Fox Farms Ocean Forest Rant

NaturalNate

NaturalNate

Member
Sorry to hear your bum luck but iv'e been using FF OC/LW for years .....with all my house plants ,and never had a problems other than self-inflicted ones,sorry to take sides but you must have contaminated it some how, well as your bug problems go i would not give them the right enviorment to breed ,topsoil your plants with sand ......keep topsoil really dry then really wet letting the top get wet only when its necessary to water.Again keep grow area very clean mites can attach themselves to shoes,cloths,skin,ect.....
 
Total Head

Total Head

Well-Known Member
this isn't really my area of expertise (thank god), but i've always thought that organic soils are prone to pests no matter what the brand because of the fact that they do not cook the soil because they want it to be "alive". wouldn't any attempt to rectify this issue before shipping render the product "inorganic"? i have never done a 100% organic grow but i have always thought the higher rate of bugs was inevitable. i do use ffof but have never seen any bugs. maybe there is a code or something on it that can identify which batch it came from and they will give you a refund or something, and you could tell riu in case anyone else got some of the same batch. all the complaints i have heard about fungus gnats in soil seem to be centered around mg organic choice...
 
robert 14617

robert 14617

Well-Known Member
soil allowed to stay too moist gives the gnats a perfect environment,get the traps and sprays but also back off on your soil moisture
 
C

Chebus

Active Member
Total Head said:
this isn't really my area of expertise (thank god), but i've always thought that organic soils are prone to pests no matter what the brand because of the fact that they do not cook the soil because they want it to be "alive". wouldn't any attempt to rectify this issue before shipping render the product "inorganic"? i have never done a 100% organic grow but i have always thought the higher rate of bugs was inevitable. i do use ffof but have never seen any bugs. maybe there is a code or something on it that can identify which batch it came from and they will give you a refund or something, and you could tell riu in case anyone else got some of the same batch. all the complaints i have heard about fungus gnats in soil seem to be centered around mg organic choice...
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word, FFOF is not steralized in any way, so there will always be a possibility of gnats...but iv read the Azamax stuff is pretty good at killing them...
 
trichlone fiend

trichlone fiend

New Member
robert 14617 said:
soil allowed to stay too moist gives the gnats a perfect environment,get the traps and sprays but also back off on your soil moisture
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Bingo. Keeping your soil too wet will cause gnats...however, a few gnats are nothing to worrie about. The adult flies are harmless to your plants, its the larva that will destroy your roots if they get the chance to populate in very, very high numbers. Letting your soil dry out will kill 80% of the larva. Let them dry until they slightly start to wilt, add ivory dishliquid ( several drops per gallon to allow the water to penetrate your soil better and give your soil an undesired taste to the larva ) to some dechlorinized & pH'd h20 when watering, hang some fly tape in your room, get a dehumidifier and up your intake/exaust if possible. This happens with any soil that remains too moist, not just Fox farm ocean forest. You could also add a top layer of construction sand to your soil, this makes it hard for the flies to dig and lay eggs. Another option I've heard of is to add french fry shaped potatos into your soil's top layer, dig them up every couple days and toss them. The theory is, the flies perfer to lay eggs into the potato, you toss before they hatch.

The spider mites are a whole different issue that has nothing to do with the soil. I would gas your room, follow up with regular foilar misting using Neem oil & dish liquid.

...sounds like the store or whoever you got your soil from probably stored your bag to bad conditions, bad times.
 
OhGr

OhGr

Active Member
Total Head said:
i have heard about fungus gnats in soil seem to be centered around mg organic choice...
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I've only had gnats when I used MG. I'm not sure if it was "organic choice", but my room/house had them flying around for a couple days then they just seemed to kinda dissipate. No clue where or why they went but I'm not complaining. Best of luck.
 
P

phusionsa

Active Member
wjames86 said:
I have heard that lady bugs kill spider mites as well as other pests. I hope thats true because I have them everywhere LOL
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Look online and read up on Neem Oil and/or AzaMax. For natural control, do a g-search for predator mites. The only eat spider miets, are not harmful to the plant and die off when the spider mites have all been eaten.
 
Hotwired

Hotwired

Well-Known Member
Chebus said:
15$ a bag for FFocean forest...your gettin played
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OhGr said:
11$ for the big bag here and 8 for the small.. I agree with the above statement. You're gettin played hard.
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You guys are on the west coast, amirite?

East coasters pay $20 plus easy. No one is getting played. Even if I ordered it online the delivery charge would be huge. It costs money to send heavy bags of soil east. Yep, it's a lil steep, but you get what you pay for my friends. No one plays me, but they can play with me :eyesmoke:
 
OhGr

OhGr

Active Member
Hotwired said:
You guys are on the west coast, amirite?

East coasters pay $20 plus easy. No one is getting played. Even if I ordered it online the delivery charge would be huge. It costs money to send heavy bags of soil east. Yep, it's a lil steep, but you get what you pay for my friends. No one plays me, but they can play with me :eyesmoke:
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East here buddy and I only pay 11bucks.
 
bajafox

bajafox

Well-Known Member
Not sure if it's been mentioned but I read some guys journal who filled up the top of his pots with sand and that supposedly suffocated the larvae and didn't allow adults to lay new ones.

Again, not sure if it works, just something I read while I was stoned reading one night. I'm a first time grower and bought FFOF and so far so good....
 
Saerimmner

Saerimmner

Well-Known Member
sprinkle a layer of sand on the top of the soil ( scrapes em to death when they try walking over it) and put fly strips up in ur grow area as well (to catch any that are flying) hopefully the little buggers should be gone after a few days
 
Total Head

Total Head

Well-Known Member
they charge 10 for the small and 22 for the large at my local store and i'm in new england. i didn't realize people paid such different amounts. maybe it's just the stores we shop at and not so much the area? for example, worms way has several stores nationwide, and when i look on their website it gives a price without making me put in a zip code or anything, and it's the price at the store. so i would imagine that worms way in like kentucky or somewhere would be the same price. there are only 4 places within 50 miles of me that sell ff stuff. i go where's closest. now i have to go price all these other places...
 
Total Head

Total Head

Well-Known Member
turns out i am getting screwed, just not by enough to warrent an additional 40 minutes of time and gas. cheapest i found the big bag for was $19.50. i also found the nutes a bit cheaper, but again not by much.
 
Hotwired

Hotwired

Well-Known Member
I did a bit of research on FF products and the prices for soil get higher the further east you go from the factory. I'm not sure where they put their bags together but I believe it's either California or Washington. I'm not sure if they have another factory on the east coast.

I'm not sure about anything anymore :eyesmoke:

You can definitely see the price increase as you head east tho. Shipping heavy bags of soil cross country is a serious business if ya know what I mean :blsmoke:

So in the end us east coasters are paying for shipping.
 
akgrown

akgrown

Well-Known Member
Yeah your getting it up the butt but, I have a cheap/free solution to your fngus gnat problem. Get some sand and layer it about an inch deep ontop of your soil. they cant crawl through it so they just die and the larvae cant get out so they die. It really works, trust me I know I had the same problem last year with MG organic choice.
 
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