kratos015
Well-Known Member
Crab Meal is preferred over Bone Meal due to its lighter NPK and the fact that it is a source of chitinase, an enzyme that is quite effective as pest control. Bone Meal will work just fine, just be sure to use it sparingly. Potent stuff. You can still get chitin from Insect Frass, or better yet, homemade EWC.OK this is awesome and wildly making me wish I was using some 30gal pots. Your grow is my utopia of laziness. I thought I was wildly the laziest person here
I own the blumat already though, I got it so in the event of a flood it was limited, and my 10 gal resevoir wouldn't make toooo much of a mess.
And I'm in fabric pots.
thank you so much for this! Everyone was saying maybe it was doable but I still had no idea what to doI'm perfectly happy to not use the karanja, it's too hard to find for me.
How come crab meal instead of bone meal? and would it make sense to add epsom salts or oyster shell along the way?
So now that I have a plan does the kashi still help? I thought the plant kind of just extracted the stuff via roots and water, and the topdress didn't need to decompose. But as I can see with your setup you are leagues ahead of me.
Don't add OSF along the way, its pure Calcium Carbonate and it serves to buffer your pH. OSF should only be used when first mixing a new batch of soil. If you need Calcium, there are plenty of sources of it that won't ruin your pH; crab and bone meals, gypsum, egg shells, etc.
Epsom salts only work in foliar, even if it is dissolved in water, when used as a soil drench epsom salts are quite ineffective. Epsom salts in a foliar is where it has its uses, the plants leaves absorb the Magnesium and Sulfur much easier and effectively than the plant's roots can. Always good to have Epsom Salts around, just in case.
The only thing to keep in mind, is that you should be sure to spray the leaves again after applying the Epsom Salts. What happens is the salts eventually start to build up on your leaves, not good. Simply spraying the leaves off the next day with normal water should wash a bulk of the residue off, to ensure it never builds up on your leaves.
Just wanted to second this real quick. There are plenty of ways to construct a balanced and efficient soil. While some amendments have more benefits than others, they can all have their uses in building your perfect living soil.
That said, don't load up on P of Ca, be cautious.
Too much P in your soil will make it unusable for 3-5 years, you'll legit have to start over with new soil while you wait the 3-5 years. P lockout is way more common than P deficiency. One must ensure they don't have a lockout before applying more P. With how readily available in the soil most sources of P is, there is no harm in waiting on applying it until you confirm the issue is not lockout.
Too much Ca will lock out your Mg, K, and P, which obviously fucks our plants pretty hard. Especially in bloom. In my experience, people are rarely P deficient, just Ca locking it out.
I always recommend people omit the Gypsum from these recipes, as the Crab Meal/Bone Meal and Lime/OSF will provide plenty of Calcium for the plant. And unless you're using RO water, your water likely has Ca in it too. If for some reason your plants need more Ca, egg shells work great.
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