New to soil - Advice and discussion - UK

[420Steve]

Hello 420 growers,

I am new to organic soil growing, I need advice on the quantities, mixture of soil and the ingredients i have to hand.

To start things off here are the ingredients i got from my local hydroponic shop that i plan to use:

What mixtures would be good, I have a 80 liter mixing container use this as a guideline.

Here are a few questions i have:

Does organic soil expire?
What soil mixture percentages should i use?
Should i use all the ingredients i have purchased?
PH of the water for organic soil?

Any advice or information on this would be greatly appricated! I look forward to reading some of your guys answers and info!

Thank you,

420Steve

 

[Papageno]

Hey Steve...

There are lots of places to find this info. The best thing to look up is search for "supper soil" and you can find tons of recipes. That said I did a bunch of experiments in the past. My base soil mix is 1/3 good potting soil, 1/3 perlite, 1/3 precomposted steer manure. Adding some Humic soil at maybe 2 cups a gallon is good. The Great White fungus just sprinkle a little around the area you transplant to but a good ancient forest Humic bled should have all the goods in it.


With that mix you wont need any nutes in Veg. The manure is very important. You need organic material in the soil for the nutes you add. Just plain old soil will allow many of the nutes to just run through. Nutes will temporarily seep into the manure and then the plant can reaccess it as stored goods later instead of it all washing out the bottom. But Manure has lots of the veg cycle nutes in it so don't add anything but water to this mix until you got a good sized plant.

Does organic soil expire? Never waited long enough to find out sorry.
Soil mix % see above...
Bat Guano is not environmentally sustainable the way most of it is harvested and it is not really any more special than other forms of composted crap. You have it so use it I guess but I wouldn't know the right ratios for that.
and lastly I personally have never had a Ph issue in soil. Just use good soil, clean water and don't over feed. If you are growing fast then when you switch to flower you may want to flush the soil hard to clean out but you probably wont need to do that is you don't over feed in veg.

Best of luck!!

 

[Papageno]

Also since you are new to soil I would give you one more trick. Once it is all potted add a top layer of about 2.5cm (I'd say 1 inch but you probably don't know that ) of vermiculite to the top. That will prevent Gnats getting to the roots. When they land on it they will immediately fly away because they are looking for soil to plant their eggs in.

 

[420Steve]

Hey Villiageidiot,

Its been a while since i have been active on the forum, i did soak up this information when you posted it back in october and it is greatly appricated and you know what you are talking about, i think after this first grow i am going to switch to synthetic nutes just seems so much easier with a schedual then organics

I look forward to hearing from you,

Thanks 420Steve Out!

 

[Papageno]

Well Honestly after it is set up a good organic blend is the easiest. If you nail the recipe all you have to do is add water and you don't even have to pH it. But the up front labor is a bit exhausting (I do break a sweat making my compost). And then you have to cook it for at least a month (I don't do less than 2). Basically I start a compost sometime before I start bloom on my current grow for the next one unless I am doing Hydro next run.

But I think going a bit less sophisticated and growing based on a program is a good way to get some solid learning and background. You will learn about nute burn and over and under feeding that way. These are important things to learn about.


Just remember that any program was designed for a certain environment and growth rate. Fertilizers or Nutes are not the actual plant food. They support the the proper use of sugars created from photosynthesis. Nute burn is when there is not enough photosynthesis going on for the level of fertilizers which could be for a lot of things. This is the primary reason why aggressive defoliation is an expert thing only. When you start stripping down the fan leaves to promote a certain type of growth you have to scale back the ferts.

Anyway the point I am making is when following a recipe unless you have the same setup and have the same rate of fan leaf growth then your photosynthesis is different so the nutes should be adjusted accordingly. Now in reality the widow for a good concentration is very large so you can be all over the map and it is way better for the plant to be on the low end forcing the roots to search for stuff then on the high end where a minor miss step can cause burn.

It is a lot like watering. Give a lot of water and the plant will grow slow and stunted and may die. Water infrequently and the plant will grow vigorously and fast. Try to go low on the nutes and you will be happy.

 

[420Steve]

Hey Villiageidiot,

Your advice is absolutely incredible and i think alot of people will agree with me on this, I want to use the Plant magic synthetic nutrient line but my questions is if i use [PM Grow and Bloom] will this mean i wont be able to use organic additives or benificals how would this effect the plants growth or would it even do anything?

Another questions aswell what is the difference between hard water nutes and soft water nutes?
What do plant magic class as hard?
Do soft water nutes have cal+mag in it and not in hard water nutes?

Thank you,

420Steve out!

 

[Papageno]

Naw you should be good to go.

Organic is just a better way of getting chemicals to the plants but chemicals are chemicals. Organic just aids in a few things like getting a good ratio and balance. Plants in the wild do not grow in sterilized environments. They grow symbiotically in soils where natural things are going on and bacteria are keeping things in a certain balance. So if it gets a bit too much one way the natural order of things will typically balance it out.

So mixing all this up is no big deal and in fact is preferred. See the problem is you go buy some plant food XYZ. And it has a specified ratio of macro and micro nutes. The NPK ratios are right on the front but there are a ton of micro nutes in there as well (if you bought anything decent). Those ratios are never perfect and have some to do with the strain and the total soil blend you start with and the quality (or lack there of) of water you use.

So just like how a farmer had to rotate his crops to have good soil...if you just do the same thing over and over the soil can build up with some stuff while others are becoming deficient. Having bacteria and symbiotic fungi and enzymes in there will help to balance out the issues we create no matter how we do them. Also it can aid in uptake and produce faster growing plants.

I do Hydro some times. I make a bacterial tea that when I add it to the res my uptake of water and nutes doubles. The growth of the plant goes through the roof. Now some of my tea is ferts but most of it is bacteria and blooming enhancers not fertilizers. What is happening is the res is being stabilized to a good pH level so the nutes can be absorbed in a more productive ratio.

Anyway good stuff is good stuff. I like making my own teas and compost. It is fun. And in the end you can't really beat natures results. It takes a lot of years of controlled experimentation with the ability to minorly change things in a controlled way to really out do nature.

The thing that we get away with is we only grow these for 4 months and then we are out. So it is easy to get through that short of time fertilizing wrong because that is not a lot of time to have things build up. If cannabis took 24 months to grow...everyone would be doing it organically.

 

[420Steve]

Pmed you