subs supersoil

Also I noticed that most strains seem to like coots mix. I def found some that needed less than prescribed on the SS.(more tweaks strain to strain) Subs the inspiration for me going organic years ago, I have just been drawn to no till. And imo coots is cheaper, especially over time. I have been impressed by both but coots mix or similar just have worked for me better. SS has its place no doubt and works great but imo from a ROLS standpoint I think you may consider coots or similar.

Build a soil is my go to for the goods needed to make it. Can give you help if ya want. And a few pics so you know im.not full of it lol. Or find me in the bodhi thread. I'm there more than anywhere!


You are a legend sub and will be missed! Fly high and rest easy brother! May you live on through the fire you created. I hope your cherrygasum is good lol, 2 hit the dirt in honor of you. Cheesequake next. Thank you for your inspiration and help over the years. See you on the other side!

Always check local nurseries and feed stores. Bet you could find all that’s essential.

If shopping local down to earth is a widely sold brand almost everywhere now or can be ordered. They also make quality ingredients.

Bas neem/karanja, kelp is of the best quality I have found anywhere. DTE is legit and you can prob find it local as @hillbill said. Online I'd go BAS or kis organics.

Squonk said:

Hello all. I'm trying to troubleshoot a matter that I've been encountering with my crops during the latter stage of flowering. I'm relatively new at this and only grow once a year on a very small scale just for personal use. So please pardon my ignorance, as I'm still very much in a learning curve.

I've used Sub's recipe the last two years in a row and the plants absolutely THRIVE in it, except toward the latter half of the flowering stage. They first start fading about three weeks into the flowering stage. Very slight at first, but profound toward the end. At the same time the leaf tips start showing signs of nute burn, which gradually works its way up the leaf. Secondly the trichomes don't seem to reach their optimum potency in terms of cloudy vs clear. Some do turn cloudy, but a high percentage remain clear with little noticeable improvement over the last few weeks and days of flowering until I'm forced to harvest due to the plant fading out too much.

I realize that fading is normal during late flowering. But the symptoms of nute burn during late flowering have me puzzled. Also, just based on the ratio of cloudy/clear trichs at harvest I suspect I'm not getting full potency. I don't know whether anything can be done to postpone the fading, or even if that would have any benefit in optimizing the trichomes. Also, to me it seems counter intuitive to add more nutes or top dressing to reduce the fading, when at the same time there are symptoms of nute burn.

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Holy cow, I ran sub’s mix to the T last season and I had the EXACT same results as above. Midway through flower and I never really fully corrected it.

One observation:
I had multiple 20 gallon pots with this mix. The showed the deficiency and leaf tip yellowing all at the same time. I also had a 45 gallon pot that went another two weeks before it showed the same signs. Is it possible it’s from rootbound stress and not even an actual deficiency? The 20 gallon pots were bottom to top roots and the 45 about the same.

Second observation: Nothing I could do would fix the symptoms. Tried more water, less water, light nitrogen, some KNF. It persisted until harvest but it was still fire.

Another thought was maybe it was a phosphorous toxicity in flower, all the plants showed it at the same time (in the same size pots). I used 0-10-0 bat guano instead of the 0-5-0 by mistake so thats what had me thinking this.

I was stunned when I read the origional post, wasnt just me seeing this.

Trainwreckertonville said:

Holy cow, I ran sub’s mix to the T last season and I had the EXACT same results as above. Midway through flower and I never really fully corrected it.

One observation:
I had multiple 20 gallon pots with this mix. The showed the deficiency and leaf tip yellowing all at the same time. I also had a 45 gallon pot that went another two weeks before it showed the same signs. Is it possible it’s from rootbound stress and not even an actual deficiency? The 20 gallon pots were bottom to top roots and the 45 about the same.

Second observation: Nothing I could do would fix the symptoms. Tried more water, less water, light nitrogen, some KNF. It persisted until harvest but it was still fire.

