My Own soil Mix n Teas, please advise

Ok, I am giving up on pre-mixed soil blends and nutrient juices. I am going to do my own run of soil and teas. This isn't my fist, second, third, ect grow. I am just looking for constructive criticism on why or why not, what I have chosen to provide my plants, will or will not work. Trying something new, I like second opinions before diving into it.

Soil: To make roughly 45-50 gallons. Letting sit for 2-3 weeks before planting
Pro-Mix HP- 28 gallons
Perlite- 12 gallons
Worm Castings- 2.5 gallons
Compost- 5 gallons
Powdered Kelp- 1.5 cups
Powdered Lime- 3 cups
Jersey Greensand- 1.5 cups
Azomite- 3 cups

Veg Tea- To apply every other watering, or every third watering, depending on what my plants tell me. Straight water the rest of the time. This recipe is for 5 gallons, then cutting it down 50% with water for soil drench.

De-Chlorinated Water- 5 gallons
Worm casting or compost or Humus- 1 cup
1/3 Cup- High Nitrogen Mexican Bat Guano'
1/2" Cup- Alfalfa Meal
5 tbs- Blackstrap Molasses
5 tbs- Kelp Extract

Aerate and let sit for 1-2 days, then use.

Bloom Tea: Same watering schedule as veg tea. Same 5 gallon with 50% water cut.

De-Chlorinated Water- 5 gallons
1 cup- Worm Castings or compost or humus
1/3 Cup- High Phosphorus Jamaican Bat Guano
1/2 Cup- Alfalfa Meal
2 tbs- Epsom Salt
3 tbs- Blacksrap Molasses
5 tbs- Kelp Meal

Aerate and let sit for 1-2 days, then use.

OK, there it is. Let me know your thoughts and ideas. I want to go shopping and get started!!

Short and sweet my thoughts.

Not near enough humus or amendments in the original mix. 45-50 gallons is approx 8 cu ft. I would be adding equal parts peat, ewc/compost, and aeration. Amendments I would add something like 4c kelp, 4c crab meal, 4c neem meal, 32c mineral mix (something like 4x – Glacial Rock Dust, 1x Bentonite, 1x Oyster Shell Powder, 1x Basalt) to that mix. Even if you don't use those exact ingredients keep in mind the volume.

Teas take out the guanos and salts, read microbeorganics.com.

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to the soil add some bone meal...and add epsoma Bio tone to get the soil alive and also some Epsoma plant tone and some crab meal and some rare earth powder...use the crab meal in the teas also....good source of chitosan.....all you need to what U have listed....No guano in the teas...like said above...

Perfect, thanks for the input from both of you. I will change ratios, add crab (tea and soil), neem and oyster for sure. Questions are as follows, in response to both of your questions...

- Will the bonemeal being added to the soil, and such a high phosphorus content, will that be harmful for younger plants? Or is it a slower release product in which it should be broken down in time for flower? How much Bone meal is recommended for 50 gallons/ 8 CF?

- In regards to minerals....rock dust, azomite, limestone, greensand, do these truly get broken down to a useful mineral that the plant can accept in enough time?. I have been reading conflicting reports of these products being actually used by the plants in their life time.

- Down the road, if I see a need for additional nutrients , N-P-K, how would you recommend applying these without a tea method? And without using a fox-farm, floranova ect mixture.

Thanks for the help.

jact55 said:

Perfect, thanks for the input from both of you. I will change ratios, add crab (tea and soil), neem and oyster for sure. Questions are as follows, in response to both of your questions...

- Will the bonemeal being added to the soil, and such a high phosphorus content, will that be harmful for younger plants? Or is it a slower release product in which it should be broken down in time for flower? How much Bone meal is recommended for 50 gallons/ 8 CF?

- In regards to minerals....rock dust, azomite, limestone, greensand, do these truly get broken down to a useful mineral that the plant can accept in enough time?. I have been reading conflicting reports of these products being actually used by the plants in their life time.

- Down the road, if I see a need for additional nutrients , N-P-K, how would you recommend applying these without a tea method? And without using a fox-farm, floranova ect mixture.

Thanks for the help.

Click to expand...

