I’m more referring to the ones that make a fresh batch for every grow and dump the leftover, some people are like that and I’m just like can I bring over my trailer and haul it for u at least hahaha
That whole living soil term is kinda Confusing really cuz technically all organic soil methods should be flourishing with microbes, why does no till get to coin the term. Only difference is delivery methods, no till builds a hot ass package for lifespan and I recharge my cultures with teas doing soil organics, both methods rely on the microbes and are technically living though, am i wrong?
That’s been my goal as to make a more spectacular garden is adding as much microbe diversity as possible, most recent creative way has been catching a fish from the swamp down the road and keeping it alive with my air pump and a bin of water overnight and releasing the fish the next day using the water as the base of my teas, shit exploded after that one…
This recipe works great for me. Given to me by @nube , although I’m not sure if he got it from another source.
Nube’s Soil Recipe
Base Mix - 1:1:1 ratio
Fluffed peat moss
Mix of good quality compost and/or earthworm castings (ewc)
Rice hulls or other aeration
Minerals - 1.25 cup per cuft of base
Rock dust
Gypsum
Oyster Shell Flour (ONLY added if tapwater pH is 7.0 or below)
Food - 1/2 cup per cuft of base
Fish bone meal
Kelp or alfalfa meal
Malted barley, powdered or milled fine
Neem seed meal
Crustacean Meal (ONLY added if tapwater pH is 7.0 or below)
Additive - 3 tbsp per cuft of base
Langbeinite
Fertilizer - None. Tapwater only. Teas not required.
Topdress at flip with 1TBSP each of kelp or alfalfa meal and neem seed meal per gallon of soil, plus 1" ewc on top of that. Can put a mulch layer of rice hulls on top of that if required.
Reamend in these amounts per cuft of reclaimed soil after each flower run
4cups peat
10cups compost & ewc
Oyster shell flour, crustacean meal, fish bone meal, neem seed meal, kelp/alfalfa, barley in original quantities
Gypsum 1/2 cup
Langbeinite 1TBSP
Rice hulls or aeration as necessary, typically every other cycle.
I’ve had amazing luck just using a good quality potting soil like happy frog, organic dry amendments like earth dust or gaia green, worm castings, and the occasional veg/bloom tea using castings, dry amendments, and some blackstap molasses. KEEP IT STUPID SIMPLE!!!
I do a modified coots mix similar to the one @Vagabond_Windy posted my recipe:
50 percent peat moss
30 percent airation (I use pumice and rice hulls but lava rock can be a good substitute)
20 percent quality compost I use ewc from my worm bin
Amendments -
Fishbone meal 1/2 cup per cubic foot
Crab meal 1/2 cup per cubic foot
Kelp meal 1/2 cup per cubic foot
Cal pho 1/2 cup per cubic foot applied once per run
Neem seed meal 1/2 cup per cubic foot applied once at beginning of cycle
Green sand 1/2 cup per cubic foot
Insect frass (meal worm 1/2 cup per cubic foot )
Alfalfa meal 1/4 -1/2 per cubic foot
Bokashi 1/4 cup per cubic foot
Malted barley (1/4 cup per cubic foot)
Organic oats ( 1/4 cup per cubic foot)
Langbenite 1-2 tsb per cubic foot
Oyster shell flour 1/2 cup per cubic foot
Minerals -
basalt 1 cup per cubic foot
Glacial rock dust 1cup per cubic foot
Gypsum 1/2 cup per cubic foot
Occasional feeds-
Fresh aloe
Coconut powder
Sst (mungbean or corn or malted barley)
Fulvic acid (bio ag)
AACT (fungal or veg based during cycle)
Compost( Thermo/mushroom/ewc)
Fish hydrolysate
Currently working on adding some knf style imputs into my grow always trying to learn and expand my knowledge on growing this lovely plant
Bit of lime or gypsum in the mix should take care of mg in the future. I have bottles of calmag and a big bag of Epsom salts I don’t even have to look at anymore.
I’ve been thinking of figuring out a recipe using mostly buildasoil craft blend for the amendment additions as I ran out of neem meal and kelp and they’re pretty pricey. Anyone done this? Was thinking standard coots recipe(1:1:1 peat, compost/ewc, aeration), 2-4cups of craft blend, and then maybe half of the mineral additions (1/2cup gypsum, 1/2cup oyster shell flour, 1 cup rock dust).
