Ideas on using local Colorado Dirt

[Seamaiden]

FYI, this site is great for determining what your local soil may need, as far as amendments. Tons of useful info on here.

http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/

I really wish this would work. Every time I try it I get the following error.

 

[maestro]

Sorry
This ol'man tried to zip his lip but hey gotta say somethin.

Colorado has some of the best most fertile mineral rich soil anywhere in the world brothers. You just have to know where to find it and how to use it. Most the soil along larger creek beds n rivers is excellent for growing dank. Basically add some manure if need be in most you are good to go. For years I've seen many of a river bottom in Colo guerilla farmed with just a few tree stakes. It does help to have an old school well aclimated strain but whatever.

Soil here does have some drastic variation and depending, some of it needs amending buts easy. For instance soil made up of mainly composted pine debris is inherit acidic duh! But usually mineral rich specifically iron rich
n notrogen poor just because for it being top soil its fairly "new" not a lot of biology has happened in it in the mopuntains compared to temperate areas.....add some manure lime n something break it up n add air pockets you are great!
Head away east or west the mountains the soil become alkali because all the minerals/shale decomposing n lack of much organic top soil in the dry ass plains....add some manure, more than average, little peat maybe some perilite for drainage n air....good to go....these soils been used by CO farmers since the 60's. Any soil mix I ever use thats not sterile I prefer about 10-20% good dirt to eliminate mineral guess work....P n K imho come best from GOOd OL dirt.

...just a old man full of hot air...
Our soil and climate is very similar to regions of the world where the best indicas evolved like hindukush mountains.....hot dry n cold nights,
mineral rich soil and an environment harsh enough to just slightly stress lovlies constantly make the ganga do something majic here.

I love watching the grass grow in July under the Colorado sun! Breath taking!
My final transplants done now its time to kick back n watch in amazement n add water! ha ha

To Seas of Green n Skies of Blue
peace

 

[chickenman]

Sorry
This ol'man tried to zip his lip but hey gotta say somethin.

Colorado has some of the best most fertile mineral rich soil anywhere in the world brothers. You just have to know where to find it and how to use it. Most the soil along larger creek beds n rivers is excellent for growing dank. Basically add some manure if need be in most you are good to go. For years I've seen many of a river bottom in Colo guerilla farmed with just a few tree stakes. It does help to have an old school well aclimated strain but whatever.

Soil here does have some drastic variation and depending, some of it needs amending buts easy. For instance soil made up of mainly composted pine debris is inherit acidic duh! But usually mineral rich specifically iron rich
n notrogen poor just because for it being top soil its fairly "new" not a lot of biology has happened in it in the mopuntains compared to temperate areas.....add some manure lime n something break it up n add air pockets you are great!
Head away east or west the mountains the soil become alkali because all the minerals/shale decomposing n lack of much organic top soil in the dry ass plains....add some manure, more than average, little peat maybe some perilite for drainage n air....good to go....these soils been used by CO farmers since the 60's. Any soil mix I ever use thats not sterile I prefer about 10-20% good dirt to eliminate mineral guess work....P n K imho come best from GOOd OL dirt.

...just a old man full of hot air...
Our soil and climate is very similar to regions of the world where the best indicas evolved like hindukush mountains.....hot dry n cold nights,
mineral rich soil and an environment harsh enough to just slightly stress lovlies constantly make the ganga do something majic here.

I love watching the grass grow in July under the Colorado sun! Breath taking!
My final transplants done now its time to kick back n watch in amazement n add water! ha ha

To Seas of Green n Skies of Blue
peace

You got it. Seems crazy to spend on ffof when we got all we neeed right here. Gunna mix up a batch of manure and dirt with some pearlite and upcan today

 

[sky high]

http://www.soiltestinglab.colostate.edu/

 

[City farmer]

Yes I am trying to figure out a way to make soil without shipping in to much plastic, peat and other non sustainable ingredients. The base is the hard part.....typically peat or coco. Coco is the better of the two in quality even though its shipped from sri lanka still better than destroying peat bogs. Local dirt harvested from the ground is usually to much sand or clay to be of much use for high end potting soil.

I think setting up a large scale vermicomposting bin is a good idea for home soil production. A biochar burner to make biochar as a replacement for perlite to lighten soil. If you soak the biochar in a good compost tea it absorbs all the good microbes.

So thinking
coco coir 40% (wish there was a better option but the bricks are cheap)
home made good quality compost mixed with shredded mulch 40%
home made worm castings 10%
home made biochar inoculated with compost tea 10%

plus some mycorrhizae, dolomite lime, green sand, rock phosphate, bat guano, blood and bone meal.

 

[Blaze]

Get the soil tested and post results, otherwise you are just guessing. You should have no problem making a nice cheap locally sourced soil blend what the materials you have but it REALLY helps to know what you are working with first. Fox Farm soil is pure crap, I've seen that stuff screw up so many grows over the years, I bet it was the source of your issues last season.

