Living organic soil from start through recycling

[BlueJayWay]

I somehow knew this would happen.....I wanted to believe it like I wanted to believe in Santa....but that fat bastard let me down......organic living soil won't let you down.

Now all we need is home-stoned application rates~ This is fucking awesome Coot...this is big.

Yup - I was going to ask about application rates n ratios, is it mixed up into a liquid I.e. Protekt in order to be able to apply at same 5ml per gal, or can a measured powder qty be added to the reservoir without prior dilution.

 

[unclefishstick]

Uncle

You work at a hydro store, right? (sorry if I have the wrong guy here)

Are you not able to order these things at work?

I do understand how you feel, though. I live in a place where none of these things are available at feed stores, like they seem to be for everyone else.

Maybe instead of giving up, we can all work together to identify your local weeds (to substitute for kelp), and determine what alternative dry amendments you have available at work.

I just couldn't justify the cost of various rock dusts shipped to my house from the PNW, so I went to a local gravel yard, and picked up a 5 gallon bucket of crusher fines for no charge. I screened it at home, threw the big chunks in my outdoor veggie garden for drainage, and started getting a gallon or two at a time of different colors of rock dust at the bottom of local cliffs. I get all the free 2 years+ aged horse manure I can haul locally as well, and it is teeming with composting worms, so I screen it and harvest the worms. I have them in a 20 gallon smart pot in my garage, slowly but surely multiplying. Since I live in CO and it is cold in the garage now, even though it is underground, I vent my dryer in there to warm it up.

All the while I am running crops rather successfully with salt nutrients, but I plan to have a solid soil ready when they run out - about two more cycles.

Just want to encourage you to make the best of what is locally available. Don't see what you can get, get what you can see, and open up your time frame a little while you continue with the bottled gunk.

its also the only having a bike to transport stuff,i really try and limit anyone elses exposure to my choice to grow,so i really dislike having other people haul me around to get stuff for the grow,plus im trying to stay low profile,so hauling in 50 lb sack of alfalfa meal and the like someplace with no outdoor garden would tend to get a bit dodgy.
and let me say again,we get 9 inches or rain here a year,my yard is three feet of pure sand,our tap water is 640ppm and choked with calcium,there are many hurdles aside from getting the materials to overcome here...bottled gunk is easy,and it only cost 200 bucks per run and can all be discretely bought home in my pack.

Expensive? You obviously don't "get it"

Other than keeping the lights on, I get barley seed at the food store, or just use quinoa which I keep on hand anyway. I get "floor dry" at the auto parts place, Alfalfa at the feed store... Pennies per plant, if that. Most if not all of it could be replaced with something free, sourced locally.

The key is having a solid humus component to your soil. Something you won't find at the hydro store.

I know people using the general organics line and store bought "soil" (replaced each time) on the same strains I am running and the resin output on theirs is pale in comparison. Aroma is weak, and flavor is severely lacking.

i was talking about the initial cost of getting everything together,that plus the bike for transport thing makes it tough to implement in the face of already having a solid system in place,and no one has ever complained about what i was growing,the bud im smoking right now is flavorful,clean burning and more than potent enough for me.

 

[xmobotx]

dont give up unclefishstick

maybe start a small worm bin? small compost pile? i usually bring some of mine {both} indoors in a small sterilite type shoebox {12 qt} each for the winter ~it doesn't have to take up much space {even up to pretty good scale}

do you have dandelions?

 

[Gascanastan]

Obviously it's the start up costs that are somewhat steep...but once you buy that stuff you have it for a very long time....cutting garden costs from here on out.

Fish Stix new economy organic soil mix..

2 gal peat
2 gal EWC
3-4 gal perlite
2 tablespoons oyster shell powder....or yeah.... dolomite


Topdress with fish and kelp...or make teas with fish and kelp. If you can't find fish,use guano.

This takes the 'cooking' aspect out of the picture...you can plant directly into this mix considering the peat has been fully hydrated.

This should work just fine...and give a nice base mix that you can recycle....but don't take my word for it...just fucking do it...if you fail,which you won't...I'll send you replacement beans.

 

[Gascanastan]

Let it be known that I'm mixing batches of soil up for people about every month..not all batches are the same...I'm not running a charity either,so they have to come up with whatever they can.... then I'll teach them how to assemble it and grow...no matter what it is,as long as it matches the material needed......as well as also hold some of those folks hands through the cycle.

