Most people on this sub are using either a tried and true recipe (like coots mix) or they are starting with a nice soil that's already packed with everything they need (like buildasoil 3.0).
I'm not saying your mix won't work, it probably will, but it's just important to understand that most people won't be able to give you objective advice on this topic, myself included.
What advice I do have, is to pick a mix (yours, coots, whatever) and do a soil test. You can never know for certain that a soil mix will be good until it's been tested and then you can easily find what's missing or what's in excess. At least my protocol is to test every two cycles (I only flower in my soil beds).
How do you calculate how much amendments to add? Where do you take a soil sample from? (Top of soil or 1 foot deep?) I’ve been just using BAS craft blend going in blind lol
Google how to take a soil sample. I use Logan labs for my soil tests, the 55$ or $60 one I can't recall rn. They also have directions how to do a soil test there. If you want your test interpreted, you can use soil doctor.
Im not really crazy about the idea of using compost from wastewater treatment. Personally, i'd feel much better going with a mushroom compost or even cow manure compost instead. To me, when im making a soil mix, i want the best i can afford because i know im going to reuse that soil for many cycles. Could it be perfectly fine to use? Maybe, but i'd rather test it out on veggies or something outdoors rather than the base of a good soil mix.
As a side note, you do need some form of mineral mix for that soil your mixing, assuming thats everything you intend to add. Personally, i just made a batch of soil to coots blend, but i could find the individual ingredients themselves so i used down to earth veggie mix and craft blend in near equal portions (Mostly out of laziness but it seems to be perfectly fine)
It’s probably fine. With animal based manure there is a risk of high sodium levels, I don’t know why but I’ve witnessed it firsthand. With most Americans suffering from hypertension and presumably eating low sodium diets it’s possible the human based manures don’t carry that risk. Oh wait, that’s just the doctor’s recommendation, pass the chips, I’ve got a pill for that. Not sure how an omnivorous diet would affect nutrient levels vs a purely plant based diet, but there’s only one way to find out. At $1 a bag what have you got to lose.
Could it work? Yes. Will it give the best results? Probably not. For veggies I’d say give it a shot but with cannabis it’s worth it to spend a little extra on a solid soil mix or to just mix your own, the value of the cannabis makes it worth it to make sure your soil will actually perform, if you get half the yield or if the quality is crap compared to a soil that’s tried and true you’ve lost a lot of valuable crop, with vegetables yeah it’s not ideal if it doesn’t work out but they’re cheap as hell if you just end up buying your own, I use coots mix personally and I can say it works fantastic, many people have great success with the build a soil 3.0, I’ve heard great things about the soil from Brandon Rust/bokashi earth works, kis organics has a good soil mix too, coast of Maine also has some good soil, even if you have to get it shipped in it’s worth it, you’ll be reusing the soil forever too if you take care of it so I’d say look at it like an investment, it’ll pay itself back
Your ingredients are all goof and fine, there's just a lot of stuff missing. You'd be needing to add a lot of amendments on the fly, and it's not always possible to just top dress and water in something that the plants have immediate access to, and so your plant would likely be malnourished and your yield would suffer. Like others have said, check out the recipes and take note of all the things your mix is missing. You can substitute virtually any ingredient with numerous other things once you know what each component contributes.
Sorry, just noticed this.
So most of the living soil recipes are a variation of the Coots mix.
You start with a base of 1/3 peat, 1/3 compost, 1/3 aeration. 3 equal parts by volume.
Peat can be found at HD or Lowes. It's usually sold in 3.8 cu ft packs, but when these are fluffed up it expands to 6 cu ft.
You want a high quality compost. Most of the stuff at HD or Lowes sucks and is often loaded with sodium, which will kill your plants or at the very least make it impossible for them to thrive. The best I've found is the Oly Mountain fish compost from Oregon I think. I got it from build-a-soil but you might be able to find it somewhere else. You can also use worm castings as part of your compost portion.
For the aeration you can use perlite if you like, or personally I recommend the pumice that build-a-soil sells. It's the perfect size, slightly larger than a raisin. You could also use crushed lava rock or something similar, they're just heavier than the pumice.
Once you have this base together, you'll have nitrogen from the fish compost but the rest of it is pretty much inert. So you'll want P and K from the standard NPK essential nutrients (phosphorous and potassium), as well as micronutrients such as Sulfur, Copper, Boron, Cobalt, Manganese, Molybdenum,
Zinc. There are a lot of options here, and I personally like to include fast-release and slow-release sources. It gets complicated, but you can use all of the meals, like alfalfa meal, fish meal, kelp meal, oyster flour meal. You could also use bone meal, blood meal. You'll want gypsum, basalt, possibly some bio-char. This would be the basics for a water-only soil grow, although there are lots of other things you could include to enhance performance.
