A micro living organic soil grow

Indoor Growing Growroom Diaries
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Thanks, but I know they’re prob far from where they could/should be… we’ll see how they react to this defoliation now that they won’t have as many leaves to buffer whatever nute/ph/water/? issue may or may not being going on…

I just redid the ph test again, removing most rocks, and it seemed to settle on 6.6, so if that’s the case I would think it’s ok, however I will say I didn’t get too deep into the pot so maybe it’s a lil different lower down (always something lol).

Next run I’m basically goin some mix of pure peat, coco, pumice, and compost (either Malibu’s Bu or Symsoil)… possibly dolomite if the ph is off… this should set me up for a pretty decent living setup that is mostly inert (I think, unless the compost isn’t) which should let me implement this newer kind of natural farming method that IGer developed I’ve mentioned earlier…

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422

Hmm, actually, I think nvm about the ph, screw that probe, I just measure some straight up peat and it’s giving me 6.5… that stuff I feel like is supposed to be a ph of 4 or 5 or something like that :roll_eyes:

I feel like it’s just picking up the ph of my water

This shit was a brand new probe to :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

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test something with a known ph, make sure that thing is working.

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If you’re going to continue to grow in one gallon pots, I don’t even see why the blumats are necessary, unless you’re planning on being away from your garden for days on end. Just take each pot out of the tent and hand-water them. I do the same thing with my seven gallon pots, which are much heavier, but it gives me a chance to inspect each plant and I feel like it gives me some control over them, too. Plus, it allows me to rotate the spot that each pot is in so that they all get equal amounts of light.

Also, that defoliation… hoowee. You took off a ton of leaves. The plants are really probably gonna need those leaves in the upcoming weeks. In coco or hydro grows, it’s fine to hack away like that, because you’re force-feeding the plants with salt-based garbage. In organic grows, I leave everything on. No defoliation at all. Between the one gallon pots and the total absence of fan leaves and shit… I dunno. I don’t mean to be a downer or anything. It’s all a learning experience haha.

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I got some ph strips coming so hopefully they will show some differences between them

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lol yah I have three different things to check the ph with… that way if I think one of them failed I try the others. 2 different solutions as well as a probe.

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Yeah, people can learn from my mistakes hehe

The blumat idea was to have a set it and forget it type deal and not have to worry about the watering…

I think my issues mostly have to do with human error… I just rewatched an instructional video and yeah, I had the dialing in wrong as well so, once again we’ll see :laughing:

As for the defoliation, you may very well be right on that… I do wonder tho if the humic/amino regiment might make an organic approach closer to the hydro/salts since this is supposed to be the most avail form for the plants as far as I understand.

I’ll have to ask some guys on discord that are using this protocol what they do.

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Yeah, I mean, that’s a thing, I guess. Adding lots of stuff to your water. I’ve always felt that, as far as organic growing is concerned, the whole point is that you really don’t have to do shit except water your plants. I mean, you can do a lot of stuff if you want, but you also don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m not cheap, but the less I have to spend on my grow, the better. Especially now, in the summer time, when I’m already running my AC all the time and the lights, too. If I can grow great weed with just water and the occasional kelp tea or coconut water or whatever, I’m gonna do that.

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I use classic organics with alfalfa meal and bone meal and green sand. I think organic systems can be as complicated as you want it to be :wink: or as simple.

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Yeah, everything can be as complicated or as simple as you want. Just like in life, never mind growing haha. But my point is, mix up a good batch of soil and call it a day. Even if you choose to do nothing, your weed should turn out pretty dang good.

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I would love a water only mix from rooted clone to harvest, that would def be nice, but also I don’t know how possible that is in small containers… smaller than one gal even.

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Well, you pretty much did mix up a water-only batch of soil, but then you complicated things with the rocks on the bottom of your pots and the constant addition of humic acids and whatever all else haha. We’re passed that now, though. But yeah, in those one gallon pots…. sheesh. Definitely hard to do. Like I said a while ago, I’ve done the water-only thing in three gallon pots several times and got great results. You could fit the same amount of those in your space as you’ve got with the one gallons. Probably you could even fit some five gallons in there.

Anyway, like I said, it’s all a learning experience. We told you to LITFA, constantly, and you did the exact opposite haha. Chopped all of the leaves off your plants and everything haha! I’m sure they’ll still turn out okay, though. I fried the fuck out of some plants a couple years ago, way too much fulvic acid. They looked like your plants do now, with all of the leaves basically gone, but they still turned out amazing. You’ll be alright.

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433

Flower week 4 update:

There has been an interesting discovery which may very well have contributed to my issues or be the exact cause.

