Indoor McDee goes Organic

[McDee]

yes sir
for reamending, topdressing and teas along with baf

How much would you use to reamend in a 5 gal bag for an auto & photo?

 

[Tom Bombadil]

How much would you use to reamend in a 5 gal bag for an auto & photo?

generally follow the websites suggestion:
Craft Blend weighs about 8.3 Ounces per cup ~ 1/2 pound per cup

• Brew All Around Balanced Nutrient Tea's for Veg - Flower (1/4 - 1 Cup Per 5 gallon Bucket of Water)
• Re-Amend your used Organic Soil at 2-4 Cups Per Cubic Foot
• Top Dress at 1/4 - 1 Cup Per Plant.
  
  and ll use additional top dressings and teas if needed for larger plants.. same for a photo with a long veg time
  
  ime generally #5 cloth pots hold around 3.5+ true gallons or so, #7s are closer to 5 gallons..

 

[Rasterman]

What rate do you use it at? Like I have questions on their directions. It says to amend used soil 2-4 Cups per cubic foot. So my 3lbs bag will make 1.5 cbft of strong, 2 cbft medium, or 3 cbft of weak soil. That's 2-4 plants at 5gal each. I'm not sure how much to use. I was going to just do 4 plant from it using 1.5 cups per plant mixed throughout the soil. Then I thought well auto wouldn't use same as a photo right? The top dressing says .25-1 cup per plant, but is that for the entire grow or is that several different feeding amounts? With the autopots not going to top dress just trying to see how much to use per plant. Trying to figure out how much for auto vs photo. Do you add anything else?

First a caveat: I don't measure stuff, so this is a guess. Also sorry for the long and wandering explanation. I hope you find the information useful.

Aside from the limited immediately-usable nutes in the topdress, there's not much danger of overfeeding. So 1.5 cups per five gallons sounds about right for soil reuse. I topdress going into flower about a cup per five gallon. With new soil I topdress about a cup too. I also usually topdress with composted chicken poo at transplant or when the plant is about three weeks old, about 1/4 cup per five gallon to give them a boost.

I don't usually add anything else unless I see a nitrogen deficiency in veg which isn't typical with off-the-shelf Buildasoil, though it did happen once with new bags this summer for some reason (see below).

That's all I do but haven't reused soil more than a couple of times because I just started using living soil a couple years ago and got myself into trouble trying to mix my own and adding it to the prepackaged stuff.

I add a little extra for 7 gallons, and the few 7 gallon living soil grows I've done have gone to harvest without doing anything else besides microbes, and I haven't done that consistently though I do now.

I bought two bags of Buildasoil Recipe 3 this summer and had deficiencies for every plant using it. I think that's because the bags were shipped to New Mexico during a heatwave and were nuked in a hot warehouse. So now I'm going to add Microbe Complete every grow. The only times I've otherwise had problems were in pots smaller than #7.

According to Jeremy at Buildasoil, you can go water only from seed to harvest. But he recommends buying all kinds of crap for better harvest and I would agree except I hate measuring and buying extra ingredients.

The Complete System – BuildASoil

Introduction Continuous Credit to Clackamascoots, Gascanastan and all the others before me. The reason we put this system together is for those that want to have a birds eye view of the entire process from start to finish. Many people want to grow naturally and just don't trust that it will...

buildasoil.com

There's a feeding schedule at the link and if you use it you can't go wrong.

My granddaughter recently completed a grow seed to harvest in Buildasoil, water only in 7 gallon except for 1/4 cup of chicken poo during veg running photo clones. She didn't have any problems and her plants did really well.

I don't think craft blend is sufficient after a couple of runs of reuse though, but that's just a guess because I haven't reused that many times. My plan for reuse next time is to topdress with craft blend AND a couple of inches of good compost.

My first living soil grow, I had the soil tested before the second grow in that soil and it didn't need anything! -Except there were a couple of micronutrient deficiencies. So I added Bioag TM-7 but haven't used it consistently since.

Moisture drives the "battery" so mulching is extremely important. I topdress under the mulch.

 

[WildBill]

I am going to use the soil from these 2. How much would you recommend of craft blend per 5gal bag for an auto? I have worm castings should I add that to the mix, if so how much?

Right now, anything less than 20 gallons will get media re-amended in a large tote and cook for a period of time. For craft blend I picked the lower amount and go with at two cups per cubic foot.
After the initial run in the 20 gallon bags, I'll top dress with the same amount after working it into the top of the media which will by that time have a living cover crop and active worms. That's a lot to top dress at one time with worms active in the upper part of the media structure. Worms do not like craft blend they run from it. I'm sure it's because it's a drying irritant to them, but it could be something else. I'm gonna apply it and probably 4 periods with a couple of days in between. Re amending will begin on the day of chop. This will give it two weeks to be able to apply the re amended nutrients as the girls dry and give time to the microbes and other little bugs and worms to eat up the old root system.
All of the defoliation will be a cut and drop operation. If there is too much bulk, I'll just put it in the blender and juice it and then apply the liquid. The bulk material, after the juice is squeezed out, will be fed to the worms in the worm bin.

Until I get my grow room built in my shop, the 20 gallon bags are a way of having a bed to run my girls in that I can get to and take care of in the tent. If I could set my tent up to have access to all four sides easily, I would've had a 4x4 bed a long time ago.
Anyway, that's the plan. We'll see if it works out or not.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

ive never used 4 cups per cf.. mostly because its too damn expensive...occasionally i add another bag of ffof to my bins and mix it into my used soil with most likely 2c per cf and the worms living in the bins add castings constantly as I feed them once in a while with fruit scraps leaves and roots... periodically add some rice hulls to counteract the castings. rice hulls break down after a few cycles and add silica. had the same soil for almost 5 years... but I never leave it in the bags and replant.. im always swapping out with soil from the storage bin..