The people that succeed and have great results are the people that follow directions. This includes first time growers...I have kick started countless first time growers out here in the real world...if they listen they win..period. It's only if they start doubting themselves or the soil....and then go and get bottles and bad advice at the dro-store then everything goes wrong after that.

Manifest your own destiny...get on the bus or not,it's your movie.

 

[BlueJayWay]

MM - I was hoping and am thankful that you chimed in here. Your assertions verify my thoughts on the benefit of having a deep layer of multi sized and types of rocks at the bottom of deep smartie (above and beyond the obvious drainage factor).

There's an excellent creek bed in the canyon a half mile down from my place, processes Lots of snow melt and is frozen for months of the year. Rock dusts will be gathered there for certain and rocks slowly, but my hilly property is a landmine of granite so I can most certainly do all the heavy rock collecting right outside my door .

I have stacks of oak and pine bark that was peeled away from the rounds, there's the possibility of this being added as a thin layer between the soil mix and the rocks...

...oh the possibilities, and that's half of what this is about, resourcefulness and getting results with what's cheap and available to you, fulpower and liquid aloe Vera et al is the luxury.

It doesn't take a biologist to get there, but it does take someone with a real desire, a yearning if you will, to be in touch in tune with the garden with the soil with the bugs with the rocks with the earth. A gardener a farmer at heart, not a closet daaank grower with $$ in their eyes. It's just not gonna make sense or work for that person.

I have spent countless hours researching and reading, here I am looking at a turkey on the table but my mind is in the garden, I love every minute of it and learn new things expand my mind each and every day that I'm at it.

Uncle fish, I appreciate your spending time in here, asking questions and not slinking away from speaking your opinion, good luck on your journey and you know where we'll be when you get that summer veggie garden ready

BlueJay; You may wish to consider using some locally sourced rocks/stones in the bottom of a large no-till. I've been thinking on this and hypothesizing that using stones (eg. round river polished & gravel) with a variety of colors may provide longterm release of a variety of minerals in addition to providing drainage. This concept is similar to the one where a variety of colors in vegetables provide humans with a variety of nutrition and vitamins.

Where we moved to two years ago, the soil is very rocky, as we are sitting on top of an old mountain slide. Besides that we have a very high water table.These pretty much necessitated building raised beds. We dug out a pond about 20 x 60 x 7 feet deep and used the fill as our base. It was full of clay and multi-colored rocks of all sizes. We eliminated rocks larger than hardballs but there were many smaller, red, gold, white, blue, granite rocks. On top we piled a soil mix of topsoil, sand, aged wood bits & compost (15% OM). We ended up with beds around 16 inches high and about 80 x 20 in total. The plants which went into the bed did extremely well, supplemented only with ACT. Subsequent years will tell the story.

What I think can (does) happen is, as the soil matures, the microorganisms become heirarchically arranged at various depths so there are bottom dwellers mining the minerals and passing converted nutrients up the chain to the next level of microorganisms and/or to the roots. Conversely the top dwellers are able to process the organic matter applied to the surface.

When we constructed our greenhouse we layed down sand which was packed and leveled, then put down landscape cloth, then 3/4 inch crush gravel with fines mixed in. We kept some Empress trees in there which were raised from seed and transplanted into one gallon pots. They did exceedingly well and we discovered why when we went to move them out to harden off. They had put roots into the gravel and were deriving nutrients (micronutrients/minerals) from it.

 

[unclefishstick]

dont give up unclefishstick

maybe start a small worm bin? small compost pile? i usually bring some of mine {both} indoors in a small sterilite type shoebox {12 qt} each for the winter ~it doesn't have to take up much space {even up to pretty good scale}

do you have dandelions?

yes,dandelions do grow around here for about a month in the summer,my yard is not currently a source of anything aside from noisome desert weeds of various levels of heinousness and bermuda grass,while it turns out some of the common weeds were in the charts MM provided,but its simply not a significant source of biomass of any useful sort.

indoor space is not the issue,i have a mostly unused 20x40 workshop,and im single so theres no one to say no you cant keep that in the house ..

Obviously it's the start up costs that are somewhat steep...but once you buy that stuff you have it for a very long time....cutting garden costs from here on out.

Fish Stix new economy organic soil mix..

2 gal peat
2 gal EWC
3-4 gal perlite
2 tablespoons oyster shell powder....or yeah.... dolomite


Topdress with fish and kelp...or make teas with fish and kelp. If you can't find fish,use guano.

