Organic Pro-Mix

[magiccannabus]

Hi guys. I'm not new to growing but it has been a while. I used Pro-Mix for containers with added perlite and vermiculite in the past and loved it. Now I have some of their organic mix. I made my mix ration 25% Pro-Mix Organic, 25% Pro-Mix for Containers, and 50% perlite (It would have had 15-20% vermiculite if I could find it right now).

Has anyone here used a mix like this? I'm planning to grow plants with a lot of side lighting, so I am going to grow a plant that is about 12" in diameter, about 40 inches tall when finished, and full of bud top to bottom. How well will this mix suit that?

I'm using 8 inch plastic Wal-Mart pots. How do I best go about growing such a tall plant proportionate to the root space available with this mix?

For extra fertilizer I have blood meal, urine, epsom salts, and I have Expert Gardener brand foliar sprays(veg and bloom) just for backup.

Is my plan solid, or am I missing something?

Edit* here is my desired plant profile

 

[barletta]

Are you growing just 1 plant? If you are JAMMED into a small space with mylar, I like vertical flouro's, but I dunno if 32w t8's will be intense enough. My first flower room was 16" x 22" x 36"h, and I had mylar on 3 sides, and 2 x 125w envirolights hung vertically. I ran 4-6 plants in 2l pots in a perpetual (veg was the same square footage, but ~24"h with 3 x 42w cfl's vertically) The plants stayed small, and the buds were ~ as dense as my current buds w/400's (in a way bigger space). I would think that you may be better off placing all 4 bulbs side by side, parallel to the ground, and train the plant to grow 'longways' under (not next to) the t8's. Are you growing from clone?

EDIT - There are plenty of quality threads on here about feeding/building soil, but if you are lazy, get some dolomite lime and some castings for the mix, and a bottle of 'something' high in P.

 

[magiccannabus]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not growing just one plant and the lights in the diagram are more to represent how I am lighting them and not where the specific lights are. My effective grow space has about 250W per square foot from 8 pairs of 32W T8 lamps. I know they aren't intense, but I'm compensating for that. By using the tubes this way I can pack a lot more of them into the same space.

I just planted some seeds in case my clones don't come through. The only named strain I have in there is Trainwreck x Colombian Gold. Hopefully I get a female.

 

[harold]

probably be better to train you plants (scrog or lst) and have 1 intense light source from above? and ditch the flouros, my 2 cents...

 

[magiccannabus]

I'm using a lot more light than that diagram suggests. 250W per square foot actually.

 

[magiccannabus]

Has nobody here used this soil? I just added about 3 tablespoons of pelletized dolomite to my 3 gallon bucket of soil that I've mixed up using the above mix. How much is too much on the dolomite?

 

[Bulénath]

250 watts per square foot? Are you insane? You can achieve the same thing with 50 watts per square foot with an HPS!

Even my Veg chamber has strictly CFLs with a light distribution of 38w/square foot! And I grow with 150HPS bulbs!

 

[magiccannabus]

Thanks for the reply Bulenath,

I'm using a lot of wattage for the area, but it's spread out from every direction except up and down. I'm doing an experiment to see if the plants respond to that much more light, but from such a diffuse source. I'm looking to make a solid mass of bud over 3 feet tall in every pot, and I have 5 x 8" pots total in there. If I can make this work by only flipping on half my lights I'll be happy as hell. If switching them all on produces mega bud for the space, then I'll go that route. It's as easy as unplugging or plugging them in.

Your plants look great. I'm going for a very different approach, but it's still inspiring to see small grows really producing. I'm really looking forward to rejoining the growing community. I just got my clones yesterday, and I have a few seedlings. I'm growing Trainwreck x Colombian Gold, Purple Haze, and a few others I don't know the names of yet(when my friend dropped them off he was in a hurry and they are not labeled).

You can take a look at my setup here: T8 Shop Light(only) Grow

 

[Bulénath]

I really hope that it works out well for you!
Realize my first post wasn't that helpful at all, for at the moment your post really caught me off guard! My appologies.

I have never seen such wattage packed into a such a small space! Are you not worried about burning your plants or even bleaching them with too intense light? The only similar design I can recall is a Phototron.

No experience with shop floros, only CFL's, but to think it was earlier suggested that it might not be enough light after all, just makes my jaw drop!


Anyway, on to the point...


Those Wal-Mart pots that you speak of, are those the 88 cent ones?

Since you are trying to accomplish something rather experiemtnal and something I have never seen before, this is only what can be offered, but hopefully it helps...
I think we are talking about the same pots....















The smaller purple plants grew into one huge mass like you spoke of!
Though the plant itself is less than 1 foot tall!....Just a solid mass of bud under a 150HPS grown within extremely limited height.

The taller ones were grown in a 36" tall flower chamber, smaller ones 17-1/2" tall flower chamber.

Sadly the purple small plants and the taller plants are not the same strain. But they were both grown under a 150HPS in the same pots.
Plants just seem to adapt to different enviroments, so I am looking foward to seeing your design in action...

Guess it is worth mentioning at this point:

I veg in 1/3 each: Perlite, Blackgolds worm casting, vermiculite.

Flower in 1/3 each: Perlite, Blackgolds worm casting, Blackgolds organic soil.

They eat and drink plain tap water and Pure Blend Pro.

I really hope that with such intense light, your plants flourish into a giant mass of solid bud aswelll.

