Rocketman64
Active Member
I've been a lurker for awhile now, thought I would chime in with a couple tips for soil growers specifically. First I'll start by giving a quick background on where I'm coming from. I've been growing since 1980, always outdoors. I come from an era where we didn't talk about it, didn't brag about our grows and damn sure didn't tell anybody where we were growing. We never took pictures of the plants either because back then the film would have to be processed and printed somewhere. We weren't willing to take the chance of having some photo geek at the local lab call the law. There was no internet to research growing info and we were too paranoid to check out a book in the library. We were taught MJ was an evil drug and if you smoked it, you were pretty much going to die. We soon learned otherwise. The only thing we knew about growing was planting the seeds we found in a bag of really good Mexican sativa or maybe some Columbian Gold, come back in the fall and pick the goods. Although we didn't pay any attention to soil nutrients, soil ph, moisture levels, lumens, spider mites or bat guano we always ended up with the best bud around. Over the years I've been able to refine what I was doing when I finally had a place to grow privately with little fear of getting caught. Coming from a biology and chemistry background in school I quickly realized this amazing plant didn't really need that much human intervention to thrive. Most of the info I studied was about botany, not how to grow pot. There's really nothing magical about the life of a Cannabis plant when compared to most other annuals. The magic comes after the growing is done. So, with that in mind, I set out to figure out a way to keep the plants healthy, safe from animals and stealthy enough to keep it hidden. The foremost concern for me was making sure I had a good soil to grow with. I tried all the store-bought soils, then started mixing some store bought soils together. I finally realized it was pretty stupid to buy soil when I was literally surrounded by enough soil to grow a jungle. I live in an area of the country where farming is all around me and farmers love to talk about their crops and their little secrets for superior cultivation. Armed with the knowledge of generations of farmers, I started a compost pile to come up with my own little secrets. I'll skip the 15 years of playing around and get right to some of the things I do to make a complete growing soil that needs absolutely no additional nutrients. I've used this mix for several years both in my vegetable garden and for the few Sativa plants I grow each year for personal consumption. Every year I rake leaves from the yard and pile them in an area I use to compost. The pile starts out 4 feet high but quickly compresses after a couple rains. I also add all the sawdust from my wood shop to this pile. I'm also an avid home distiller so I have a lot of byproducts from that operation. This all goes right into the pile as well. Before the cold sets in, I'll dig up a dozen worms from the pile and go fishing. I usually bring home two or three dozen small bluegill from the local pond, dig a hole 15" deep and dump them in. The hole is usually about two feet square, covered with leaves and sawdust then protected from animals with chicken wire laid right over top of the hole and weighted down with bricks. I'll cover the entire area with another layer of leaves and debris before dumping three 5-gallon buckets of mason sand over the entire pile to smash down the pile a bit. By the time winter is over I can't even tell there was a pile there. The snow and rain has compressed all this nicely by spring and it's ready for tilling. Once I remove the chicken wire and bricks from the pile, I dig up what's left of the fish and spread it around then till the shit out it. When I'm ready to use it, I'll run it through a 1/4" steel mesh screen to get a nice fluffy planter's mix. I can't tell you how incredibly rich and stinky this stuff is when I'm done. It's black, moist, airy and best of all- full of worm poop. When I grow with this stuff I add nothing. I don't add nutrients, ph stabilizers, bat shit, blood meal, bone meal- nothing but water. When it's all said and done, I haven't spent a dime on this soil and it never lets me down. I really feel the addition of fish to this compost pile is the key ingredient. Ironic part is the worms sacrifice a few of their brothers to get the fish but the worms have the last laugh as they devour everything but the bones over the course of the fall, winter and early spring leaving me with their lovely, stinky poop. What a great bunch of guys those worms are. Damn, I just realized I wrote a book, sorry. Hope some of this helps you soil growers out there. I'm finally over my paranoia of getting caught growing over the past 35 years so as soon as I can, I'll post some photos of my latest plant and how I keep it stealthy. Looking forward to any comments or complaints about the post. It's pretty cool to actually be able to talk about this stuff now and learn even more from this community. Thanks go to all that share and make this a whole new experience for me.
