New grow problem

Richard Drysift said:

What’s cool about oyster shell is it’s kinda chunky I it breaks down very slowly whereas D-lime is so fine it’s almost water soluble. I add the oyster shell directly into the bottom layer of each final size container; maybe just a half a handful and usually in conjunction with a fertilizer like chix shit (which is rather hot btw) to help bring ph up slightly. Oyster shell does raise ph but only affects the soil that is in close proximity to it. D-lime can be distributed more evenly through the entire container; affecting ph as a whole. With d-lime, oyster shell, and all the eggshells I put in the worm bin have not had to give cal/mag in soluble form for years.

Try watering more often but with less water. Never let it run all the way through to the bottom. I find it’s better to water lightly every other day than it is to drown the root zone every 4-5 days. Adding perlite to your mix when you can would benefit aeration; if you need more moisture retention just add vermiculite.

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This is a great read sir !
Very informative and useful.
In a world with great soil as a base , then he is spot on with not letting them dry enough to see water running through the pot every water but also not to overwater. Organics is great even when you cheat and use some chems.

Bignutes said:

When making a soil mix like the ones posted online ph is highly important. These mixes are not a true soil they are a hybrid of soil and inert media leaning heavily towards the inert media. Inert media is coco, peat, aeration. Soil is actual dirt. The way I go about determining ph is by calculating how much actual soil you have in your mix.

Let's say the optimum ph of inert growing media is 5.9 while soil is 6.5 for cannabis (.a difference of 0.6 in ph). If your mix is 30% soil then its going to lean more towards a ph of 5.9. To figure out take 30% of 0.6 which is 0.3x0.6=0.18. This means you should aim for the ph to be 5.9+0.18 = 6.08 or 6.1 is your target.

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I love your math and your style! Those numbers and you knowing what soil is shows were in the right spot.
Almost every mix is peat or coco based so for the most part its inert. however the ph of these bases are "stable" Peat moss has a very low ph and average of 5.0-6.0 and coco is closer to 6.0. They both act as buffers in our mix. Peat moss by itself needs the d-lime/oyster/egg shells to buffer the ph a lil higher..... were still guessing here but 6ish is where our guess is at. Coco is closer to the "right ph" for weed so you can get away without the extra buffer but you'll find everything grows better with lime in it. Im assuming its all the micro nutes that the lime contains....same with oyster or egg shells although my reading leads me to believe egg shells take way too long to break down in a pot.

Either way i still have yet to see a reason why we would put ph up or down in our food mix ? Its literally a waste of chems. In any good mix , you have zero reason to ph anything as you cannot change it in the pot. Use Earth juice only and you'll be watering with what a meter reads as 4.0 but it will never hurt the plant......Why? because the buffers in the soil or soiless medium will change the ph to whatever your mix is .....nothing can change that unless your growing in the same pot for a year or more.

PadawanWarrior said:

I'm still really just trying to figure out the whole organic no-till thing, but am slowly learning.

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Its fuckin great bud! no till is another ballgame .....are you doing big pots with your no till ? ive been running 80% organic for years but never wanted to try no-till indoors.... hows it going ?
I been considering it for years , just aint got to it....i no till outside though. I just run a worm farm and a bokashi bin and reuse mix over and over just adding back perlite for aeration. I dont "need" lime in every mix but i add it anyways. I grew up watching an old guy pour a cup or two of lime into every single pot and his shit was always above average so i assume you cant hurt anything by adding lime. (no need in handfuls though)

The reason eggshells take way too long to provide a benefit is they are left as bigger chunks and their surface area to volume ratio is low so its ineffective as an immediate calcium source because the microbes and such don't have as much surface area to work on. Oyster shell flour has a large surface area to volume ratio. The way to get egg shells to be the equivalent is to powder the egg shell. I put it in my magic bullet and it gets a similar end result. They are both so close in calcium composition both made of calcium carbonate, egg shells are 39% and oyster shells are 38%.

getogrow said:

Its fuckin great bud! no till is another ballgame .....are you doing big pots with your no till ? ive been running 80% organic for years but never wanted to try no-till indoors.... hows it going ?
I been considering it for years , just aint got to it....i no till outside though. I just run a worm farm and a bokashi bin and reuse mix over and over just adding back perlite for aeration. I dont "need" lime in every mix but i add it anyways. I grew up watching an old guy pour a cup or two of lime into every single pot and his shit was always above average so i assume you cant hurt anything by adding lime. (no need in handfuls though)

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In my limited experience if you want to run no till i think you'll want to run a higher soil content than the supersoil recipes online and be running a higher ph for better microbial life. My second last run I used a 40% coco and 60% soil, it resulted in earthworms, had lots of the good haptosis mites and the ph was a little higher. In comparison the last run used 10% soil and the rest was subs supersoil recipe resulted in no earthworms with very few good mites with a low ph near 6.0. It's not an exact comparison but food for thought. Guys with more experience with no till would have the best bead on this.

