Anyone making their own meals, flours eg: oyster shell flour etc

Indoor Growing Organics
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I’ve been looking around for amendments and where I’m from they seem to lack in a few and the ones they have are quite pricey.

Crustacean meal is $100 per kg… Which puts it out of my price range…

So to fellow OG’ers anyone in here collecting there own oysters shells and then processing them? If so what is the correct process of doing it?

The other would be crab /crustacean meal how are you collecting and processing?

Any other meals your making yourself feel free to share and write down your process might save save us a few dollars for a little elbow grease.

Appreciate your guidance

:peace_symbol:

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I’ve made my own Crab/Shrimp meal here in AK…also Oyster Shells. Cheap to come by up here as a by product of the fishing industry.

Either buy it in bulk or collect myself from fishermen…dry thoroughly then grind into a “flower” can be a bit ripe smelling in the drying process! Lol

Also Salmon, Cod and other fish carcasses to use into fertilizer…but again really smelly to make!!

Alaskagrown

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I managed to find a YT video and they are burning the OS then pounding it.

I was thinking to go to the local fish monger and ask about the OS shells and crab although the crab shrimp stuff might be harder to source…

I can get fish meal and fish bone meal at pretty decent pricing so I’ll skip making that at home cause as you said very smelly.

:peace_symbol:

I wonder if maybe drying out the shells on very low heat in th oven woul dbe ook as opposed to naturally that way you could maybe bypass the "ripe smell :laughing:

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Crustacean meal has a few good nutrients, particularly chitosan and calcium. Nothing that can’t be sourced elsewhere. For example insect fraas for chitosan and garden lime for calcium.

In the states I can get crab or shrimp meal for about $15 per kg. Maybe searching one if those sources would be cheaper. I use a 50/50 mix of both.

Or you could just omit the crustacean meal, I believe Clackamass Coot has dropped it recently. I assume you are making a Coot’s mix

Same with oyster shell flour, if you can’t find it cheap, just use garden lime. Both are mainly calcium carbonate and only differ in some of the micronutrients.

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I’ve been looking into this stuff lately as well as I’d very much like to try a full organic run (about time after almost 20 years) definitely following along and hoping you find what you need, sorry I can’t be of any help personally

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So I’m working on using nubes recipe which is as follows
High ph (7.5 +) tapwater Simplified Clackamas Coots Mix for hard water

Mix on a tarp. This does not need to be cooked. You can use it same day.

1.5cuft bale of peat moss (fluffs to 2.5cuft)
2.5cuft of compost or mix of expensive compost (bu's blend or oly fish compost) or humus and worm castings (mixed in and for top-dress)
2.5cuft of aeration - P & V or organic rice hulls work

4cups Fish Bone Meal
4cups Kelp Meal
4cups Neem Seed Meal (neem cake)
4cups Milled Malted Barley - 2 or 6 row

10cups Rock Dust
10cups Gypsum
1.5cups Langbeinite

NOTE:  The above is what I used in ABQ - just let tapwater sit out for 24hrs, then use without anything else.  For outdoors, straight tapwater is fine.

After the plant is in the final container, top-dress with 1" worm castings on top of the soil, plus 1tbsp each of kelp meal and neem seed meal per gallon of soil. Then compost or cover crop or rice hulls or perlite or sand + mosquito dunks on top.

Normal ph tapwater (6.0 - 7.5) Simplified Clackamas Coots Mix

1.5cuft bale of peat moss (fluffs to 2.5cuft)
2.5cuft of compost or mix of compost and humus and EWC (mixed in and for top-dress)
2.5cuft of aeration - P & V or organic rice hulls work

4cups Crustacean Meal (crab & shrimp)
4cups Fish Bone Meal
4cups Kelp Meal
4cups Neem Seed Meal (neem cake)
4cups Milled Malted Barley - 2 or 6 row

10cups Rock Dust
10cups Gypsum
10cups Oyster Shell Flour
1.5cups Langbeinite

NOTE If your water pH is close to the high end of this range, use slightly less oyster shell flour. If it’s close to the low end of the range, use slightly more of that, crustacean meal, and fish bone meal. Don’t add lime.

The crustacean meal is way out of my price range as mentioned and I live at the ass end of the world even shipping something cheap from another country ends up being double in shipping and that brings the price back up to or more than $100 per Kg far to much

Is this on a forum somewhere I would like to see his new version.

