The creation of my own super-soil.

[AWickedWizard]

Hello beautiful people of the farmers community, I come once again in the search for some advice!

I'm currently reading through the 50 pages of ''post your organic soil mix'' while taking notes and trying to craft my recipe with what I have at hand but I feel like some personal advice would be greatly beneficial.

This is what I have:

(Plagron) Light mix: White Peat, Black Peat, Fibrous Peat, Perlite, PH: 5.5 to 6.9, EC: 0.8 to 1.2, NPK: 12/14/24, Dry matter: 34%, Organic Matter: 80%, Water retention: 4ml/gr
(Atami) Coco: coconut fibers, mineral lime, calcium nitrate, PH: 6.0, EC: (1: 1.5 H2O VV) & lt; 1.75 mS / cm, Organic Matter >85%, Moisture content <85%, NPK: 11-27-8

Large pumice: Hydrocorn
Vermiculite:
Feather Meal:
Blood Meal:
Marine Guano: NPK 12-9-2
Bone Meal:
Crustacean Meal:
Lava rock powder: Lava Rock Powder 50%, Basalt Powder 50 % / Silica 44 %, Magnesium 13%, Calcium 11 %, Other :(Potash, phosphorus, iron, zinc, boron...)
Oyster shell meal:
Insect Frass:
Kelp Meal:
Bat Guano: NPK 1-10-1
(BioBizz) Worm Humus:
Neem meal:

My idea was to go after the subcool recipe which to my understanding looks like this:

Ocean's forest soil: Composted forest humus, sphagnum peat moss, Pacific Northwest sea-going fish emulsion, crab meal, shrimp meal, earthworm castings, sandy loam, perlite, bat guano, granite dust, Norwegian kelp, and oyster shell
20% lazaris charcoal
20% large pumice
20% worm castings
1-2 cumps neem meal
1-2 cups kelp meal

And voila... but as I'm a real bob, I thought why just buy ocean's forest soil... let's make it myself... Now I'm faced with the need to know how to dose everything which might turn out to be quite tricky, maybe you guys could help shed some light on the matter? And also maybe some essential tips or things I need to watch out for?

 

[AWickedWizard]

This is where I'm currently at:

100L Light mix (Already contains perlite)
28L Worm humus
28L Hydrocorn
7L Coco Fibre (Has some Lime which might become excessive with the oyster shell)
7L Vermiculite
330g Bat Guano
330g Seabird Guano
330g Bone Meal
165g Oyster shell (Unsure of dosing / comparing it to dolomite lime)
82g Feather Meal
82g kelp meal (Might be doubled)
82g Neem meal (Might be doubled)
82g Lava rock powder (Unsure of dosing, lot of silica with the vermiculite)
82g insect frass (Unsure)
82g Crustacean meal

Feel like it's rather on the safe side with the extra nutes and am now a little dissapointed I didn't get some azomite as that stuff just seems to come up everywhere, kinda figured the lava rock powder would replace it but I'm now reconsidering.

Nonetheless any thoughts will be thoroughly appreciated.

 

[Dirtbag]

Sounds expensive lol. Keep us posted, curious to see what you manage to grow with this. I've avoided this style of growing for various reasons.

 

[One drop]

Sounds expensive lol. Keep us posted, curious to see what you manage to grow with this. I've avoided this style of growing for various reasons.

Yes to many times I’ve seen people build there own soil spent lots of cash to get burnt like ash .. Honestly my best advice is learn to grow in a medium that suits a beginner like coco perlite mic 30 /70 mix keep it simply because you will confuse yourself with all the notion of wanting to grow in a soil type medium, you have to sweep the path clear before you walk down it . Regards OD .

 

[Ina]

Feel like it's rather on the safe side with the extra nutes

I feel like the safe side is with less nutes:)At least for smaller plants.May be i would skip some of the guanos,also the bone meal,blood and such are unnecessary.Instead of blood and bones you have stones:DI would save those hot soils for flowering(but most of them could be really hot in N).

