How's This For A Soil Mix?

[flytier]

Hey everybody. I'm a very new grower and I've massacred a number of seedlings by using nutrient-enriched potting soil before finding out what was wrong. I'm in the process of making up my own organic mix now and I'd like to get some opinions on it before I potentially fuck up more expensive plants.

I brought home some fish compost from work (I'm a salmon hatchery technician and we have an inexhaustible supply of it), and I put it together with peat moss, perlite and black soil from Walmart. I also have some scallop shells that I can crush up and add. Oh yeah, and I picked up some molasses for the soil tonight too.

Does this sound like anything that anybody out there has tried? If not, does anyone have an opinion on the sound of it? I'm really getting tired of killing plants and I don't want to off some more playing mad scientist.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[wanabegrower]

1 part perlite, 1 part peat moss, 1 part vermiculite, and 2 part organic potting soil. just plain water for at least a weak or two depending on strain.

same soil mix 9 days after sprout on 3rd node. no nutrients for at least a Weak.

 

[flytier]

Thanks for the input. I don't have any vermiculite yet, but it's not hard to get. You use a lot more than I was planning on, but by the looks of your plants the mix is just the ticket. I'll definitely make liberal use of it at transplant time. I may even start bringing home some spring water from work that we use for the fish. When it gets into our system we supersaturate it with pure oxygen and I bet the roots would make good use of that. We have plain well water at home which, although I never tested it, is generally very low in O2.

What strain are you growing there? The nodes are closely spaced; looks like it's gonna be a nice bushy plant. Here's my earlier White Widow on LST in a store-bought soil mix. I had absolutely no idea that weed would grow so bloody thick.