Another thought was maybe it was a phosphorous toxicity in flower, all the plants showed it at the same time (in the same size pots). I used 0-10-0 bat guano instead of the 0-5-0 by mistake so thats what had me thinking this.

I was stunned when I read the origional post, wasnt just me seeing this.

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Was that post answered?
Sounds like K deficiency to me. K is the most important macro in flower.
Is your recipe similar to the one I posted earlier?
That is why I didn't use it, no K.
P toxicity would look similar but different context clues, pictures would be useful.
It could be both with this recipe, you would have to use high K with no P to remedy.

DankDave420 said:

Was that post answered?
Sounds like K deficiency to me. K is the most important macro in flower.
Is your recipe similar to the one I posted earlier?
That is why I didn't use it, no K.
P toxicity would look similar but different context clues, pictures would be useful.
It could be both with this recipe, you would have to use high K with no P to remedy.

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I appreciate the reply. This is the mix I used. What would I add for the K? I just sent it out to logan labs for soil testing so I guess it will show there.

• 8 large bags of a high-quality organic potting soil with coco fiber and mycorrhizae (i.e., your base soil)
• 25 to 50 lbs of organic worm castings
• 5 lbs steamed bone meal
• 5 lbs Bloom bat guano
• 5 lbs blood meal
• 3 lbs rock phosphate
• ¾ cup Epson salts
• ½ cup sweet lime (dolomite)
• ½ cup azomite (trace elements)
• 2 tbsp powdered humic acid

Trainwreckertonville said:

I appreciate the reply. This is the mix I used. What would I add for the K? I just sent it out to logan labs for soil testing so I guess it will show there.

• 8 large bags of a high-quality organic potting soil with coco fiber and mycorrhizae (i.e., your base soil)
• 25 to 50 lbs of organic worm castings
• 5 lbs steamed bone meal
• 5 lbs Bloom bat guano
• 5 lbs blood meal
• 3 lbs rock phosphate
• ¾ cup Epson salts
• ½ cup sweet lime (dolomite)
• ½ cup azomite (trace elements)
• 2 tbsp powdered humic acid

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Oh nice. I have Langbeinite for K.

I am using subs recipe and my girls are fading fast by 5th week of flower, nothing is helping. Up until third week of flower they were extremely healthy looking. Instead of using in the bottom third of pot I am using 1/4 strength of what his soil recipe is but its in the whole volume of pot. I included some alfalfa meal and kelp meal to boost k in the bottom and my rock phosphate has 20% calcium, no azomite either. On reevaluating I am thinking it is too small of a pot, I have a smaller plant in a container that's the same size as the larger plants. The large plants are suffering but the small plant is looking extremely healthy at the same point in flowering. This leads me to believe I need to increase my pot size to plant size. Currently a 26 liter pot with a 2x2 scrog plant is showing nutrient deficiencies at three weeks flower, moderately at five weeks and it's fading fast. I think this would be fixed by increasing the pot size to about 35-40 liters. It's true I think of what subcool says that 10 gallon is his recommendation, anything smaller like a 7 gal I would knock off about 12 days of veg to keep the plant smaller and have a better nutrient reserve left over to power thru flower. I think his soil recipe still rocks just need to pay attention to his sage advice on pot size and quit trying to stretch a dollar, its leading to shitty yields.

Fading mid/late flower seems to be a recurring topic, I too had the same problem. I got a soil test done recently on sub’s mix after one season and the potassium was extremely low.

I started using this mix last year after a nice long cook and I'm not real sure about continuing with it. May go back to hydro/aero. I know growth is slower with soil mix, but my girls would barely make it to a third of the hydros in side by side grows, if that. I followed the mix to a tee, scaled down for a mix of about 3 cubic feet. And just to be safe, I left it to cook in the 90+ heat for about 4-5 months inside a black storage tote with just enough airflow to keep from going anaerobic. Any ideas or thoughts, because I would love to stay with this and save a boatload of money on the hydro side, but the severely stunted growth has me thinking otherwise.

