Weed wars soil mix

[Reg Dixon]

Hi just finijshed watching episode 1 of weed wars and they showed an indoor grower mixing his soil mix. Along with the bag of soil itself there were a bunch of little white things he mixed in quite liberally. Could anyone tell me what they are and whether I need them for indoor soil mix? I currently am planting my seedling in 'seed starter' soil in party cups/small pots but when it comes time to transplant them I want to make sure my soil has the right mix.
Please bear in mind the normal range of nutes is beyond my reach as I live way away from the USA in the deep dark tropics although I have seen a bag of white things that looked the same as the ones they used in the weed wars episode. Unfortunately the bag is not labelled at all and my knowledge of the local language does not extend to specific gardening terms yet.

 

[Avinash.miles]

are you talking perlite? maybe mixing perlite into growing medium to increase air pores in soil, a common practice.
i havent seen the episode

 

[BigDawg]

don't forget the aphids

 

[SmokeTrees]

ya he is indeed talking about perlite. Ive seen the episode

 

[BigDawg]

and that's why they were wearing masks.. perlite is dusty and should not be inhaled.

 

[Abja Roots]

It's perlite and it helps increase soil porosity. It will help your soil dry out quicker. The more you add, the more often you will have to water. However it will also keep your roots from becoming oxygen deprived. If it's cold for example and it's a big pot, then the plant will use less water. This could be an issue, if the soil has low porosity. If it's hot, and the plant uses more water. Then too much perlite can be an issue, with the soil drying out too quickly. There's obviously more to it, than that. For the record I do mix perlite into my soil. Another option that is being used is rice hulls. They decompose much more quickly. Depending on where you are, this might be available.

Definitely wear a mask. One tip I have is to run some water over it, before you use it. This will keep the dust from going everywhere.

 

[bodhiseeds]

looked like black gold, oyster shell, and perlite to me...

 

[forty]

i thought it was a box of lucky charms.

 

[green thumbs]

Everything I add perlite I wet it down before working with it . Good tip Abja Roots..

 

[sso]

i dont add anything, used to add perlite, but i find that if its good soil, then there is no need (good soil = black or dark brown, fluffy and light and water drains easily)

 

[sso]

though to be specific, its cold and arid around here (though the growbox isnt cold lol)

 

[señorsloth]

it's perlite and you don't need to add any if you're using a premixed potting soil. if your making your own with all base ingredients it's needed but there is no need to add it to a soil like fox farm ocean forest. i am not just making it up it's well documented, i learned about it from mandela seeds, the myth that you will get better growth by adding more perlite came from the early days of indoor growing, in the seventies when these pre-mixed soils weren't available. when growing in real, plain dirt it's definitely necessary or it will have serious drainage issues. when you are growing in a modern mix they have already calculated the optimum amounts of peat and perlite, as well as the other ingredients, for the best drainage and water retention possible!

by adding more perlite you are further increasing the drainage and reducing the soils ability to hold on to water and nutrients. the pearlite literally replaces the water and nutrients, essentially having the same effect as running a mix without added perlite, but in a smaller pot. just like with a smaller pot, you will have to water more often, and ph levels and nutrient concentrations fluctuate more than they would in a bigger pot.

additionally, the difference in growth is negligible...i have been growing with straight fox farm happy frog for almost a year now and i'm getting better growth than i ever used to get with my old promix, which i added a LOT of perlite too.

alas, this is the black market working it's magic, because communication between the worlds growers is extremely crippled(only a small fraction of growers actually post online). when people make new discoveries they take years, even decades to catch on, compared to legal endeavors, where you have corporations, scientists, farmers and gardeners all trying new things constantly and sharing the information quickly and efficiently to each other. slowly people are realizing that you don't have to add perlite to premixed soils, but i predict i will take many more years before it becomes mainstream.

the same could be said about the 12-1 lighting schedule...it's superior in nearly every way to the old school 12/12 schedule, yet almost nobody knows about it. imagine, using less than 75% of your previous energy consumption, maybe more depending on your previous lighting schedule...while getting your plants to ripen a week earlier, smell and taste stronger, and yield just as much, if not more than the old lighting schedules. the 12-1 schedule has been used by commercial flower (like roses)growers for many many years because it's the best way to do it. when you're spending millions of dollars growing billions of flowers you do EVERYTHING in the most efficient way possible, because on that scale you could lose a lot of money if you aren't staying on the very cusp of future growing techniques. they spend MILLIONS researching the best way to do things. I for one have been having an extremely good results with the 12-1 schedule, IMO it's vastly superior to my old 12-12 and don't intend to change unless somebody comes up with something even better!

