Need custom organic soil advice for outdoor pots

[Azimuth]

Unfortunately, organics and standard commercial fertilizers don't play well together. Commercial fertilizers are generally salt based and poison the soil, making it inhospitable for the organic life. You then become dependent on them going forward.

So, you have to pick a camp. Maybe go with your chemical version in a few large pots for a round or two while you work on your soil. @FelipeBlu has grown some absolute monster plants in a simple 5 gallon bucket. He uses the "hempy" style which is literally a bucket with a single hole about an inch or two up from the bottom, and filled with perlite or some other inert medium. Stick your plant in, water with your pH'd chemical nutes until water comes out the hole every day or two or three and that's it!

I'm trying to do an organic version but so far not having great success.

Using that system could get you a great harvest in a very small footprint. Using 2-5 gallon buckets, perlite to fill them, and some nutes are generally all you need. Wouldn't be organic, but if you're considering alternatives that would be a very good option. Your main challenge there would be getting a decent pH pen and a way to adjust the pH up and down which come in bottles called pH Up and pH down, and those should be available at agricultural supply stores if you can't shop online.

Hempy style is considered a hydro method so you get extraordinarily fast and explosive growth. You can check out felipe's journal to see what I mean.

FelipeBlu's Outdoor Hempy Photos and Autos 2020

Plant photos

 

[greenjeans]

How long does it take for your soil to recover from being given the commercial fertz??

 

[CBDMed]

Uff!! Oy va voi... I am sorry to hear that! I am not ready to throw in the towel just yet. I did run chemical fertilizers for my first two or three grows, but I don't think I have access to a full enough spectrum of nutrients to make a truly tasty grow with chemicals (just bagged 15-15-15 and bagged 10-30-10 from the local "big box" store).

The flavor when I used Subcool's and Clack's recipes was really far superior to anything I did chemically. I am sure there are ways to bring out the flavors chemically, but I don't think I have access to those nutrients here at any sort of reasonable price.

I am not ready to wave the white flag yet. I made a big list of all of the components of Subcool's and Clack's, and sent it to my friend in a nearby small city, and he will see how many of them he can find. (It makes sense that they *should have some form of blood meal, bone meal, feather meal, etc., because of the slaughterhouses. And they *should have some form of crustacean meal, because they are on the ocean. So although I am very eager to get started, I think I should give it a week, and see what he can come up with.

Or maybe I could start a single plant in black soil with enough perlite and coco coir to open it up, and then experiment with the 15-15-15 and 10-30-10, both to get started, and as kind of a "control group"? And then that will buy my friend some time, and give me a small scientific test?? (Hmm.......)

I really appreciate everyone's help.

 

[Azimuth]

How long does it take for your soil to recover from being given the commercial fertz??

I guess it would depend on how long you used them. It doesn't take many applications to ruin the soil for the microbes. If I were going to do chemicals I'd do it in pots or buckets. Remediating the soil from salts would be very difficult.

That way you can work on your soil with organics and keep the salts and petrochemicals out of your soils for you and the next guy, and still get a decent harvest to get you started.

 

[Azimuth]

Or maybe I could start a single plant in black soil with enough perlite and coco coir to open it up, and then experiment with the 15-15-15 and 10-30-10, both to get started, and as kind of a "control group"? And then that will buy my friend some time, and give me a small scientific test?? (Hmm.......)

Sure, just do it in a pot or bucket. There are huge swaths of the world where once extremely fertile ground is now barren and won't support life without the constant addition of the chemical fertilizers thanks to companies like Monsanto and Bayer. Once you go that route they have you for life, having to keep buying their ferts and pest controls because natural stuff will no longer work. And don't get me started on GMO'S.

 

[greenjeans]

This year I have become more serious with my composting worms (8 bins) and have built a sifter for the castings, so it will be interesting to see how much I get from that. I have stock piled a couple of barrels of mulched leaves and quite a few buckets of fresh water pond sea weed to feed them.
I usually mix, I'm guessing, 1 part pro-mix mycorrhizae growing mix to 2 parts soil and add quite a bit of perlite and then will throw in all the worm castings that I have. I\m hoping that the worms can produce about a 1/4 of the bulk but we'll see.
I'm aiming at a much later start this year (outdoor) just to try to keep them frisky gals smaller. That should give me a bit of time to let the worms munch!!

