Your not going to hurt my feelings lol... I've just been chasing my tail and not really get much improvement, but I feel like I am close. I get my soil tested and it don't look like it is very far off, and a lot of times I feel like I should be getting better results. It seems like I am always chasing some sort of deficiency. Another problem is that I will read stuff and remember it, but I don't know how it all works together. Just like my last harvest, I knew that Ca and Mg would lock out K but that didn't stop me from adding Oyster shell flour during flower period. Needless to say, I locked out K. I'm always making some sort of dumb-ass mistake and after 8yrs the mistakes start getting depressing but I still learn from them. After trying different soil mixes, I'm going to stick with my compost that is always sky high in phosphorus and low in micronutrients. I thought that I could just fix the soil one time and call it good, but I think that I have to continually feed with Mn and Fe, just smaller amounts.
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I feel like I am working too hard at this. I had a great harvest about 2yrs ago, so I got to see what it looks like and I've been missing every time since then. I also thought really hard about what I used in that batch of compost and what was right and wrong about it. I used rock phosphate and greensand, but I started having trouble with the compost after about 12mo and I blamed both of them. However, I think that the greensand was a big part of what I was missing and I haven't used it since my "great harvest of 2016".
The part that I was having trouble understanding was how you say ROLS soil and you didn't have to do all of this crazy shit to balance it. I'm assuming that you were having trouble with the soil outside of the SIP container? Maybe Malibu compost is better than I give it credit for? Man, what I am getting at is that I saw that you used dolomite lime but dolo completely fucked me last harvest because I was having K lockout/deficiency because I used a LOT of it in my peat. I let the peat sit in a composter for about 6-8mo with the dolomite in it and the soil that I made with it didn't do so hot at all. Everything looked great until week 5-6 of flower.
What you did just sounds too easy and I'm a little skeptical for some reason. I'm still going to make a DIY SIP and I actually came up with some decent ideas for some stuff that I have laying around. I have atleast one tote that I can use along with a tray from a Worm Farm 360. I'll flip it upside-down for the rez. If it works out, then I'll start making outdoor SIP beds.
if you ask me... which you didnt LOL.... there are a couple things I would note about your thought process...
1) compost is just carbon for the microbes. I really don't see the need to worry about amending it at all. if you do, less is more. I draw this conclusion based on the fact that we add amendments to the soil... so why do we need to amend the compost when it's really just food for the microbes? just focus on making good quality compost (which you do cause you got all them wormies).
2) recently I have discovered that adding OSF or Dolo to recycled mixes every time
seems (keyword) pointless. There is no need to buffer anymore because the mix just turns into compost after 1 or 2 cycles,
so the peat gets neutralized. Compost is a natural buffer.
So why buffer a buffer? Makes no sense if you ask me! The plant will put protons in the soil when it needs too help with acidity during cation exchange with the substrate, and fungi will help with acidity too (digestive acidic enzymes). So, I've been omitting the OSF from my recycled mixes recently and haven't noticed the slightest bit of Ca def (yet!). We'll see after a few more recycles... but If ya ask me I think I got plenty of Ca... gypsum (which does not act as a pH buffer), glacial rock dust, crab shell meal, kelp, worm castings (which have a calcitic slime on them from what I understand). I'm sure I even missed one or two inputs.
3) I no longer add additional compost to my recycled mixes. Think about the carbon cycle in the soil... we're not fighting erosion or leaching indoors in containers or beds, so the carbon really isn't going anywhere. Plants build themselves of inorganic carbon, not soil carbon. So the microbes cycle carbon amongst themselves and that carbon stays put. If you leave roots in the recycle mix, thats
brand new carbon added to the soil via the plant. when you add additional amendments to the mix, thats additional carbon. when your mulch layer breaks down... guess what? more carbon! Gotta have more carbon baby! (like christopher walken and cowbell! LOL). Adding compost tea... yup, more carbon. the biology you breed in the tea is more carbon. I may toss a handful or two of castings into a recycle mix just to re-inoculate... but that's it anymore. no more large additions of organic matter. just pointless imo.
fwiw, i think greensand is a great product. slow release K. like real slow. perfect. that's all we need. and I also think langebenite could be another great product, just used in smaller amounts because of the high K and the additional Mg... so maybe no more than 1/4c per cu.ft.
just my ramblings and thoughts from the last couple years of doing this. I'm by no means a veteran... but I try and approach things somewhat scientifically (or maybe more methodically) rather than just adding stuff because I read about it from outdated posts on here (not saying you're doing this but I think you get what I'm saying, we have more knowledge now than we did years ago). I ruined some soil in my short career of organic growing. pH got way too high, yields suffered, and when I reset with fresh coot mixes, what do ya know... problem solved. So I tried to think about what I was doing that was causing that. I came up with... over buffering, too much organic matter additions, too much fertilizer (after recycles), too much bacteria (which support slightly basic conditions) and not enough fungi (which support acidic conditions), and not having enough fungal foods (brown mulch). i don't brew bacteria anymore, only fungal brews.
Sorry bout the novel. But I do enjoy me some soil discussion!
