First time building my soil, would love to hear your thoughts, peat, pumice and (mostly) gaia green

[AtomC]

@hecno Thats a beautiful thing. I probably have about as much space to work with as the turkey nest. Really love how you're working with what you have naturally and doing great things.

 

[DTOM420]

Very few people will be able to look at your recipe and tell you how it’ll work. I tried the route you seem to be on and kept being told to have it tested. So I did and even had some consultants look at the results - including talking to Tad from KIS. Then they told me to add this and that and retest. It was a rabbit hole. Did it grow well? Yes and no. I was able to harvest out of it but it didn’t produce my best; AND I had to use AACT to get it done. Come to find out... Coot’s recipe was heavily dependent on his amazing compost and EWC. Without that incredibly active microbial input, the “water only” thing wasn’t possible. In the end, I quit trying to come up with my own recipe and now I use either a soil building kit from BuildASoil or KIS. It’s a far less time consuming way of getting to the same place; and it’s actually been more affordable than buying all the inputs separately. I would strongly advise you order some extremely high quality compost and EWC. For the size of your grow, ordering from one of those companies or another purveyor of top shelf compost and EWC will pay HUGE dividends in the long run. A little will go a long way. IF you decide to keep living soil, you won’t need to buy more biology later on anyway. Just a thought.

I’m a big fan of Build A Soil’s peat based kits and I keep using the soil with a freshen-up each cycle with their “craft blend” nutrient pack. I’d take Tom Sowell’s advice. Some folks live in an environment (like hecno) that lends itself to doing some amazing stuff with what’s layin around or available locally. I wish I was one of those. It’s a very deep rabbit hole. Much deeper than I realized when I first started listening to Coot or when KIS started the podcasts. BAS and KIS make it pretty easy to get great results a lot quicker than most folks can do it in their own.
Good luck!

 

[AtomC]

Very few people will be able to look at your recipe and tell you how it’ll work. I tried the route you seem to be on and kept being told to have it tested. So I did and even had some consultants look at the results - including talking to Tad from KIS. Then they told me to add this and that and retest. It was a rabbit hole. Did it grow well? Yes and no. I was able to harvest out of it but it didn’t produce my best; AND I had to use AACT to get it done. Come to find out... Coot’s recipe was heavily dependent on his amazing compost and EWC. Without that incredibly active microbial input, the “water only” thing wasn’t possible. In the end, I quit trying to come up with my own recipe and now I use either a soil building kit from BuildASoil or KIS. It’s a far less time consuming way of getting to the same place; and it’s actually been more affordable than buying all the inputs separately. I would strongly advise you order some extremely high quality compost and EWC. For the size of your grow, ordering from one of those companies or another purveyor of top shelf compost and EWC will pay HUGE dividends in the long run. A little will go a long way. IF you decide to keep living soil, you won’t need to buy more biology later on anyway. Just a thought.

I’m a big fan of Build A Soil’s peat based kits and I keep using the soil with a freshen-up each cycle with their “craft blend” nutrient pack. I’d take Tom Sowell’s advice. Some folks live in an environment (like hecno) that lends itself to doing some amazing stuff with what’s layin around or available locally. I wish I was one of those. It’s a very deep rabbit hole. Much deeper than I realized when I first started listening to Coot or when KIS started the podcasts. BAS and KIS make it pretty easy to get great results a lot quicker than most folks can do it in their own.
Good luck!

Thanks for all that. With the amount I need it really would be more cost effective to just buy a kit, but being in Canada I haven't had much luck finding a good one. Hell, I can't even find an affordable test lab/kit along the lines of soil savvy that I'd be willing to pay for semi regularly, although I admit I only did a bit of googling. At the end of the day growing is a hobby for me, so the learning and trial and error aspect of things is less consequential than for some, although likely just as frustrating.

I'm 6 weeks into my first run in the soil and the plants seem quite happy. A bit of lightening between veins on some leaves that I can't diagnose, let alone fix on my own, but the onset is very slow and it doesn't seem to be slowing the plants down. Currently it is blowing away my previous OF with Gaia Green grow, so I'm happy with what I have and look forward to improving it.

