One of my friends just started growing for the first time and they’re gonna be using just osmocote plus and good soil. I really look forward to their results!
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Used it for 30+ years. Does that count? 
Look…I’m an old pHart, 73. I’ve trialed stuff on about every kind of plant material you can think of for 50 years.
For veggie gardens it’s an economy of scale issue. Damn stuff is very expensive ever since Uncle Joe took office. (Green new deal, pro organics, tariffs on raw synthetic materials like potash, etc.) Few months ago I planted cukes, okra and cantaloupe in the veggie garden. I scratched some in. Getting a ton of tomatoes mainly from the greenhouse. Lovin’ one of my favorite grape tomaters, Juliet.
UB
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I have been using Osmocote since 1976. My outdoor guerilla grows thrived on it. I have used it on my indoor grows also when I knew I couldn’t maintain them as much as I should. I have had 0 issues in all these years. I am definatly a fan of this product with it’s ease of use and low maintenance.
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7 months old re-vegged Lapis at harvest. Osmocote and MicroKote came thru. Doing the root pruning thing again, this time with MicroKote - #100 by OldUncleBen
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I recently bought some Osmocote and decided to test it out on some of my veggie garden plants.
My tiny basil plants started to take off. all the other plants I used it on seem very happy. While i’m not as old as you, I have been gardening 45+ years. Oddly I never tried Osmocote. In the past it was Peters which Is now Jacks. So I may test Osmocote on 1 plant in my fall indoor to see how it goes. Thanks for starting this thread. I may have never tried this otherwise.
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I’m doing all of my autos with Osmocote, based on this thread.
They’re in a homemade soil mix that’s about half and half Cococoir and compost, with a good dose of perlite in it.
They’re all in containers. I dug a hole for the seedling, dumped a small handful of bonemeal in the hole, plopped the seedling in, and we’re off to the races.
They seem to be VERY happy so far. Not sure why, with the terrible weather we’ve had in Maine so far. I think for the past 6wks, we’ve had maybe 4-5 days of sunshine. Everything else is just gray/rain/drizzle.
Folks around me planted their gardens, TWICE, washed out each time, and just gave up.
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Congrats!
Yeah, Os is the bomb. Used it for decades which should speak for itself.
If you’re growing outdoors using pots here’s a trick - dig a 3" deep hole a little bigger than the bottom diameter for the typical 3-5 gal. pot. Make sure the drainholes are not plugged, drop the pot in the hole, kick up soil around the pot and water as usual. Roots will grow into native soil which is a good thing. I did this for big pot plants subterfuge in my ag field. Ran a 1/4" drip tube off my main irrigation line into the top of the pot…
Gardening is all about the roots. As soon as folks figure this out, they’ll excel.
Uncle Ben
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Agree with the roots…that’s why I give everything a little dose of bone meal in the hole before the plant goes in.
What’s the advantage of planting the pot?..seems to me that if you just put the plant directly into the soil, the roots grow unabated, instead of just through the drainage holes…am I missing something?
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It’s a matter of not having to disturb the roots and convenience while taking into account the nature, the texture, of your native soil @Lobstah.
You wouldn’t treat a perennial that way though. You’d pop the plant out, correct for any root problems and then plant - root spin out, girdling, J rooting are serious issues that WILL stunt or eventually kill the plant, like this mango tree. Damn thing just fell over about a year after planting. Never rooted into a very fine bed of soil in a large bottomless Root Builder pot.
Severe root spin out.
Uncle Ben
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Checked on my plants yesterday…Charlotte’s Dementia and the Black Molasses both have buds.
Think I popped them around 6/1. We’ll see how they do. Hoping I can get fall crops of carrots and beets started this coming week.
Lob
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will be interesting to see the yield. I grew some autos last year for breeding/seeds, so kept them small. I am tempted to play around a little this year, but I’ve got so many seeds I should just leave them alone and go for harvest 
Lob
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Lookin’ good!
I did this for years with guerilla grows. Mostly because it’s ledgerock country here. The pot itself was more dirt than I could dig for a hole in many spots. Sinking the pot helped, but I would of course dig and improve a hole when possible.
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NH4 is an interesting cation with some positives and some negatives. For one thing, it’s a very small molecule, so it’s taken up much more rapidly than nitrate nitrogen. That’s part of the challenge in using it. A lot of that is probably mitigated by the slow release coating.
But in bloom it can easily create nitrogen toxicity. After stretch, nitrogen is almost unneeded by the plant. Mainly potassium is what you want in late flower.
One other aspect of NH4 is that in the nitrification process, the plant releases extra hydrogen ions from NH4 helping to mitigate the normal rise in pH. Osmocote would probably work well with lime.
I just bought a bag of 15-9-12 to try some experiments in 2 gallon pots with coco coir. I’m planning to use the minimum amount of osmocote fora healthy veg, and amend the coco with pelletized gypsum and lime to meet calcium and magnesium reqs. I will probably feed water only, but I might add some chelated micros. I have very soft water with almost no minerals — no iron, no calcium, no magnesium. I’ll get none of that from coco either.
One I see pistils I’ll add some potassium phosphate and potassium sulfate to the feed water.
$60 from Lowe’s with enough gypsum and lime to last forever. 
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You’re gonna fuck it up.
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Appreciate the concern but I’ll be ok
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I will definitely be watching to see how well this works for your particular use case and I am excited to see what, if any, adjustments might be necessary to achieve a successful harvest by anyone else who might be considering similar out of the box usage. 
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Coco can be a bit tricky if you haven’t used it before, but it’s my favorite medium. I’d love to get down to a water only mix. I think it could be done with langbenite, but I used the last of my bag in the garden this year. I’ll work out that part later. I just need to get the osmocote and calcium quantities worked out first. Just time and problem solving.
I’m not sure there’s enough flexibility for landrace sativas. They hate nitrogen! But hybrids and indicas tend to have a lot better nutrient tolerance.
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I know you can do it. I love coco, and have been using it for over 20 years. I had a buddy who used to successfully grow organically in pure coco, he would initially charge the coco with his Vic High soil nutrients mix and then amend all organic supplements on the top of the pot and only soak the bottoms of the pots with about 1" of pure, pH-balanced, water.
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That’s awesome. Organic is pretty easy, and I like it for that and use chicken shit in my gardens. I just don’t really want bags of powdered slaughterhouse blood and seagull shit in my basement.
I haven’t had much success with NH4+ formulas with coco in the past. It binds the other cations, so it probably interacts. I’ll just have to see. I’d still bet calcium would displace it anyway. I’m game to experiment though. Gotta be a first time before there’s a second time.
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