What ratio do I need?

[kkt3]

This is such an awesome place to learn about this cool hobby. I want to try the living soil method. I have a bunch of organic stuff here and want to know how much of each I have to add to mix up enough for a couple 7 gallon outdoor grows next year for 2 plants. I have read the longer your soil sits, the better it will be.

Here's what I have on hand:
-peat moss
-earth worm castings
-potting soil
-kelp meal 1-0-3
-bat guano 10-3-1
-power bloom 2-8-4 the ingredients in this are fishbone meal, bone meal, glacial rock dust, mined potassium sulphate, fossilized carbon complex, rock phosphate, greensand, kelp meal, gypsum and bat guano.
-azomite
-bone meal 4-10-0
-organic non-gmo alfalfa pellets
-horse manure

Is there anything else I should get?

 

[greasemonkeymann]

This is such an awesome place to learn about this cool hobby. I want to try the living soil method. I have a bunch of organic stuff here and want to know how much of each I have to add to mix up enough for a couple 7 gallon outdoor grows next year for 2 plants. I have read the longer your soil sits, the better it will be.

Here's what I have on hand:
-peat moss
-earth worm castings
-potting soil
-kelp meal 1-0-3
-bat guano 10-3-1
-power bloom 2-8-4 the ingredients in this are fishbone meal, bone meal, glacial rock dust, mined potassium sulphate, fossilized carbon complex, rock phosphate, greensand, kelp meal, gypsum and bat guano.
-azomite
-bone meal 4-10-0
-organic non-gmo alfalfa pellets
-horse manure

Is there anything else I should get?

If you are going the have the soil age for that long, you may want to go for different amendments,
personally i'd keep the bat guano out of the lix and replace with fish meal, and alfalfa meal.
I also do not use anything that has bovine spinal parts, scary shit there.
replace with fishbone meal.
the pellets I think have molasses on them, yea?
the 2-8-4 seems a lil low, considering what those amendments normally have...
azomite is ok, but not ideal for a living soil that you are aging that long, reason being is that the fulvic and humic acids created by the composting procedure, in theory, can break down the aluminum in the azomite.. but that's a theory..
i'd go with a gypsum, rock phosphate, greensand, langbeinite mix
horse manure is fine, good source of humus.

you can make a mix with that, it'd grow herb just fine though, i'd do it a lil different but that doesn't mean anything

 

[ShLUbY]

equal parts Peat, EWC, and drainage (pumice, lava rock, vermiculite, perlite though it is not favored among most, and there are many others). This is known as your BASE mix. so to make a cuft. of soil you would use 2.5gal of worm castings (or compost or both), 2.5 gal of moistened peat (moist NOT soggy!), and 2.5 gal of whatever drainage you have on hand.

to each cubic foot of the base (1cuft. = 7.5gal) you can add .5cups of each individual nutrient amendment (the power bloom is not an individual amendment is is a mixture of amendments), and 2 cups of rock dusts in any combination. i will say you CAN have too many individual amendments in your mix which can make it burn plants. so just be careful with the blood and bone meals, and guanos as these can be hot ingredients (can burn plants if there is too much)

you will need a ph'ing agent like the combination of oyster shell flour, crab shell meal, and gypsum, each @ .5cups per cuft. of base soil. Or you can use dolomite lime but i have yet to do a livin mix with dolomite. the crab shell oyster shell and gypsum is a better route as it becomes available sooner than the dolomite does from what i have read.

if you read the first 40-50 pages of this thread https://www.rollitup.org/t/recycled-organic-living-soil-rols-and-no-till-thread.636057/ you will start to get a good idea of what kind of mix you should be doing. you don't have to read it all right now, just skim and look for some soil mix recipes. there is plenty of information in the first 20 pages. but definitely try to absorb some of the basic information.

and MOST IMPORTANTLY you MUST mix your soil and moisten it with a compost tea of microbes, and then let the soil "cook" for 30 days. this allows microbes to eat the nutrients you put in the soil so they can excrete them in a plant available form.

 

[kkt3]

I picked up some Gaia Green glacial rock dust, fishbone meal 5-20-0, and greensand. Is it to early to mix everything together for next springs planting?

 

[green_machine_two9er]

I picked up some Gaia Green glacial rock dust, fishbone meal 5-20-0, and greensand. Is it to early to mix everything together for next springs planting?

