I know this way after the fact but when you say low amounts, can you specify how weak you made your mixture? (New here, but working with Malana as well.)
Also, I was wondering if you or anybody else might be able to shed some light on whether they’ve tried growing landrace varieties with and without specialized mixes for the same cultivar? My anecdotal understanding is that landraces are very sensitive to additives, and I’m curious what the difference actually is in the finished product/smoke?
Here is an interesting “scholarly study” that attempts to take into account the variables that can impact the development :
(unfortunately, no pure landraces were used)
Ofcourse; intuitively, it seems that the best way forward is to emulate mother nature.
Has anybody taken efforts to do so for their particular cultivars in the soil mix to imitate the point of origin terroir and compared it to their conventional soil mix?
For example, for Cambodian cultivars (ideally understanding the geographical point-of-origin):
Firstly, welcome to OG! Great place to learn.
I have not done separate mixes for the same landrace. I’m trying to find a “one shoe fits all” soil mix for landraces to simplify my own growing and to help others enter the landrace world. The only thing I have done is mimic the homeland outdoors in the ground as much as possible. Moroccan will go into dry, boney soil with little else growing in it. Malana into well drained soil with cow/ alpaca manure( i have no goats).
Everything else gets a similar mix. 33-50% foxfarm ocean forest or other super soil cut with garden soil( my own is superior, but I’ve used Black Gold), compost and castings. Lots of perlite is added to lighten the mix. I often topdress with castings, compost and alpaca manure.
The Malana did fine in a 50% foxfarm mix but took off in the ground with native soil. They get root bound quickly in a cup. Other than that, they are easy to grow. I planted late and they still reached 11- 13+ feet.
I only add nutrients to my own supersoil and don’t know how much i add. I go by eye. I use the regular garden soil, less or more depending on the cultivar. I give wilder landraces a third supersoil, worked landraces half supersoil andvsee how the plants like it. I adjust if needed first transplant.
In the ground i added maybe 5 pounds of bone, blood( or guano) and kelp meal mixed with greensand, fishbone meal, wood ashes and dolomite lime ( total 5 pounds) for a 6×6 area or so. I waited 30 days and planted.
The idea of unique soil mixes is a good one but it complicates things and i don’t have time to make half a dozen or more mixes. My goal is to make it easy.
Here in Upstate NY we can go from winter to summer quickly. Planting time is always a scramble.
Thank you for the detailed reply @Upstate ! Totally understand taking a measured yet simplified approach, after all … there is brilliance in simplicity!
I’m a bit of an ogre when it comes to this stuff, just to make sure I’m understanding you correctly —
For the Moroccan, when you say boney soil do you mean soil with bone meal mixed into it?
(Approximate nutritional profile ranging between 0-12-0 to 3-20-0. According to the author cited below, excess phosphorous can cause issues. Presuming you’ve taken this into account and only use a small amount? What % is do you consider small or ‘boney’ ?
How do you define well-drained soil? Can you specify your approximate %s of components to allow for ‘well-drained’(as you stated that you used lots of perlite)? I’ve started increasing the amount of perlite used to facilitate this as the seedlings were staying wet after watering for a while, with drooping cotyledons etc. and even tried sand but it seems to make the mix much more compact and it concerns me re: oxygen etc.
I’ve been prepping soil mixes on the fly and wondering why the results are sporadic. If I’m reading your write up correctly, any “super soil” mix should be allowed a minimum of 30 days to bind and form it’s new ecosystem prior to any new transplants. Guess I’ll haveto stop winging it; as they say in latin, “Amat Victoria Curam”
I used ‘used soil’ mostly one year old happy frog then cut it with one third perlite and one third charges peat.Moss for.my lebanese and they seemed OK with it.
