Soil Choices for makeing supersoil.

peat moss, perlite, coco, azomite, espoma biotone, worm castings... great base soil

can i use regular fertile dirt with fertilizers for my outdoor grow and expect a good yeild? i might mix in some gravel and straw to but was wondering if it was worth to grow if i cant get my hands (my wallet) on any soil

i use a homemade soil as my base. peat/perlite/compost. cheap. i mean.......yer gonna juice it up with amendments......right? so why pay for FF, Roots, et al.? a cube of peat, a big bag of perlite, and a pile of my compost, and i'll fill yer living room with base soil.

ZigZagXain said:

I hear ya, but it seems like that would only work for a very small amount of soil, I mean, even with all the supersoil ingredients, the base soil(bagged potting soil) makes up a big majority of the final mix, w/o doing the math, its like 65% or more is the base soil. So that would be almost impossible for ppl that need the equivalent of a pallet of dirt. To do as your saying, it seems like it would be quite a task, your making the entire soil. You would have to go get a bunch of sphagnum moss, peat, coco, sand etc...on top of the amendments.

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What do you consider 'small amounts' of soil? I make up ~12cf at a pop of base mix.

The cost is ~$5-7/cf and would blow away any bagged mix regardless of cost. Yes, it is quite a task. I'm doing the mixing and blending rather than paying to have it done. I would dearly love a cement mixer though.

Besides being well less than 1/2 the cost of say FFOF, I have better ingredients (my own worm castings for example), a wider variety of ingredients and I can tailor the amounts of each just the way I prefer.

Super Soil is nothing but this base mix with some of the amendments bumped up, a hotter version.

Wet

You guys have made some good points, you could say im lazy
I got 68 1.5 cf bags of FFOF this year for $800, so yeah I could be saving a lil cash but it still isnt that much more, mine comes out to around $11-12/1.5cf, and its a lil bit more than just a base.

i make mine for about $7 cu ft and when i say base, i mean a complete soil that you can use as a SS base. my mix has shrimp compost, leaf mold, blood meal, bone meal, kelp, greensand, feather meal, alfalfa meal, dolomite lime, azomite, endo & ecto myco's and quite a few bacteria cultures. ever since i learned to mix my own i will never buy bagged shit again.

ZigZagXain said:

You guys have made some good points, you could say im lazy
I got 68 1.5 cf bags of FFOF this year for $800, so yeah I could be saving a lil cash but it still isnt that much more, mine comes out to around $11-12/1.5cf, and its a lil bit more than just a base.

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For the same amount of soil you paid $800 for you could've gotten the same amount of Sunshine mix or Promix for $350-400 (even cheaper if you buy the bales of peat & rice hulls, premier peat: $10 for 8 cf, rice hulls (depends on how close you are to a rice mill, but I paid $17 for 4 CF compressed, breaks up to about 7.8 cf) & the amendments are all cheap, especially compost & EWC which can be made at home & other amendments can be grown at home or purchased for $1 a pound usually. These soils can be re used as well, and even work better the 2nd time around.. My experience with bag soil has generally been: bugs, especially FFOF.

farmerjoe420 said:

i make mine for about $7 cu ft and when i say base, i mean a complete soil that you can use as a SS base. my mix has shrimp compost, leaf mold, blood meal, bone meal, kelp, greensand, feather meal, alfalfa meal, dolomite lime, azomite, endo & ecto myco's and quite a few bacteria cultures. ever since i learned to mix my own i will never buy bagged shit again.

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Nice I'm with you Farmerjoe420! I'm never buying bagged soil again, too many unknowns... Here's my mix: 65% Promix, 32% EWC & Compost, 3% parboiled rice hulls (for added drainage), to each CF 1/2 cup of kelp meal, alfalfa meal, neem cake, & fish bone meal, 1 cup of pelleted lime, 1 cup granular azomite, 1.5 tablespoons of langbeinite (Sul-Po-Mag) then instead of adding any mycos I apply an indigenous effective microbe tea, to water the mix as I initially stir it dry for easier handling.