This takes the 'cooking' aspect out of the picture...you can plant directly into this mix considering the peat has been fully hydrated.

This should work just fine...and give a nice base mix that you can recycle....but don't take my word for it...just fucking do it...if you fail,which you won't...I'll send you replacement beans.

not to put too fine a point on things,but the cost isnt really the issue,for 200 dollars of medium and nutes i get at minimum 4.5 lbs out the back end,even with fussy long flowering sativas....not to mention the 104 different plants species i have in my house that are flourishing using the veganic nutes,you can see where that would make switching seem a bit less attractive....

my garden has two main purposes,to provide me with more than i can smoke,and second to allow me the financial freedom to explore my artistic pretenses,owing to the nature of my work it may take me months to complete a single piece of artwork,so my garden needs to be simple to run,and only take a minimal amount of my time.right now i have a simple productive system,it is exactly the tool i needed for the job i intended it for.it aint broke right now....

 

[Gascanastan]

Uncle

You work at a hydro store, right? (sorry if I have the wrong guy here)

Are you not able to order these things at work?

I do understand how you feel, though. I live in a place where none of these things are available at feed stores, like they seem to be for everyone else.

Maybe instead of giving up, we can all work together to identify your local weeds (to substitute for kelp), and determine what alternative dry amendments you have available at work.

I just couldn't justify the cost of various rock dusts shipped to my house from the PNW, so I went to a local gravel yard, and picked up a 5 gallon bucket of crusher fines for no charge. I screened it at home, threw the big chunks in my outdoor veggie garden for drainage, and started getting a gallon or two at a time of different colors of rock dust at the bottom of local cliffs. I get all the free 2 years+ aged horse manure I can haul locally as well, and it is teeming with composting worms, so I screen it and harvest the worms. I have them in a 20 gallon smart pot in my garage, slowly but surely multiplying. Since I live in CO and it is cold in the garage now, even though it is underground, I vent my dryer in there to warm it up.

All the while I am running crops rather successfully with salt nutrients, but I plan to have a solid soil ready when they run out - about two more cycles.

Just want to encourage you to make the best of what is locally available. Don't see what you can get, get what you can see, and open up your time frame a little while you continue with the bottled gunk.

Now here's a good attitude.^^^ Think outside the box and improvise...take the steps to manifest your material. Be confident in this...invest trust back into nature and she will reward you if you are capable of any kind of natural flow.....think people,it's free...and we have one of the most powerful tools to use in this free thinking ability..CANNABIS!!!!!

 

[Gascanastan]

yes,dandelions do grow around here for about a month in the summer,my yard is not currently a source of anything aside from noisome desert weeds of various levels of heinousness and bermuda grass,while it turns out some of the common weeds were in the charts MM provided,but its simply not a significant source of biomass of any useful sort.

indoor space is not the issue,i have a mostly unused 20x40 workshop,and im single so theres no one to say no you cant keep that in the house ..


not to put too fine a point on things,but the cost isnt really the issue,for 200 dollars of medium and nutes i get at minimum 4.5 lbs out the back end,even with fussy long flowering sativas....not to mention the 104 different plants species i have in my house that are flourishing using the veganic nutes,you can see where that would make switching seem a bit less attractive....

my garden has two main purposes,to provide me with more than i can smoke,and second to allow me the financial freedom to explore my artistic pretenses,owing to the nature of my work it may take me months to complete a single piece of artwork,so my garden needs to be simple to run,and only take a minimal amount of my time.right now i have a simple productive system,it is exactly the tool i needed for the job i intended it for.it aint broke right now....

OMG...a genuine starving artist.

Ok then...we're here when you are ready.

 

[QuentinQuark]

Just want to say you guys are my heroes. I want to get there... I will get there... someday. For now I will start with a simple organic grow. But living soil recycled - YES that's the goal.

 

[gregor_mendel]

Uncle

What parts of the GO line do you use? Their schedule, or did you figure out your own? Just curious.

 

[unclefishstick]

OMG...a genuine starving artist.

Ok then...we're here when you are ready.

i already tried the starving artist thing,you end up with depressing art...i want to try the fed artist thing for a bit...

thank you,i will be back,let me do my learning outside with veggies until i get comfy with all the new info,it is a lot to grok

 

[Gascanastan]

Just want to say you guys are my heroes. I want to get there... I will get there... someday. For now I will start with a simple organic grow. But living soil recycled - YES that's the goal.

