Homeade Soil?

[SlumpAwakens]

I've got a compost pile finishing up can I make my own soil with it? I read to mix that with peat moss and pearlite. Is this enough to grow? Anyone have a mix that doesn't have a million things in it? I just need the must haves.

 

[MustangStudFarm]

I've got a compost pile finishing up can I make my own soil with it? I read to mix that with peat moss and pearlite. Is this enough to grow? Anyone have a mix that doesn't have a million things in it? I just need the must haves.

I'm using a mix of ProMix and EWC. However, I use a lot of rock dust in my worm bin like Azomite, Greensand, and Basalt. The hippy method is to compost comfrey, nettle, borage, or other plants that are high in micronutrients. What I figured out through soil testing is that compost can be super high in Phosphorus and these plants help bring the P#'s down to a normal level. Excess P will cause iron lockout, or iron chlorosis. Not every compost is made equal. If I had only one choice to add to compost, it would be greensand. Adding local weeds to the compost would help too. I have Lambsquarter in my yard that I was going to use. It's high in manganese, one of the micronutrients that I am always low on.

Lambsquarter

 

[MustangStudFarm]

I meant to say, use your compost for sure. It's probably better than most stuff that you can buy!

 

[Richard Drysift]

I've got a compost pile finishing up can I make my own soil with it? I read to mix that with peat moss and pearlite. Is this enough to grow? Anyone have a mix that doesn't have a million things in it? I just need the must haves.

If you just want the must haves without buying a ton of stuff you can just use your compost along with some perlite and then just buy some base soil to mix in with that.

 

[SlumpAwakens]

I'm using a mix of ProMix and EWC. However, I use a lot of rock dust in my worm bin like Azomite, Greensand, and Basalt. The hippy method is to compost comfrey, nettle, borage, or other plants that are high in micronutrients. What I figured out through soil testing is that compost can be super high in Phosphorus and these plants help bring the P#'s down to a normal level. Excess P will cause iron lockout, or iron chlorosis. Not every compost is made equal. If I had only one choice to add to compost, it would be greensand. Adding local weeds to the compost would help too. I have Lambsquarter in my yard that I was going to use. It's high in manganese, one of the micronutrients that I am always low on.

Lambsquarter
View attachment 4619330

Thanks for the info....I've only used grass, leaves, and everything leftover from the kitchen thats organic...all my vegetable scraps and coffee all that. I did put a few layers of my yard soil to cover scraps I the beginning.

 

[MustangStudFarm]

Thanks for the info....I've only used grass, leaves, and everything leftover from the kitchen thats organic...all my vegetable scraps and coffee all that. I did put a few layers of my yard soil to cover scraps I the beginning.

You should be fine! I've been making my own compost for several years now and it beats the store bought stuff everytime... I've also had my soil tested over the years and I'm usually low in iron and manganese, greensand provides both. I'm not saying that you need it right away or anything, but it would be like your next step or whatever. I think that you will actually do better than most people on here because you didn't add a bunch of trivial things like rock phosphate and bone meal(I hate the stuff). When it's time to recycle your soil, your spent soil would count as the brown material and you would just have to add grass clippings and food scraps. You were right about making the base compost, just grass and leaves will make up 2/3 of your mix, but you still need 1/3 aeration to make potting soil. I've been mixing my worm castings with ProMix 50/50 and it's been GREAT for everything including my seedlings and clones.

My last seed run, I went 33 for 36 seeds and the clones look super happy.


The outdoor soil I used mostly EWC and perlite. Plus, I had some 2 1/2yr old leaf mold, pure leaf mold. I didn't pay for any fertilizers and I only paid for the peatmoss to fill the worm bins. I saw this as a way to treat the peat before I used it too. Peat straight out of the bag sucks, you gotta work with it first and it will go from red to brown. It's also hydrophobic(repel water) straight out of the bag, so it's PITA to use.


I found a store that would give me expired produce, but it's kind of slowed down since 'rona...

My worm bins are about 550gal each, or 2.67 cubic yards. I have 4x worm bins and a 8x12 concrete slab that I use for compost. My goal is to make the leaf and grass compost and then feed it into the worm bins with the food...

