base soil for organic no till

TLDR: Just bottom water (like ebb and flow) your plants if you want optimal growth.

Aeration as it is is a bad joke. Your plants cant eat perlite, vermiculite and lava rock. You need a good loose soil which is totally obtainable without perlite, peat, lava rocks or any of that shit.

Put your soil in the pot, don't drench it/compact it with water. let it sit. let the fungi form connections inside and "set" the soil, now you have structure without amendments - this is how it works in nature.


Water like nature does. A sprinkling of rain on the leaves (or bottom water, see below).

The leaves direct water away from the base of the plant and make a watering "circle" around the plant - this is where it likes water the best. (IE no water falls under plant!)

Plants exude salts from their roots they dont like - in that top layer of soil. The leaves direct the water away from those salts and keep them from contacting the lower feeder roots again.


So everytime you drench plants at the stem/under its leaves, you are just undoing all its hard work to get the bad salts out!!! Plus you are shifting and compacting the soil structure.


This advice originally came from Mandala seeds. Thanks guys!! some of the most powerful growing knowledge I've ever received.

If you start "bottom watering" (like ebb and flow, soak plant from bottom of pot in 2-3" of water and let it percolate upwards) you WILL notice healthier plants.

grassified said:

Aeration is a bad joke. Your plants cant eat perlite,vermiculite and lava rock.s You need a good fluffy soil which is totally obtainable without perlite, peat, lava rocks or any of that shit.

Put your soil in the pot, don't drench it/compact it with water. let it sit. let the fungi form connections inside and "set" the soil, now you have structure without amendments.


water like nature does. a sprinkling of rain on the leaves. (or bottom water, see below)

The leaves direct water away from the base of the plant and make a watering "circle" around the plant - this is where it likes water the best. (IE no water falls under plant!)

Plants exude salts from their roots they dont like - in that top layer of soil. The leaves direct the water away from those salts and keep them from contacting the lower feeder roots again.


So everytime you drench plants at the stem, you are just undoing all its hard work to get the bad salts out!!!


This advice originally came from Mandala seeds. Thanks guys!! some of the most powerful growing knowledge I've ever received.

If you start "bottom watering" (like ebb and flow, soak plant from bottom of pot in 2-3" of water and let it percolate upwards) you WILL notice healthier plants.

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This is laughable

GoRealUhGro said:

This is laughable

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And your reply, poorly thought out!

Ok.. Anyone who makes a statement like.. Aeration is a bad joke ..is suspect in any grow advice i hear feom then on out...

I feel like every hole iv ever dug in nature the soil is not airy at ALL... what your saying sounds good but soil has weight an weight is affected by gravity = soil will compact and harden... its called settling and with the water like nature aspect ya that is good but even if i were to put leaves on top and water on them when the water hits the soil and starts going down it will pull all the small pieces of the soil down and will compact.

rollangrow said:

I feel like every hole iv ever dug in nature the soil is not airy at ALL... what your saying sounds good but soil has weight an weight is affected by gravity = soil will compact and harden... its called settling and with the water like nature aspect ya that is good but even if i were to put leaves on top and water on them when the water hits the soil and starts going down it will pull all the small pieces of the soil down and will compact.

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Good observation, but you're digging in the wrong areas. 99.9% of soil in nature will be like this. but theres a .01%, usually close to a water source and high amounts of organic matter, that at least have a topsoil layer like I describe. The grail soils (.001%)are in very select areas where flood water wash out that top layer of organic matter into a ditch and create a nice deep layer of rich loamy soil.

What we are doing is very rare in nature, in that we work lots of organic matter deep into the soil whereas in nature it forms on the top layer only. bu when you find that soil you'll know. You never find it because wherever this soil it, theres usually a big ass tree growing in it.

let me add to that the best soil i've ever found in nature was at the base of a freshly fallen tree at the bottom of a hill You could tell how good it as by all the new, vibrant green weeds that were taking hold. There was spring nearby because a few inches down the soil was visibly moist whereas around it you'd have to dig a foot. It was super soft and full of earthworms to 1 foot + getting more compact as I dug.

Needless to say I harvest some BIG tomatoes from that one lol.

grassified said:

TLDR: Just bottom water (like ebb and flow) your plants if you want optimal growth.

Aeration as it is is a bad joke. Your plants cant eat perlite, vermiculite and lava rock. You need a good loose soil which is totally obtainable without perlite, peat, lava rocks or any of that shit.

Put your soil in the pot, don't drench it/compact it with water. let it sit. let the fungi form connections inside and "set" the soil, now you have structure without amendments - this is how it works in nature.


Water like nature does. A sprinkling of rain on the leaves (or bottom water, see below).

The leaves direct water away from the base of the plant and make a watering "circle" around the plant - this is where it likes water the best. (IE no water falls under plant!)

Plants exude salts from their roots they dont like - in that top layer of soil. The leaves direct the water away from those salts and keep them from contacting the lower feeder roots again.


So everytime you drench plants at the stem/under its leaves, you are just undoing all its hard work to get the bad salts out!!! Plus you are shifting and compacting the soil structure.


This advice originally came from Mandala seeds. Thanks guys!! some of the most powerful growing knowledge I've ever received.