 

[caregiverken]

nice bump Blaze :) GTSY

Great Idea Chicken man...did you end up useing the Chicken and goat poop?

I have some aged chicken crap...but im afraid to use it.
I have used it a Lasanga garden bed and grew tomatoes the 1st season..
Vegged huge!...no fruito_O
.then I reused that soil , full of worms, for the Cannabis the next year...worked great!

I have been using this stuff and posting this picture for two years here at the farm..:p
One more time cant hurt ;)
5 bucks a bag...good stuff in it.

Great for mixing in your own dirt beds too.

you guys saw the results last summer:D

 

[City farmer]

Blaze....true getting it tested is key to knowing what to add or not to add. But years of "testing" different ingredients in real life on the plants themselves. Is usually my way of testing......I have always had good results regardless of if I used ocean forest, roots 707, happy frog, coco coir etc. A few seasons ago I got some manure from the pasture and mixed it with some locally harvested top soil next to a natural spring kind of as a joke thinking it would burn it or stunt it. But that plant grew over 7 ft tall after being stripped of all its leaves in a hail storm. Getting consistent results is hard and lab testing would help with that im sure. But my experience tells me to keep it simple and less is more, that soil mix i posted above should work great I hope!

Caregiver ken....dont be afraid to use the chicken poo that stuff is great. Just make sure it comes from chickens that are on a natural diet for best results and dont use to much.

 

[fishwhistle]

This advertisement has always been in the high times classifieds for YEARS and has always intrigued me:

UTAH DEVIL DIRT
Goat and sheep manure composted naturally over many years.
(801)550-0643
Ask for the Horseshoer

To have an ad running for so long he must be selling some dirt,Has anyone ever met the Horseshoer?Burned a fatty with him?Actually driven to utah to pick up dirt?lol.
I know that the red dirt in southern utah has a super high mineral content that causes mule deer bucks to grow huge trophy racks,does it work with buds too?So many questions,So little time...

 

[City farmer]

The ancient amazonian's made there own very fertile soil by mixing in charcoal or biochar, broken pottery, and compost and called it terra preta. They still harvest and sell this stuff in south america.

 

[Seamaiden]

nice bump Blaze :) GTSY

Great Idea Chicken man...did you end up useing the Chicken and goat poop?

I have some aged chicken crap...but im afraid to use it.
I have used it a Lasanga garden bed and grew tomatoes the 1st season..
Vegged huge!...no fruito_O
.then I reused that soil , full of worms, for the Cannabis the next year...worked great!

I have been using this stuff and posting this picture for two years here at the farm..:p
One more time cant hurt ;)
5 bucks a bag...good stuff in it.
View attachment 286295
Great for mixing in your own dirt beds too.

you guys saw the results last summer:D
View attachment 286301

Uh, you do know that Kellogg's uses 'biosolids', right?

I'm going to make biochar using rice hulls, out in the open, on a burn day. The process is extremely simple (I don't know if I have the site I was reading bookmarked). You start a small fire, then smother it with rice hulls. Wait, and when a vent opens, cover that with more rice hulls. Continue until all the hulls are on the burn, then turn when new vents open. Stop the burn once all the hulls are charred by wetting down.

 

[caregiverken]

Uh, you do know that Kellogg's uses 'biosolids', right?

.

Uh..no..I didnt even know what they were till just googled em
Human Biosolids?o_O no way..really?

I take it Biosolids are bad?o_O

 

[caveman4.20]

for me its a red flag if they flaunt all natural and only have flowers no fruits or veggies on the package i wonder if they advertise to grow veggies or fruit with that soil......basically i think the only good poop is vegetarian poop from animals herbivores its something about the meat in the diet but i know this i buddy of mine used dog shit to grow the most KILLER bud ive seen just didn taste that good needless to say that was the last time i tried that kind of bud knowingly lol:) but KEN your on the right track and i love this thread....and as far as the best amendment for colorado soil that ive used is Earth Magic Soil Secrets LLC. the humic is 98% and its all compost none of that leonardite stuff

 

[kolah]

I like compost bins. I got mine going and added about 1000 worms. REAL black gold.

I litmus test soil for ph and that's it. I experiment by tossing a few plants on my land and see how they do. I take a few notes and if they do well I plant in that area. I have a lot of Ponderosa PIne trees here with pine needles everywhere. This creates a acidic soil but it is great for potatoes and berries. I have found that the acidiity is only in the top 4-5 inches of soil though. A few years back I dug out a root cellar and went about 6-7 feet down. Last summer I planted some MJ in the dirtpile leftover from my diggings and the plants did quite well. I watched them closely and added nothing but water. There seems to be lots of good rich soil deep below the crust surfaces.

Bad toxic soil and pesticides may grow good looking weed but you can tell if it's toxic by the way it burns. It will often crack, sizzle, pop and leave a odd dark or black residue. Clean weed smokes nice and smooth and leaves a nice powdery grey ash.

and btw all those soils bragging they are "organic and "all natural" most likely come from sludge (human shit)...The same goes for USDA "organic" foods....ever since they took over organic labeling in 1998-99.