​

 

[CBDMed]

Unfortunately, organics and standard commercial fertilizers don't play well together. Commercial fertilizers are generally salt based and poison the soil, making it inhospitable for the organic life. You then become dependent on them going forward.

So, you have to pick a camp.

Once you go that route they have you for life, having to keep buying their ferts and pest controls because natural stuff will no longer work.

Uff! Azimuth, are you saying that if one will use chemical fertilizers, there is no benefit to using worm castings,?

And if so, then would one be better off with black soil plus "openers" (e.g. Perlite) and chemical fertilizers (and it is not organic) in a pot?
Or black soil plus "openers" (e.g. Perlite) and a lot of worm castings, and a much reduced yield?

 

[Azimuth]

Uff! Azimuth, are you saying that if one will use chemical fertilizers, there is no benefit to using worm castings,?

And if so, then would one be better off with black soil plus "openers" (e.g. Perlite) and chemical fertilizers (and it is not organic) in a pot?
Or black soil plus "openers" (e.g. Perlite) and a lot of worm castings, and a much reduced yield?

Yes, unfortunately that's what I'm saying. The salts in the chem ferts will kill off whatever microbes the worms can produce, assuming the worms live.

I'd save your worm castings for the organic grow and use the black soil plus perlite plus chem ferts in a pot/bucket to give you some yield while you're putting together your organic soil.

The organic amendments really should "cook" for a while anyway so you don't burn your plants while the organic soil is preparing itself.

If your chem ferts say they can work with hydro I'd go the hempy route with the perlite and save the black soil for the organic grow. If not, then use it with the ferts and plan on replacing it for the organic grow.

The worm castings won't be enough to power the grow to completion, at least they weren't for me. I did get some yield, but it was maybe a quarter or less than what I should have gotten.

Of course that will also depend on the quality of your castings. I ran mine before I really knew what I should have run through the bin. For me, the vast majority was kitchen scraps. Now I know it should have included leaves, minerals, all the various meals, etc.

If my castings included all of those things I'm sure it would have produced much better.

 

[bobrown14]

There should be some pretty good soil for growing weed in Columbia... we used to get top shelf weed from there I doubt they did much anything but toss some manure inna hole and plant some plants on top.

Might try and talk around and find an old timer that was around when they were growing weed back in the 70s.

Columbia probably has some decent soil from the mountains that washed down to the plains and beyond check you local creek or river bank for some soil also composting is critical for soil health going forward.

 

[CBDMed]

Thanks very much, Azimuth.

"Yes, unfortunately that's what I'm saying. The salts in the chem ferts will kill off whatever microbes the worms can produce, assuming the worms live."

Ugh...
Well, I can understand how chemical salts would kill both any worms, and any beneficial bacteria. And I am not happy about it. Only, I won't have live worms in these pots.
My problem is that I have *no* affordable access to organic nutrients at the moment (a la Subcool and Clackamas Coot).
However, I *do* have cheap access to black soil, coco coir, rice hulls, and worm castings (25 kg for $7.50 US).
But the cruncher is, the only NPK I can afford (at least right now) is regular chemical pellets.

So if I understand correctly, if worm castings alone won't power the mix, then I should fill fabric pots with a mix of black soil, coco coir, rice hulls and NPK pellets.
The only option is, I can either add (or not add) lots and lots of cheap worm castings (up to 1/3 of the pot), which costs not much more than the black soil.
So at the moment the only question seems to be, "To add worm castings, or not to add worm castings--that is the question."
To me, I would think that lots of cheap worm castings will vastly improve both the flavor and the nutrient content, even in spite of the NPK pellets.
Is that wrong?

Hopefully in 2-3 months I can get to a place with a garden, and I can start to build soil for a truly organic grow.
Hopefully by then I can find out which aggregator plants are available here, and how to make biochar, and research that Korean fermented compost. And no chemical pellets will be allowed!
But at the moment I have only coco coir, rice hulls, NPK, and worm castings in fabric pots.

My Colombian friend wrote to some people, but things move super slowly here.
Hopefully in a few weeks I will know if I have access to organic nutrients here in Colombia. But I probably won't hava access to whatever there is for a few weeks.
So if I understand my situation correctly, about the best I can do for this batch is to mix everything together in pots (with worm compost), and start looking for a place where I can go truly organic next time. And start educating myself.
Does that seem right?
Or what am I missing?