Never to early ime. Hell ive been bagging my soil up after the cook process. but they sit for a few months and doesn't miss a step once a simple EWC and molasses tea are reapplied before use.
Also Love your avatar there kkt3

 

[greasemonkeymann]

I picked up some Gaia Green glacial rock dust, fishbone meal 5-20-0, and greensand. Is it to early to mix everything together for next springs planting?

is it just fish bone meal?
that's different NPK than what I've seen

 

[anzohaze]

Yes let it cook longer the better. now add worms and feed the worms and then use soil next spring

 

[kkt3]

Well I think I will make a batch then. And I will add my own tea that I usually make. It's ewc, alfalfa pellets and black strap molasses bubbled for 36 hours in rainwater. Will have to do some reading and find out how much of each to add. Yes, it's ingredients are ground fish bones. So I can take some of the worms from my 2 worm bins in the basement and add them to the mix right away? Will there be enough food in there for them? Thanks green_machine_two9er. Check out my new one... It was an Indica and I had to chop it. Coulda went another 4 weeks easy. Oh well!!

 

[anzohaze]

Well I think I will make a batch then. And I will add my own tea that I usually make. It's ewc, alfalfa pellets and black strap molasses bubbled for 36 hours in rainwater. Will have to do some reading and find out how much of each to add. Yes, it's ingredients are ground fish bones. So I can take some of the worms from my 2 worm bins in the basement and add them to the mix right away? Will there be enough food in there for them? Thanks green_machine_two9er. Check out my new one... It was an Indica and I had to chop it. Coulda went another 4 weeks easy. Oh well!!

He's the worms will break down all ammendments and make readily avaliable to plants....it's organic bro. Worms should be everywhere even in your flower pots

 

[kkt3]

Will the mixture still be working over the winter when it's stored in my shed? It gets well below freezing here.

 

[kkt3]

Went to town and found some vermiculite and perlite. Which is better?

I also have a good source of wood chips, and can get any type and size from fines all the way up to large ones. Could I use them in my mix?

 

[ShLUbY]

the vermiculite breaks down relatively quickly from what i've read/heard. but it's also got a really good CEC, and is good for microbes. you could do 3/4perlite and 1/4 vermiculite or something.... or half and half even.

i wouldn't use the wood chips in the mix (i could be wrong about that), but if they are clean you could use them as a mulch, or shove them in a compost pile and eventually they'll break down.

 

[kkt3]

Thanks ShLUby. Yes the woodchips are coming straight from the sawmills. I can even get them dried for me. What about my mixture freezing over the winter if I leave it outside? Would it be better to have it inside?

 

[ShLUbY]

Thanks ShLUby. Yes the woodchips are coming straight from the sawmills. I can even get them dried for me. What about my mixture freezing over the winter if I leave it outside? Would it be better to have it inside?

i would say that it would be fine, it's just gonna go really slow i would bet, if not go dormant on the real cold days. when are you looking to plant into it?

 

[kkt3]

I'm north of the 49th, so they are gonna be probably going outside last weekend in May 2016. Starting them inside a couple months before that and was hoping to use the soil for that to.

 

[ShLUbY]

I'm north of the 49th, so they are gonna be probably going outside last weekend in May 2016. Starting them inside a couple months before that and was hoping to use the soil for that to.

lol you might want to even wait til mid june then lol. i live about the 43rd and end of may is still iffy imo!

 

[greasemonkeymann]

Thanks ShLUby. Yes the woodchips are coming straight from the sawmills. I can even get them dried for me. What about my mixture freezing over the winter if I leave it outside? Would it be better to have it inside?

if you are aging whatever the soil is, for a long time (6 months or so), then wood chips are fine, but they WILL sequester a lot of nitrogen... if you are to do it that way i'd suggest putting them alongside with something relatively high in nitrogen, like alfalfa meal, or something, you could also charge it similar to biochar, but it won't be a permanent thing...
Wood chips really shouldn't be in a soil mix, rather a compost pile.
They can be used though, but I wouldn't in a soil mix until they are well composted.

 

[greasemonkeymann]

Thanks ShLUby. Yes the woodchips are coming straight from the sawmills. I can even get them dried for me. What about my mixture freezing over the winter if I leave it outside? Would it be better to have it inside?

another thing to consider is certain resinous woods are prone to jacking your acidity..
Honestly I would leave the wood chips out

 

[kkt3]

Thanks greasemonkeymann. I will leave them out.

 

[greasemonkeymann]

Thanks greasemonkeymann. I will leave them out.

if you do want to use them you can, you just need to compost them for a yr or so, rotten/composted wood is a really good aeration to use, I use rotten tree log chunks.
they are awesome