 

[AWickedWizard]

Damn you guys are everywhere! And there I was thinking I might be hidden in the organics section haha...

Yup I realise this is probably taking on a lot, and it's probably fairly foolish but I... well have already got all the stuff so thought I might aswell give it a go, If I end up dumping everything cause it fails I'll just have to start again and admit that I have once again gone to far.

Originally the whole idea was actually to save myself the hassle of using the nutrients... That and I do seem to have severe Gear acquisition syndrome no matter what I go after.

+ Whats the risk, you guys will be looking after me right? ;)

 

[Dirtbag]

Yes to many times I’ve seen people build there own soil spent lots of cash to get burnt like ash .. Honestly my best advice is learn to grow in a medium that suits a beginner like coco perlite mic 30 /70 mix keep it simply because you will confuse yourself with all the notion of wanting to grow in a soil type medium, you have to sweep the path clear before you walk down it . Regards OD .

I loosely dabbled in living organic soil but quickly bailed on it.

I watched my buddy waste hundreds/thousands of dollars on it and fail time and time again before he finally gave up and went back to promix and GH 3part lol. His organic pot always burned black and harsh, and looked like shit.

 

[AWickedWizard]

Supposedly this is a ''light'' or maybe ''lighter''... mix where the additives have been halved, this is also for flowering plants and ideally to be reused and amended over time, where it gets mostly drained over the last few weeks so that it is then weak enough to start a new grow with

 

[AWickedWizard]

To be entirely honest I ordered everything before getting here, and with all I've been reading had in mind to try the coco especially after reading through Dirtbag's diary on the next grow depending on results...

I have a knack to over complicate things, working from home and wanted something that would keep me busy, I have also dabbled in organics before but with tomatoes etc... Just never indoors.

Interesting comments though, I wouldn't even of thought about the quality being so negatively impacted by this, will be noting everything down and hopefully managing to keep my diary fresh with all info, it will be monitored closely.

In reality I'm just happy to be growing, trying stuff and especially talking about it here. This is what the dream has all been about. If it turns out pretty bad I'll just have to pay a visit to my experienced grower friends and ask them to help a brother out once again haha.

 

[One drop]

Man i have been growing science 1979 I’ve tried it all but have come to the reality that coco perlite mix is the best way for beginners to start out on , I grow in 2 types of medium indoor coco perlite outdoors in native soil with the aid of worm casting and Salmond fish I catch to burry under my outdoor crop keeping it simple is the best way to go but I can see you have the bright lights of a magic grow twinkling in your eyes . All the best keep us posted regards OD .

 

[AWickedWizard]

You have no idea how much your advice means to me, and I'm by no means going against it... I think that after all this time waiting to grow again I just got myself way to hyped where the complicated has to be better. By the sound of it, it will turn out okay, I'll learn my lessons and will long for something easier and more efficient on the next which already seems to be coco, after all you guys have already made the mistakes for me and reading through the diaries it's easy to see, if only I could backtrack a couple months I would of been golden. but it's a fun ride to be on, and who knows at least I'll have something to smoke! Well... Hopefully...

On a side note I do have an extra 33L of coco I'll probably end up giving it a test run with some of the spare seeds I have.

 

[One drop]

You have no idea how much your advice means to me, and I'm by no means going against it... I think that after all this time waiting to grow again I just got myself way to hyped where the complicated has to be better. By the sound of it, it will turn out okay, I'll learn my lessons and will long for something easier and more efficient on the next which already seems to be coco, after all you guys have already made the mistakes for me and reading through the diaries it's easy to see, if only I could backtrack a couple months I would of been golden. but it's a fun ride to be on, and who knows at least I'll have something to smoke! Well... Hopefully...

On a side note I do have an extra 33L of coco I'll probably end up giving it a test run with some of the spare seeds I have.