Gullett79 said:

I started using this mix last year after a nice long cook and I'm not real sure about continuing with it. May go back to hydro/aero. I know growth is slower with soil mix, but my girls would barely make it to a third of the hydros in side by side grows, if that. I followed the mix to a tee, scaled down for a mix of about 3 cubic feet. And just to be safe, I left it to cook in the 90+ heat for about 4-5 months inside a black storage tote with just enough airflow to keep from going anaerobic. Any ideas or thoughts, because I would love to stay with this and save a boatload of money on the hydro side, but the severely stunted growth has me thinking otherwise.

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Don't give up on organics just because you bought into the sub soil BS.
It is obvious at this point that his recipe is trash.
And he doesn't like to mention too often that he ALWAYS supplemented with additional nutes.
Sorry he wasted your time. You're not the only one.

Gullett79 said:

I started using this mix last year after a nice long cook and I'm not real sure about continuing with it. May go back to hydro/aero. I know growth is slower with soil mix, but my girls would barely make it to a third of the hydros in side by side grows, if that. I followed the mix to a tee, scaled down for a mix of about 3 cubic feet. And just to be safe, I left it to cook in the 90+ heat for about 4-5 months inside a black storage tote with just enough airflow to keep from going anaerobic. Any ideas or thoughts, because I would love to stay with this and save a boatload of money on the hydro side, but the severely stunted growth has me thinking otherwise.

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A lot of folks have hydro like growth with actual LOS. Maybe try that before you head back to hydro/aero.

DankDave420 said:

Don't give up on organics just because you bought into the sub soil BS.
It is obvious at this point that his recipe is trash.
And he doesn't like to mention too often that he ALWAYS supplemented with additional nutes.
Sorry he wasted your time. You're not the only one.

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I've heard tons of people swear by it and have great results with just water, and I've seen others where I'm at. It's frustrating. I was considering making some adjustments to his recipe, but there's a million different posts out there giving their adjustments. The only problem is they're all different lol.

smokeybeard said:

A lot of folks have hydro like growth with actual LOS. Maybe try that before you head back to hydro/aero.

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I'm going to try to sort through all the different posts with recommended adjustments to the Sub recipe to see if I can find one that's used most often with that type of result. I'd really hate to have to ditch all of the soil I currently have and start all over.

Gullett79 said:

I've heard tons of people swear by it and have great results with just water, and I've seen others where I'm at. It's frustrating. I was considering making some adjustments to his recipe, but there's a million different posts out there giving their adjustments. The only problem is they're all different lol.

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Follow the Coots mix, I know lots of folks use it in general and as a stellar base with plenty of room to customize your own build.

Subcools has too little potassium, when they change gears into 3-4 week and the flowers bulk up they need K which there is very little of. This explains why he says his yields don't rival his lady grower friend. I am working to reverse engineer subcool's recipe to find out the strength of NPK, Ca, Mg per litre of soil. Very little K, Ca or Mg.

When I started comparing Coots mix with Subcool's they are vastly different. Coots is absolutely loaded with Ca, about 4 times that of Subcool's and about 1.5X the Mg. Coots has very little P but relies on top dressing malt barley and alfalfa tea which doesn't have a lot of P either. Then you factor in the availability of nutrients and this all goes out the door, time delay is also vastly different. Its apples and oranges.......

Gullett79 said:

I'm going to try to sort through all the different posts with recommended adjustments to the Sub recipe to see if I can find one that's used most often with that type of result. I'd really hate to have to ditch all of the soil I currently have and start all over.

