Homesteader
- 3,477
- 263
Soil mix has been improved on over the past few years to decrease the price and discard anything unnecessary. I start with a 5 gallon bucket each of hydrated peat, coco coir and add another 5 gallon bucket of rice hull and this is my soil mix base.
From that base I add:
1 cup of crabshell
1 cup woodash from my fireplace or lime
1 cup of menafee humates (carbon/humic acid)
2 cups bone char
2 cups gypsum
3-4 cups of soybean meal
I mix my soil with a grout paddle mixer on a drill in a kiddie pool then I fill the soil bags full with leaves and sticks from my woodlot (Oak, beech, maple, fir) and then compact it down with the soil mix. The mix is moistened then left for about a month to break down. I think I am paying gross around $10-15 per bag (25 gallon) for soil plus the extra work with raking. I also get my kids to round me up some worms for me and I get about a handful of them per bag sometimes I have to pay them out of necessity (worms get much less exciting as summer wears on for my kids). Most of the worms my kids collect are the nightcrawlers so I also throw a few wrigglers in as well. The wrigglers will compost near the surface and in the leaves at the bottom while the crawlers provide channels for water and air, as well as shit. The crawlers won’t process waste like the wrigglers will but they are a benefit for the roots.
I don’t worry about bugs really. I use BTi in a few waterings early on in the grow and don’t seem to have the fungus gnat issue I had when I used the store bought EWC.
Lights are my own builds. I’m starting a small business and hope to get it off the ground this summer (although I guess this kicks it off as well) by getting my design certified and a few lights being tested and sold. Homestead LEDs are going to be using a simplistic and cost effective design with Osram high powered SSL diodes on sinkpad boards with US made aluminum and Polycase junctions (in other words great quality parts and no whistles or bells). I am trying to provide the highest quality LED grow lights for a reasonable price using science and not bullshit marketing. My emitters were reflowed for me in California from AduraLED and I am very pleased with their quality. The rest is assembled by me for now in Maine.
66% of the diodes are 3000k whites and 33% of the emitters are 660nm reds. Both emitters are the highest quality and newest tech in Osrams high powered Oslon SSL line. I believe driving these diodes at 1400mA is the sweet spot and using I believe using heavy in the color 660nm allows the light produced to be more effective at what we need it to do.
The first prototypes had some design flaws but the kinks are slowly becoming less and the builds are coming together (actually being taken apart and put back together). I am doing most of the work on these myself to cut out the middleman and bring down on the cost. The last step now is working with getting my acrylic cover made now that the Ledil lenses they make for these boards have been scraped for now.
Strains for this first run will be GG#4, Blue Dream/Holy Grail Kush, and Larry OG.
From that base I add:
1 cup of crabshell
1 cup woodash from my fireplace or lime
1 cup of menafee humates (carbon/humic acid)
2 cups bone char
2 cups gypsum
3-4 cups of soybean meal
I mix my soil with a grout paddle mixer on a drill in a kiddie pool then I fill the soil bags full with leaves and sticks from my woodlot (Oak, beech, maple, fir) and then compact it down with the soil mix. The mix is moistened then left for about a month to break down. I think I am paying gross around $10-15 per bag (25 gallon) for soil plus the extra work with raking. I also get my kids to round me up some worms for me and I get about a handful of them per bag sometimes I have to pay them out of necessity (worms get much less exciting as summer wears on for my kids). Most of the worms my kids collect are the nightcrawlers so I also throw a few wrigglers in as well. The wrigglers will compost near the surface and in the leaves at the bottom while the crawlers provide channels for water and air, as well as shit. The crawlers won’t process waste like the wrigglers will but they are a benefit for the roots.
I don’t worry about bugs really. I use BTi in a few waterings early on in the grow and don’t seem to have the fungus gnat issue I had when I used the store bought EWC.
Lights are my own builds. I’m starting a small business and hope to get it off the ground this summer (although I guess this kicks it off as well) by getting my design certified and a few lights being tested and sold. Homestead LEDs are going to be using a simplistic and cost effective design with Osram high powered SSL diodes on sinkpad boards with US made aluminum and Polycase junctions (in other words great quality parts and no whistles or bells). I am trying to provide the highest quality LED grow lights for a reasonable price using science and not bullshit marketing. My emitters were reflowed for me in California from AduraLED and I am very pleased with their quality. The rest is assembled by me for now in Maine.
66% of the diodes are 3000k whites and 33% of the emitters are 660nm reds. Both emitters are the highest quality and newest tech in Osrams high powered Oslon SSL line. I believe driving these diodes at 1400mA is the sweet spot and using I believe using heavy in the color 660nm allows the light produced to be more effective at what we need it to do.
The first prototypes had some design flaws but the kinks are slowly becoming less and the builds are coming together (actually being taken apart and put back together). I am doing most of the work on these myself to cut out the middleman and bring down on the cost. The last step now is working with getting my acrylic cover made now that the Ledil lenses they make for these boards have been scraped for now.
Strains for this first run will be GG#4, Blue Dream/Holy Grail Kush, and Larry OG.
