Recycling Happy Frog Soil into Super Soil

[GreenMeanie]

So I have been using straight Happy Frog soil for a few runs here, with the basic Earth Juice line of nutes, but it's getting annoying (and stinky) always mixing up Earth Juice in my little 3 gal reservoirs for submersion watering. So I would really like to get a little "more organic" with my grow and reuse my Happy Frog, but what I would really like to do is recycle this into a super soil using only tap water.

Anyone have any insight on how I could go about doing this, I thought about just looking up Subcool's recipe and just adding that stuff to the soil before reuse, but I would imagine I would need smaller amounts of all ingredients. But obtaining all these items locally has proven difficult (I have done some random browsing local garden stores), and I really don't want to have to go back to a Hydro store ever again. So if there was an easier way to do this with less ingredients that would be better, but not completely necessary. Just as long as I can maintain a living soil, which leaves out the salt based fertilizers that kill the micro herd. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mad librettist]

the espoma line of "tones" are damn near complete organic amendment packages for cannabis. The tones are well balanced, so there is a huge margin of error to work in. Only thing mising is rock flours.

To condition your soil the best thing is living plants, next best thing is an active dead mulch layer. Better than that is both at once. You can grow a living mulch in rotation or right alongside your harvest. Check the stickies.

Also check the stickies and the recycling sub-forum for fellow happy frog recyclers.



Good luck and feel free to ask any questions, we are friendly here.

 

[GreenMeanie]

Thanks for the response, I actually have a bag of white clover seed(couldn't find your micro clover, even online), and I have been dying to get a living mulch started. Unfortunately for my micro setup I only use 1L air pots for my flowering plants and mothers, so my white clover doesn't seem applicable for my situation, although I might just give it a try anyways.

I'm going to have quite a bit of (what I hope will be) quality castings to amend with, due to the worm bin I started yesterday for all of my leftover plant material and appropriate kitchen waste. I'm relieved you mentioned that Espoma Tone line, because I saw some at Home-Depot the other day, but was worried about it's authenticity. I loved all the talk of microbes and fungi on the bags, because that's obviously what you look for in organics, but was skeptical because it was right next to the "Miracle Grow Organic Potting Soil". The local stores only seem to carry the Plant-Tone and Holly-Tone however, where it looks like the Biotone Starter Plus looked much better. Do you think the Plant-Tone would be sufficient?

As far as the rock flours go, I found some hydrated sweet lime down at the local garden/bird feed store, but that's about the only thing that place had to offer besides some Blood Meal that I picked up for the hell of it. So that would leave rock phosphate and azomite, two things I don't think I have ever seen around here locally. I could always try online for that I guess, just worried about shipping costs and suspicion.

 

[mad librettist]

I use the garden tone, which is pretty much bio-tone now that they add the same microbes minus the fungi.

starter plus is a waste because it has so few of the spores you want.

you don't need blood meal with the tone line as it has dried manure and feather meal as well as cocoa meal. It also has bone meal. it's pretty much complete.

garden tone and myke is a good combo. i got mine in large format from a garden center. I got a big bag of azomite there too.

avoid hydrated lime - you want dolomite and add it only if you are adding peat. rock flours is azomite, glacial rock dust, stuff from riverbeds, etc...

 

[GreenMeanie]

Okay excellent. I have access to the Espoma garden lime, which from the label I believe it is dolomite, but it's the tiny pellets not powder, do you think if I ground that stuff up I could get the same effect? Happy Frog uses both peat and dolomite lime in the base mix, but I assume the lime gets used up and would need to be amended.

Hopefully I can find a local store that actually carries the Garden-Tone and not just the Plant-Tone. But do you think it will feed the plant the whole way through flowering, i'm currently going straight from a water clone to my 1L air pot, with a week of veg to get a root system, then going straight to 12/12. The bottom half of the air pot and probably most of the side spikes will be filled with the "super soil" mix, with regular Happy Frog for the top half of the pot so the clone doesn't burn. I would have to go quite a bit over the recommended dosage correct?

I may be able to source the espoma Greensand locally as well, would added that eliminate any of the rock flours I need to incorporate? Or is that just something else I should be adding to the mix anyways? Something tells me not too many stores around here are gonna sell glacial rock dust lol.

I really appreciate all the help.

 

[mad librettist]

plant-tone should be just fine. look at the ingredients. if you had bags of each of these things, and you mixed a soil, would you expect it to take you through flower?

only way it can fail you is if you use way too much or too little.

Derived from: Hydrolyzed Feather Meal, Pasteurized Poultry Manure, Cocoa Meal, Bone Meal, Alfalfa Meal, Greensand, Humates, Sulfate of Potash, and Sulfate of Potash Magnesia.

oh, i forgot - kelp and crab/lobster/shrimp meal are good things to get if you see them.


btw, reading this I see I need to go to the humic acid thread and say I've been using it after all lol

 

[GreenMeanie]

Wow I guess it's just hard for me to wrap my head around how loaded the Garden-Tone really is, maybe I have just gotten used to the hydro stores charging outrageous prices for everything, because I just left Lowes with a big bag of pulverized dolomite lime, and a nice sized bag of Garden-Tone that'll last awhile for under 12 bucks. No luck with the rock flours, even the local hydro store, which is an HTGSupply (about 2 hour drive away) doesn't have any of that stuff on the website, except the crustacean/kelp meal. I better get searching locally for this stuff because fall is upon us and they might not stock this kind of stuff anymore.

Also I just wanted to throw this recycling system out there for critiques; I have an 18 gallon plastic bin that I emptied my last four 1L air pot "used" soil into, now I didn't cut the roots up, just what I break up with my hands, and just put it all in the bin. Now I harvest approximately one plant a week, so I plan on dumping the soil from each harvest, with each of the fertilizers (diluted down to 1L of soil of course) and mixing the whole bin up. Do you think while hopefully maintaining a very alive and active bin at all times that I will be able to pull 1L of soil out of the bin for a new plant flowering each week?

I've also considered dropping a couple of worms from my worm bin into the soil mix to really keep things moving.

 

[mad librettist]

I have no experience with pots that small, but my intuition says you will need some kind of boost starting mid flower.

worms always help, but the most important thing for you is not letting those pots get too dry.

 

[rippinvanwinkle]

stone mason type store for your crushd rock 'flour' needs

 

[Granger2]

http://www.groworganic.com/
You'll find many of the items here. There are millions of home vegetable gardeners out there. -granger

 

[Bongstar420]

I have grown on the same media for over 3 years. The main problem that I have seen is that the porosity degrades substantially. The first lesson about the media composition was that bark or something will be added periodically as the media contracts in volume from particle size degradation and chemical evaporation and leaching. The second is that Perlite is good for maybe a year and must be renewed but will contribute to the accumulation of fine grain sand like particles. Some is good, but a lot is not. I think coarse/medium Pumice or something like that is more preferable.

I'm assuming you are keeping after nutrient and Ph issues what not which you can manage with or without pre plant incorporation of minerals (its better with limestone IMO). Humates shouldnt be an issue if you are adding bark or coir periodically since that is what it breaks down to (I have know idea is supplementing it is worth it, but Ive always added humates figuring extra wont hurt but not enough probably would).

Someday I will have a heavy metals analysis done on my media and hopefully I will feel generous and post it somewhere around here for free. I really do have +3 years continuous production soilless media with all kinds of stuff gone through it.