Ok well if you make up your Super soil just don’t all all those goodies on the list it will be way to hot to much N don’t forget that Air is 78% Nitrogen.

 

[AWickedWizard]

I feel like the safe side is with less nutes:)At least for smaller plants.May be i would skip some of the guanos,also the bone meal,blood and such are unnecessary.Instead of blood and bones you have stones:DI would save those hot soils for flowering(but most of them could be really hot in N).

Just realized I got a little excited and never finished writing, seems pretty sound, I was hesitant on the animal products in the first place, the guano amounts have also been halved but could be introduced through teas if necessary luckily these came in small bags. The idea was just to try getting something as close as possible to the ocean's forest just finding quantities of each isn't easy.

 

[AWickedWizard]

Ok well if you make up your Super soil just don’t all all those goodies on the list it will be way to hot to much N don’t forget that Air is 78% Nitrogen.

Brilliant, thanks guys, that was the next part of the quest, finding and balancing out the N.P.Ks which is where I'm a little more skeptical, I'll be doing quite a bit more research on this over the weekend and the original post was for exactly this reason.

 

[One drop]

Just realized I got a little excited and never finished writing, seems pretty sound, I was hesitant on the animal products in the first place, the guano amounts have also been halved but could be introduced through teas if necessary luckily these came in small bags. The idea was just to try getting something as close as possible to the ocean's forest just finding quantities of each isn't easy.

I would half the guano again it is very easy to add Nutes to a plant but once you have put that plant into the super soil you can’t take out the Nutes so plant suffers but anyway you will have to suck it and see .

 

[One drop]

Ok well if you make up your Super soil just don’t all all those goodies on the list it will be way to hot to much N don’t forget that Air is 78% Nitrogen.

That’s why I run Nutes low in N I run passive air intake ....

 

[AWickedWizard]

I would half the guano again it is very easy to add Nutes to a plant but once you have put that plant into the super soil you can’t take out the Nutes so plant suffers but anyway you will have to suck it and see .

Yeah I was going to say that sounds like a smart thing to do, started thinking about ways to test the soil before using it, the main issue being the time it takes for stuff to break down and become biologically active/available, which with an already hot soil could turn into an extremely hot soil 2 to 4 weeks down the line...Something I was also thinking about was making a ''most'' basic version but testing out the stronger ones on clones once they had reached a similar size for consistency.

I'll let you guys know how I get on, this is already great insight as yeah, worse comes to worse I just add nutes from teas.

 

[AWickedWizard]

That’s why I run Nutes low in N I run passive air intake ....

This alone has gotten me beard stroking...

I'll see what I can scavenge on the interweb from people having done something like this, should give more food for thought and a few corrections...

 

[One drop]

This alone has gotten me beard stroking...

I’m going to follow you if that’s ok just to keep an eye on things have fun relax remember this a mistake is the way to form knowledge unfortunately it a crappy way to find out but it makes you a better grower believe me even as a young horticulturist I thought I had the magic salutation to growing better stronger weed well then I bet I’ve dumped more cannabis plants in the compost than you can imagine it’s trail and ERROR , each grow is different each grow space has its own set of problems to sort out . Ok I’m off I’ve got 5 tone of garlic to plant out better drag these old bones down to the shed enjoy your evening .

 

[AWickedWizard]

I’m going to follow you if that’s ok just to keep an eye on things have fun relax remember this a mistake is the way to form knowledge unfortunately it a crappy way to find out but it makes you a better grower believe me even as a young horticulturist I thought I had the magic salutation to growing better stronger weed well then I bet I’ve dumped more cannabis plants in the compost than you can imagine it’s trail and ERROR , each grow is different each grow space has its own set of problems to sort out . Ok I’m off I’ve got 5 tone of garlic to plant out better drag these old bones down to the shed enjoy your evening .

I have so much to say about all this.

But I'll just leave it with a very heartfelt thank you...