 

[MustangStudFarm]

I forgot to mention that I started growing borage and comfrey just to compost with. It turns out that both plants flower and will attract beneficial insects like lady bugs and green lacewings. I also have a lot of hover flies that eat aphids, wasp that control the worms, and I even saw an assassin bug(red) stalking a grasshopper the other day. It made a lot more sense to why there are flowers in a veggie/cannabis garden. Grow the right kind of flower and the good bugs will show up, but they have different mouth parts, so different flowers attract different insects.

 

[MustangStudFarm]

I did put a few layers of my yard soil to cover scraps I the beginning.

Nothing wrong with this at all! It will only be heavier to carry. If you wasn't trying to make potting soil and were planting straight into the ground, you wouldn't have to add a thing! Farmers call ground soil "Mineral soil" because it's just that, it has all of the trace minerals(micronutrients) that I was talking about with greensand. Using ground soil will be heavier, but you also get more minerals.

 

[SlumpAwakens]

You should be fine! I've been making my own compost for several years now and it beats the store bought stuff everytime... I've also had my soil tested over the years and I'm usually low in iron and manganese, greensand provides both. I'm not saying that you need it right away or anything, but it would be like your next step or whatever. I think that you will actually do better than most people on here because you didn't add a bunch of trivial things like rock phosphate and bone meal(I hate the stuff). When it's time to recycle your soil, your spent soil would count as the brown material and you would just have to add grass clippings and food scraps. You were right about making the base compost, just grass and leaves will make up 2/3 of your mix, but you still need 1/3 aeration to make potting soil. I've been mixing my worm castings with ProMix 50/50 and it's been GREAT for everything including my seedlings and clones.

My last seed run, I went 33 for 36 seeds and the clones look super happy.
View attachment 4619616

The outdoor soil I used mostly EWC and perlite. Plus, I had some 2 1/2yr old leaf mold, pure leaf mold. I didn't pay for any fertilizers and I only paid for the peatmoss to fill the worm bins. I saw this as a way to treat the peat before I used it too. Peat straight out of the bag sucks, you gotta work with it first and it will go from red to brown. It's also hydrophobic(repel water) straight out of the bag, so it's PITA to use.
View attachment 4619619

I found a store that would give me expired produce, but it's kind of slowed down since 'rona...
View attachment 4619621
My worm bins are about 550gal each, or 2.67 cubic yards. I have 4x worm bins and a 8x12 concrete slab that I use for compost. My goal is to make the leaf and grass compost and then feed it into the worm bins with the food...
View attachment 4619629

Awesome thanks for the info. So also I'm going to be bringing this soil indoors for the indoor girls is this going to be ok? And would you think I would need to add nutrients during the grow if I jjst used peat compost and perlite?

 

[MustangStudFarm]

Awesome thanks for the info. So also I'm going to be bringing this soil indoors for the indoor girls is this going to be ok? And would you think I would need to add nutrients during the grow if I jjst used peat compost and perlite?

The worst that will happen is that you might get bugs crawling out of the soil, but that shouldn't hurt anything. I'll come across an occasional centipede, so I started wearing gloves when I mix compost. If you run low on nutrients, just topdress again. Composted leaves are pretty hearty.

 

[SlumpAwakens]

The worst that will happen is that you might get bugs crawling out of the soil, but that shouldn't hurt anything. I'll come across an occasional centipede, so I started wearing gloves when I mix compost. If you run low on nutrients, just topdress again. Composted leaves are pretty hearty.

Definitely I have soldier fly larvae in it and they demolish compost im told 5lbs a day. So my bin is all castings at this point I assume lol they are gross but its almost ready so there's not near as much of them.

 

[MustangStudFarm]

Definitely I have soldier fly larvae in it and they demolish compost im told 5lbs a day. So my bin is all castings at this point I assume lol they are gross but its almost ready so there's not near as much of them.

I bought some BSF larvae back in March, they don't show up until late summer normally. So, I got a jumpstart on them this summer.