Bignutes said:

The reason eggshells take way too long to provide a benefit is they are left as bigger chunks and their surface area to volume ratio is low so its ineffective as an immediate calcium source because the microbes and such don't have as much surface area to work on. Oyster shell flour has a large surface area to volume ratio. The way to get egg shells to be the equivalent is to powder the egg shell. I put it in my magic bullet and it gets a similar end result. They are both so close in calcium composition both made of calcium carbonate, egg shells are 39% and oyster shells are 38%.

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That does make sense. I can see that being the reason we use already pulverized shells. Great info. thank you sir.

Bignutes said:

In my limited experience if you want to run no till i think you'll want to run a higher soil content than the supersoil recipes online and be running a higher ph for better microbial life. My second last run I used a 40% coco and 60% soil, it resulted in earthworms, had lots of the good haptosis mites and the ph was a little higher. In comparison the last run used 10% soil and the rest was subs supersoil recipe resulted in no earthworms with very few good mites with a low ph near 6.0. It's not an exact comparison but food for thought. Guys with more experience with no till would have the best bead on this.

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you would be surprised just how much your "limited experience" actually adds up. Rollitup would have you think there are weedologist on every corner but the stuff being mass produced proves this aint true. there are only a few handfuls of actual successful organic growers out there and we all agree on the same things .... Soil and organics are just now being mastered and studied fully. 20 years ago we would never dream of putting "bugs" on our roots and in our soil .....now the hydro guys are doing it too. We still have a lot to do but were on the right path! Keep up the good work sir!

Ive always thought subs soil could use more soil but thats my opinion. His soils have produced the best in the world. 60% soil is fuckin great ! Best ive done indoors is prolly around 40-50% soil. I had lots of problems in 80% soil but that was 20 years ago and indoors ..... "wetdog" is around here somewhere and his organic knowledge is second to none. Lots of good reads and experience.

When you go with more soil look at this chart to dial it in:
You'll want to exist in the lower in the loam region, silt loam and to a lesser extent the sandy loam region. If i was going with a lot of teas I'd go with the sandy loam. If i was shooting for no or less tea use and using more granular amendments I'd shoot for silt loam and loam.

The second link is for determining your soil and what type it is. It's systematic and once you start doing this to different soils you become really good at it. Taking it to the next step would be adding silt, sand or clay to get the soil composition that works best for cannabis. Also add in organics, microbes would already be present so no need to inoculate.

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getogrow said:

Its fuckin great bud! no till is another ballgame .....are you doing big pots with your no till ? ive been running 80% organic for years but never wanted to try no-till indoors.... hows it going ?
I been considering it for years , just aint got to it....i no till outside though. I just run a worm farm and a bokashi bin and reuse mix over and over just adding back perlite for aeration. I dont "need" lime in every mix but i add it anyways. I grew up watching an old guy pour a cup or two of lime into every single pot and his shit was always above average so i assume you cant hurt anything by adding lime. (no need in handfuls though)

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I'm using 15 gal plastic pots. I would use fabric, but it's really dry here so I would be watering daily. I don't add lime. I have added oyster shell flour in the past, but I've added a lot of other amendments with Ca, and my water has Ca to begin with, so my soil is kinda maxed out on Ca right now. I've been cutting out the extra Ca, and my pH is getting back in range now. I like no-till because I'm lazy, lol. Organics makes really tasty buds too.

This was a couple weeks ago.

PadawanWarrior said:

I'm using 15 gal plastic pots. I would use fabric, but it's really dry here so I would be watering daily. I don't add lime. I have added oyster shell flour in the past, but I've added a lot of other amendments with Ca, and my water has Ca to begin with, so my soil is kinda maxed out on Ca right now. I've been cutting out the extra Ca, and my pH is getting back in range now. I like no-till because I'm lazy, lol. Organics makes really tasty buds too.

This was a couple weeks ago.
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fuck yea bud ! beautiful an no-till ....i bet that taste good. now i feel left out ....i'll go snap a pic later when the lights kick on.

