Post your Organic Soil Mix

[Kygiacomo]

That's a waste if you don't get something growing in there right now. Go to bulkfoods.com and buy the 5lb bag of fenugreek, get that in there. It'll never grow big, the microgreens are tasty edibles and then you get the seeds. The BEST way to get all of these things available is to create conditions suitable for the largest diversity of soil life, and the best way to do that is to get something growing in there. Do it! Doo eeet! :D

i dont really see it as a waste. im looking at the long term benefits of it. i already got my holes dug and all my amendments in there cycling till may. i may stick one the free seeds i got in it just to see how it works. i wont put my treasured plants in it this year though.
Awesome SM i will check that out right now. i planted alfalfa after season was over in oct and last time i was there they was nice and green. i havent been back to the spots though since Oct. will this fenugreek grow in snow and 7 degrees? thats what the temp is right now. i would assume that all the microbes and things in my soil would be slowed down right now,but i do have a heavy layer of forest leaf litter on the holes so maybe they are not affected at all. im new to this organic growing shit so i have no clue to how all this works good just yet. All i do know is i try to use little amounts of lots of things, like Dr earth vega mix and down to earth vegan mix along with 4-5 different rock dusts. i may be going overboard but i kept reading diversity is the spice of life in organics.

 

[AwesomeAdam]

About to be making up a batch of soil.

40 lb compost
40 lb perlite
40 lb peat moss
5 lb blood meal
5 lb fish bone meal
5 lb bananas
2 lb soft rock phosphate
2 lb crushed eggshells
1 lb green sand
1 lb sugar
1 lb rice
4 oz azomite and/or glacier dust


My only worry is a need for some sort of pH buffer during the cook. And I'm on the fence about adding worm castings
Thoughts? Ideas? Criticisms?

 

[Kygiacomo]

That's a waste if you don't get something growing in there right now. Go to bulkfoods.com and buy the 5lb bag of fenugreek, get that in there. It'll never grow big, the microgreens are tasty edibles and then you get the seeds. The BEST way to get all of these things available is to create conditions suitable for the largest diversity of soil life, and the best way to do that is to get something growing in there. Do it! Doo eeet! :D

i built my first hugelkultur guerilla plot yesterday. this is gonna be awesome according to the pics and my understanding on how it works. u have to water very little,no matter how long the drought is and the best thing about it is it gets better and better each year and comes to a point where u dont have to water or feed at all. the plant gets all its water and nutes from the rotton logs or limbs that it sits upon. there is a guy name jerry on grass city that told me i should do this since im a guerilla grower. the logs are like big sponges and are full of nutrients and billions and billions of local acclitized fungi and bacteria. the best results from what i read is the 2 year +. the dark soil in that one pic was loaded with worms. i took them over to my hole and put them in there so with all the new food i added to my hole they should be feasting right about now. i added bat guano,azomite,gypsum,oyster shell flour,kelpinsect frass,neem meal,lobster compost and lobster meal,basalt rockdust,and about 4 gallons last years living soil mix that i got from build a soil and used at my orgnaic plot.

 

[Seamaiden]

They are just like sponges. I was AMAZED when we took down a big pine, all the water that kept coming out of that log for MONTHS.

The thing was so big we had to leave it there, couldn't even get sections up the slope. :o

 

[shemshemet]

Wonder how well if at all something like this would work in pots or indoor beds. Biggest canna-stems line the bottom of pots?

 

[Bulldog11]

That is why the best firewood is seasoned for two years. Lots of water in trees.

 

[Kygiacomo]

They are just like sponges. I was AMAZED when we took down a big pine, all the water that kept coming out of that log for MONTHS.
hell ya SeaM. plus all the nutrients and billions of extra fungi and bacteria that is gonna help. this hole is a 45 gallon hole and it gets 10 hours of direct sun. i went back today and layered the hole a bit better. i used 1cf of build a soil that i used last year. i had to dig it up since that site got compramised last year. u can see the root hairs in the 2nd pic. i have bio-cozyme that i will use to break those up..i also have some maltd barley as well... i also added in some home made compost and horse and chicken manure. i also added a new 1 cf bag of BAS living soil and i added sea bird guano,bat guano,azomite,elemite to it and got a nice hugle hole now. my pics of the finished hole i have added so u can check it out.
The thing was so big we had to leave it there, couldn't even get sections up the slope. :o

Wonder how well if at all something like this would work in pots or indoor beds. Biggest canna-stems line the bottom of pots?

i hear it works just fine in pots according to jerry the guy that told me about this method. here is a good link http://permaculturenews.org/2010/08...sforming-woody-debris-into-a-garden-resource/

 

[AwesomeAdam]

Soo..
Is my post not cool enough to answer? Or is it just me?

I can go shower if I smell bad or something.

 

[Kygiacomo]

Soo..
Is my post not cool enough to answer? Or is it just me?

I can go shower if I smell bad or something.

i just now seen this but the first thing on ur list should be worm castings. that is the engine in the soil that keeps the motor running smooth. its also got everything in it like fulvic acid,calcium,humas and billons and billons of microbes. i was always told that worm castings and compost had to be high quality to make the grow run without any issues. if u dont have high quality humas in the soil then all u have is just amendments. i would also add 1 cup per Cf of oyster shell flour,1 cup of gypsum and drop the sugar u are gonna put in there.