I'd recommend fish bone meal over bovine. Like 2c for your amount of soil on that. As far as rock dust, I'm not a big fan of limestone or greensand, and I have mixed feelings about azomite. I would look for Glacial Rock Dust, Basalt dust, any kind of lava rock dust. If you have to mail order these I'm sure I can dig up links. These are important. If I had to slim down my mineral ingredients, I'd use mostly GRD with some oyster shell and gypsum (3c grd, 1/2c oyster, 1/2c gypsum). You might check a pottery store for bentonite. If the gypsum is pellatized, try and break it up, coffee grinder etc. You are correct, the more surface area, the faster these will become available.

There are usually some soluble nutrients when you add these items. Therefore, the mix maybe initially a little hot, but will settle with a little time. For adding more nutrients later, I like to top dress amendments first, or add nutrient teas second choice. Often times not much top dressing is needed depending on the initial soil amendments. Remember easier to add more then to take it out.

Ok, that's a quick ramble.

Ok, and to make it a little longer. If you needed a kick like say week 3 of flower try this:

1/2 cup alfalfa
1/4 cup kelp
Per 5 gal water and bubble for 24hrs – then if possible add:

25ml potassium silicate (Protekt)
50-100ml fulpower (bioag)
1/2 cup Aloe vera juice (like Lilly of the desert, or blend up some fresh aloe)

Water undiluted and see if you don’t notice any greening up in the next 24-48 hrs. As a general rule, I always go half strength on any new recipe to make sure I don't see any adverse effects.

Peace!
P-

jact55 said:

Perfect, thanks for the input from both of you. I will change ratios, add crab (tea and soil), neem and oyster for sure. Questions are as follows, in response to both of your questions...

- Will the bonemeal being added to the soil, and such a high phosphorus content, will that be harmful for younger plants? Or is it a slower release product in which it should be broken down in time for flower? How much Bone meal is recommended for 50 gallons/ 8 CF?

- In regards to minerals....rock dust, azomite, limestone, greensand, do these truly get broken down to a useful mineral that the plant can accept in enough time?. I have been reading conflicting reports of these products being actually used by the plants in their life time.

- Down the road, if I see a need for additional nutrients , N-P-K, how would you recommend applying these without a tea method? And without using a fox-farm, floranova ect mixture.

Thanks for the help.

Click to expand...

check out recycled soil stcky for some good ammendment ratios. and look at organic feeding 101 sticky for Great liquid nutrient recipes. i also made some willow leaf, sprout, bark tea which is amazing.! and use it with sprouts and clones.

@Pattahabi how do you feel about Zeolite?

DonPetro said:

@Pattahabi how do you feel about Zeolite?

Click to expand...

DonP, never used it. A quick read says there are many places and ways this material can be derived. Seems some of it is mined in the US. Are you looking for the cec from it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite

P-

Pattahabi said:

I'd recommend fish bone meal over bovine. Like 2c for your amount of soil on that. As far as rock dust, I'm not a big fan of limestone or greensand, and I have mixed feelings about azomite. I would look for Glacial Rock Dust, Basalt dust, any kind of lava rock dust. If you have to mail order these I'm sure I can dig up links. These are important. If I had to slim down my mineral ingredients, I'd use mostly GRD with some oyster shell and gypsum (3c grd, 1/2c oyster, 1/2c gypsum). You might check a pottery store for bentonite. If the gypsum is pellatized, try and break it up, coffee grinder etc. You are correct, the more surface area, the faster these will become available.

There are usually some soluble nutrients when you add these items. Therefore, the mix maybe initially a little hot, but will settle with a little time. For adding more nutrients later, I like to top dress amendments first, or add nutrient teas second choice. Often times not much top dressing is needed depending on the initial soil amendments. Remember easier to add more then to take it out.

Ok, that's a quick ramble.

Ok, and to make it a little longer. If you needed a kick like say week 3 of flower try this:

1/2 cup alfalfa
1/4 cup kelp
Per 5 gal water and bubble for 24hrs – then if possible add:

25ml potassium silicate (Protekt)
50-100ml fulpower (bioag)
1/2 cup Aloe vera juice (like Lilly of the desert, or blend up some fresh aloe)

Water undiluted and see if you don’t notice any greening up in the next 24-48 hrs. As a general rule, I always go half strength on any new recipe to make sure I don't see any adverse effects.

Peace!
P-

Click to expand...

