What do you topdress with?

  • Thread starter Funkadelic
  • Start date
  • Tagged users None
Funkadelic

Funkadelic

808
93
Hey all - what ingredients do you personally topdress with or recommend?

Looking at safe ingredients to supplement fertilizer / balance pH / encourage microbials / mulch with...
thoughts...
 
Oregon Panda

Oregon Panda

560
93
Supplement fertilizer/balance PH/encourage microbials: Leonardite, or any source of humic or fulvic acid.

Mulch with mulch. or dont mulch. I only mulch when I have mulch. lol Leaves or sticks work great. While not mulch, the tops of pots are great places to start a rock collection.
 
Seamaiden

Seamaiden

Living dead girl
23,596
638
Funkadelic said:
Hey all - what ingredients do you personally topdress with or recommend?

Looking at safe ingredients to supplement fertilizer / balance pH / encourage microbials / mulch with...
thoughts...
Click to expand...
Poop, rock dusts, not really worm castings anymore because this is in an outdoor scenario where there are already lots of live worms. Um... sometimes sugars like malted barley extract, molasses, dry kelp.. and last year I tried cover cropping and I did a chop & drop that worked pretty well for the most part. It went a long way toward preventing drying out between waterings (it's all on automated drip irrigation) whereas if it's just mulched, or there's nothing at all the top of the soil itself dries out. I found that if I got the chopped material touching the soil well it would decompose fairly quickly.

Oh! Love alfalfa/hay sweepings, I get them for free from my local feed shop. Now that I have chickenbirds I'll get some of that and top-dress with it, too. Of course, that's poop.
 
Mogrow

Mogrow

1,695
263
compost, comfrey and EWC right after the flip.
Girls are fat and sassy.
i should have put more comfrey in but didn't harvest enough.
your soil will eat it up. my soil will eat the root ball of a plant grow in a 10 to 15 gallon smartie in less than 3 months.
the soil is alive and hungry, feed it man, feed it.
 
Myco

Myco

718
243
Where's the neem seed meal love :o

Hehe. I pretty much only topdress EWC (which is PFM by the way. Pure Fucking Magic), kelp, and neem cake. I hear comfrey is the ticket, I need to get/grow some.

But really, as far as your main question goes, EWC is a general all-around great topdress. Seems anytime my ladies look to be lacking or ailing in some way, a nice 2" layer of EWC has the ladies looking lush shortly thereafter.

And here's a good rule of thumb - the more water soluble the better :)
 
Funkadelic

Funkadelic

808
93
Oregon Panda - I have (handy) some gypsum, azomite, and read good things about "Ful-Power" (my orchard is indoors). What do you think of those for humic/fulvic supplementation?

PButter - I neglected to add 15g of the 25-30g of EWC in the Simplici-tea.com "Keep It Simple Nutrient Pack" mix, so I'm going to topdress a *lot* with EWC. How does that sound?

SeaMaiden - I have multiple kinds of kelp and alfalfa meal... and I use RTI/Xtreme Gardening teas - should I topdress these, use them in tea, or a combo do you think? Also, I have gypsum and azomite - same question with these?

Mogrow - Yeah, going to add a whole lot of EWC as topdress. Maybe 2.5g of topdress in a 10g smartie?
Also, I'm thinking of having 2 batches of soil - one in flower, the other cooking, then rotate them and top off nutes and add a bunch of enzymes for breakdown when the flower gets taken down.... your thoughts?

midwestdensies - I have all your ingredients...! Looks like all the reading I do here added up. Which sul-po-mag do you use? Also, are gypsum and azomite rock dusts you would use? Congrats on being stony in the A.M. "Its the wake and bake baby, when I open my eyes" -The Goats

Myco - Where do you get your neem seed meal? I didn't find it at feed and garden stores near me. Online?
Is that different from the neem cake?
Water soluble - well, I used to run Nectar of the Gods... fng amazing results, but a total PITA to mix. Expensive. TOTAL PITA, did I mention? Wasteful. Its a bitch. So I'm experimenting with dry amendments this time. After a year of ridiculous feed schedules and mixing barrels full of nutewater every 72hrs, I'm looking at other options.
Your avatar looks like a Primus album cover, by the way. Primus sucks.
 
Myco

Myco

718
243
Neem seed meal and neemcake are the same indeed. I order mine... some stores carry it but not many. Google "Ahimsa" - they are known to have very high quality neem products which is where I get mine... I'll find the link for you if you can't find it.

And by water soluble I just meant dry amendments that are water soluble are things you can topdress with as a rule of thumb. Such as ewc, kelp, guanos etc, are very water soluble. Bone meal, for example, isn't, therefore it's rather useless to use as a topdress. Ya catch my drift? ;)
 
Seamaiden

Seamaiden

Living dead girl
23,596
638
Funk, I use gypsum and Azomite when I'm mixing up the soil, not as a top-dressing. Something like the Xtreme gardening product I'd probably use as a tea, in conjunction with the top-dressings.
 
Mogrow

Mogrow

1,695
263
Funkadelic said:
Oregon Panda - I have (handy) some gypsum, azomite, and read good things about "Ful-Power" (my orchard is indoors). What do you think of those for humic/fulvic supplementation?

PButter - I neglected to add 15g of the 25-30g of EWC in the Simplici-tea.com "Keep It Simple Nutrient Pack" mix, so I'm going to topdress a *lot* with EWC. How does that sound?

SeaMaiden - I have multiple kinds of kelp and alfalfa meal... and I use RTI/Xtreme Gardening teas - should I topdress these, use them in tea, or a combo do you think? Also, I have gypsum and azomite - same question with these?

Mogrow - Yeah, going to add a whole lot of EWC as topdress. Maybe 2.5g of topdress in a 10g smartie?
Also, I'm thinking of having 2 batches of soil - one in flower, the other cooking, then rotate them and top off nutes and add a bunch of enzymes for breakdown when the flower gets taken down.... your thoughts?

midwestdensies - I have all your ingredients...! Looks like all the reading I do here added up. Which sul-po-mag do you use? Also, are gypsum and azomite rock dusts you would use? Congrats on being stony in the A.M. "Its the wake and bake baby, when I open my eyes" -The Goats

Myco - Where do you get your neem seed meal? I didn't find it at feed and garden stores near me. Online?
Is that different from the neem cake?
Water soluble - well, I used to run Nectar of the Gods... fng amazing results, but a total PITA to mix. Expensive. TOTAL PITA, did I mention? Wasteful. Its a bitch. So I'm experimenting with dry amendments this time. After a year of ridiculous feed schedules and mixing barrels full of nutewater every 72hrs, I'm looking at other options.
Your avatar looks like a Primus album cover, by the way. Primus sucks.
Click to expand...
Funk/// i add about 2 or 3 inches of EWC to my 10 - 15 gallon smarties. i try and mix something else in with it. your soil idea is right on the money, i try and rotate but sometimes the batches all look alike.
try and remember what the plant did in the pot, and amend accordingly.
 
neverbreak

neverbreak

1,223
163
how much ewc do u guys topdress with? pretty high in n.

neverbreak
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Top Bottom