When fertilizing I cut my usual in half and only gave it to them evey other watering with xal.mag once a month then weak big bloom once when in flower…then plain water for the last two wks
My nutes are megacrop and well water. I typically check the ppm and try to run about 500/ 800 for.modern hybrids…starting low and working up inrill blooming good then switching to well water cal.mag and big bloom solution…I cut it all in half for my landrace Lebanese so very low.ppms
Of.course.I’m.growing for seed not huge flowers …and trying to get the lndrace to finish with no Hermie means as little stress as possible. I use florescents for them also so no light burn
Dry ground with nothing else growing in it, but short grass and weeds. A sign of soil that dries quicker than surrounding soil. Usually rocky ground. Maybe a shelf of limestone a foot down in my area . You want well-draining soil for them.
“Boney” soil doesn’t mean bonemeal. Sorry about that… It’s an Upstate term we use to describe rocky ground.
I had extra perlite for drainage. I would add another 25% to something like ocean Forest. And then I mix my own garden soil with perlite and shoot for a similar consistency, whatever amount of perlite that might be. Lava rock/ pumice is a great alternative but we don’t have it in my area. That fish tank gravel is pretty awesome too, whatever it is.
I have lots of clay in my garden soil so I don’t use sand. Sand and clay make bricks. Compost is a great Amendment and so are castings.
Yes, you want the microlife to have an opportunity to eat the nutrients and process them into smaller particles your plants can use. The microlifes manure and their corpses feed your plants in bite size portions. When people say the soil they have made is too hot, they mean it has not finished “cooking” yet( at least in some cases. Can also mean too strong). The bacteria and microlife work themselves into a feeding frenzy in your pile of nutrient-rich soil and as they do so the soil heats up from their activity. There are different microlife for different temperature ranges and when one type of microlife dies off at a certain temperature, another one takes over. These micro life can get that soil so hot it will literally cook your roots as if they were in a steamer. The inside of a compost pile can reach 170 degrees. That’s from the microlife.
Lastly, if I use any Dry food for additional feeding it will have low numbers like 555 or 322… and I only use a little bit like a tablespoon in a 3 gallon container, placed in one little pile on top of half an inch of soil to keep it from getting washed out the bottom when watered. Some soil is placed on top of it for a buffer or instead I’ll make a food Spikes with a stick just outside the drip line at transplanting time and if you are using a spike you can use higher numbers if you want to. Sometimes I will add two blood meal and two bat guano spikes in a 5-gallon container when I know the plants will be in there a long time. Blood meal is 12-0-0 and bat guano is 0-5-0 or 0-12-0.
I have huge compost piles at work that I have to flip with a tractor. In the winter when it’s below freezing they are still to hot to touch in the center. They have to be monitored or can easily start a fire. Between the bacteria doing there job and the exchange between carbon and nitrogen things can get realy hot. The hotter the better though for quick turn over.
Landraces can be picky, it’s best to mimic the nutrient profile and cycling rate of there native soils to avoid upset plants.
The old saying of less is more really seems to apply here.
Still experimenting with different mixes to see what sort of outcomes can be had — should have some anecdotal feedback to share in the next month or so (recent categorical tests> A. native soil only B. ‘super soil mix’ C. approx 60% native soil / 40% super soil mix D. coco coir & periodic light feeds)
A lot of mistakes, but steadily climbing the learning curve (much faster thanks to everybody’s input and landrace threads). Note to self: use bone meal to bait the trap next time you want to catch some critters.
It’s basically how fast nutrients are replenished within the native soil and at what amounts. The rainforest for example has low nutrients with a fast cycle. Here is a definition I found
“A nutrient cycle is a repeated pathway of a particular nutrient or element from the environment through one or more organisms and back to the environment. Examples include the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle and the phosphorus cycle.”
I always wanted to grow Mazar-I-Shariff because it’s Old World Indica and in my plethora of seeds I only have 2 good Indicas and neither one is Landarace.
Sudan seedling volunteers. Survived a 14 inch snow and 25 degree nights after the snow melted. Damp off took a couple( first pic) but others are still alive.
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