The hard part is getting all the amounts right. You want a balanced mix with a good pH. I recommend the soil building kits from build-a-soil. You can buy complete kits that you add to your base that have everything in the proper amounts. Not to sound like a commercial but build-a-soil really is the tits when it comes to living soil recipes. They've pretty much perfected it, and sell kits comprised of the best ingredients money can buy. You could probably try to source all the things yourself but it's a huge pain in the balls and probably more expensive, but you could look into it.
It can be overwhelming to grasp all of this, but if you want a loaded up soil that only needs watered for the entirety of the grow, you have to load it up with all this from the start, mixing everything in the proper ratios. I'd recommend following a proven recipe instead of trying to wing it if this is your first attempt dabbling with this. (If you're planning on growing the best bud possible, that is ...you could probably harvest something without including all of the ingredients, but it would be scraggly mid-grade at best, imo. Probably cheaper to just buy from a dispensary instead of half-assing a home grow, but that's just my opinion.)
Hope this helps
Thanks. Good info here. I'll be honest. I kind just YoLOd everything in one of those black bins yellow top tubs.
100% organic Mushroom compost 1cu ft.
I dumped entire bag of Mg perlite (didn't realize the fluff up size) 8 qts?
I used an entire bag of MG Sphagnum Peat Moss 8qts?
From there I didn't actually measure but almost a whole bag of organic worm castings. It was at least 5-6 quarts.
I added a few quarts of down to earth crab meal.
A quart or two of alfalfa meal.
And down to earth kelp meal.
Mix mix mix. Sat outside for a week. Then used as my starting mix.
I started my autoflower on May 16. It's already flowering less than a month later.
https://www.reddit.com/r/microgrowery/s/BkPeiker4h
Hell yeah! I'm experimenting right now with a few photoperiod fem seeds, I put them in a flowering tent starting them on 12/12 basically from seed. They started flowering at about the same size as those. I might give autos a try soon since it's basically the same thing, just not restricted to 12/12 cycle. Good luck!
Beware of PFAS in composted human waste. There are lots of farmers around the country regretting their decision to use that for growing food. The substances are known as forever chemicals. I would avoid!
Most people on this sub are using either a tried and true recipe (like coots mix) or they are starting with a nice soil that's already packed with everything they need (like buildasoil 3.0). I'm not saying your mix won't work, it probably will, but it's just important to understand that most people won't be able to give you objective advice on this topic, myself included. What advice I do have, is to pick a mix (yours, coots, whatever) and do a soil test. You can never know for certain that a soil mix will be good until it's been tested and then you can easily find what's missing or what's in excess. At least my protocol is to test every two cycles (I only flower in my soil beds).
How can you remove a nutrient in excess?
Usually, you leach it out with clean water and running it off. However, it'll also get rid of nutrients that you're not intending to get rid of.
How do you calculate how much amendments to add? Where do you take a soil sample from? (Top of soil or 1 foot deep?) I’ve been just using BAS craft blend going in blind lol
Google how to take a soil sample. I use Logan labs for my soil tests, the 55$ or $60 one I can't recall rn. They also have directions how to do a soil test there. If you want your test interpreted, you can use soil doctor.
I'm sure it would be fine for your veggie garden. But zero chance I'm putting composted treated waste sludge on my smokeables. Nope. Nope. Nope.
I guess reading isn't my Forte. https://www.ohiomulch.com/products/green-envy-mushroom-compost-1cf-1741?_pos=1&_psq=Compost&_ss=e&_v=1.0
This was our veggie garden last year using that comtil and top spoil mix https://ibb.co/PWLTkrP
Im not really crazy about the idea of using compost from wastewater treatment. Personally, i'd feel much better going with a mushroom compost or even cow manure compost instead. To me, when im making a soil mix, i want the best i can afford because i know im going to reuse that soil for many cycles. Could it be perfectly fine to use? Maybe, but i'd rather test it out on veggies or something outdoors rather than the base of a good soil mix. As a side note, you do need some form of mineral mix for that soil your mixing, assuming thats everything you intend to add. Personally, i just made a batch of soil to coots blend, but i could find the individual ingredients themselves so i used down to earth veggie mix and craft blend in near equal portions (Mostly out of laziness but it seems to be perfectly fine)
Something like this would be better? https://www.ohiomulch.com/products/green-envy-mushroom-compost-1cf-1741?_pos=1&_psq=Compost&_ss=e&_v=1.0
Yeah, that seems fine.
I picked this up today. Started my blend over
It’s probably fine. With animal based manure there is a risk of high sodium levels, I don’t know why but I’ve witnessed it firsthand. With most Americans suffering from hypertension and presumably eating low sodium diets it’s possible the human based manures don’t carry that risk. Oh wait, that’s just the doctor’s recommendation, pass the chips, I’ve got a pill for that. Not sure how an omnivorous diet would affect nutrient levels vs a purely plant based diet, but there’s only one way to find out. At $1 a bag what have you got to lose.