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I am in the same boat, don't ditch it, add k either with langenbeinite, alfalfa or kelp meal. Also fortify with some crusteacean meal and eggshells ground up or oyster shellshell. The ratio subs recipe is at is a 1 to 1 ratio of ca to mg so I would take his ca and add about 2.25x, Epsom another 1.25x. Get the ratio of k:ca:mg to 4:2:1 or even 3:2:1. Currently subs recipe is 0:1:1 so anything to bump k levels remotely close to 4:2:1 should be a significant upgrade. I'd knock back the P levels (ie don't amend with as much after next cycle) or if soil is a fresh batch dilute it by 25% to get P levels down and then if you run into problems on next grow insert alfalfa meal to quickly correct the recipe. That is essentially what Coots recipe is doing to correct deficiencies.

Rasta Roy said:

It is low on K and way too high on N, P, and soluble fertilizers that will wash out of your soil instead of breaking down and providing you with the nutrients you need.

Here is a better recipe.

40 percent peat moss, coco coir, or pine tree bark
45 percent perlite, pumice, or rice hulls
15 percent worm castings or whatever best quality compost you have available (cow manure compost, lawn disposal based compost)

That makes your base potting soil.

Then you can literally buy any all purpose organic fertilizer bag from home depot or wherever and just use 1tbsp per gallon of soil for bigger plants, or 1 tsp for smaller plants. One that's labeled for tomatoes or vegetables will work best.

I'm at work but I'll shoot off another message in a minute here with a breakdown if you want to do all the ingredients separately yourself.

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I have a raised bed that I want to dig up and replace the soil. I may use this recipe to replace it. I'm thinking of putting in some bio live along with the 15% EWC. Then top feed with rose and flower or 0-11-0 seabird guano during the beginning of flowering. I also want to water with mammoth p and terpenez during flowering. Thats my general plan. Ive seen you around on here before and i know you know your shit. Is that a good general plan? I want to get the soil together soon so I can get some microbial activity in before i transplant into the bed in June. Peace

doug mirabelli said:

I have a raised bed that I want to dig up and replace the soil. I may use this recipe to replace it. I'm thinking of putting in some bio live along with the 15% EWC. Then top feed with rose and flower or 0-11-0 seabird guano during the beginning of flowering. I also want to water with mammoth p and terpenez during flowering. Thats my general plan. Ive seen you around on here before and i know you know your shit. Is that a good general plan? I want to get the soil together soon so I can get some microbial activity in before i transplant into the bed in June. Peace

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A few things to note:

There are now many variations to subs supersoil over the years so its best to specify exactly your plan.

I did the “original” mix and had great results however I had leaf yellowing a few weeks into flower which became known as a common problem due to K deficiency. So plan on adding some K to the mix like langbenite.

He calls for 0-5-0 guano and stick to that because I used a few 0-10-0 and my soil test after harvest showed the P was SKY HIGH so you may not need to add alot of P in flower like you stated above even at the 0-5-0 rate.

Use more compost, EWC and aeration than he calls for.

Going forward i’m using “coots mix” which has IMO a better mix of ingredients and no guanos. I also like that the mix is the entire pot instead of just the bottom layer as in subs mix. That layering is tough to reamend IMO because you have fully depleted soil in 3/4 of the pot and a hotter charge at the bottom. Nothing against subs mix at all, Ive seen great results and it was my segway into living soil and I appreciate his work for that.

This was the OG recipe im referring to.

doug mirabelli said:

I have a raised bed that I want to dig up and replace the soil. I may use this recipe to replace it. I'm thinking of putting in some bio live along with the 15% EWC. Then top feed with rose and flower or 0-11-0 seabird guano during the beginning of flowering. I also want to water with mammoth p and terpenez during flowering. Thats my general plan. Ive seen you around on here before and i know you know your shit. Is that a good general plan? I want to get the soil together soon so I can get some microbial activity in before i transplant into the bed in June. Peace

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If you're using bio live I would skip the top feeds, the mam p, and the guano. I would evaluate how your plants are looking at around early/mid July...and then top dress with some more biolive in late July or sooner if needed. If you want to go a liquid fertilizer route I would getting something for tomatoes, that has a balanced fertilizer ratio but has a higher P and K than N. And I wouldn't use it until end of July, early August unless you saw a need for it sooner.