Vegan Organics Aka Veganics With Matt Rize

Way back in this thread, I griped about trying to get dialed in with bio canna, yadda yadda, a year later and I'm not using any bottled nutes, none, and seeing the best yields and best quality in years. It's all in the soil, and its fun being a soil farmer and composter rather than juggling a dozen bottles. Thousands of dollars in bottles I went through, I've probably spent a couple hundred on soil amendments over several months, and reusing the soil, I won't spend much at all for months to come

Work the soil and let the soil grow your plants, and it can be done plant based also...

Hey everybody! I finally finished reading through this remarkable compendium of knowledge. PROPS on this amazing thread Matt seriously, thank you so much for opening up my eyes to this revolutionary way of growing. too bad you don't like the camera cus' I think that you could just about blow any current public marijuana figure out of the water just in terms of knowledge and expertise alone. (Kyle included)... lol. Anyway I'm a new grower, however with all of the information that I've learned from this thread and the few other veganic information sources, I wholeheartedly believe that I'll be able to achieve good results on my first run. so, I have a couple of pretty basic questions that I dont think that anyone has covered yet. im going to be making my own mix and my goal is to replicate the Bio Terra Plus as closely as possible. so anyway, Bio Terra Plus is peat based and we all know that the Bio Canna line works best in a peat based medium...... so my question is this...... are Sphagnum Peat Moss and regular Peat the same thing? If not, which one should I be using in my mix? Should it be a combination of both? and on a little more complicated note.... does anyone happen to know, or think that they may have some idea, of what the ingredient ratio is for the BTP? in other words, about what percentage of the peat/coco/bark, or possibly, peat/peat moss/coco/bark, should I be mixing? As of right now I'm thinking about going with this:

25% Peat
20% Sphagnum Peat Moss (assuming theres a difference, if not Ill just go with 45% of the right one)
25% Coco Coir (Canna)
15% EWC (vegan sourced)
10% Perlite (grade 4)
5% tree bark chips (mold resistant)

I'll then be adding 1% neem cake and 1 cup of Dolomite with some kelp meal (dont know how much yet, I was hoping someone could chime in), along with the Bountea and Extreme Gardening Mycos and Azos.

My final question is in regards to the nessessary PK boost in flowering. I believe it was Bluejay who said that crab meal was an excellent source of PK to use during the flowering period. my question is, if I do add some crab meal to my final transplant mix, will it affect the taste of the finished product in the same way that pooganics does? Thanks for bearing with me through all that. Matt I'd really love to hear your thoughts . same to anyone else out there who would be willing to chime in and share your expertise. Thanks Guys!

for me, Crab is chitin, calcium and phosphorus source, kelp is the K source, crab shell meal is something like 93% calcium carbonate, not much different than adding limestone other than the added benefit of chitin and a healthy dose of P without overdoing it like with guanos, so NO you won't get pooganics LOL.

Sphagnum Peat moss is what you want, straight from the source via Alaksa peat inc. or premier peat (sold @ home depots/lowes for cheap) if it doesn't say sphagnum then it has been more processed i.e. chopped up and you lose the benefit of it being peat, other than a nearly innert growing medium.

Not sure on the ratios in terra plus, but make sure you mineralize your soil mix, i.e. limestone, gypsum, rock dusts, dol. lime etc. consider 1:1:1 sphagnum peat: aeration amendment: ewc/compost and throw in some of your bark chips or leaf mold, preferably half way broken down by fungi (from sitting out in the elements and remaining moist).

Per CuF of that mix you can add 1 cup of neem cake, 1 cup of kelp meal, 1 cup of dol. lime and i'd throw in 1 cup of mixture of limestone/gypsum and even another cup or two of glacial rock dust / granite dust. I add 1 cup of crab as well, for truly plant based (except the EWC, because worms are animals - sorry but it's true ) you could sub. rock phosphate as your P source. I've added 1 cup of alfalfa but i don't anymore because i make a lot of alfalfa teas and i find it better that way than in the soil. I've also used azomite cotton seed meal and slue of others with success, but i've backed down on the number of inputs, KISS

Use the Mycos @ transplants and i don't use Azos anymore, but i would throw it in the tea from time to time or it does make excellent cloning solution.

You don't need HEAVY PK boosters as is the hydro myth, a little goes a long way in a living soil mix, which is what you're making.

Cool, thanks for all the great info blueJ, much appreciated. I may have read this wrong or missed out on some stuff when all those pages got erased but I thought that the general consensus between Matt and the others was that EWC are not technically poop because worms dont have stomaches, therefore the material passes through them undigested, leaving it biologically unrendered. or something to that effect, lol im no scientist myself. anyway, do you think it would be more productive to use compost inplace of the EWC or with them? at least I think thats something along the lines of what you were suggesting right? and im sure im totally wrong about this but arent rock dusts and rock phosphate chemically treated? lol im sure that cant be right or you guys wouldnt be using the stuff. anyway thanks again bro, if anyone else has any input on the mix I'd love to hear it.

