Help me move from Hydro to Soil

Hey guys. Any help would be very much appreciated. As some may know, I’ve done Hydro for many years , but I'm now making a big change over to soil. It seems kind of backwards, I know.

so .. what’s the best soil to be using for the set up?

I will be using 1pot XL’s (gravity bottom fed I believe) linked together for a sea of green, I won’t have any access to the back of the room so making sure I get the most stable soil setup going, is imperative.
Was swaying towards fox farms and some of their nutes.

And a stupid question, how do you you feed your soil grows?!
In Hydro I we feed into the brain bucket. But there isn’t a brain for a soil. I always thought it was bad practice to put into the res but that’s all there will be available to put a tea into.

slinkysaurus said:

Hey guys. Any help would be very much appreciated. As some may know, I’ve done Hydro for many years , but I'm now making a big change over to soil. It seems kind of backwards, I know.

so .. what’s the best soil to be using for the set up?

I will be using 1pot XL’s (gravity bottom fed I believe) linked together for a sea of green, I won’t have any access to the back of the room so making sure I get the most stable soil setup going, is imperative.
Was swaying towards fox farms and some of their nutes.

And a stupid question, how do you you feed your soil grows?!
In Hydro I we feed into the brain bucket. But there isn’t a brain for a soil. I always thought it was bad practice to put into the res but that’s all there will be available to put a tea into.

Click to expand...

I like to use Fox Farm Happy Frog for seedlings and Fox Farm Ocean Forest when I up pot to solo cups, one gallons, and then 5 gallons. The Ocean Forest is hot and keeps the plant fed to the point that I really don’t need any nutrients during veg.

Thanks, I’ll try that out. any info on feeding schedule / regime ? Usually use a brain bucket ! Is it safe to put tea straight into res?

slinkysaurus said:

Thanks, I’ll try that out. any info on feeding schedule / regime ? Usually use a brain bucket ! Is it safe to put tea straight into res?

Click to expand...

I can’t help you much on the brain bucket, sorry. I feed by hand, and I make sure to let the pots really dry out between feedings. I feed every 2-3 days with mature plants, and I lift the pot to feel the weight to make sure she’s dry. Overwatering is your probably biggest risk if you’re moving to soil.

If @Budzbuddha will respond he is a great source for soil grows. He does a FFHF / FFOF and Great White layering that he doesn't need to feed the entire grow, if I remember that correctly.

I would stick with smaller pots like 2-3gal and maybe consider mixing a coco based soil in with the FFOF to speed up wet/dry cycles. I personally think 5 gal take too long to dry which means sometimes you might see a deficiency but you have to wait 2 or 3 days til next feeding to address it. Just my personal opinion.

Also a bigger question to ask is what would you prefer in terms of feeding style? A lot of your decision making is based on personal preference and what you are trying to achieve, but also consider that how you build your soil and chosen nutes will affect what feeding methods you choose.

The closest thing to hydro would be to just use a soilless medium like Promix or Coco and all nutrients come with the watering. Not sure how this works in a bottom feed system. But I feel like it might make for an easier transition of someone coming from hydro background.

You could go with just FFOF as your base, personally I ammend a blend of FFOF and FFHF with some Malibu Bus compost and perlite, and then topdress dry amendments as needed. Or you use liquid bottled nutes. I know a lot of ppl on RIU use Megacrop. Ive been using Roots Organics liquid and dry nutes. Ive also just started using Recharge once a week to help keep my soil microbes happy.

I think eventually a lot of soil growers try to get to a SuperSoil or Living Organic Soil style grow where they can just feed with water and their soil has all they need. Usually this does mean also brewing compost teas a few times during the grow cycle.

My next batch of soil I am mixing is along those lines except I am going for an all veganic style based on BuildASoil's LOS Vegan Mix. I'm using 2 parts of an organic coco based soil mix with OMRI compost from only plant matter, EWC, rock dust, and myco, 1 part BAS Pinto Bean Compost' and 1 part perlite. I will ammend that with Down To Earth Vegan Mix. I will also use Recharge up until week 5 of flower. I am sure it will take me a few cycles to dial it in.