Stop watering often, it’s still a baby

Lpena007 said:

Stop watering often, it’s still a baby

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thanks bud , that fixed everything.

getogrow said:

you would be surprised just how much your "limited experience" actually adds up. Rollitup would have you think there are weedologist on every corner but the stuff being mass produced proves this aint true. there are only a few handfuls of actual successful organic growers out there and we all agree on the same things .... Soil and organics are just now being mastered and studied fully. 20 years ago we would never dream of putting "bugs" on our roots and in our soil .....now the hydro guys are doing it too. We still have a lot to do but were on the right path! Keep up the good work sir!

Ive always thought subs soil could use more soil but thats my opinion. His soils have produced the best in the world. 60% soil is fuckin great ! Best ive done indoors is prolly around 40-50% soil. I had lots of problems in 80% soil but that was 20 years ago and indoors ..... "wetdog" is around here somewhere and his organic knowledge is second to none. Lots of good reads and experience.

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Yeah the Revs recipes and suggested list of amendments from his book actually made my soil way too rich after awhile. The tea recipes are also super strong but the idea I think was for indoor grows in smaller size pots than the average organic grower would try to do. My plants were getting “the claw” and growing all stringy and twisted from N toxicity. Cut it back with just base soil, perlite, and a brick of coco coir. It’s been perfect ever since.
Recently ive had to buy more soil so all I did was add a bag of FFOF soil to a few spent root balls. Added some ewc and let it set for a few weeks. Plants are now flowering strong in that mix.

Richard Drysift said:

Yeah the Revs recipes and suggested list of amendments from his book actually made my soil way too rich after awhile. The tea recipes are also super strong but the idea I think was for indoor grows in smaller size pots than the average organic grower would try to do. My plants were getting “the claw” and growing all stringy and twisted from N toxicity. Cut it back with just base soil, perlite, and a brick of coco coir. It’s been perfect ever since.
Recently ive had to buy more soil so all I did was add a bag of FFOF soil to a few spent root balls. Added some ewc and let it set for a few weeks. Plants are now flowering strong in that mix.

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I agree on the toxicity. As an experiment I took a single stem clone and put it in a 24 litre pot, it's one main cola and it takes up 8x8 inches lol. It has the claw and super dark green towards end of flower.

On my subcool recipes I didn't want the hassle of doing a separate mix for the bottom third of pot so i took his recipe and reduced its strength by 1/4 and made it for the whole soil volume so it was uniform. It didn't have enough gas to get to the end on a 2x2 plant in 24 litres of soil.

This coming grow the pot size is going to be 42 litres and at half strength of subcool recipe for a 2x2 plant, we'll see how that fares, should be enough but somewhat concerned about toxicity right after transplant.

I am going to also try bagged top soil with more aeration and a few cheap fertilizers, subcool's recipe is fairly expensive. I used this same bag soil for a run on its own, wasn't enough but with some alfalfa and a few other things it should bring the cost down by maybe half.

As I get more into this soil recipe stuff no till is becoming more attractive to go along with bokashi, super cheap and my household will produce the fertilizer.

Richard Drysift said:

Recently ive had to buy more soil so all I did was add a bag of FFOF soil to a few spent root balls. Added some ewc and let it set for a few weeks.

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Im not in an ideal spot right now , very low on space so i cheat. FFOF and some rainbow mix powder an some lime. Stir it , water it , repeat for a couple months. Ready to use again. Not near as rich as having Ewc an bokashi on hand but its better then just buying more over an over. In 2-4 weeks the activity of the microbes will break down all the old roots , thats about when its ready to reuse. In a normal ideal world , it would be 2-6 months with lots more compost,ewc an bokashi. That usually gets me around 40-50% soil.

Bignutes , that 1/3rd on the bottom is so that the new clones dont get "burnt" in the new hot mix. Im sure you knew that though.

I'll for sure get some pics up later..... i got busy yesterday and the yellow hurts my eyes but i'll post um anyways....im not here to brag.....just hang out.

I wanted to know what my soil is at thru the column, if I dump the soil and reammend it's mixing two different soil strengths. I figured it would be better to leave it one strength and it would give me better repeatability on consecutive grows, who knows maybe I am making a mountain out of a mole hill.

the healthy , fresh girls
the bigger ones , not quite as healthy. (week 7 out of 9)
better pic of above .... HID fucked me on the pics ....best i can do.