Should I be watering to runoff?

[Raspberrykiwi]

Ahhh.... the struggle of living and learning. I wanted to cry when my first plants died. Lol.... it's funny to me that when I first started I though to myself "it's just growing a plant. Water, light, dirt, how hard can it be? ". Man if I only knew.

Man. I thought “ima follow the mr canuk from YouTube. Dry amendments and a peat moss”. I fucked up. Idk what he does that makes it work, but I definitely couldn’t. First try making my own soil lol. Went terrible. I’m sure now I could do it no problem, some peat, perlite, compost, ewc and wallaaaa. My very own homemade soil mix lol.

 

[Hollatchaboy]

Well yeah. Organics is based on the amount of organic matter in the soil. The more, the better. You can get away with soil, compost and worm castings from seed to harvest. But if you start removing compost and worm castings and just use soil, you’ll run into issues with only soil and dry amendments. I used dry amendments only my first try, cooked my plants in 2 weeks. I tried to add more amendments thinking maybe they’re deficient. They died within a couple days.

I feel dry amendments are needed

Man. I thought “ima follow the mr canuk from YouTube. Dry amendments and a peat moss”. I fucked up. Idk what he does that makes it work, but I definitely couldn’t. First try making my own soil lol. Went terrible. I’m sure now I could do it no problem, some peat, perlite, compost, ewc and wallaaaa. My very own homemade soil mix lol.

Lol yea he does have a way to make them look.... perfect. I started off with hygro hybrid. It's the same with him. They make it look so easy, and it is once you get the hang of it, but until then.... let's just say I never used to have anxiety.

 

[Hollatchaboy]

I feel dry amendments are needed

Lol yea he does have a way to make them look.... perfect. I started off with hygro hybrid. It's the same with him. They make it look so easy, and it is once you get the hang of it, but until then.... let's just say I never used to have anxiety.

Disregard first one. I thought it was someone else. Lol

 

[Hollatchaboy]

How is it too late to switch to organic. Give a nice watering til runoff to wash out the salts. I told someone do that mid grow and his plants came out great. If you aren’t an experienced grower, bottled nutes can be difficult. Getting his soil right can definitely save them plants.

I know this is a few days old, but I just wanted to say that I agree. Imo bottled nutes with soil is a pain in the ass. It's hard to get the ratio just right and by the time you do you've lost out on mass. Good compost and ewc, some dry amendments, perlite, just a lil of each of those. Top dress. Water. It made my life much simpler. That's just my experience though and I'm pretty dumb, so if it works for me.....

 

[GardenWeasel77]

Well yeah. Organics is based on the amount of organic matter in the soil. The more, the better. You can get away with soil, compost and worm castings from seed to harvest. But if you start removing compost and worm castings and just use soil, you’ll run into issues with only soil and dry amendments. I used dry amendments only my first try, cooked my plants in 2 weeks. I tried to add more amendments thinking maybe they’re deficient. They died within a couple days.

Interesting. If I were to make my own soil with compost ewc perlite and ffof what ratio would you recommend?

 

[Raspberrykiwi]

Interesting. If I were to make my own soil with compost ewc perlite and ffof what ratio would you recommend?

Depends on how many gallons you’re in. I do 1/2 of the pot size of straight FFOF. Then add equal amounts of EWC and compost. Add the remaining amount of perlite. 4 quarts = 1g. So for 3 gallons, you would use 1.5g or 6 quarts of FFOF, 2 quarts of EWC, 2 quarts of compost and probably around 3-4 quarts of perlite. Then to add 1 tablespoon per gallon of your dr earth. Should fill a 3 gallon to the top

 

[GardenWeasel77]

So quick update. I started I bought some miracle grow all purpose liquid fert thanks to drsaltzmans advice. I then bought some gh bloom to get me through the rest of the grow. Plants seem to be doing better.