This is very good information, although, wouldn't you want some EWC and maybe a speck of molasses in there to kick start the teas? I'd say maybe a half or full tablespoon?the kelp/alfalfa microbes are gonna need some food, no? Especially if you add some EWC.
Words of wisdom, "Remember easier to add more than to take it out"

greasemonkeymann said:

This is very good information, although, wouldn't you want some EWC and maybe a speck of molasses in there to kick start the teas? I'd say maybe a half or full tablespoon?the kelp/alfalfa microbes are gonna need some food, no? Especially if you add some EWC.
Words of wisdom, "Remember easier to add more than to take it out"

Click to expand...

Grease, that is a straight nutrient tea. It's not designed necessarily for microbe extrapolation. Surely there will be some microbe multiplying in there, but not the primary goal. You could certainly add a little ewc and molasses if you wanted, but I would do an ACT in a different application.

Just my 2¢,
P-

jact55 said:

Perfect, thanks for the input from both of you. I will change ratios, add crab (tea and soil), neem and oyster for sure. Questions are as follows, in response to both of your questions...

- Will the bonemeal being added to the soil, and such a high phosphorus content, will that be harmful for younger plants? Or is it a slower release product in which it should be broken down in time for flower? How much Bone meal is recommended for 50 gallons/ 8 CF?

- In regards to minerals....rock dust, azomite, limestone, greensand, do these truly get broken down to a useful mineral that the plant can accept in enough time?. I have been reading conflicting reports of these products being actually used by the plants in their life time.

- Down the road, if I see a need for additional nutrients , N-P-K, how would you recommend applying these without a tea method? And without using a fox-farm, floranova ect mixture.

Thanks for the help.

Click to expand...

What I like to do is have enough soil to make three sets of grows, one you use, one you compost/age, and one that's ready for the next grow. So for example, if you need 75 gallons of soil, each grow, then you'll need 225 gallons of soil mix in total.
Remember its kinda like growing, you have different stages, an all organic mix works SO much better when aged/composted correctly.
First three grows would be from a "fresh" mix, so a mix like you have only tweaked a lil. My favorite "secret" weapons for my soil are alpaca/rabbit manure, and my own homegrown earthworm castings, from there it's basicly what you prefer. I have two "types" of soil a hotter version and a cooler version, the difference is the cooler version has less manure and more EWC, the hotter has rabbit/alpaca and seabird guano. You don't need to do this, I do because I've dialed in, what my picky-ass plants like (they reward me though)
So, I echo the fish bone meal preference to the bovine (mad cow disease freaks me out)
Peat moss, fish bone meal, alpaca/rabbit manure, EWC, alfalfa meal, kelp meal, cricket castings, seabird guano, crab meal, glacial dust. If you can't get rabbit/alpaca manure (try craigslist for alpaca wool and rabbits to buy) then get some guano, I like seabird guano because the one I have is 12-8-2, and I like me some nitrogen, some growers just go for phosphorus because they read its for flowers and fruit, it is, but nitrogen is MORE important to a healthy plant, in my opinion, its also used up pretty fast by cannabis.
So those are my amendments, and all I do is feed them AACT teas to make the food "digested" for the plant.
I normally don't feed, but if I do, it's once or twice and it's with a VERY light food. Like fish emulsion or rabbit manure in it.
But you asked how to feed without teas, honestly I HIGHLY recommend teas, it's almost essential. But without, like pattahabi said, top dressing works just also, I prefer to get a couple handfuls of EWC and mix that with whatever you want to topdress with. For example two handfuls of EWC and two tablespoons of guano would be a good topdress for a large plant. Water it in well, and it works similar to a tea.
but a good tea is waay more effective to the overall health of the plant.
Soil mixes are something that takes a little "tuning" sometimes you can have the recipe perfect, but it still doesn't work well because its not aged, so keep that in mind also.
Just remember this.
LESS FOOD IS ALWAYS BETTER. don't overdo it, it's easy to do. and earthworm castings are your friend.

Pattahabi said:

Grease, that is a straight nutrient tea. It's not designed necessarily for microbe extrapolation. Surely there will be some microbe multiplying in there, but not the primary goal. You could certainly add a little ewc and molasses if you wanted, but I would do an ACT in a different application.

Just my 2¢,
P-

Click to expand...

I gotcha, I always kinda think microbes are good, all the time. I like my lil bug friends. Just me

greasemonkeymann said:

I gotcha, I always kinda think microbes are good, all the time. I like my lil bug friends. Just me

Click to expand...

