Converting Super Soil to Living Soil

After having a successful couple runs with my first super soil batch. I would like to convert it to a living soil. One to save money, and two less work in the long run. What are some steps you might take to transition a super soil to a living soil? Mulch top layer? Adding compost worms to the pot? Currently my super soil is very ingredient diverse, I took the kitchen sink approach. I’ve found that it’s very nitrogen heavy, and had some N burn after throwing a teenage clone in. I was layering it underneath a basic Gaia green 444 and EWC mix with peat and perlite. My thought is that since it’s so heavy in N I could get away with just top dressing occasionally. I’ve been watching and seeing a lot of build a soil stuff. What makes it different from a super soil other than the mulch layer and compost worms that I see some people adding? I already add microbial inoculants. I even ferment my own LABs. Anybody that would like to chime in on my high thoughts please do! Thanks!

I feel like the line between super soil and living soil is kinda blurry. Practically all organic soil (or soilless mixes as most people do indoors) has life in it, but some mixes are just microbes and some have more visible forms of life like worms, soil mites, insects, cover crops, etc.

Just based on my experience of re-using my soil and not dumping out my planter boxes for the last few grows, it seems like if you have plants growing in it relatively consistently, don't let it dry out, and add compost or worm castings when you amend, signs of life will start to appear.

It probably also helps to have a mulch or cover crop (living mulch) to keep the top layer of soil moist. And not throwing away your plant waste like roots, stems, leaves, and trim, just leave the old roots in the soil and bury whatever you trim off so soil life can decompose it.

Anyway, just my 2 cents on it

weedstoner420 said:

I feel like the line between super soil and living soil is kinda blurry. Practically all organic soil (or soilless mixes as most people do indoors) has life in it, but some mixes are just microbes and some have more visible forms of life like worms, soil mites, insects, cover crops, etc.

Just based on my experience of re-using my soil and not dumping out my planter boxes for the last few grows, it seems like if you have plants growing in it relatively consistently, don't let it dry out, and add compost or worm castings when you amend, signs of life will start to appear.

It probably also helps to have a mulch or cover crop (living mulch) to keep the top layer of soil moist. And not throwing away your plant waste like roots, stems, leaves, and trim, just leave the old roots in the soil and bury whatever you trim off so soil life can decompose it.

Anyway, just my 2 cents on it

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Thanks for your 2 cents! Right around my train of thought also. Definitely going to be upsizing to 15 gallon pots, I’ll probably stick with Gaia green 444 and 284 as well. Looking forward to more replies hopefully!

Super soil is just a name subcool made up for his pre amended soil. It’s just another term used only by cannabis growers. Any soil with microbial life living in it, is living soil. It sounds like you have it mostly figured out though. The more soil mass the better. Cover crops and mulch are super helpful as well. A big “no till” bed is a good way to go and gets gets better with age. I’ve been running my bed for a year and a bit now since I had to mix in the soil from a smaller bed and it just keeps getting better every cycle. The older and more colonized the soil is the less you have to add to it as well. The goal(for me anyways) is to have soil run on auto pilot


I’ll probably add 2 or 3 cups of bloom and 2 cups of oyster shell flour before I flip to flower and that will last them until harvest

The main difference I think of with super vs living soil is balance. Super soils I think of high is bone, and blood meal and other amendments with high NPK numbers. Living soil to me is cultivating the relationship between the microbes and plant. Usuually with more equal NPK and not really anything above 5-6

green_machine_two9er said:

The main difference I think of with super vs living soil is balance. Super soils I think of high is bone, and blood meal and other amendments with high NPK numbers. Living soil to me is cultivating the relationship between the microbes and plant. Usuually with more equal NPK and not really anything above 5-6

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Yeah my super soil recipe is full of amendments of all kinds, I used fish and fishbone meal, feather, neeem seed, alfalfa, crab meal, guano, rock phosphate, gypsum, greensand, glacial and volcanic rock dusts, langbeinite. It seems that coots mix / BAS sticks with plant and fish based meals rather than bone n blood meals. I definitely have the diversity in my mix I’ll be upsizing to 15 gallon grassroots living soil fabric pots and from there if I have good success I’ll either switch to esrthboxes or beds in my 5x4