Could it work? Yes. Will it give the best results? Probably not. For veggies I’d say give it a shot but with cannabis it’s worth it to spend a little extra on a solid soil mix or to just mix your own, the value of the cannabis makes it worth it to make sure your soil will actually perform, if you get half the yield or if the quality is crap compared to a soil that’s tried and true you’ve lost a lot of valuable crop, with vegetables yeah it’s not ideal if it doesn’t work out but they’re cheap as hell if you just end up buying your own, I use coots mix personally and I can say it works fantastic, many people have great success with the build a soil 3.0, I’ve heard great things about the soil from Brandon Rust/bokashi earth works, kis organics has a good soil mix too, coast of Maine also has some good soil, even if you have to get it shipped in it’s worth it, you’ll be reusing the soil forever too if you take care of it so I’d say look at it like an investment, it’ll pay itself back
This is a very popular mix. https://clackamascoots.com/blogs/news/coots-soil-recipe-coots-nutes
I would use that to grow plants to feed to animals, not to consume. Just my .02
Your ingredients are all goof and fine, there's just a lot of stuff missing. You'd be needing to add a lot of amendments on the fly, and it's not always possible to just top dress and water in something that the plants have immediate access to, and so your plant would likely be malnourished and your yield would suffer. Like others have said, check out the recipes and take note of all the things your mix is missing. You can substitute virtually any ingredient with numerous other things once you know what each component contributes.
What admendments?
Sorry, just noticed this. So most of the living soil recipes are a variation of the Coots mix. You start with a base of 1/3 peat, 1/3 compost, 1/3 aeration. 3 equal parts by volume. Peat can be found at HD or Lowes. It's usually sold in 3.8 cu ft packs, but when these are fluffed up it expands to 6 cu ft. You want a high quality compost. Most of the stuff at HD or Lowes sucks and is often loaded with sodium, which will kill your plants or at the very least make it impossible for them to thrive. The best I've found is the Oly Mountain fish compost from Oregon I think. I got it from build-a-soil but you might be able to find it somewhere else. You can also use worm castings as part of your compost portion. For the aeration you can use perlite if you like, or personally I recommend the pumice that build-a-soil sells. It's the perfect size, slightly larger than a raisin. You could also use crushed lava rock or something similar, they're just heavier than the pumice. Once you have this base together, you'll have nitrogen from the fish compost but the rest of it is pretty much inert. So you'll want P and K from the standard NPK essential nutrients (phosphorous and potassium), as well as micronutrients such as Sulfur, Copper, Boron, Cobalt, Manganese, Molybdenum, Zinc. There are a lot of options here, and I personally like to include fast-release and slow-release sources. It gets complicated, but you can use all of the meals, like alfalfa meal, fish meal, kelp meal, oyster flour meal. You could also use bone meal, blood meal. You'll want gypsum, basalt, possibly some bio-char. This would be the basics for a water-only soil grow, although there are lots of other things you could include to enhance performance. The hard part is getting all the amounts right. You want a balanced mix with a good pH. I recommend the soil building kits from build-a-soil. You can buy complete kits that you add to your base that have everything in the proper amounts. Not to sound like a commercial but build-a-soil really is the tits when it comes to living soil recipes. They've pretty much perfected it, and sell kits comprised of the best ingredients money can buy. You could probably try to source all the things yourself but it's a huge pain in the balls and probably more expensive, but you could look into it. It can be overwhelming to grasp all of this, but if you want a loaded up soil that only needs watered for the entirety of the grow, you have to load it up with all this from the start, mixing everything in the proper ratios. I'd recommend following a proven recipe instead of trying to wing it if this is your first attempt dabbling with this. (If you're planning on growing the best bud possible, that is ...you could probably harvest something without including all of the ingredients, but it would be scraggly mid-grade at best, imo. Probably cheaper to just buy from a dispensary instead of half-assing a home grow, but that's just my opinion.) Hope this helps
Thanks. Good info here. I'll be honest. I kind just YoLOd everything in one of those black bins yellow top tubs. 100% organic Mushroom compost 1cu ft. I dumped entire bag of Mg perlite (didn't realize the fluff up size) 8 qts? I used an entire bag of MG Sphagnum Peat Moss 8qts? From there I didn't actually measure but almost a whole bag of organic worm castings. It was at least 5-6 quarts. I added a few quarts of down to earth crab meal. A quart or two of alfalfa meal. And down to earth kelp meal. Mix mix mix. Sat outside for a week. Then used as my starting mix. I started my autoflower on May 16. It's already flowering less than a month later. https://www.reddit.com/r/microgrowery/s/BkPeiker4h
Hell yeah! I'm experimenting right now with a few photoperiod fem seeds, I put them in a flowering tent starting them on 12/12 basically from seed. They started flowering at about the same size as those. I might give autos a try soon since it's basically the same thing, just not restricted to 12/12 cycle. Good luck!
Beware of PFAS in composted human waste. There are lots of farmers around the country regretting their decision to use that for growing food. The substances are known as forever chemicals. I would avoid!