 

[caregiverken]

:(

I think My weed tastes good...burns nice..
Im gonna go smoke more of it right now.

But yeah, I dont wanna grow in human shit :(

 

[kolah]

If you do some reading, you CAN use human shit, safely. I am just not convinced that the commercial stuff is clean or prepared properly. Then again I could be wrong. :)

I often read articles where they say to avoid composting human feces and animal carcasses (meat, eggs, etc). But the savage Injuns grew some killer corn with using fish heads as their main source of fertilizer.

If anyone has time, save your shit, mix it with soil and pop a few seedlings in it and see what happens.It could bring a whole new meaning to "smoking some good shit."
.

 

[cannabeans]

The other term that was used years ago was "sewage sludge" but was changed to "biosolids" make it sound harmeless.
http://www.sludgenews.org

What is sewage sludge?
Sewage is the mix of water and whatever wastes from domestic and industrial life are flushed into the sewer. To retrieve the precious water, the sewage is then “treated,” that is, “cleaned,” in what are called “treatment plants.” The ideal of the treatment plant is to take out of the sewer water all the “wastes” that sewering put into it. The water is “cleaned” in the degree to which the pollutants which had turned the water into sewage are removed by treatment-primary, secondary, or tertiary-and concentrated in the sludge.

We must note that, though the aim of sewage treatment is to produce clean water, it is never to produce “clean” sludge. Indeed, the “dirtier” the sludge-the more complete its concentration of the noxious wastes-the more the treatment has done its job. If there are industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, hormones, nano particles, prions, hospital wastes including antibiotic-resistant bacteria-and there will be all of these-you want them to end up in the sludge. Every waste produced in our society that can be got rid of down toilets and drains and that can also be got out of the sewage by a given treatment process will be in the sludge. Sludge is thus inevitably a noxious brew of vastly various and incompatible materials unpredictable in themselves and in the toxicity of their amalgamation, incalculably but certainly wildly dangerous to life.

The policy of disposing of sludge by spreading it on agricultural land-a policy given the benign term “land application”-has its inception in the Ocean Dumping ban of 1987. Before 1992, when the law went into effect, the practice had been, after extracting the sludge from the wastewater, to load it on barges and dump it 12, and later 106 miles off shore into the ocean.

But many people who cared about life in the ocean knew that, wherever it was dumped, the sludge was causing vast dead moon-scapes on the ocean floor. New EPA regulations for “land application” were promulgated in 1993. With the aid of heating and pelletizing and some slippery name morphs along the way, EPA claimed sludge could be transmogrified into “compost”: compost, the sacred substance of all real farmers. And this “compost,” this Trojan Horse replete with the most complex array of toxic materials industrial civilization has ever known, would “fertilize” America's farmlands.

To carry out this plan EPA made a “win-win” deal with some solid-waste hauling corporations. In return for taking the sludge off the hands of municipalities, the corporate haulers would get the tax dollars that had previously gone to pay for dumping the sludge in the local landfill. This deal was indeed a “win” for municipal authorities who had suffered the mess, and worse the liability of sludge; it was a “win” for the corporations which, besides getting the tax dollars, wouldn't suffer from the liability either because that, amazingly, was transferred to the farmer on whose land the sludge is spread.

But the land “application” of sewage sludge represents a clear lose-lose-for people and for the environment-on a scale staggering to contemplate. It will pollute the whole chain of life for which soil is the base.

• About Sewage Sludge
• Political Action
• The Sludge Industry
• Science & Technology Resources
• Newsroom & Press
• Contact Us

 

[kolah]

Good post, cannbeans. IMO we have to start getting away from anything corporate/commercial. They don't care about us or the environment..just the money.

 

[City farmer]

I agree.......let the dispensary owners grow with Biosolids and keep it a secret thats its a bunch of shit, chemicals and drugs slopped into a questionable form of compost......ewwww! Not in my marijuana!

 

[Seamaiden]

Uh..no..I didnt even know what they were till just googled em
Human Biosolids?o_O no way..really?

I take it Biosolids are bad?o_O

Well... I'll use it for landscaping plants, but definitely not veggies. I am ambivalent about using it on cannabis, I'm just not sure. The possibility of pharmaceuticals is what concerns me most, and I don't think it's really tested for much. Humans take a lot of medications that microbes don't have any or much effect on, that's really my bigger concern. It's why I have refused to take the usual hormone replacement therapy and am living with hot flashes til I can find a good doctor that uses bioidenticals in appropriate amounts (which means PROPERLY TESTING ME THROUGHOUT A MONTH OR SO BEFORE PRESCRIBING, not just throwing a Rx at me and saying sayanara). Downstream effects. Feminized amphibians and all that. Factual, not fictional, and I can at least have that much influence (and responsibility?).

I keep a Spanish handpainted fan in my purse for the flashes. It attracts a lot of attention from young and old alike, especially since we don't live in a hot climate. LMAO! But, they dig it.