I put my old double pronged ph/moisture probe into a few different places of a few of the pots. At least a couple of them had different PHs in different areas! Some wild differences, like 7 in one area, then in the same pot, like 4 or 3.5 in another area (seemed like usually depth of probe made the change)!!!

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So I think this might have to do with what @minitiger partially had said in that possibly having those different layers of soil may have lead to this!!!

I never checked the PH of those individual layers/soils after I composed and before I put them in the pots! A lot of people will say you don’t need to PH soil or maybe it’s that you don’t need to PH your water as much cause the soil determines it more? Well, I guess when you get random samples for clay and silt and then further add random stuff to it vs some premade off the shelf stuff, prob a good idea to test it out lol

Next runs I may just go the traditional (non layered) route with most using just the off the shelf B.A.S. Light mix (which is working great right now with the clones along with humic and aminos every watering, and mycos, comfrey FPE, and Fish Sh!t all here and there) but I might retry the layers with one pot, PH’d prior of course.

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I think the flowering plants might be doing ok though, but we’ll see:

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As for the capillary surface Blumats, I believe I still have yet to reach their optimum settings, still dialing lol and still learning with more experience and communication with the Sustainable Village. This compiled with the soil drench feedings has been tricky to figure out, but basically, I have taken what the amount of feed would have been had I put it in the recommended watering of 10% volume of pot size, but put that amount of nutrients into approx 2.5% of pot size amount of water (so more concentrated) so they can get the same amount of total feed without being over watered (hopefully, well that’s the idea)… before I was giving the recommended concentration but only 2.5% volume of water so they weren’t getting the total amount of feed that was recommended essentially if that makes sense.

Also, now I’m at a point where the mat is on the drier side, the bottom sides of the pots have been dry, but the center bottom is still moist with the probes saying the pots are still very moist… I think they will further dry out with where the dial/mat might be now, and then I might slowly and slightly start inching my way with the dial. That was one of my flooding mistakes confirmed by the company, when I thought it was too dry, I adjusted two full triangle markings on the dial (which is maybe a quarter turn?) where I should have been going like maybe a third of one triangle or something, checking adjustments every couple hours to get it right.

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I’ve found that “not needing to ph water in a soil grow” assumes a few things:

  • Your water isn’t excessively acidic or alkaline or excessively soft or hard
  • You have an existing and thriving microbiome population in your soil
  • You have no problems keeping the soil at a very consistent moisture level
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I used to not pH my soil grows, but I’ve found dropping to 6.5 really does make a noticable difference indoors. It’s just how I do it, YMMV

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I’ve tried it both ways in my soil grows. If I leave my tap water as is (roughly 8.1ph and 150 ppm tds from tap) my plants tend to have more problems, especially in newer soil. If I ph to between 6.2-6.8 my plants look happy as can be…unless I do something else to them, like blow a fan directly at them for hours or overwater.

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This.
Early on in my growing career i was using the hempy bucket system and was fighting all sorts of nasties late in bloom then I saw on ICmag blynx growing great looking, productive plants using only promix and ewc.
Kept it nearly dry too in a deep tray with no weep holes.
So then I next went overboard on the TLO method which works great btw but has a high number of ingredients.
Now when I recycle my mix, I only add blood and bone meal, some lime, gypsum and rock dusts.
Later on in flower supplement with Burpees water soluble organic ferts.
Lots of success now with 1/3 the work.

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Like, the Rev’s TLO? That mix is pretty expensive, but mostly because he adds a lot of ingredients that are totally redundant. You can mix up a batch of Coot’s mix for like a third of the price of the Rev’s mix.

Anyway, sounds like you know that haha. I definitely appreciate the ease-of-use or whatever that organic growing provides. And I like the fact that if I do fuck up, it isn’t gonna fry my entire garden in twelve hours, like growing in hydro will. Maybe I’ll get some crispy leaves a week after adding too much of something, but the plants won’t die on me in a day haha.

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I use RO water, ppm’s will vary, depending on how recently I changed the filters. Anywhere from 9-50 (right now they’re at 36, even though I changed the filters and the membrane pretty recently, don’t know what’s going on there), but I’ve never, ever checked the pH of my water. I have no idea what it is. Maybe I’ll see about that and raise or lower the pH to 6.5.

I thought there was some deal with using pH up/down in organic growing. Like, it’s not good to use that? Detrimental to the soil life? Something like that, anyway. Probably read that somewhere years ago and it just stuck with me.

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Well, it’s salts. Ph down is phosphoric acid, pH up is a mix of potasium hydroxide and potasium silicate. (If your using pH up no need for expensive silica additives, it’s already in it!)

So you do need to realize you are adding phosphorus and potasium by using these products

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