(post if you make your own soil) making your own potting soil

Well i have been wondering how many people on these forums make there own soil. is there enough to start an official thread about it. i ask cuz i liv in a place where no one sells potting soils and am always amending mine and i do it trial and error. i don't think i can make a thread for every question i have, either way most people buy there soil so if there was a thread for soil makers it would be easy to learn and share ideas. so post if you make your own soil.

I am about ready to start making my own. I just need one of those huge sacks of pearlite to mix with my masonry sand and the peat moss I bought at the homo depot. I can use some for starter plants and make subcools supersoil with the rest.

It wont say roots on the bag but with all the ingrediants I add it will grow dank

i make my own soil/ jamacian, indon, peruvian and mexican bat guano. Earthworm castings, hydrated lime(better to use dolomite), hi-mag, gypsum, seaweed meal, perlite, vermiculite, native soil( very clayish), mychorizi and fungi, nematodes

I buy my soil from home depot and lowes. My neighbor is teaching me about composting. He never buys soil, instead he tosses mulch and veggie food scraps into his bin and turns it two to three times a week, three months later he has rich dark earth.

5-6 parts "all purpose" potting soil, 2 parts perlite, 1 part vermicullite...... there you have it .... a cheap fuckin soil mix void of any nutrients, it would be advised to ponder the thought of which nutes you will be administering before you go ahead and make the soil though. i like to have it without any nutes in it at the start so you always know what actual food the gals have been givin.... p.s. buy the FFOF if your a richie bastard but all the rest of the poor folk, follow my lead !

Vindicated the problem with hot composting, which is what that is, is it kills a lot of microbiology. A slow compost that takes a year is more rich than you can imagine.

hmm good point, but if your adding fertilizer then you're supplying all the nutes the plant needs. So while your right, it might kill the fungi, IMO the fungi are parasitic since they steal sugars with no added benefit.

Plants 100% do not use sugar. Carbohydrates are added for the benefit of the microbiology not the plants. They produce sugars as food storage, they do not consume sugars you put into the soil. Mychorrizae are 100% needed in a soil grow.

Good ideas in here. I would like to add one more. I mix one part cocofiber. Its has a neutral PH and help retain H20 for those water sucking HPS lamps. I did a small study had 2 pots filled with soil. 1 with 1 part cocofiber and the other no cocofiber (just my soil mix) and the one with cocofiber stayed moist for nearly a week about 2 inches down the bottom. And it feels nice and airy to allow the roots to grow freely. In my opinion my plants seem to love it.
-ProfPurp

this is what i am using to make my soil for future use,

earthwise organic compost(cow and chicken manure)
scotts premium top soil
safer brand diatomaceous earth
epsoma garden lime
ferti lome vermiculite
ferti lome charcoal
ferti lome perlite
MG perlite
lady bug brand worm castings
fish bone meal
bat guano
garden ville rocket fuel

all organic ingredients except for that MG perlite, at least others have told me

many gardeners choose to add fungi, b1 vitamins, boosters, etc. I have no ego about having to be right. I'm here to share what I know and learn from others. I don't care for fungi because I'm trusting the advice of my friend who holds a doctorate in horticulture science. I encourage you to write to your local university, tell them your farming and want to know if adding fungi will help increase your yield. I think you might be surprised that they will take the time to write back and give you very reliable information. I used to be an advocate of fungi until I learned more about their relationship with plants. Its all very fascinating to me. if anyone wants to talk about fungi in more detail I suggest starting a new thread. I'll be happy to stop by and add whatever
advice I can

much respect to your friend... I thought that beneficial fungi was good for the plant, not that i will remove them from what i mix for my soils, but dont you think that in nature these relationships are essential for all around plant life to function? I mean, plants need nitrogen and good friends in the soil they live in... Fungi allow a symbiotic relationship with lichens that attach to the roots. So i think they are essential and a must in all soils for good soil life...

your thoughts

Vindicated said:

many gardeners choose to add fungi, b1 vitamins, boosters, etc. I have no ego about having to be right. I'm here to share what I know and learn from others. I don't care for fungi because I'm trusting the advice of my friend who holds a doctorate in horticulture science. I encourage you to write to your local university, tell them your farming and want to know if adding fungi will help increase your yield. I think you might be surprised that they will take the time to write back and give you very reliable information. I used to be an advocate of fungi until I learned more about their relationship with plants. Its all very fascinating to me. if anyone wants to talk about fungi in more detail I suggest starting a new thread. I'll be happy to stop by and add whatever
advice I can

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now that we are on the topic, can some of you view these links to some organic stuff i can get locally? i just want some of you'alls thoughts on these products before i use them any further... thanks

http://www.garden-ville.com/4429779_36600.htm

http://www.ladybugbrand.com/products...tting-Soil.asp


i bought the lady bug vortex soil for 14.99 for 1.5 cu ft. is that a good deal?

im trying to use two 1000w lights angled over a 10gallon soil pot

growcaptain, why?