I'm curious how folks here think about the soil im using currently, and have done with amazing results since 2010. I was told by a friend he only uses sterilized potting soil but ive found that the "friendly" healthy soil is a living soil to let microrganisms help out the root structure. I go only to these guys religiously. www.intervalecompost.net/ good fun those products can be when i can locally source some of the products ive seen such as neem cake and the like. Organics rock!

SeniorFrostyKush said:

Cool, thanks for all the great info blueJ, much appreciated. I may have read this wrong or missed out on some stuff when all those pages got erased but I thought that the general consensus between Matt and the others was that EWC are not technically poop because worms dont have stomaches, therefore the material passes through them undigested, leaving it biologically unrendered. or something to that effect, lol im no scientist myself. anyway, do you think it would be more productive to use compost inplace of the EWC or with them? at least I think thats something along the lines of what you were suggesting right? and im sure im totally wrong about this but arent rock dusts and rock phosphate chemically treated? lol im sure that cant be right or you guys wouldnt be using the stuff. anyway thanks again bro, if anyone else has any input on the mix I'd love to hear it.

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A worm, by definition, is an animal - food goes in one end, and what's leftover comes out the other end - so technically you can call it whatever you want, :d I'll leave it at that, not my thread.

good quality compost or ewc can be used interchangeably, if its an option the best bet is to take homemade compost beefed up with alfalfa hay kelp meal rock dusts, comfrey, nettles etc and feed that through the worm bin for highest quality vermicompost.

rock dusts are just that, completely natural very fine rock/mineral, usually byproduct of rock landscaping companies, you can get it free or very very cheap. I like agrowins granite rock dust and gaia green glacial rock dust.

rock phosphate is a mined product from sedimentary deposits, usually phosphorite I believe, and I think there are concerns with it having high qty of heavy metal / aluminum content or something, so some steer clear of it for that reason.

I believe on the label bio canna states to use only with a well mineralized soil.

Thanks again for the info blueJ. that compost to EWC conversion is an awesome tip. i'll be building my worm bin this weekend.

anyway, my local hydro store is an authorized Canna distributor. the manager there told me that Canna has finally started manufacturing the Bio Terra Plus in the US, and its currently in the process of being tested right now. he said that it should "hopefully" be in stores by the end of the year.

Veganic Qrazy Train!! 56 days of phunk!!

Has anyone tried Bio Bizz's All Mix? this stuff looks like a really good medium and its the only product that I've seen other than the Bio Terra Plus that contains garden peat. from what I understand garden peat is chunks of white or brown peat mixed with regular blonde sphagnum peat moss. I'm thinking about going with this stuff and adding some amendments instead of making my own mix, but I don't know yet.

Make your own mix, that way you know the ratio and quality of amendments, sphagnum peat is the only peat you need to know. From what I saw "garden peat" is peat moss with a little lime and all purpose fert mixed in.

I think that might have just been the website that you were on. it might have been this site called kekkila or something like that. it was the first site I found on google that said anything about garden peat but they just add all that stuff to their product. from what I read, garden peat is sphagnum peat moss, but basically the premiere horticultural grade peat and its pretty much the reason why BTP is so much better than most mediums. its also the reason why BTP and Bio Bizz can buffer Ph while the others cant. I really dont know much about the Bio Bizz though. I looked back in the thread and saw Matt saying that he had heard good things about it in use with regular organics, but Im still hoping someone can tell me if it works well with Bio Canna. I'm pretty sure there are a couple of Canadian peat moss distributors selling garden peat, they just dont call it that. I think Sunshine's grower grade Blue is one of them but I could be wrong. If it doesnt say garden or block peat, or white or brown peat, then it should say something like, "extra course" or "chunky peat".

blueJ said:

Way back in this thread, I griped about trying to get dialed in with bio canna, yadda yadda, a year later and I'm not using any bottled nutes, none, and seeing the best yields and best quality in years. It's all in the soil, and its fun being a soil farmer and composter rather than juggling a dozen bottles. Thousands of dollars in bottles I went through, I've probably spent a couple hundred on soil amendments over several months, and reusing the soil, I won't spend much at all for months to come

Work the soil and let the soil grow your plants, and it can be done plant based also...

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Hey I was just reading through this thread (I dont grow veganic, I try to eat this way though!!) But I see you are re-using your soil or plan on doing so. are you doing it with the Bokashi composting method? if so I would like to keep in touch with you and see what seems to work best, I am just starting to experiment with it and one small batch at a time makes it hard to really know how much to use and all. It would be nice to compare results in the future. Cheers.