All that said if you can get to a water only setup then it will make setting up a drip system or bottom feed like you suggested a lot more manageable. If you are mixing nutes into your water then you have a lot more work to do keeping your setup disinfected and clean.

I personally am still hand watering bc I havent switched over to a super soil style setup yet but those are all the things that I think are worth considering when making this switch.

slinkysaurus said:

Thanks, I’ll try that out. any info on feeding schedule / regime ? Usually use a brain bucket ! Is it safe to put tea straight into res?

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I forgot to add that I usually run a ratio of 1/3 perlite to 2/3 FFOF for drainage. Best of luck to you.

@ilovereggae @twalte @tslonige Thank you for all those replies , there’s some great information in there for me to digest. Sorry I didn’t reply immediately but it was best I milled everything over and just as well I did;

Unfortunately I don’t receive a good supply of FoxFarms to my area without huge costs , so I’ve had to go down the biobizz route, much to my dismay.
Pots will be AutoPots in a modular sea of green layout.

The reason for staying away from coco is that I want my life back somewhat , it’s the whole reason for moving away from hydro. As tempted as I am by coco I just can’t bring myself to the hydro feeding regime again , I would rather build a good soil and have something semi automatic.

The plan now - leaning towards building a soil , using Canna Start and Canna Seed Mix (other brands are available but I always use their stuff. I’m a sucker, shouod have seen what went into the hydro feed schedule..8 part ceed)
Seedlings in 3” fibre/peat pots.
Then once thoroughly rooted , transplanted into the 15L /3Gal auto pots with BioBizz AllMix and perlite , with a base layer of clay pebbles .
Veg and flower under some Dimlux 1000w 400V.
Feeding regime - Canna Terra A+B.

Anything else to help boost that soil build, up at all? Is it time to move away from Canna and go a different feed? I’m liking the idea of letting the soil do most of the work

slinkysaurus said:

@ilovereggae @twalte @tslonige Thank you for all those replies , there’s some great information in there for me to digest. Sorry I didn’t reply immediately but it was best I milled everything over and just as well I did;

Unfortunately I don’t receive a good supply of FoxFarms to my area without huge costs , so I’ve had to go down the biobizz route, much to my dismay.
Pots will be AutoPots in a modular sea of green layout.

The reason for staying away from coco is that I want my life back somewhat , it’s the whole reason for moving away from hydro. As tempted as I am by coco I just can’t bring myself to the hydro feeding regime again , I would rather build a good soil and have something semi automatic.

The plan now - leaning towards building a soil , using Canna Start and Canna Seed Mix (other brands are available but I always use their stuff. I’m a sucker, shouod have seen what went into the hydro feed schedule..8 part ceed)
Seedlings in 3” fibre/peat pots.
Then once thoroughly rooted , transplanted into the 15L /3Gal auto pots with BioBizz AllMix and perlite , with a base layer of clay pebbles .
Veg and flower under some Dimlux 1000w 400V.
Feeding regime - Canna Terra A+B.

Anything else to help boost that soil build, up at all? Is it time to move away from Canna and go a different feed? I’m liking the idea of letting the soil do most of the work

Click to expand...

The other product that I really like to use with soil is Recharge soil conditioner. It works with all nutrients and helps to build a healthy microbe base in your soil. Best of luck with your grow!

twalte said:

The other product that I really like to use with soil is Recharge soil conditioner. It works with all nutrients and helps to build a healthy microbe base in your soil. Best of luck with your grow!

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I just got an 8 oz bag of Recharge and their guarantee that you will see "results 48 hrs" was no joke. I used some last week and my plants that were 2 weeks into flower jumped by at least 6 inches and got super green with bud sites everywhere.

Thanks I’ll be ordering some of this up !