once the outside air temp is above 25c, your plant will struggle to get rid of excess heat in full sun. As your plants grow, if you live in a hot location in summer, you might want to look at a UV screen to help your plant accommodate the energy. I use one here from 10am-18hrs typically in June-August
you might use humic acid and or gypsum to break heavy clays. Clays become sticky due to accumulation of certain cations which make it tricky to manage. if we exchange say sodium or magnesium with Calcium, we can free up the clays making them more friable. Note tho that you may need extra N during the mineralization, but gypsum will have no net impact on pH :-)
always let animal manures cook, this is great advice buddy.
Living soil is better for plants than say using coco outside, which tends to lack sufficient diversity unless you add lots of other inputs. LOS means CO2 is being released from worm channels and root passages, water channels too, in to the air where it is pulled in to our plants. This extra CO2 helps plants growing with living soil, better manage environmental stress like high heat and UV, but there are limits of course and so having a sunscreen is a good idea for the times of day we get peaks, which might go above 25C. Keeping the soil covered again lowers LW energy by reducing radiated heat, so making it more possible to manage the absorbed totals and shed any excess :-)
looks ok to me, just so you know, I use basic soil without all these amendments. then i use powder and liquid nutes and bio stims, each cycle costs me just over $2 in added inputs, soil costs are approx $1/15kg
yes I like Ray Archuleta, I like Rick Haney, Will Brinton, I like Paul Stamets, I like all sorts of people doing great work oinline.
best thing you can do is test its CO2 levels mate, no way of knowing if its any good otherwise. Compost piles and old soil should be covered, all soil should be covered. mans biggest mistake is to strip the land bare. We are still doing it and this is fucking annoying, excuse my french, but we simply have to be better at learning from errors :-)
the reason i dont make super soil myself buddy, is more or less covered here. I use organic nutrients, that i make and biology that I breed mate, i dont guess, preferring to use a system of inputs that I know attract XYZ microbes at the right time, and is predictable in terms of cost, is easy to measure, easy to use, and is used all over the world by people/patients with many complex real health matters and whom often have to negotiate life with widely compromised immune systems and so on.
4 will be plenty bro, depending on why you grow. I did only 2 personal plants last year, scored a massive haul, enough for a whole year :-)