Wow thanks man...life's a ball,take it to the hoop~

...you hear that world......fucking hero's....may as well be saving burning babies eh....same thing.

Okay..I'm outta here....eat drink and be merry....and smoke those bowls out behind grannies tool shed if she ain't smokin w/you.

Let it grow...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlyR_LwiESc

 

[BlueJayWay]

Who wants to buy my unopened gallon of GO bloom?

 

[unclefishstick]

Uncle

What parts of the GO line do you use? Their schedule, or did you figure out your own? Just curious.

i use the grow,bloom,bioweed,CAL/MAG!!(lol),roots,and bloom booster (double lol) plus i also use the pura vida veganic line of grow and bloom to switch out on occasion.since i work in a shop i got free samples of roots organic extreme serene and trinity bio catalyst so i use them on occasion as well.once a week i make a tea with ewc,kelp meal, and molasses as a base,i brew that for 24 hours and add some liquid bat guano in the form of roots organic HPK (i dont like working with dried guano after getting guano lung a few times) and brew that for another 24 hours for flowering,in veg i used the compost tea we make at work. for medium i use sunshine advanced mix #4 cut with two bags of ancient forest compost.and i do recycle my rootballs into my future garden beds,it is all pure sand here,so i have been in ground composting them and the leaves from the lone tree in the yard for years now,i have a half decent bed worked up at this point...


its my own schedule,i feed very lightly,but i feed every single day...

 

[gregor_mendel]

Gas said:

if you fail,which you won't...I'll send you replacement beans

I have considered myself a failure for quite some time now.
Will my beans be a surprise pack, or may I pick them?

 

[gregor_mendel]

Uncle:

Just as an experiment, maybe take one harvest of "spent" soil, dump it all in a Smart Pot you can get at work (roll it up and stuff it in a backpack), order the 1000 cocoons Coot mentioned earlier, mix, and put in the corner of that big shop. With all the organic residue from the GO gunk, I'll bet six months later you would have quite the nice castings. Drink coffee? Eat eggs? Throw the waste from that in too. Now mix back with a bale of Sunshine, and you're off the the races... in six months to a years.

 

[ClackamasCootz]

Yup - I was going to ask about application rates n ratios, is it mixed up into a liquid I.e. Protekt in order to be able to apply at same 5ml per gal, or can a measured powder qty be added to the reservoir without prior dilution.

Okay - here's what is on the AgSil 16H label:

Potassium Silicate Guaranteed Analysis

Nitrogen - 0%
Phosphate - 0%
Potassium - 32%
Silica (SiO2) - 52.8%​

0.7 grams in 1 gallon of water yields 49 ppm Potassium and 98 ppm SiO2 or 46 ppm of Si

Element concentration range of common nutrient solutions:

Potassium 80 - 350 ppm
SiO2: 0 - 200 ppm​

Not too helpful.

Dyna-Gro Pro-TeKt Guaranteed Analysis

Potassium: 3.7%
Silicon (SiO2) 7.8%​

That then are the numbers for the concentrate, correct? (That's a question actually)

So how does one take the AgSil and make a gallon of concentrated Pro-TeKt?

Once we have the answer to that then the other ratios would be easy to figure out perhaps.

HTH

CC

 

[rrog]

Just want to say you guys are my heroes. I want to get there... I will get there... someday. For now I will start with a simple organic grow. But living soil recycled - YES that's the goal.

Welcome Quentin! You've reached ground zero with this thread. You will see.

 

[unclefishstick]

Uncle:

Just as an experiment, maybe take one harvest of "spent" soil, dump it all in a Smart Pot you can get at work (roll it up and stuff it in a backpack), order the 1000 cocoons Coot mentioned earlier, mix, and put in the corner of that big shop. With all the organic residue from the GO gunk, I'll bet six months later you would have quite the nice castings. Drink coffee? Eat eggs? Throw the waste from that in too. Now mix back with a bale of Sunshine, and you're off the the races... in six months to a years.

thats kinda why i was thinking of starting from having the outdoor veggie garden as the first step,then i could much more easily generate the compost/ewc and such on my own,and i should also have a small greenhouse in the next year or so,as well the woodshop will start generating loads of sawdust that i will need to do something with,even a mask sized wood carving generates a garbage bag of wood chips,thats got to be good for something in an organic garden!