I am currently mixing up a second batch so I can alternate between growing and cooking soils. I've found a fish compost that I believe is similar to Oly Mountain for this run, so hopefully that is a step in the right direction. I also have been and will keep making teas, there isn't much else for me to do with blumats taking care of the watering so I don't mind propping up the biology myself from time to time.

You're right, it is a deep rabbit hole and I keep bouncing between "I couldn't possibly get all this right" and "Throw everything in there, cook it and keep the microbes happy and it will be fine". At the end of the day I'm looking forward to throwing away less soil and growing happy plants.

Thanks again for the tips, it is great to hear from someone with similar experience.

 

[stonerlibrarian]

Hi,

I'm not an expert. I'm just starting to grow. But I thought i'd chime in because I also use gaia green to grow autos and thus far my growing strategy has been to keep it simple and it's worked well. So I use gaia green as well, and all I've been doing is 70% pro-mix hp, 20% Worm castings, 10% extra perlite. then 2tbsp per gallon of gaia green 4-4-4, and a tiny bit of dolomite lime (might leave it out next time). The 4-4-4 has a variety of rock dusts, but if you want more i'd just go for azomite or their glacial rock dust (you can get the small jar for dirt cheap like $7 or $8). Then top dress 1.5tbsp/gallon at 50/50 4-4-4 and 2-8-4 at ~ 4weeks. If it's a long flowering auto then another tbsp per gallon of 2-8-4 and or do a compost/ewc tea or two at around week 7 or 8 week mark if your plants need it (throw some kelp in there and worm castings).

I basically took this strategy off from a mix of mr canuks grow on youtube, and this blog http://www.marijuanamama420.ca/my-nutrient-schedule/ as well as my own experience growing tomatoes and peppers with pro-mix from lowes.

 

[KIS]

Very few people will be able to look at your recipe and tell you how it’ll work. I tried the route you seem to be on and kept being told to have it tested. So I did and even had some consultants look at the results - including talking to Tad from KIS. Then they told me to add this and that and retest. It was a rabbit hole. Did it grow well? Yes and no. I was able to harvest out of it but it didn’t produce my best; AND I had to use AACT to get it done. Come to find out... Coot’s recipe was heavily dependent on his amazing compost and EWC. Without that incredibly active microbial input, the “water only” thing wasn’t possible. In the end, I quit trying to come up with my own recipe and now I use either a soil building kit from BuildASoil or KIS. It’s a far less time consuming way of getting to the same place; and it’s actually been more affordable than buying all the inputs separately. I would strongly advise you order some extremely high quality compost and EWC. For the size of your grow, ordering from one of those companies or another purveyor of top shelf compost and EWC will pay HUGE dividends in the long run. A little will go a long way. IF you decide to keep living soil, you won’t need to buy more biology later on anyway. Just a thought.

I’m a big fan of Build A Soil’s peat based kits and I keep using the soil with a freshen-up each cycle with their “craft blend” nutrient pack. I’d take Tom Sowell’s advice. Some folks live in an environment (like hecno) that lends itself to doing some amazing stuff with what’s layin around or available locally. I wish I was one of those. It’s a very deep rabbit hole. Much deeper than I realized when I first started listening to Coot or when KIS started the podcasts. BAS and KIS make it pretty easy to get great results a lot quicker than most folks can do it in their own.
Good luck!

Good post! The recipe OP posted is Coot's mix and he always says it's not his mix unless they're using his EWC. It's much lighter on nutrients than the what we put in our soils at KIS. That being said, many folks have great success with it and being that we are talking autos, it's probably sufficient provided you don't use a really small container.

Canada is tough. Have you looked at Black Swallow Living Soils? They're good folks, I've been working with them the past few years in creating a mix for Canada, but they also have all the amendments available and ship anywhere in the country.

If you do want to come up with your own recipe, it could save you money in the long run. The thing to consider is how scientific you want to be and if you're okay with a bad cycle or not. If you're not doing any soil testing it would be hard to know exactly what is in your soil or what the limiting factor of growth might be from a nutrient perspective. There's so many variables that go into growing and soil is only one of them. Lighting, environment, training/pruning, genetics, pest pressure, watering....all play huge roles in your plant's health and yield.