If you start "bottom watering" (like ebb and flow, soak plant from bottom of pot in 2-3" of water and let it percolate upwards) you WILL notice healthier plants.

Click to expand...

Do you have sources on any of that? Especially the part where you wrote plants exude salts they don't like in the top soil.

Would you like the scholarly article on a silver platter, sir? I told you it was knowledge from Mandala Seeds - well respected and established breeders in the cannabis industry. They may have some literature on it but it was more of an offhand comment that I read on a forum.

I am surprised their FAQ doesn't talk about it.

FWIW thats how I water now and it works much better than what I used to do. it mimics nature. If you want perfection ALWAYS MIMIC NATURE.

grassified said:

Would you like the scholarly article on a silver platter, sir? I told you it was knowledge from Mandala Seeds - well respected and established breeders in the cannabis industry. They may have some literature on it but it was more of an offhand comment that I read on a forum.

I am surprised their FAQ doesn't talk about it.

FWIW thats how I water now and it works much better than what I used to do. it mimics nature. If you want perfection ALWAYS MIMIC NATURE.

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What's your soil recipe if ya don't mind?

dubekoms said:

What's your soil recipe if ya don't mind?

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Tree rot soil (soil immediately around and underneath a fallen tree thats been rotting in a moist area for 2+ years - keep in mind i'm in a tropical climate where things decompose faster) + surrounding red dirt.

The red dirt is some really good Ag soil, full of nutrients, lacking in just a few that's easily remedied. So I correct with very minute amounts of magnesium, potassium, sulpher (SulPoMag - u can buy it online).

The heaviness and nutrient density of the tropical clay mixes nicely with the super fluffy, loamy, mostly insect frass that is the decomposed stump "soil". It's nearly as fluffy as slightly moistened and fluffed peat moss for reference.

Then in the bottom, or sometimes mixed in I'll add some osmocote - this stuff is plant steroids. They seem to like this "chem-organic" mix I give them, it;s the best of both worlds IMO.

No need to drench the soil with expensive chemical salts 90% of which are probably washing out of the soil not even being used by the plant.

I start them off in 1 gallon grow bags with this mix - then I transplant into ~200 gallons of tropical red soil + my local composting facilities composted green waste + various seaweeds, coral sand (for calcium + micronutrients).+ the secret ingredient/method.

I would prefer this to sit for ~6-8 months before planting in it as this gives best results.



By the time they have reached the end of flower and are being flushed, the osmocote is long gone (for sativas this may be over a year after I put them in the 1 gal bags) - it's only there to get them going strong at first.

I make extracts, hash mostly, I always sample the buds and do a small cure batch of each plant in case I chance upon some good flower. The rest of it is made into extract.


I don't use those toxic hydrocarbon, co2 BS extraction techniques either.. You are destroying the trichomes structure, mixing all the terpenes, resins, psychoactive materials together in ways they were never meant to be.

Really what you want to be smoking is a perfectly untouched, well cured trichome that hasn't been crushed, dissolved or otherwise mutilated from its natural form. It's difficult to get this untouched, intact trichome in hash but possible (something like kief) and is IMO the best way to smoke cannabis extract.

Behold the complexity and perfection of the trichome. Keep your terps and cannabinoids separated folks

kratos015 said:

If you already have them then may as well use them I suppose, just be cautious as both fish bone meal and alfalfa meal break down and decompose rather quickly and you'll likely have to let your soil "cook" for a few weeks if you choose to implement these amendments. Temperatures from the decomposition process can reach up to 190F+ and that is definitely not something you want happening to your roots.

The main reason I shy away from guano, fish/blood meals, and alfalfa/cottonseed meals is because they break down incredibly fast where as the crab and neem take more time to break down and thus don't get as "hot" as the formerly listed ingredients do. Alfalfa meal especially as you can overdo things with alfalfa meal and cause lots of problems.

Hope things go well.

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As long as you're on top of sticking to the recommended rates there shouldn't be any issues with burning. I just stick with the lower range and get all of the benefits with no risk of burn.

For my big beds I just use the Down To Earth BioLive and All Purpose. There both complete blends and between them there's pretty every ideal dry organic amendment and beneficial inoculant you could want. On top of that I don't have to worry about calculating nutrient or amendment ratios.

I may be biased towards DTE. I sometimes just ride my bike across town to the Down To Earth retail store since I live in the same town. In fact, everytime I go down their it's like a trip to memory lane since it's right across the street from the jail where I served part of my sentence and met up for the road crew to do my community service about fifteen years ago when I got busted for growing. We've definitely come a long way since then.

ya my ratio is pretty simple i have 5lb of everything an that = 15 cups i have 30 cu ft of soil so its half a cup per cu ft.. i screwed up when i ordered the azomite i only got 2 lb. so im gonna try and find some more mineral. i was talking to the owner of my local garden store (seems very knowledgeable) he was telling me how he gets all the mineral in his garden, he buys cattle mineral its the same thing an you get way more for way less. like he said mineral is mineral it dont matter what form it comes in, he just speads it over his garden and it breaks down and inters the soil. you can buy it with
Sulfur
Potassium
Magnesium
Calcium and Phosphorus in it anyone ever tried this? i might make a new thread