 

[CBDMed]

BoBrown, thanks.

"There should be some pretty good soil for growing weed in Columbia... we used to get top shelf weed from there I doubt they did much anything but toss some manure inna hole and plant some plants on top."

Yeah.
They said the black soil is soil from the colder regions, and I suspect it has maybe a bit of volcanic inputs.
A neighbor lady grows really nice looking flowers and such in her pots, and her husband was just putting straight black soil in her pots (no amendments). It looks pretty good, except for some lumps of clay (but not too bad).

I think for right now I'm just gonna have to mix everything I have together (black soil, coco coir, rice hulls, NPK, and worm castings), and hope I can find some affordable organic nutrients with Colombian origin for the future.
And find out what aggregator plants grow here.
And do my best job with compost, and building the soil once I get a real garden.
Then I can do in-ground organic grows, and let the plants get big (with Gas Lantern Routine). And hopefully have lots of live little critters in the soil.
But in the mean time, just get this grow on the road...

Thanks.

 

[Azimuth]

Well, I think your choices are to go all organic with your worm castings with the expectation that it won't be a super productive grow, or go the other route and use the chem ferts to build up your stockpile until you get to your next site.

Or, maybe run a pot or two of each. Maybe your worm castings have had all of the Coot's amendments added to them. Pretty doubtful, but who knows. Doing both will allow you to compare results and see just how good that black soil and worm castings is. Who knows, might be a great combination!

 

[CBDMed]

Azimuth, thanks. But may I please ask you?
Even if the NPK kills the beneficial bacteria and the beneficial mycorrhiza, and also kills any worms, does the NPK stop the plant from accessing the nutrients and such that already exist in the worm castings? Or can the plant still access the nutrients and such that exist in the worm castings, just like it can access the nutrients and such that exist in the black soil?
(Or am I thinking all wrong?)

 

[Azimuth]

The way the two work are quite different. In organic grows, the nutrients are not generally directly available to the plant but rather locked away and require microbes to break them down to make them available in a form the plant can use. When the plant needs a particular nutrient the roots send a signal to the microbes which then deliver it and are rewarded with sugars created by the plant. A very symbiotic relationship.

With chemical fertilizers the nutrients are encapsulated in a salt based structure that dissolve in water and are immediately available to the plant. You are, in effect, force feeding whatever you give it rather than what the plant wants at the time. In the process, the dissolved salts build up in the soil, poisoning it and killing off the microlife, making you dependent on the chemicals going forward.

At least that's how I understand it. So using organics like your worm castings along with chemical fertilizers is basically a waste of good castings. The plant won't be able to access their goodies without the microbes that can't live in salt poisoned soil.

That's why I say you have to pick a side. The two approaches are mutually exclusive.

 

[CBDMed]

Uff. Pick a side, and go with it.
Well, I guess that is like many things in life--you have to pick a pony and ride.
Thanks very much for explaining.
I cannot wait to get a real garden plot, so I can get an organic grow.

 

[Azimuth]

 

[732002]

Maybe keep it simple?

Promix HP
Down to Earth 4-4-4 veg and 4-8-4 flower

 

[Azimuth]

Even if the NPK kills the beneficial bacteria and the beneficial mycorrhiza, and also kills any worms, does the NPK stop the plant from accessing the nutrients and such that already exist in the worm castings?

Also, please keep in mind it is not the NPK that's the problem. Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium are all major elements used and needed by the plant.

It is the delivery mechanism (the salts) that is the issue. That's what contaminates the soil.

Plants need differing levels of each of these major, as well as many minor, elements at various parts of their growth and flowering stages.

 

[bobrown14]

If you want to use NPK ferts its probably best to add 1/2 to the hole then top dress or scratch in the other 1/2 of what you want to use half way thru the grow cycle growing in the ground.

Soil does a lot of buffering and the N in the NPK is extremely volatile meaning it gasses off can change quickly to forms the plant cant use etc. Nitrogen cycle and nitrification at play.

Manure and or kelp meal are your friends for longer stable N sources. Again this is outdoors in the ground NOT containers.