What's up Endur0xX - haven't messed around with Bokashi at all bro, heard nothing but good things about it that's for sure - I'm not veganic either anymore, I use Crab Shell Meal LOL, doesn't seem to really be anyone growing 100% veganic, I was going to stop posting here since i'm not veganic, but no one really is lol and there's a good group of people posting here and great info, so i guess i stick around until i get kicked out hehe.

I'm starting to prefer recycling my soil in the sense of going NO-TILL, which = NO FUSS and increased yields and vigour run after run with only simple top dresses. I still do plenty of recycling for the 5 gal buckets though, i break the root ball up and everything and usually i find that i need to add more aeartion amendments, not always the same amount, depends on how much the soil broke down over each cycle ya know what i mean? And i add compost or EWC each time, and minimal amendments such as the crab and kelp and neem and rock dusts, and let it sit for at least a week, i try to do this all way ahead of time so it sits for a month or more. And from time to time it gets watered with compost or botanical teas as the surface dries.

Been reusing the fuck out of my soil for over a year now, better and better my friend

Awesome, I will use less bokashi I think, I barely have any roots in my used soil from doing 12/12 from seed in 7 gallons hehe.

Nice to see other people using neem cake, it has been in my SS recipe from day 1 and I believe it helps with the taste of my flowers, weird maybe I just always felt it does something that I love, and its good for bugs too!! In my room I know there are a few containers with my Recycled SS (which I thought would be way to hot because I fucked up when re-amending it) and I didnt identify them and now I lost track of which is which, so I guess my Recycled SS is working anyway!!

Something I started doing recently too is when I am done with a plant, I put the top half of the container in a seperate garbage bin that the bottom half hoping that at some point after a little while composting with bokashi I can use the weak bins for my seedlings and to transplant.

Nice results btw!!

So with compost teas do you think of feeding the plants in similar terms to feeding yourself? Like if I want calcium, since I don't consume animal products, I go for some bok choy, cabbage or leafy greens. Would juicing that and feeding it to your plant give them calcium and the other micronutrients it's rich in? Maybe let it sit for a couple weeks stirring to give it time to break down or grow bacteria?

Looking at tea recipes I was surprised how many of the ingredients were just "whole", natural, plant-based ingredients, alfalfa for example, banana peel, etc.

^^^ That's where these expensive secret ingredients and PGR's come from and they don't tell you on the bottle - alfalfa - kelp are the big ones, take the raw plant "meal" or what have you and bubble it for a day, you have a badass botanical tea with all the goodies plus a shit ton more that doesn't make it through the manufacturing process and into the bottle. Liquid seaweed products have become a joke since i started making kelp meal tea.

let it sit for a couple weeks and you'll have a fermented plant extract and you'll want to dilute at least a cup to a gallon, the short brew "tea" can be used at full strength, i don't like to go over a cup of dried material per 5gallon and can usually be used full strength.

alfalfa - kelp - comfrey - nettle - yarrow to name a few.

If a plant is rich in something, i.e. calcium as you suggested, then absolutely it will benefit your plants. - edit - ****homemade compost from kitchen, yard and garden scraps @ it's finest!****

blueJ said:

What's up Endur0xX - haven't messed around with Bokashi at all bro, heard nothing but good things about it that's for sure - I'm not veganic either anymore, I use Crab Shell Meal LOL, doesn't seem to really be anyone growing 100% veganic, I was going to stop posting here since i'm not veganic, but no one really is lol and there's a good group of people posting here and great info, so i guess i stick around until i get kicked out hehe.

I'm starting to prefer recycling my soil in the sense of going NO-TILL, which = NO FUSS and increased yields and vigour run after
run with only simple top dresses. I still do plenty of recycling for the 5 gal buckets though, i break the root ball up and everything
and usually i find that i need to add more aeartion amendments, not always the same amount, depends on how much the soil
broke down over each cycle ya know what i mean? And i add compost or EWC each time, and minimal amendments such as the
crab and kelp and neem and rock dusts, and let it sit for at least a week, i try to do this all way ahead of time so it sits for a
month or more. And from time to time it gets watered with compost or botanical teas as the surf
Been reusing the fuck out of my soil for over a year now, better and better my friend
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I noticed in your third picture you have something sprouting in there as well. What is that? And does that help when yoU compost that fresh veggie material?

Bird Gymnastics said:

I noticed in your third picture you have something sprouting in there as well. What is that? And does that help when yoU compost that fresh veggie material?

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It's red clover. Nitrogen fixer, helps keep topsoil moist and aerated with an active network of roots and yes with higher microbial activity towards the surface it will enhance decompostion of any mulch material layed down.

that pic is dope bro. looks like some bomb ass bud growing on another planet or something lol. ya im blazed.

Ok newbie confession time. My tea pail has a 6" thick head on it and smells like beer.......compost heap, or cannabis pails? I must have overdosed the molasses.