 

[Bulldog11]

i just now seen this but the first thing on ur list should be worm castings. that is the engine in the soil that keeps the motor running smooth. its also got everything in it like fulvic acid,calcium,humas and billons and billons of microbes. i was always told that worm castings and compost had to be high quality to make the grow run without any issues. if u dont have high quality humas in the soil then all u have is just amendments. i would also add 1 cup per Cf of oyster shell flour,1 cup of gypsum and drop the sugar u are gonna put in there.

Plenty of humus in that natural soil by the looks of it.

 

[shemshemet]

About to be making up a batch of soil.

40 lb compost
40 lb perlite
40 lb peat moss
5 lb blood meal
5 lb fish bone meal
5 lb bananas
2 lb soft rock phosphate
2 lb crushed eggshells
1 lb green sand
1 lb sugar
1 lb rice
4 oz azomite and/or glacier dust


My only worry is a need for some sort of pH buffer during the cook. And I'm on the fence about adding worm castings
Thoughts? Ideas? Criticisms?

Personally I don't answer specific recipe questions. I have my reasons, and I bet many others have their own.

I don't think I have it down enough to fine tune others' recipes. And nobody else does unless you have a soil test done.

This also is because there are SO MANY recipe threads and sticky's. Tried and tested recipes.
The only problem is that these recipes, like in baking, need to be tweaked depending on your exact situation. Nobody else knows that situation for you. These posts get lost, because they are very generic.

To answer your question. Although I didn't do the math, the crushed egg shells should help to 'buffer' pH. And I think worm castings are THE BEST addition to any soil. Ever. Period. Boom. I love worm castings.

 

[Bulldog11]

To answer your question. Although I didn't do the math, the crushed egg shells should help to 'buffer' pH. And I think worm castings are THE BEST addition to any soil. Ever. Period. Boom. I love worm castings.

Yup! Casting are the shit.

If I don't add castings, I always add large volumes of worms to my soil. This is over a long outdoor season, might be different for indoor folks.

 

[shemshemet]

Outdoors is definitely different in my opinion! Indoors doesn't get the full soil web / cycle and I think castings helps complete it!

 

[Underthesun]

I'm going to give the Clackamas Coot's soil a go this year. I'm sourcing the material now. With the exception of compost, I'll need to purchase everything. I stole the recipe from build-a-soil, they give credit to Coot.

Base:
1 part peat
1 part compost ( I'll use roughly 35/65 EWC to Cold Compost)
1/3 part rice hulls
2/3 pumice (may use perlite since I can find it easier and cheaper)

Amendments:
1/2 cup/cf of kelp
1/2 cup/cf of neem cake (I have neem meal?).
1/2 cup/cf crab meal
1 cup/cf basalt dust
1 cup/cf glacial rock dust
1 cup/cf gypsum
1 cup/cf oyster flour
1 cup/cf biochar

I have some extra blood meal, boon meal, bat guano, sea bird gauno lying around and was thinking of saving those for top dressing later on if needed. My worms need to hurry up and eat more!

 

[Bulldog11]

That isn't going to come out even close to coots mix, sorry. Compost matters.

 

[Underthesun]

That isn't going to come out even close to coots mix, sorry. Compost matters.

Well, its my home compost from my own worms and me turning piles a couple times a week. His recipe calls for 33% compost does it not? And homemade worm castings and homemade cold compost is supposedly the best, is it not? What am I missing here? Where in my description did you see me say I'm using shit compost?

Maybe I wasn't clear on my Base mix 1:1:1 , compost : peat : ricehulls/pumice

 

[Bulldog11]

Your missing the base cation saturation levels.

Coots mix is like a fine recipe. If you don't have the same ingredients, it might taste funny.

Your home made compost could have a completely different nutrient profile, and being 33% of the mix, that can mean huge variances.

 

[Bulldog11]

For example, there are different coots recipe's going around. Look at build-a-soil. They have a coots mix with Malibu compost, and they a similar coots mix with Oily Mountain.

Compost is the single most important part of a soil mix, with consistency being the hardest thing to achieve.

 

[Bulldog11]

34 pages in this thread and people seem to have no idea whether or not their soil is actually balanced or not.

To give an idea, I have spent around 500 dollars just on soil testing this spring, and have another 300 or so to go.

 

[Underthesun]

I understand you are trying to get cup winning quality. That is awesome, testing soil and doing all this leg work, much props to you. I'm just a small scale grower looking to have the best, for me mostly, without spending thousands. Build-a-soil specifically states to use your own compost if you have access, that "your soil mix will be better than 99% of soils out there" using your own. And buying someone elses compost defeats the whole purpose of composting for me. So for a whole site that is dedicated to building soils and selling them, tells me my compost is great and to use it, I tend to believe them. Yes they have specific compost, but I'm sure mine is pretty good...considering EWCs range of microbes. But your saying Coots mix calls for compost made with specific ingredients, I don't see that anywhere.