Sounds like a good standard recipe, there’s tons and tons of threads online about it, including the BAS website itself…
However I think Coots Mix has been taken and adapted to sell because it uses harder to source ingredients so its a win for BAS to do so, Coot uses like 7 year old leaf mold for example. Can just go for about 25% compost. Checkout LC’s Soilless mix on the ICMAG thread, organics for beginners has some cheap recipes, or just use Dr Earth or whatever is cheap from a local store.
That Craft Blend already contains minerals, so be careful on overdoing it, less is more.
Yup I think staying on the lower end ( 2 cups of craft blend) would be a good starting point to test it out with the half-strength mineral additions. I haven’t found any specifically on BAS website for just craft blend as the additions, was thinking of emailing them and asking if I can find their email.
Gypsum is calciumsulfate, it doesn’t contain Mg quite the contrary, it can make the Mg being leeched/drained out quicker, on top of ion antagonism, thereby decreasing Mg availability
Just a ‘BIG’ Thanks to everybody for adding to this thread! Trying hard to pull together more LS materials over here in Asia, so the ideas have really helped out a lot! By the way, Thailand just decriminalized last month…it’s still pretty foggy on the details but nobody is waiting for clarity!
If you look at cations and their magnetivity ( +, ++, +++), calcium has the weakest bond, and potassium has the strongest bonding factor.
This means, if you add a bunch of potassium, it will knock of some Mg from the cation exchange sites, and moreso knock off a lot of calcium from the CE sites.
As such, its beneficial when building a soil to add your calcium supplements first. Then add your magnesium. Then rock dusts. Then add potassium last.
If you add potassium first, they will be too tightly bound to the CE sites of peat/coco to allow calcium to bind to the sites.
My routine is first moisten my peat.
Add calcium
Add magnesium
Add rock dusts
Add potassium
Then add all the anion foods (alfalfa, kelp, crustacean, etc).
A good certified organic bagged potting soil to start off, then topdress with kitchenscraps, tree leaves, grass clippings and weeds with deep taproots like nettles, thistle, dandelion…
Been working well for me for years now.
You don’t need to spend a whole bunch of money to get good results.
There’s also companion / cover crops like vetch etc. that make it even easier.
Placing stones and big pebbles on top of your mulched soil will help it decompose faster.
Got 8 different species of plants going on in there.
And entire civilizations of soil mites and rolly pollies.
They stay in there for the most part because it’s abundant with kitchenscraps, they are living inside their food, lol, something us humans should be doing more, create permaculture food forests to live in; free food and a robust system that can handle extreme weather when well designed and helps balance global climate.
On a rare occasion I see a rolly polly wandering around the house but they could also have come from outside, they are abundant here everywhere.
They are harmless, non-toxic, don’t bite, and are rather shy and sensitive.
Saw one chase a soil mite once, it was so funny!
Had a few aphids and thrips too but they disappeared on their own once autumn arrived.
To truely get everything one needed one would have to compost a whole plant buds and all in order to truely have everything needed if if was grew right to start with but yeah you’re on the right track, I personally look for plants in my environment that are bio accumilaters like for instance yellow dock is a iron accumilaters and it’s in the proper form and stinging nettle is another good one that can usually be found in ditches and creek banks and make a JLF
Yes, where ever nettle grows that means it’s very fertile rich soil.
I had one pop up in my indoor soil, very good sign.
Now I can enjoy fresh nettle tea which is super healthy and does wonders for your skin.
Nothing but praise for nettles, such a wonderfully versatile plant.
What is this based on? I’ve just only seen the binding preference in the Ideal Soil written as
Ca > Mg > K > Na. The author explained it as a mix of size and charge.
I would expect magnesium to be the most difficult to remove from soil due to its high ionization energy and I’d expect excess hydrogen to create issues in native/clay containing soil due to its small size and high ionization energy (collapse and bond sheets of clay, exacerbating compaction). Sodium and potassium seem to be the easiest to remove due to relatively low ionization energies, at least compared to Ca Mg and H+, despite their smaller sizes.