Im no expert, but dont you think two for 1 pot = too much?

growcaptain said:

im trying to use two 1000w lights angled over a 10gallon soil pot

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To be honest, I'm not familiar with Vortex line. I usually like to see things like worm castings, kelp, and bat guano in the mix. I don't pay much attention to the actual brand name. As long as it has the ingredients that I like and feels right.

olylifter420, I pasted a conversation in my profile, under my RIU blog, that I had with a horticulturalist. I still have quiet a few conversations saved on my computer. I'll add more when I have some extra time. I'm by no means a cannabis expert or even a gardening expert. I do talk to anyone who has knowledge to share, be it cannabis, growing veggies, or knowledge about life in general. And when I come across stuff that makes me go, wow that's good stuff, I save it. lol. Oh and if you've read any good books or websites, I'd love to know about them. Feel free to look at my profile and post on my wall.

- Vin

well, sure seems like we have enogh people who do it, i mix , rabbit manure (well composted), composted plant matter (usually grass,tree leaves, corn stocks,) dol lime, seed meal/blood meal. saw dust( lack of peat moss) this is a mix has worked great so far, best out of a lot of trials i feed with compost tea, molasses( mixed with EM[effective micro organisms]).. well who would be in favor of officializing a thread for soil?

Vindicated said:

many gardeners choose to add fungi, b1 vitamins, boosters, etc. I have no ego about having to be right. I'm here to share what I know and learn from others. I don't care for fungi because I'm trusting the advice of my friend who holds a doctorate in horticulture science. I encourage you to write to your local university, tell them your farming and want to know if adding fungi will help increase your yield. I think you might be surprised that they will take the time to write back and give you very reliable information. I used to be an advocate of fungi until I learned more about their relationship with plants. Its all very fascinating to me. if anyone wants to talk about fungi in more detail I suggest starting a new thread. I'll be happy to stop by and add whatever
advice I can

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So I take it your friend has never heard of mycorrhizae? Trichoderma? It would actually be quite understandable if your friend did indeed hold a doctorate in horti-science and hadn't ever heard or seriously researched these symbionts... microbes are [mostly] invisible to the naked eye, of course. They've been over-looked and under-appreciated for so long, and research into the complex interactions they share with plants has only just begun to unfold over the past couple decades.
Certainly this is something a soil scientist who has graduated within the last decade and keeps up to snuff on the latest news in the field should be aware of. It is now known that most plants in nature do in fact rely on these peculiar kinds of fungus known as mycorrhizae. The various species of mycorrhizal fungi interact with plant roots in a few distinct ways, some more intimately than others, but the common thread is that the plant gets nutrients (phosphorous in particular) and even water in exchange for root exudates (carbohydrates in particular). Studies have shown that plants grown with myco as opposed to in sterilized soil are indeed more vigorous and do indeed yield more and require less fertilizer. Some plants won't grow at all without mycorrhizae.

In fact, plants secrete exudates rich in carbohydrates specifically in order to attract microbes and mycorrhizal fungi into the rhizosphere. Now, maybe you know all this and still know something that I don't. But it seems like a lot of people who have worked for a very long time with plants simply are not aware of this. Case in point:

Personally I'm appalled that somehow I missed the whole mycorrhizal fungi connection despite spending over 30 years gardening and 20 years heading a seed company. These partnerships are amazing. They increase the effective area of the root by a factor of 10 to 1000 thereby greatly increasing the availability of nutrients to the plant. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of benefits these fungi impart to their plant partners and the environment they grow in.

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- http://www.the-compost-gardener.com/mycorrhizal-fungi.html

These days brands of grass seed now come inoculated with mycorrhizae. You might have seen the advertisements for the "Smart Seed" which grows into a lush healthy lawn and can grow with significantly less water... and this is all thanks to mycorrhizal fungi (they've even used it for the lawn at the White House).

Nullis, are you familiar with Michael Martin Melendez? He is doing some of the worlds most advanced research on humic acid at a University in New Mexico. I've been to his yearly Arboretum tour, very impressive.