Attempting To Transition

[jkpaw]

Hi -- old man medical user here. After just three relatively successful grows in a room that can handle about 12 five-gallon ladies, the best advice I can offer others like me is to get yourself a rolling stool. When you're relaxed and comfortable tooling around your plants you want to spend more time with them! So you get to know them a lot better, see problems earlier, trim without haste, and enjoy marveling through a magnifying glass.

I never really made a firm enough decision about whether or not to use real soil, but now I'm wanting to give a fully organic approach an honest try -- which can be pretty challenging in containers. Hopefully some of the more experienced indoor soil lovers won't mind sharing some of their wisdom. For starters I'd love to hear some best practices regarding homemade compost.

 

[DTG]

Good luck with your efforts, hope it works out for you . . . I am sorry I have no advice to offer as I only grow outdoors . . .


Don

 

[Mr Bee]

there's LOADS of info on here about fully organic "living" soil were you mix a good soil with certain amendments and all you add is water and the odd benny tea throughout the grow.its all about getting benificial bacteria going in your rootzone which allows your plant to access more of whats available in the soil.obviously there's more to it than that but its not something i personally have done so i you would have to do a bit of research yourself.
someone once described it to me like this-when growing in coco or hydro that's like force feeding someone junk food to fatten em up.whith true organics is like letting someone dine on the best of foods,the best steaks blah blah but you let them eat only what they want to take.
not too sure if that's an accurate metaphor but it made sense to me at the time.
to search for specific stuff there's a search it on the top left with those three horizontal bars.just hit those and hit the little magnifying glass icon.

 

[jumpincactus]

https://www.thcfarmer.com/community/forums/organic-soil.31/


@jkpaw


https://buildasoil.com/

 

[jkpaw]

Mr Bee, thanks. That's mainly what got me turning toward organic approaches: my first two grows, while not hydro, were pretty much force feeding -- and their growth, flowering, trichs, and medical effects were all quite decent. But I was really surprised by low-quality taste and aroma, regardless of strain (despite using flower fuels, molasses, flushing, etc). My third grow was totally organic except for pH adjustments, and produced the best flavors, smells, and strength. The buds were more modest, but sweet and tight, so I didn't mind a slightly smaller yield.

Anyway, I like where I'm headed, but would I really want to be more self-sufficient -- not only to save money, but to ensure quality. I paid a lot for Fox Farms soils only to find troublesome hot spots and too many fungus gnats.

After tons of googling and reading I've realized there aren't very many growers trying this route. Standard super soils are one thing, but trying to produce your own super soil mostly from scratch that can safely be used inside has a pretty specific set of challenges. So much to learn.

 

[jkpaw]

@jumpincactus thx I'd never run across the build-a-soil site.

It's encouraging to find people striving for the same thing I'm looking into, namely growing from a homemade compost base in containers, indoors. A bit discouraging, however, to see all that might be required -- huge pots, cover crops, red worms, etc. I had been thinking my main challenge would be properly pasteurizing my mix, keeping bugs out of the house, and then rebuilding micro life with compost teas. But Build-a-soil stresses the opposite: create a fully living ecosystem balanced enough to keep plants fed and healthy so they're not susceptible to infestation while in their huge pots.

But I'll keep reading, and, when ready, seek this community's accumulated wisdom with more specific questions. The one thing I have plenty of is great homemade compost. Now I need to see if I can come up with a strategy that I can imagine implementing in my space.

 

[jumpincactus]

@jumpincactus thx I'd never run across the build-a-soil site.

It's encouraging to find people striving for the same thing I'm looking into, namely growing from a homemade compost base in containers, indoors. A bit discouraging, however, to see all that might be required -- huge pots, cover crops, red worms, etc. I had been thinking my main challenge would be properly pasteurizing my mix, keeping bugs out of the house, and then rebuilding micro life with compost teas. But Build-a-soil stresses the opposite: create a fully living ecosystem balanced enough to keep plants fed and healthy so they're not susceptible to infestation while in their huge pots.
'
But I'll keep reading, and, when ready, seek this community's accumulated wisdom with more specific questions. The one thing I have plenty of is great homemade compost. Now I need to see if I can come up with a strategy that I can imagine implementing in my space.

Another great resource is author Jeff Lowefels and Wayne Lewis "teaming with microbes" And "teaming with nutrients" and "Teaming with fungi" he is one of the better resources in organic/living soil farming. Give him a read he has several great books.

And indeed cover cropping can be a huge positive as when you don't have a current crop in rotation the covercrop will keep your soil alive and the microherd humming along and ready for next planting.

Here is his site http://www.jefflowenfels.com/


also amazon link for books
https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&k...qmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_5g9tyatkym_e