living soil aeration

Rurumo

Rurumo

Well-Known Member
Hard to beat the 3/8 pumice. Also, personally, I only tried a Cootz type mix in a 5 gal pot once and I got a lot of deficiencies. This mix works well with big pots because of the massive root system you develop, all that surface area is able to extract the minerals you need from the rock dusts. In the 5 gal, I ended up having to feed Neptune's harvest and top dress with langbeinite a few times. Usually, the cure for most issues that occur in a Cootz type mix in a small pot is to transplant up.
 
Hollatchaboy

Hollatchaboy

Well-Known Member
Northwood said:
I agree with the fabric pot issue for no-till. In my first grow cycle I noticed that the biological activity within several inches of the side was non-existent. It just dried out too fast. And this fabric pot has a capacity of 150 gallons of soil (but 100 gallons in it), so it represented a huge volume of dead medium I could be using for growing or organic material cycling instead. I somewhat solved the issue by wrapping the outside of it tightly with several layers of plastic sheeting, allowing a couple inches uncovered at the bottom for drainage. It was a great improvement. I originally looked for a small kiddy pool as a pot, but I couldn't find one at the time with the dimensions and formfactor I was looking for.
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Damn man. I just switched over from plastic pots. Looks like I gotta such back. Thanks for the info.
 
Dreminen169

Dreminen169

Well-Known Member
Rurumo said:
Hard to beat the 3/8 pumice. Also, personally, I only tried a Cootz type mix in a 5 gal pot once and I got a lot of deficiencies. This mix works well with big pots because of the massive root system you develop, all that surface area is able to extract the minerals you need from the rock dusts. In the 5 gal, I ended up having to feed Neptune's harvest and top dress with langbeinite a few times. Usually, the cure for most issues that occur in a Cootz type mix in a small pot is to transplant up.
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If I were to use a Cootz type mix with coco & the buildasoil mineral kit how big of pot do you think I need to go?
 
Dreminen169

Dreminen169

Well-Known Member
Hollatchaboy said:
I don't really but I was told 10% water by volume so I get a tiny bit of run off. Maybe 10ml. Should I do less? Plus I'm using fabric pots, so some leaks out the sides. I'm switching back to plastic.
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I guess a tiny bit of runoff is not the end of the world, but every time water runs off good bacteria fungi and amendments are being washed away. Maybe allow the tiny bit to soak back up
 
Tht_Blk_Guy27

Tht_Blk_Guy27

Well-Known Member
Hollatchaboy said:
A tiny bit of runoff isn't bad. Just do 10% water by volume. Ime, anything more than that, I get leaf droop anyways.
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i think it comes from the deconditioning you have to have when growing cannabis. Detaching yourself from the thought that "you can treat it like _________" and that's not how any of this works lol
 
G

Growitpondifarm

Well-Known Member
Rurumo said:
Hard to beat the 3/8 pumice. Also, personally, I only tried a Cootz type mix in a 5 gal pot once and I got a lot of deficiencies. This mix works well with big pots because of the massive root system you develop, all that surface area is able to extract the minerals you need from the rock dusts. In the 5 gal, I ended up having to feed Neptune's harvest and top dress with langbeinite a few times. Usually, the cure for most issues that occur in a Cootz type mix in a small pot is to transplant up.
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I started a potting soil based off of the coots/Cornell recipe awhile back and had issues right off the bat. If you plant straight into the mix after building it you’re 100% going to have issues. I don’t care what anyone says no mix is optimal right after being put together. If I could do it it all over again I think I’d build it with 1/2 the recommended amendments and use fish emulsion to get through the first round of plants. After each round you can add more amendments as the soil figures itself out. I say this because ever since I have put my original coot mix into the raised bed I have been putting together a different potting soil to veg the plants in(1 gal nursery pot) prior to being transplanted Into said bed. For this mix I just use pro mix Hp, home made garden waste compost amended with a small amount of feather meal, alfalfa meal and tiny tiny bit of kelp. The plants in this mix do MUCH better than the first set of plants I put into the coots mix many years ago. Like night and day. Not sure what happens over time as I am not a soil biologist so I don’t want to just spew BS As to why this is, all I can say is the results will get better over time but suffer at first.

There are so many ways to grow plants in soil, I think what it comes down to is finding what works best for yourself and not trying to recreate the newest trends. Use the recipes online as a soft guideline while sourcing ingredients that are available locally as these will be the freshest and therefore most effective. This is especially true concerning compost. I see lots of new growers getting hung up on sourcing some exotic amendment or trendy new compost that is totally unnecessary. Remember, cannabis isn’t some magical plant that requires super rare and hard to source fertilizers. You could put a plant in some old cow shit and it would be happy as a clam haha.
 
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