So based on the the above recipe what would need to be changed in terms or quantities if the crustacean/shrimp meal is removed?

I can get the Langbeinite and OSF
In addition to the recipe above I have on hand insect frass, fish meal chicken manure pellets, alfa alfa pellets, dolomite lime

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Pretty interesting he’s removed all amendments except
bassalt/granite
kelp meal
neem meal/karanja
limestone
gypsum
and only EWC…

I’m sure he had a lot more than that in his mixes from memory or am I wrong?

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Same as his original recipe without the crustacean meal. I run a modified mix with biochar and malted barley added.

Also to be honest Coot makes some premium EWC/compost.

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Crab shell and crab meal are two different things. One smells like chalk. Calcium and phosphorus. The other smells like seafood. Proteins, fats, sulfates, aminos.

Lime and crab meal are not interchangeable either. Lime has no NPK. Crab shell is 2% available phosphoric acid. Crab meal is

Careful who’s soil your trying to recreate, if you haven’t smoked their herb first hand. These celebrity growers like Coot have been in left field way too long. Honestly the entire community is questionable, there’s people eating lemon peels for the terps out here

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What are your thoughts on Boron and the addition of it to increase totally awesomeness? Lol

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I haven’t smoked their weed but the recipe is listed above and a trusted, well respected member of this forum grows with the posted recipe… Be sure to check out their grow logs…

Crab mean & crab shell meal would be different, just like fish bone meal and fish meal are different

Welcome to the forum

:peace_symbol:

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he shoots

and creates a new meme…

Cheers
G

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Don’t listen to whoever this person is :arrow_up:

Coots mix is probably the most used, revised and reputable recipe around. And if you got your recipe from @nube like I did, then you’re golden. :green_heart:

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Why, that’s Mr. Boron…

Coots is great, I’m running KIS which is similar and loving the results.

Cheers
G

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I was just being polite :slight_smile: thats the OG way right.

I’m trying to find the alternative of the crab shell meal… and how that effects the rest of the recipe…It’s stupid expensive were I am…

I’ve been growing in a coots mix for a while results are always good. Been buying it already mixed but it’s also starting to become way too expensive to buy now.

I have most stuiff but was hoping a few members in here are were making some of the meals and the process they used to make them.

:peace_symbol:

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I’ve been collecting and cooking my egg shells and zapping them in an old coffee grinder.
It’s almost pure Calcium carbonate and by controlling the grind you can get coarse or fine and that controls the uptake.
I’ve been using this as an oyster shell substitute.

Cheers
G

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I know it ain’t a part of coots recipes but as far as a general " meal " package Ive had wonderful documented success with the Dr earth stuff, they make the general tomato/veggie and the flower girl that are a general mix of most the meals covering the basics in between runs or a top dress for some

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30 bucks for 240 gallons of coverage ain’t to shabby

Someone said oyster shell powder, u can get oyster shells from feed stores for pretty cheap, just gotta run it through a thrift store blender u don’t care about, that’s how I’ve made my own on that one, alfalfa meal I put alfalfa cubes from a feed store in a blender as well
I’ve never had to use lime in my soil mixes as I use fireplace ash and biochar that is free all day long to me, it can swing pH up a lil though so my neighbor gives me all his coffee grounds to balance it back out, can’t stand Neem and avoid it like the plague. I use azomite for my rock dust that I get 20 lbs for 30 bucks on eBay and like every other good pot farmer that’s in the game to stay I raise my own composting worms that have been getting fed all the fan leaves off of my grows and males and in my opinion the catalyst that drives us soil growers gardens. If it comes in a bag it’s not fresh with the alive and well charged microbes that truely benefit your soil health and what better way to recycle those nutrients it takes to make that plant right back into your soil, year after year my soil is only getting better to reuse

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DrEarth not available for me…
I’ve hit all the feed stores and they seem to use shell grit which is comprises of shells and not oyster shells.

I find it strange though cause we got a big oyster industry here. The feed stores seems to have products that a mixed with various components together and not single ingredient mixes

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Amazon, Lowe’s and home Depot all carry the Dr earth, where in the world are u?
Eggshells are perfectly usable as a free substitute granted u and people u know are eating eggs. I raise chickens and we give them oyster shells for the calcium to make the eggs, no reason they can’t be broken back down again and thrown in the garden, much easier on a blender too, just let em dry out first

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