Thanks for the write up @outlier these simple things are often overlooked that can bring benefits to the soil!
I’m no chemist but you may want to research recycled drywall for a gypsum source.
If viable, it would be free from construction sites.
Unfortunately only garden gypsum works. Construction gypsum is a no-no for reasons I don’t know.
For largely non-scientific reasoning I suspect.
Gypsum is the hydrated form of plaster (calcium sulphate). When the dry plaster powder is mixed with water, it re-forms into gypsum (think plaster of paris). It makes a good clay buster, and increases calcium by removing sodium. Unless you need to break up a clay soil, there are better options.
Reclaimed wallboard as a soil conditioner -
http://soils.wisc.edu/extension/pubs/A3782.pdf
The myth of Gypsum magic -
Because construction gypsum often has other things in it such as antimicrobials, desiccant, etc. Garden gypsum is just the mined mineral.
Garden gypsum is cheap and available at Lowes and Home Depot.
^What @ReikoX said. I live in Florida. About 10 years back we had a metric shit ton of Chinese drywall coming in. Something they had mixed in made everyone sick. Houses that had it installed had to be stripped bare and then all the wood/concrete painted with a special coating to neutralize the bad juju.
Update:
Packages have been trickling in over the last bit. I have everything but the driver and hopefully hardware for the SolStrips.
Charged up my biochar today with worm castings, flour, kelp and basalt. It’ll sit for 48+ hours and get mixed in 8 cups/ft.
Once that was done started mixing soil. Took up a hilarious amount of space in my small spot.
Peat, castings and pumice:
Amendments:
Mixed:
Since I’m renting and not sure how long I’m going to be in my place, I didn’t go for the big bed and got 4 15 gallon fabric pots with handles instead. I shovelled half of the soil into these and will shovel the other half in and remix when the biochar is ready.
Sorry for bad pic:
After that, I watered everything(with my new cheap plastic chapin sprayer) with aloe, fulpower and growsil.
Left to right biochar, aloe, silica, fulpower, soapnuts and cover crop seeds. Also have neem oil but forgot to include him.
Lastly for the pics are my SolStrips and one of the racks(I got 4), just waiting for the other package to start assembling.
Also received marshmallow cookies seeds from @deep_rob in the mail today. Thank you so much. These will join the (Grapefruit x Blueberry) x Tangerine Power, Tangerine Power F2 and Jungle Spice F2 seeds from @man-bot. Thank you so much as well.
As soon as I finalize things in the tent, things are gonna get rolling. Getting closer!
Cheers,
Stonedmason
Cheers, I got the seeds in the mail for you too. Should be there in about 10-14 days. Critical purple Kush, Girl Scout Crack, and some Feminized Auto Mix.
Thanks so much ReikoX! This is such a friendly community. I figure I will germinate 12 seeds in total. 4 each of one strain from the 3 generous donors. I figure this will give me at least one strong female from each. Opinions and feedback are welcome.
Are your renting, now I understand why your mixing your soil on a hard wood floor, my wife would castrate me if I did that lol.
LOL. Not only did she not castrate me but she helped mix! It went surprisingly well, nothing a light sweep and vacuum couldn’t handle.
Awesome work Mang, it’s cool to see it come together. It looks like you are almost ready to rock.
Behind every good man, there is a woman…Willing to get her hands dirty…
Mine has no choice but to help me, haha she smokes waaay more than I do.
K.