Nutrient Lockout in Organic Grow?

It doesnt really matter how many you start out with. as long as its more than 10. They will breed to fit the pot size you put them into. If you're going to be using a 5 gallon pot, you'll want to use more amendments with a slower breakdown process. This way your cover crop (mini clover) and worms can replenish your medium more efficiently. I would really recommend using a 20 gallon or larger for a more worry free experience.

In a 5 gallon, you'll want to have readily available powdered dolomite lime as well as epsom salt and molasses . You'll need to water with these about every other week at 1tsp (each) per gallon. This will keep your ph buffered as well as take care of any offset caused by using the smaller pots.

I really recommend 5 gallon pots for autoflowers because of the finite living arrangement. There is a link in my message below to my current grow journal if you need to look at some amendments typically used in this type of setup.

Wizard of Nozs said:

I would really recommend using a 20 gallon or larger for a more worry free experience.

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I wonder if some people just build large soil beds in their grow rooms. This seems like a good idea, and doable, but what would be scary would be if some kind of mold or mite infestation occurs, it may be hard to control.

Sure do. My current grow is a 2x2 fabric pot which holds around 60 gallons of medium. Got it going indoors. I live in a dry area so humidity isnt an issue for me. I even put lady bugs in there to munch on the insects that come along with having a living soil. They're all beneficial to the environment and provide some type of stabilization. You could see white type mold forming in your living soil but this is also normal and beneficial to the plant.

Ok, I'm trying to think of a plan to maximize my learning this summer. Right now, I'm considering this for my outdoor grow:

• I'm allowed four outdoor plants outside legally.
• I'll buy four 65 or 100-gallon smart pots, fill them up with living soil, throw a bunch of worms in and cover the top with clover. All I'll do is water daily because smart pots dry quickly, but no amending with anything.
• OR, I'll dig four holes in the ground, approximately 3 feet in diameter and 2 feet deep, throw a bunch of worms in, cover with grass seeds and grow right in the ground.
• I'll do Uncle Ben's topping method and defoliate nothing at all.
• Which would you think is the better of the two plans? In a pot or in the ground?

For my indoor grow, I'm going to try various methods simultaneously to see how the plants respond:

1. ProMix HP amended with only Gaia Green 4-4-4 fertilizer and some Kelp Meal. Top-dress a little when transplanting to larger pots, which is around the time I'll flip to 12/12.
2. Use the local, living soil that I can get and grow with no amendments.
3. Use the local, living soil that I can get, and top-dress with Gaia Green when I transplant to larger pots, which is around the time I flip to 12/12.

I guess that the best way for me to learn this is to keep trying different things and document it all, in addition to reading the advice given on RIU daily. I'm doing the best to soak in everything I can learn.

Cheers, I hope you're all doing well while in the middle of all this COVID-19 related crap that's going on. I just found out that I have to work from home until September.

ChrispyCritter said:

I build my soil and don't use any other nutes during grow.

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Hey ChrispyCritter, it seems like you have a good organic soil mix that you use. Would you be willing to share it? There are so many different recipes on here, it’s overwhelming. Cheers.

With a good living soil you can just use sst and aact and I look at like this I’m not feeding the plants I’m feeding the soil the plants are almost byproduct also really important to have right level of moisture which I struggled with so I brought a blumat digital Moisture sensor best thing I have ever brought
Tea wise
Sst is just organic popcorn & barley for veg flower is popcorn & mung beans
Brew in a bucket for with air pump/stone for 3-4 hours

aact is 3 cups of homemade compost 2cups worm castings 1cup of organic chicken shit brew in a bucket with air pump/stone for 17 hours after 8 hours I add 2 table spoons of molasses

Hey anyone know... if you top dress with worm castings... does that raise your ppm ???

StonerSteveG13 said:

Hey anyone know... if you top dress with worm castings... does that raise your ppm ???

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I know it lowers your pH...

So I just want to add some points here skim reading through this thread. I will share what I do with my soils and maybe this will help you make sense of what it means to grow organically.

My soil mixture is (koots mix):
1xpart Spaghum Peat
1xpart Aeration (preferably Pumice)
1xpart Worm Castings

I then add a combination of organic material and minerals. Roughly material and 4cups of minerals P

Per 5gallon pot.
Organic Materials (Max 2cups):
- Soyabean Meal
- Alfalfa Meal
- Boneameal
- Kelpmeal
- Insect Frass (Only because I cant get crusatacial meal where I live)
Minerals (Max 4cups)
- Volcanic Rock Dust
- Gypsum

This is my base. All I had from here is earthworms, arthropods (white springtail mites) & different types of bacteria and fungi. Based on the soil food web, which is what we are trying to replicate here, the combination of all of these things will create a rich biomass of nutrients for the plants to take up. The breakdown of these materials will take roughly 3-4 weeks to break down depending on your soils fertility. So all I do is add the above amendments every 3-4 weeks depending on plant size etc. Once a soil is built, I tend to wait longer before I top dress simply because there is so much nutrients available to the plant that its not really necessary.

I then ensure there is a good healthy layer of organic material on the tip for the bacteria, fungi, springtails and earthworms to do their thing. This creates an ecosystem that continues to create a biomass that the plant can draw nutrients from. I only add beneficial microbes and fermented plant extracts to the mix to up the nutrients available at any given time based on the plants development.

Rule of thumb is that the amount of organic material i add per a run is the equivalent of the ratio I have mentioned above so 2cups of organics and 4cups of mineral which I add via top dress. I add this in two dressings, first one week before flower, second end of week 3 of flower.

Watering is maximum 10% soil volume every 3 days. I water daily at roughly 3.5% soil volume everyday to get the soil nice and moist. This is plant size dependant.

So my recommendation is to just build your own soil from scratch, control what goes in there and troubleshooting is a million times easier. If you really want to learn, just check out Buildasoil bro, everything you need right there.