 

[WildBill]

ive never used 4 cups per cf.. mostly because its too damn expensive...occasionally i add another bag of ffof to my bins and mix it into my used soil with most likely 2c per cf and the worms living in the bins add castings constantly as I feed them once in a while with fruit scraps leaves and roots... periodically add some rice hulls to counteract the castings. rice hulls break down after a few cycles and add silica. had the same soil for almost 5 years... but I never leave it in the bags and replant.. im always swapping out with soil from the storage bin..

Yeah I think 4 cups is quite excessive and wasteful.

 

[McDee]

First a caveat: I don't measure stuff, so this is a guess. Also sorry for the long and wandering explanation. I hope you find the information useful.

Aside from the limited immediately-usable nutes in the topdress, there's not much danger of overfeeding. So 1.5 cups per five gallons sounds about right for soil reuse. I topdress going into flower about a cup per five gallon. With new soil I topdress about a cup too. I also usually topdress with composted chicken poo at transplant or when the plant is about three weeks old, about 1/4 cup per five gallon to give them a boost.

I don't usually add anything else unless I see a nitrogen deficiency in veg which isn't typical with off-the-shelf Buildasoil, though it did happen once with new bags this summer for some reason (see below).

That's all I do but haven't reused soil more than a couple of times because I just started using living soil a couple years ago and got myself into trouble trying to mix my own and adding it to the prepackaged stuff.

I add a little extra for 7 gallons, and the few 7 gallon living soil grows I've done have gone to harvest without doing anything else besides microbes, and I haven't done that consistently though I do now.

I bought two bags of Buildasoil Recipe 3 this summer and had deficiencies for every plant using it. I think that's because the bags were shipped to New Mexico during a heatwave and were nuked in a hot warehouse. So now I'm going to add Microbe Complete every grow. The only times I've otherwise had problems were in pots smaller than #7.

According to Jeremy at Buildasoil, you can go water only from seed to harvest. But he recommends buying all kinds of crap for better harvest and I would agree except I hate measuring and buying extra ingredients.

The Complete System – BuildASoil

Introduction Continuous Credit to Clackamascoots, Gascanastan and all the others before me. The reason we put this system together is for those that want to have a birds eye view of the entire process from start to finish. Many people want to grow naturally and just don't trust that it will...

buildasoil.com

There's a feeding schedule at the link and if you use it you can't go wrong.

My granddaughter recently completed a grow seed to harvest in Buildasoil, water only in 7 gallon except for 1/4 cup of chicken poo during veg running photo clones. She didn't have any problems and her plants did really well.

I don't think craft blend is sufficient after a couple of runs of reuse though, but that's just a guess because I haven't reused that many times. My plan for reuse next time is to topdress with craft blend AND a couple of inches of good compost.

My first living soil grow, I had the soil tested before the second grow in that soil and it didn't need anything! -Except there were a couple of micronutrient deficiencies. So I added Bioag TM-7 but haven't used it consistently since.

Moisture drives the "battery" so mulching is extremely important. I topdress under the mulch.

Good stuff bud! I'm gonna poke around some more I have a gernal idea of what I'm gonna do. I'm like a sponge I like to get as much info as I can lol. I have a compost bin going but don't know how to tell when it's ready. I'm glad you mentioned mulch. I have a few questions since I started using autopot. 1st do I still need to use a surfactant, and 2nd do still need mulch? I picked up the HubbaBubba after it had been in the autopot and it was HEAVY! It stays wet plus I will be using living soil bags that are double layered. Is mulch necessary at that point? Same with surfactant. I can't seem to find anything on it.

 

[WildBill]

Good stuff bud! I'm gonna poke around some more I have a gernal idea of what I'm gonna do. I'm like a sponge I like to get as much info as I can lol. I have a compost bin going but don't know how to tell when it's ready. I'm glad you mentioned mulch. I have a few questions since I started using autopot. 1st do I still need to use a surfactant, and 2nd do still need mulch? I picked up the HubbaBubba after it had been in the autopot and it was HEAVY! It stays wet plus I will be using living soil bags that are double layered. Is mulch necessary at that point? Same with surfactant. I can't seem to find anything on it.

In pots, I always use a surfactant. In organics, it's always best use a mulch layer. It helps foster the good moisture level at the top where your amendments are and the roots of your girl should look for her food. Rice hulls would be the best, but something easy to get ahold of at pet stores or tractor supply or Walmart is Timothy hay. It's for rabbits!
When top dressing anything with the Timothy hay on top, just apply it and shake it down through the layer. Wet that in and then sort of fluff your Timothy hay afterwards. That keeps it from compacting.

 

[McDee]

In pots, I always use a surfactant. In organics, it's always best use a mulch layer. It helps foster the good moisture level at the top where your amendments are and the roots of your girl should look for her food. Rice hulls would be the best, but something easy to get ahold of at pet stores or tractor supply or Walmart is Timothy hay. It's for rabbits!
When top dressing anything with the Timothy hay on top, just apply it and shake it down through the layer. Wet that in and then sort of fluff your Timothy hay afterwards. That keeps it from compacting.

I need some hay, or straw good idea. OK, that is a good case to use mulch.

 

[McDee]

@WildBill are all rice hulls the same? I found a 10lbs bag on Amazon, but they were promoting the use for brewing beer. Look the same as ones on build a soil.