It would probably help to say that my soil smells…rotting. Like a dead animal. At first I was thinking it was from the fish emulsion but then I remembered that the soil didn’t smell bad at all in the bag. And then I thought it was my dry amendments (Down To Earth 4-4-4) because it smells pretty rank and I top dressed it instead of mixing it in with the soil. But I don’t think that’s it. So then I thought it’s that the soil wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Would giving it some water with H2O2 help oxygenate the soil and get things going on the right track? Idk if these two things are related. This is only like my 3rd indoor grow. First grow in a tent…
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Welcome to OverGrow…
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I wouldnt use h202. Thats gonna make it worse in the end.
Youre growing in a medium thats begging for soil life. You just need to give it the proper home!
Check out this thread!
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That means there’s an enormous amount of microbial life going on already, but too much of it, it’s too hot. It’s like that if you didn’t give your soil enough time to settle before sowing. This explains it all.
Your soil should ideally smell like a forest.
Then the amount of microbial activity is just right and in balance.
Nothing you can do now, just leave it alone.
It’s only temporary, it will settle down on its own as the most vigorous phase of decomposition of the amendments is over.
This doesn’t happen if you topdress little bits of fresh organic matter often.
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That gives me more relief than I can tell you. So it’s just the microbes decomposing the organic material? That explains why it didn’t smell like that until 36 hours after I top dressed
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Yeah, be careful adding dense organic matter rich in nitrogen.
A little bit of everything is better, kitchenscraps work really well because of the diversity.
Diversity of organic matter activates more different kinds of soil life instead of a specific group that specializes in breaking down whatever you added a lot of at once.
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I added 3/4th tablespoon per gallon of DTE dry amendments. It’s 4-4-4 vegetable garden I think. I thought I was going light lol oh well. You live and you learn
This is what’s in it according to their website
Active Ingredients/Guaranteed Analysis: Derived from Fish Bone Meal, Alfalfa Meal, Feather Meal, Langbeinite, Basalt, Potassium Sulfate, Dolomite and Kelp Meal .
Yeah, that’s a shitload of nitrogen…
Even if it’s just a few tablespoons, if it wouldn’t be dehydrated it would probably be half a bucket of fresh organic matter.
Most plants are 80-90% water anyway, it acts like a buffer, but if you dehydrate and then rehydrate, that’s not the same, it’s gonna decompose faster because the fibers are already broken so it decomposes much faster, thus soil gets hot.
Fresh soil right out of the bag really doesn’t need amendments.
Or at least it shouldn’t if it’s quality stuff you actually paid for.
These plants grow in deserts and mountains, remember.
They don’t need all that much.
The organic sellers apply the same marketing tactics as any other company.
Create the illusion of necessity, hype stuff, sell more.
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Would it be a good idea to scoop the first inch or so of soil out of the buckets and discard it, replacing it with fresh soil? Because that’s where all the stuff I added is lol. I know some of it has gotten deeper into the soil but the bulk of it is on the top 1-2”
Just leave it be, just a few tiny spots on a couple of leaves, who cares.
You should see them grow in the wild, lol.
These plants are TOUGH.
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I grew outdoors for a number of years and I’d only visit them maybe 3-4 times a season. They did much better without me there lol. We’ve had this convo before. The old proverb is “the best fertilizer is a farmers shadow” but in my experience, not so much lol.
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Nothing beats LITFA.
Nature does perfectly fine without us.
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@Rogue Indoor cultivation is not nature. You can LITFA yourself into no harvest. Farming in general is very much anti-LITFA. There is so very much work involved.
@GrowTheAtlas , your plants look fine. Watch runoff pH especially with new media, but I wouldn’t worry.
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Yeah but in this specific example, growing a few plants in a tent is not farming. A farmer spends seconds-per-plant MAX on a commercial farm during this phase of life.
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OK well “take a few seconds max” and check pH once in a while if you notice things seem off.
Diligence is required if you want a decent harvest.
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With your already hot soil mix, you’re probably good with no amendments for the first month if not more. Now that you’ve added the DTE you could probably do water only for quite a while.
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Water only was the plan tbh. But now I wish I would have waited to top dress. I have a ph pen and cal mag coming Tuesday regardless. So I’ll be able to ph my run off
Another thought is to go easy on waterings, and the roots will chase the moisture down deeper, and you won’t be watering in the amendments as often, as the plants gets bigger and heartier to handle the “heat”.
/shrug just an idea…
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Have you heard about Calcium conspiracies? 
It looks like pH fluctuations to me … 
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