I totally agree about always liking microbes. However, keep in mind the alfalfa and kelp are going to slow microbial multiplication, 24 hours isn't enough time even without the kelp/alfalfa to really breed microbes, and then it is possible adding aloe is going to further reduce your microbe population. Therefore, it's my opinion to make an ACT one watering. Make a microbial extrapolation another watering. Of course there are 100 ways to skin a cat.

P-

Pattahabi said:

I totally agree about always liking microbes. However, keep in mind the alfalfa and kelp are going to slow microbial multiplication, 24 hours isn't enough time even without the kelp/alfalfa to really breed microbes, and then it is possible adding aloe is going to further reduce your microbe population. Therefore, it's my opinion to make an ACT one watering. Make a microbial extrapolation another watering. Of course there are 100 ways to skin a cat.

P-

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I always thought with kelp and alfalfa you have to go at least 35-40 hrs to get the "goods" that's what I do anyways... Kinda hard to tell what they prefer, the plants look really healthy regardless, but I don't like to wait for the plant to "tell" me when it's not happy,and like you said, 100 ways to skin a cat, and that's SOOOO true for pot, that's why we all think our own methods are the best. because frankly it's fairly hard to screw up a cannabis plant, they are a damn strong plant...
well most strains anyways.... (talkin about YOU sugarpunch....)

anyone ever use cricket castings for a tea? I've been using it for two yrs as a soil amendment but not for a tea, wondering if anyone has used it before?

greasemonkeymann said:

I always thought with kelp and alfalfa you have to go at least 35-40 hrs to get the "goods" that's what I do anyways... Kinda hard to tell what they prefer, the plants look really healthy regardless, but I don't like to wait for the plant to "tell" me when it's not happy,and like you said, 100 ways to skin a cat, and that's SOOOO true for pot, that's why we all think our own methods are the best. because frankly it's fairly hard to screw up a cannabis plant, they are a damn strong plant...
well most strains anyways.... (talkin about YOU sugarpunch....)

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Soluble nutrients will be leeched out of the kelp/alfalfa pretty quickly (few hours if I remember correctly). The long brewing times comes from when you are adding kelp/alfalfa to your microbial extrapolation. This is because they slow down the initial multiplication. And no doubt cannabis is a tough plant!

As far as I know, EWC are going to have the highest initial microbe population. Which is why we want to use them.

P-

sorry to hijack,but is this a good soli mix?should anything else be added?

1 Bale sunshine mix #2 or promix (3.8 cu ft)
8 cups Bone Meal - phosphorus source
4 cups Blood Meal - nitrogen source
1 1/3 cups Epsom salts - magnesium source
3-4 cups dolomite lime -calcium source & pH buffering
1 tsp fritted trace elements
4 cups kelp meal.
9kg (25 lbs) bag pure worm castings

Pattahabi said:

DonP, never used it. A quick read says there are many places and ways this material can be derived. Seems some of it is mined in the US. Are you looking for the cec from it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite

P-

Click to expand...

Well, looking to expand on the mineral content of my soil mixes. I feel the mineral content is somewhat lacking. Where i am, rock dusts are unusually hard to source. I currently use dolomite lime, granular soft rock phosphate and greensand. I also use perlite for aeration kind of by default because a HUGE bag of it was gifted to me. So with the zeolite i was looking at its aeration and water retention properties as well as a boost to the cec of the mix.

DonPetro said:

Well, looking to expand on the mineral content of my soil mixes. I feel the mineral content is somewhat lacking. Where i am, rock dusts are unusually hard to source. I currently use dolomite lime, granular soft rock phosphate and greensand. I also use perlite for aeration kind of by default because a HUGE bag of it was gifted to me. So with the zeolite i was looking at its aeration and water retention properties as well as a boost to the cec of the mix.

Click to expand...

I really know nothing about zeolite. With a quick read, the processed stuff doesn't sound so good, and the amount of aluminum might be a concern. I'd love to hear pro's and con's of this material, or anyone using it.

How about a little bentonite from a pottery store? Not sure where you are, but if in the US, I ordered 50# of Glacial rock dust for $42 shipped to my door from Planet Natural. Also look for basalt. If you are in another country, maybe lmk. I might be able to find a supplier.

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Yea as with most of my amendments i will likely have to order online. If you know of any places that do international shipping, let me know.