Six super soil variants run side by side

[just.blaze]

looking great, I love these experiments... and that's one hell of a full-spectrum flowering room :D

 

[Dunge]

Three weeks + one day to go.

Tomorrow is six weeks in 12/12 and they are fattening up nicely.

This is a solo shot of #5 which remains the only stand out plant in that it was the first to show any deficiency. (To my naive eyes)
Yellowing and taco fans, but the buds look fine.

This is 90 pounds of industrial climate control balanced atop thin steal legs and secured with tape to plastic.
It has allowed me to believe my garden might survive to harvest.
Prior to the AC my temps were in the 80sF and I couldn't get the RH below 80%.
I'm now at 72 Deg F & 72 % RH and the floor is dry.
Much better.

And a quick shot of the peppers in the same nine soils.
Nothing much to see here that I can tell.
Just a bunch of peppers.

 

[usstoner]

Right on man...there lookin good..love the a/c unit...fuckin heat...

 

[Dunge]

7 weeks of 12/12
Temps and RH are stable, and in the zone.
Feeling good about this harvest with only two weeks to go.

This is a shot into the corner.
Some fall patterns showing up in the fans.

This is a close shot of one of the #4 tops.
This is the only plant that has shown any deficiency.

And a hip shot of their legs.

 

[Dunge]

8 weeks 12/12
Harvest in seven days.

Getting heavy.

Shiny.

 

[ZONER]

Nice ... Very nice

 

[Seamaiden]

Shiny!

 

[Dunge]

Harvest!
After nine weeks of 12/12.
I lined the plants up 1-9 (left to right) as I did the day before they went into flower.

The matched pepper plants are also lined out.
And some close up bud shots inserted above.

Stripped and hanging.
Will have a dry weight in two weeks, but all plants produced fat buds, so it may come down to a grand smoke off.

 

[just.blaze]

congratulations man, now comes the hardest part: waiting for your buds to dry :D

 

[bigdaddyg8]

I have that same boot tray! Two of 'em, I use them, for all SORTS of things and honestly, I need more. They make fantastic plant trays. And tool trays, too. :D

i also have 5 boot tray's handy as hell

 

[Dunge]

The data are in!
Weight in grams of flowers removed from plants one through nine.
81
128
70
99
66
59
48
97
64

I drew this plot up displaying yield as a percentage of total trial yield in an attempt to back out the impact of nine plants in a 4 X 4 foot space.

Soil details are on page two:

All are being watered with microbial alfalfa tea while in flower.

Immediate observations:
Soil #2 is my present ProMix based blend and it looks good.
Soil #1 makes local dirt look like poison.
Soil #3 Coco is better than #1 because it did as well with a less ideal lighting position.
Soil #4 is a Peace of mind refurb should have done better having such a great light position but it is the best refurb.
#5 &#6 just didn't hold up their end.
#7 Three little Birds did not sing.
#8&#9 look promising for replacing guano with rock phosphate but I need to keep the blood meal levels up.

Conclusions:
Play with Peace of Mind refurb to optimize additions.
Play with blood meal levels.
Play with rock phosphate replacing high P guano.
Have a bigger room so that light variation is not such an issue.

The remainder of the room came through nicely yielding nice flowers and seeds from seedlings and cuts.
The addition of the one 400 W HPS to normal room power use threw my environment out of wack.
Had to put a window AC into a plastic wall vented into the basement to get the humidity under control.
It was noisy and expensive, but it worked.
With that light gone I'm back in the zone and the AC is now quiet.

Smoke report if I notice anything.
They all smell and look just like I expect ARC to be. Nice.

 

[Seamaiden]

That's quite a difference in yield between #2 and all others. Damn.

 

[Canalchemist]

looks to me that the addition of the Mycorrhizal fungi really made a big impact on utilizing the amendments in the soil and the tea, the proof is in the fungus.

 

[straincreation]

Good work dunbe thanks for the report.
happy farmin;)

 

[demoman1347]

So I'm a little confused, could you please post a complete list of total ingredients in test number #2, I guess I'm not sure what the base in the soil is, I realize it's Promix but what else is exactly in the pot, also are those the pots with the inverted screen type cone built in for extra oxygen, and what do all the other farmers think of that design ?, thanks

 

[demoman1347]

BTW, nice work dunge, I'm constantly realizing the work involved in farmin, nice to see someone goin the extra mile (actually many miles) to document and help people like me. This plant is a miracle for people like me and my wife who suffers from Epilepsy. Thanks everybody !!

 

[Dunge]

So happy you asked.

This is the soil I continue to use.
Alfalfa tea only in 3 gallon regular plastic pots.

soil 2: (one tenth of a full batch)
ProMix - one five gallon bucket
Compost - 6 pounds 7.5 quarts
worm castings - 3.8 pounds 2.75 quarts
blood meal - 136g 210 ml.
bone meal - 136g 220 ml.
bat guano - 384 ml.

In the real world, all these quantities are the result of product packaging.
I mix all full bags of ingredients into one batch of soil.
Big bag of ProMix.
Big bag of Down to Earth compost.
Bag of Down to Earth EWC.
3 lb. bag of each Miracle-Gro Blood and Bone meal.
One box of Down to Earth high P bat guano.

Mix well and use.
Too hot for seedlings or clone plugs.

You too can easily make this exact medium and let me know how it performs against your present formula.

Sorry the image is so small. I cut and pasted from a prior post.

 

[demoman1347]

Thanks for the reply, sounds awesome, can't wait to try it, till then what's your thoughts on re-using a soil- soilless mix at about 50/50 with new mix of 3 parts sunshine #4, 2 parts coco, 1 part larger type rock something like perlite, forgot the name. I try to use mostly natural type liquid nutes, thing is I bought this pro out of all his stuff when his wife got transferred down south. Just the nutes and additives took up over half my pick-up, lol so really just tryin to utilize things. Just been reading and researching for the past nine months , especially since my wife's diagnosis, along with weeding out what don't seem to make sense. Also when there's obvious consensus. So I think I have most of the stuff for your #2 soil, also your thoughts on potting up using a little different blend of soil to take up the diff. I know I'm hitting you, and the members of the forum for that matter, while I might add thc farmer seems to blow the rest away with your knowledge, and maturity, thanks for all the help

 

[Canalchemist]

You should do a search for soil hear... I asked the same question not to long about soil and got some really good feedback and the searches reveal a lot of past work with soil... it is how I found this thread and composting, vermin composting and bokashi threads on google.

 

[Dunge]

The reason I bothered to run this trial was my lack of confidence (ignorance) that I had a good formulation.
The way I came up with soil #2 was from gathering several recipes offered here by my fellow farmers.
Many super soil practitioners have years of experience tuning their formulas, but the materials list is often too long to make sense of from an experimental design perspective.
I stripped them down to what looked like essential elements and then looked for common denominators to make a batch easy to make.
Mixing a few full bags and boxes of stuff yields a pile of medium with nothing left over but empty packaging that then gets filled back up with new medium.
So I consider #2 a "simple super soil".
No question, it might be better, but this one was testable and reproducible.

So mix up a batch and let me know how it works for you.