Hello Fellow Growers, I am medical club member Treatyourself.com and need a small help. Having read through the extensive very interesting thread, I need few supplier address to begin and your advice for a ready to use oreganic soil mix. Thank you and keep the good work in cultivating and assisting others. Cheers
Well there are many. Your local garden shop may have some.. I have read people like Fox Farms " target="_blank">http://www.plantlighting.com/Fox-Far....html I saw one at Peaceful valley : PVFS 1.5 Cu Ft Organic Potting Soil looks good to me :: " target="_blank">http://www.groworganic.com/a/a1.html Plus you could make your own. It gets as deep as you want. I have made and I maintain my own humus/soil here.. Each year for the past 4 years I have fired up the microbes with new materials and have re-composted this soil with new materials. This next year greensand and crab shells are on the list. And I think another box of kelp meal. I think it just gets better each year. I haven't used it yet, I have a bag on the way to make soil blocks, but that Peaceful valley mix looks very interesting.. In the mind of this Organic Gardener that looks mighty like tasty stuff for a plant.. Did that help? Randy (Edited by Randy High at 7:52 pm on Jan. 23, 2005)
Fox Farms Ocean Forest soil is a good well balanced meal for plants also has enough organic ferts to feeds for several weeks.
I'm also a Organic grower like the guys above ^ and IMO there right on the money = Fox Farms Ocean Forest is a awesome ready to use mix , try this link for dealers in your area And" target="_blank">http://foxfarmfertilizer.com/ And O'yeah add some vermiculite to your soil its real cheap, just make sure you buy course Vermiculite and if you really want to spice up the batch add 10% more earth worm casting. Again its real cheap 10 US dollars for both with some cash to spare = Well at least where I shop ..
Nothing like making your own,you can buy Scotts potting mix and adderlite,vermiculite,Earthworm castings,cow manure,bone meal,bat guano, seabird guano,greensand,pyrosol,Kelp meal and mix well.Able to use this mixes up to 3 months sometimes.
a simple but effective universal soil mix is 5 gallons of peat, 2.5 gallons of vermiculite, 2.5 gallons of perilite, and 1/4 cup of dolomite lime. supplement with your favorite feeding mix at fert intervals.
QUOTE Quote: from nobogart on 2:08 am on Jan. 25, 2005 a simple but effective universal soil mix is 5 gallons of peat, 2.5 gallons of vermiculite, 2.5 gallons of perilite, and 1/4 cup of dolomite lime. supplement with your favorite feeding mix at fert intervals. I would wet that mix and let that age a bit before use.. Peat is slightly acid and the lime will interact with it.. I worry that it might be a bit hard on seedlings, maybe, if not aged a bit.. But yeah that is a great place to start. You could add Kelp meal to that as well. Randy after thought:: Add a hand full of top soil from a clean source to provide microbes. (Edited by Randy High at 3:55 am on Jan. 25, 2005)
QUOTE Nothing like making your own,you can buy Scotts potting mix and ...Scotts?...I mean Scotts?...Isn't Scotts and Miracle Grow the same Co.?..and I thought you were the organic guru there HB..
I'm a Tratingyourself member too. Nice to see you here Mauricio. Down To Earth makes a superior organic soil that is coir fiber based. http://www.down-to-earth.com/about.html
There are diffrent types of Scotts soil the one that i speak of has only a quality blend of organic materials with no chemical additives,which should make it organic,Down to earth is a greater all organic soil to use.
llIndigoll what is the best Down To Earth Organic Blend to use for MJ? Organic Blends Acid Mix 4-3-6 All-Purpose Mix 4-6-2 Bio-Fish 7-7-2 Bio-Live 5-4-2 Bio-Turf 9-3-5 Rose & Flower Mix 4-8-4 Transplant Mix 4-3-3 Tree & Shrub Mix 4-2-4 Vegan Mix 3-2-2
The Dawg, When I get the answer I'm about to give to you it frustrates me: It's all relative to what you are doing. Frustrating, eh? Since you copy/pasted the above list from down-to-earth.com why don't you click the hyperlinks there and read up on them? Their Material Data Safety Sheets are also available online. I've used their dry Blood Meal (12-0-0), dry Bat Guanos (3-10-1 and 0-7-0), Liquid All Purpose (5-5-5), and Liquid Bloom (0-5-5) all with decent results. I seldom use their Liquid fertilizers anymore, but I still use the Blood Meal and Bat Guanos once during each plant's development in conjunction with other fertilizers and teas.
My organic mix tends to be too simple for most but seems to work for me quite well considering how far I can take it. Heres the whole thing in a nut shell. --- 70% Medium to Coarse grade perlite --- 15% Quality topsoil [ black not brown, free of composted materials ] --- 15% Worm castings [ think of it as fortified topsoil thats also free of compost ] Thats it, everything else is fed to it. Now heres the reasoning to back the choices. The high ratio of perlite promotes a nice airated quick wet/dry cycle in the medium this will have the plant needing water more often but in the same turn allow the plant to feed on that same kind of frequency. All too often I see pictures of peoples soil mix and wonder how they can think it grows well when the consistancy is that of mud. Sure you only have to water it once every two weeks but when it only grows a few inches in that same timespan you pretty much got your answer. The secondary reason I use perlite over any other medium airator is that it doesnt break down like vermiculite or moss, and when moss breaks down it becomes acidic. This makes the mix recycle friendly if you happen to go thru alot of it as I do. The second two are the stable base for conducting bioactivity. In a pinch during winter I will subst the 15% topsoil with another 15% of wormcastings since I can get the WC whenever but only find good topsoil in the spring and early summer. When I transplant I will also sprinkle some mychorr granuals into the location for a root booster. The primary reason I dont add any amendments to the mix is due to their vast differences in breakdown and availability to the plant. I have seen some people add stuff to their soil like egg shells for calcium not knowing their plant will be long dead and harvested before it gets a chance to use any of that calcium. Much like the perlite the secondary reason I dont add amendments is they dont tend to be recycle friendly. To keep the plant well fed and the medium recycle friendly I will use stuff I consider 99% organic that breaks down naturally without forming salt crystals and has a fairly high imediate availability to the plant. Fish emulsions, various guanos, kelp/seaweeds, etc. Generally if it forms a crystal sediment where the cap meets the bottle I will reread the bottle and it will say something like "organic based" and not be something all organic like fish emulsion. I also avoid any type of ferts with rediculous npk values like 10-50-10 which are nothing but poison at those levels. Fortunately organics tend to have reasonable parts to their npk levels. Another benefit of this kind of mix is the elimination of the "what could be wrong factor". Its too simple and too inert to cause any problems to begin with so as long as you are good about regular feeding the mix is only a few days behind the quickness of hydro. One last concept to grab when understanding soil and ferting is that with hydro you are feeding the roots but with soil you are feeding the soil.
