Well a 2 cubic foot quart bag fills one 5 gallon grow bag with a little left over. Thats ready to use soil as well. Dry bags at 12 quarts takes about 2. At $10-20 a bag thats a lot of money to throw down.
Made me laugh Bob my mrs no matter how much I tidied would know I done the soil indoors and would try to cut my balls off lol also I recon biotabs would be a great route to takeSo if you want to luxury of water only and maybe even don't having to mess with the pH of your tapwater, unless it's way out of whack...I would suggest Organic living soil.
You don't need much to get started, but you do need to buy it all at once...So if you are talking enough material to get twenty pots worth of grows out of it, we still need to know how many pots you are going to be using. I'm gonna assume you are talking about 4 x 5gallon pots = 20gallon of mix. That's doable on a tarp outside in the garden, or if your missus isn't home in the Livingroom, lol
So what you need is the following basic stuff...
Then for the living part...You can go many ways, but the easiest it to buy a ready made starter pack. ie, like @DCLXVI suggested from the build-a-soil website ór if you live in Europe, then I would suggest you try out BioTabs. They got a 'water only' strategy which changed my life!
- One (or two) large plastic bin(s) with a lid (total about 30gallon in size) to brew your mix in.
- A tarp large enough to mix everything on.
- 15 gallon of quality soil, don't skimp out on this one. Go for some sort of 'lightmix' for young seedlings.
- 5 gallon peat or coco...dealers choice
- 5 gallon perlite or the other thing, whatchamacallit...
Any way, which way you go...You will have to mix all that together and let it brew for a while. I suggest you do this inside in the bins so the temperature stays nice and warm which will help the bacteria and mycorrhiza to grow faster and colonize the soil. One thing I really recommend you add to the soil is worms...Not any worms, but compost worms. ie, Dendrobaena and Tiger worms. These will eat all decaying matter and while doing so aerate your soil.
You will end up with about a third to much, but keep this to start your next batch of soil if you need to replace it anytime in the future.
Yup, kinda put him on tha hook for a fall didn't I, lolMade me laugh Bob my mrs no matter how much I tidied would know I done the soil indoors and would try to cut my balls off lol also I recon biotabs would be a great route to take
Yup, kinda put him on tha hook for a fall didn't I, lol
My first run with Autos in Auto pots was not entirely a disaster until I made things worse by pouring a bunch of stuff in the resevoir that my plants didn't need or want. It turns out that my soil mix was way too heavy and waterlogged. By the time I pulled the plants from the watering pans the damage was done. Great genetics produced a decent yield of fantastic stuff, no matter how hard I tried to kill them. For my next try with the Auto pots I'll try adding 1/3 Coco to my organic soil which is coast of Maine organic raised bed soil. It has all the buzzwords like kelp and lobster (yummy) vermicompost, biochar, chicken poop, etc. I screened out all the composted tree bark and some random debris and broke up all the clumps. I added 50% perlite, which I previously rinsed and let dry on a screen for a few days. I've got the soil stored in a few large Rubbermaid tubs with a lid. 1/3 soil 1/3 perlite and 1/3 Coco sounds pretty easy. I want to make these Auto pots work for me. I was so happy for the first three or four weeks. when the plants slowed down on water consumption they just sat in stagnant water. Now I know. I'm smarter than I was 90 days ago when I mixed my muddy soil. I'm going to try your method less the grow dots. I think I'll have to research more about Grow Dots. My soil may be good enough.
