Outdoor soil question

asod001

New Member
After doing a lot of reading here and elsewhere, I came up with the following idea as a simple (but hopefully effective) mixture to add to the natural soil where I will be planting (outdoors).

2:blushsmile:1 ratio of bone meal (6-9-0): blood meal (12-0-0): palm bunch ash (0-0-30). About 2 cups of this mixture, along with 1qt of perlite, per 5 gallon hole that I will dig for each plant, mix it in with the native dirt, refill the hole, then insert my paper-towel-germinated seedlings. I decided to omit lime since the pb ash is alkaline, and my soil is starting within a 6-7 range for pH.

I'm asking for suggestions about types, amounts, and ratios of the ferts and perlite, hole size, etc. Anything really. My main goal is to keep things simple and get a decent quality harvest. I'm not big into fert/water solutions because I rarely need to water given the rainfall in my area.
 
Hi asod001, :welcome:

First, let me just say that I'm an indoor grower, but I also do quite a bit of vegetable gardening outdoors...

With that out of the way, I can tell you it's going to be difficult for anyone to try and give you intelligent advice without knowing more about your soil. Ideally getting a soil analysis would be the first thing you would want to do.

You are talking about adding perlite, I'm assuming you want to add perlite to help the soil drain, but if you improve the drainage in a five gallon size hole and the rest of the soil is heavy clay where is the water going to drain to?

As far as a suggestion for fertilizers, you might want to take a look into Osmocote Plus.

Osmocote Plus Plant Food - Discuss Its Use With Cannabis Here!

It might be ideal for your situation.
 
The area where this will be is a clearing in a beech-maple forest with high levels of organic matter. There is clay once you go down 3-4 feet but there is a slight slope to aid with drainage. Also, I should have mentioned I will be growing LR2 so the roots won't be too deep. I was hoping the perlite would further improve drainage, but also just let the roots breathe a bit. I've read in grow guides that beech-maple forests have decent soil for growing, so I figured I would just add a small amount of a somewhat evenly balanced organic nute mix to make sure there was enough without burning the plants. I will have 3 separate sites with a few plants at each, so I might experiment between sites and see what turns out best. Maybe the oc+ at one, my nute mix at another, and plain native soil at another.
 
Right now I'm using an organic soil mix that has been amended with things like worm castings, compost, Tomato-Tone, bone meal and kelp meal and I still mix in OC+. Best of both worlds...:)

Also, you had said you were leaving out the lime, but in my experience our plants are magnesium hogs, fine powdered dolomite lime (make sure it's powdered, not pelletized or it will take too long to break down) is ph neutral, and will provide some of the calcium and magnesium that your girls are going to need.

You might think about some epsom salt and gypsum also. However everything's a guess without knowing what's in the soil to start with.
:goodluck:
 
Back
Top Bottom