 

[bigAl25]

Please explain the 12-1 lighting schedule, I'd love to try it out. Is it used only during flowering and not veg?
Thanks

Yes, I do add perlite, around 20%, to my purchased organic soil. It's either pro mix or miracle grow, depending on what Lowe's or Home Depot is charging for it.

 

[señorsloth]

i forget the guys name who is making it popular, i first read about it earlier this year in skunk magazine*edit*-i dug up the magazine, his name is joe pietri, google his 12-1!*edit*...the guy that is advocating for it was one of the biggest hash smugglers and a top grower as well, there are several threads on it in every weed forum on the net but it hasn't progressed out of the experimental forums yet. we must remember this is a very expensive crop, and not many people are willing to risk what could be thousands of dollars to test new methods that are very different from the norm.

basically it goes like this, in veg you give your plants 12 hours of light, then 5.5 hours of dark, followed by an hour of light, then 5.5 more hours of dark. that one hour in the middle of the dark schedule is enough to keep them happily in veg and they grow just as fast as plants vegging in 18-6 but with less electricity used. the magazine states that commercial rose and other flower growers have been using these schedules for years, as they produce the best results while saving the most money. it even stated that they could be kept from flowering with a strobe light if you had the odd urge to do that,lol not sure how well it would work, i think it was just to show that we need a lot less light to get optimal growth in veg than we used to think.

for flowering i switch to 12-12 like normal, getting rid of that extra hour interruption makes them jump into flowering quite quickly, for instance right now i'm at day 9 of flowering and all of my clones are starting to push out hairs, and my seed plants are only a few days behind the clones(they were vegged 12-1 for 3 weeks ). it's at least as fast as switching from 18/6 if not a little faster.

after the first week you subtract 15 minutes of light and add 15 minutes of dark each week, with your plants finishing at 9 hours light 15 hours dark. it also works almost as well to take half an hour off every 2 weeks but my timers go in 15 minute increments so i elected to do it by 15 minutes each week, as it's a bit closer to nature. the key is you want to finish at about 9 hours light, i start at 12-12 because that gives me 12 weeks, which is how long i need for my strains, if you were growing an 8 week strain you would start flowering at 11-13 and so on.

i know it sounds like it would reduce the yield but it really doesn't seem too! i bested my earlier yields with my last grow since switching and this next crop seems even bigger yet...that's of course me getting used to my new cab and strains, not the lighting, but it does illustrate to me that it's not hurting my yield at all and helping me ripen a week quicker, getting denser, more plump and sugary buds, with a stronger taste and smell. this is because it's closer to the schedule they spent millions of years evolving too, and they ripen much better with gradually shortening days than they do with the exact same daylight length throughout the whole season.

 

[WeedFarm]

and a thread about one thing becomes about something else...
very interesting tho, 12.1 light schedule, there is another thread somewhere on here about this....

 

[señorsloth]

lol yeah i should have just pm'd him to keep the thread clean but i didn't think of it at the time, sorry

 

[green thumbs]

Yes I would like more info on the light schedule as well. I mean a more in depth conversation

 

[señorsloth]

http://www.cannabisdynamics.com/2011/08/29/121-lighting-for-optimum-growth-and-savings/

 

[Reg Dixon]

It is ok you can dirty up the thread all you like. I found the 12:1 lighting discussion fascinating. May even try it as saving money on electricity is always a concern.

 

[señorsloth]

lol i didn't even do it for the savings, though that is a nice perk, i switched because A) it was said to not only shorten flowering by 7-10 days, but increase yields, sugar, and especially smell/taste(and it's true!), B) because it's slightly better than 18-6 and 24-0, making it technically the BEST and CORRECT flowering schedule, and i believe once more people see the results it will soon be thought of as the normal schedule, just like it is in the rest of the flower growing industry...

on top of that you get the energy savings and for me an extra little perk, i line up my schedule so that my veg portion of my cab is lit when the flowering portion is and dark when the flowering period is, except for that one hour in the middle and the extra dark that builds as flowering progresses, that means when i start flowering the lights and darks don't overlap(cept for that 1 hour), meaning less worries about light leaking from my veg space into my flowering space.

i am so bonkers over this schedule, you have no idea, i LOOOVE the extra stink it adds to my buds and the way they plump up and ripen so much better than they do in a non-descending photoperiod!