 

[magiccannabus]

Beautiful plants there man. Those are indeed the 88 cent pots I am talking about. Mine are green, but otherwise the same. I drilled a LOT of extra holes in the bottom with a Dremmel Tool. So drainage shouldn't be a problem, and it helps with how I water them(I always place them in a clean tub and allow them to soak up water from the bottom).

I am a bit worried about bleaching them, but as far as I can tell, they produce about 45,000 lumens over an astounding 2400 square inches of bulb surface area, versus a 400W HID light which would place those same lumens on just the tops of the plants and whatever it can penetrate to, but from only about 8 square inches of bulb surface area(not counting the envelope). So I am hoping that with 300 times the surface area, the reduced intensity will allow me to fill each cubic foot with even amounts of light. In the 8 cubic feet of growing space there would be 5625 lumens roughly per cubic foot. So unlike with HID, it's hitting more than one area, way more spread out. I wish I had a more scientific gauge for how much light density this adds up to, but you get the idea.

I'm definitely curious how many people have tried in the past to use such intense amounts of diffuse light. I'm having trouble finding examples though. Everyone seems to want more intense lights, but I think if it got any more intense in there it'd kill my eyes. As it is, my eyes feel weird and raped after I look away from it with all lights going. I wonder if anyone has figured out the maximum a plant can handle from a per cubic foot standpoint. I wish more grows had been done already like mine.

Edit* Here's an update of my plant profile target:

 

[Bulénath]

"I wonder if anyone has figured out the maximum a plant can handle from a per cubic foot standpoint."

Tends to vary from bulb type to bulb type. We got CFL's, HID's, Floro tubes, LED's too now...
But, just becasue I haven't seen such wattage per square foot, doesn't mean it hasn't been attempted on ICM before!


Interesting watering method you have.
Do you not find it hard to accurately feed them with such a watering method?
Quite the opposite, I left my pots as they are, complete with the run-off catcher and all. Though I have figgured out a near-exact ratio of water:gallon of potting medium. So it is all good.

For the record, the larger cabinet you see, the black one, has a floor-print of 3 square feet. I can only fit six of those 88cent Wal-Mart pots in there (because of the floor's intake), and in truth, five pots seems like enough as it is. However, I have only used three of those pots at any given time.


"So I am hoping that with 300 times the surface area, the reduced intensity will allow me to fill each cubic foot with even amounts of light. In the 8 cubic feet of growing space there would be 5625 lumens roughly per cubic foot"

That is a very intriguing idea

 

[magiccannabus]

My watering method is one I came up with based on a lot of reading I did on Overgrow. Basically you use osmosis to allow the soil to draw up just as much water as it is able to. It does take longer than other watering methods, but it does great things for minimizing root mass(and by extension being root bound). It also keeps the air/water mix correct in the medium. It also doesn't wash out nutrients as badly as top watering does.

My soil mix is an important factor too. I use 25% Pro-Mix Ultimate Organic Mix, 25% Pro-Mix for containers, and 50% perlite. This is a lot of perlite, but the Pro-Mix for containers has polymer moisture-retention crystals in it, so it balances out well and lets the roots have a lot of air. If you use a mix with too much drainage, bottom-watering is not the most effective. Both kinds of Pro-Mix have vermiculite in them as well, that is also a big plus. I really must admit I'm in love with Pro-Mix so far.

I've been doing some math and if I calculated it correctly, I should have about 5365 lumens per square foot (of tube surface area) in the cabinet. A chart I have says that about 70,000 foot-candles is the point at which plants are too close. I should have nowhere near that anywhere in the cabinets that I can tell. My friend grows with T8s as supplemental lighting and his plants grow right up against the tubes sometimes. So it seems like it should work here too.

I just wish I could figure out the standard distance from the bulb that manufacturers rate the lumens at. It must be a standard distance or the standard would be a nightmare to work with.....

 

[magiccannabus]

Here is a new picture of what I am trying to do with the training. Don't consider it exact, but it's done to give a better idea what I am going for.

 

[Avant-Green]

Hey magiccannabus. I picked up some pro mix ultimate organic potting mix a few weeks ago. Only added about 15-20% perlite. I've been having some issues, not sure if it's soil related or temp related. Do you feed with anything else or just straight water? From what ive found out about the ultimate organic mix, it has fertilizers that feed for up to 100 days.

 

[magiccannabus]

I do feed with other things. For quick ammonia nitrogen I have used human urine a lot with success. Blood meal seems to be good for my seedlings if used VERY CAREFULLY(!!!!!). I've also used bone meal in flowering, and a couple varieties of foliar sprays from Expert Gardener. I also sometimes mix magnesium sulfide(epsom salt), and potassium chloride(water softener substitute) and do a foliar spray. I've tried a lot of approaches and I have to say that the specific fertilizers you use isn't everything. You can use the best organics in the world and fail if you give them the wrong amounts.

If they are having trouble I'd suggest you first look at over-watering as the cause. Almost everyone over-waters at first. Also, the organic mix might be a little hot for seedlings. I start my seeds in peat pellets and then bury the pellet in the pot when I transplant them. This gives them a "safe" area without all the fertilizers. Lets them have some root area they don't have to get stressed by.

Really though there's too many factors to be sure. I'd recommend you go to the infirmary forum and post some pics and detailed info. I'd be glad to do what I can for you.