Osmocote, my favorite plant food - easy peasy, complete

He’s even got a great thread where he makes up nutrient mixes from scratch ingredients and they work really well for people!

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Who is this guy? I’m a member there.

@vernal " Pakistani soils are mostly calcareous (CaCO3 > 3.0%) and alkaline (pH > 7.0) in nature as soil having high pH range from 7 to 9 induce high Ca activity and pH which form insoluble di-calcium phosphate, tri-calcium phosphate with high fixation capacity ultimately dynamics of P is managed by Calcite in calcareous soil …"

Folks seem to get hooked on the latest and greatest. A member posts a nice garden, says he uses Acme Mineral X and all of a sudden that’s what made his garden productive. There’s no real world cause and effect there, only a sum of the parts.

First it was epsom salts. EVERYONE had to have epsom salts whether they had a deficiency or not (which no one knew what to look for). Then there was silicon, the magic element which supposedly protects against diseases and insect attacks. Kicker is, very few plant species respond to it.

Now it’s gypsum. yada yada yada

When I mix my soil, I do so based on what I have stockpiled. Some of this, some of that, no big deal. I usually use the bucket of my tractor to mix, or dump a lot of stuff on the garage floor and mix with the bucket, load as much as I can and finish loading with a flat nose shovel.

My last garden was pure indica, afghani stuff - Deep Chunk, Afghani 90 X Deep Chunk 1990 from Kwik Seeds, Cannacopia Lapis Mtn. indica, Tom Hill’s Monkey Balls (F3 Deep Chunk), Sensi Hindu Kush. I tossed in a couple of handfuls of gypsum I collected from a frontage road at a local gypsum mine. done…

IOW, this Afghani garden didn’t get much if any Ca. With the exception of turning out way too many males I had a very fine garden. Smoke is smooth and damn potent. 2-3 hits off a bong and that’s all I can take.

The green slop which I mix in is a slurry I make in a bucket with horse nuggets and water. Alfalfa.

Uncle Ben

I don’t know what’s popular. I haven’t used name brand nutrients in years. I use calcium nitrate, by whoever is selling calcium nitrate. Potassium phosphate, by whoever is selling calcium phosphate, etc. Osmocote is the first time I’ll be using some fancy ass branded nutrient in quite a while. I buy gypsum from the hardware store for $0.30/lb, because it doesn’t raise pH. Coco coir does better with a low pH, so I don’t want to use too much lime.

Osmocote is not a complete fertilizer. It doesn’t have calcium. That has to come from somewhere else. Gypsum is the obvious choice for coco.

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IG, not OG. Irrazinig is guys name. It’s a really cool page I implore you to check out. Interesting to see how the local farmers do things/techniques/plants.

I’m not saying they absolutely need high pH calcareous soils, I’m just saying they’ve adapted to growing in them/tolerate them, since you said indigenous cannabis hotspots like Afghanistan don’t have limey soils. They definitely do. Quite a lot of central asia is arid and has soils like that. Desert hardpan of much of SW USA is like that too.

Yeah, thank slownickel for the gypsum thing. It’s a great resource for soils deficient in calcium (greened up my yard immensely in the sandy soil that I used to live in) but no not everyone needs it. Or for displacing sodium in otherwise un-arable land. But, he’s pretty dogmatic about everyone needing it.

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I saw that post a few days ago i believe this was it. INDIAN LANDRACE EXCHANGE™ on Instagram: "The soil in Afghanistan is pre-dominantly calcareous and close to 50% of the soils of Afghanistan have a pH between 8 and 8.5, about 35% between 8.5 and 9.0 and about 10% between 9 and 9.5. Afghanistan owes it's characteristic alkalinity in soil to the climate/environment, Which is extremely dry for the most part, with little to no rains amounting to no more than 380mm/year in any given region. Such an arid environment begets Physical weathering which is more pronounced in comparison to the rate of chemical and the soil formation itself. And most of the products of such weathering are generally retained within the soil itself. Since Calcification is the biggest contributor of soil forming process in dry-arid conditions. Low rainfall triggers a seamless cycle of evaporation from the surface and replacement from the water table below. The water being drawn continuously from the ground deposits contains dissolved calcium bicarbonate and upon the evaporation calcium carbonate is deposited within the soil-body, aiding in the accumulation of the substance, which affects the ph of the soil tremendously. As far as the nutrition is concerned, there are 2 major and 1 ancillary source of it. The 2 major sources being the mineral rich clay particles present in the soil and the cow dung manure applied to the fields on an annual basis. The clay particles in the soil are densely packed with important minerals required for the plants to thrive, however it is deficient in phosphorus while being high in potassium and nitrates. Thus making the soil composition naturally - high in calcium, potassium and nitrates with only small amounts of phosphorus. The high amounts of sand present in the soil helps to break the compactness of the soil and allowing for roots to access oxygen as well as the minerals from the clay. @paklandracexchange #IndoPakAfghan23 #SILKROUTETOSALVATION"

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A.M. Leonard is offering free shipping! Use code FSF23PG.

https://www.amleo.com/c/slow-release-fertilizer

I also get this huge 4 cu. bag of vermiculite. This is a bargain. https://www.amleo.com/p-v-p-industries-vermiculite-grade-2/p/PVP24CF

Enjoy, my American gardeners,

Uncle Ben

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I got an 8lb bag of the 14-14-14 on amazon day. :slight_smile:

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Check my grow log! Osmocote with Promix in 1/2 and 1 gals. I do supplement with some GH series and Cal once or twice a week.

Works fine!

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Hi!
Pretty interesting thread and sounds KISS for sure.

Anyone tried it indoors?
Or with Coco+vermiculite/perlite in autopots?

The recommended feed is 1 tbsp of 15-9-12 and 1 of 14-14-14 in soil, right?

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I just grew indicas indoors. Smoke is so potent that I literally had to use (my deceased wife’s) walker Sat. night to get to bed, thanks to my girlfriend who fetched it for me. I took 2 small hits and one HUGE one off a bong. Combined with some scotch and a glass of wine earlier, my head and body was spinning, couldn’t walk. Stupid shit, haven’t done that in decades! My face was a pale white says my girlfriend.

Never again LOL. :sweat_smile:

I also use it outdoors with new plantings, probably about 10,000 or so head down hiney up plantings, since I built my farm out 17 years ago. Place was a hay field. I planted 65 trees as an example - shade, fruit, nut, olive and a vineyard and much more. Everything got Osmocote or Polyon.

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Depends on the size of the pot. When I backfill I add a small handful of the 15-9-12 and scratch it into the last of the backfill at the top, 2.5 gal. pot. You don’t need anything else.

UB

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Thanks for replying!
Will this work in straight Coco autopots?

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If you are using an inert medium then I highly recommend Dyna-Gro Foliage Pro. It’s complete with 16 elements.

UB

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So that’s a no go for slow release in soil less, right?

It will definitely work with coco in autopots, but I would supplement calcium at some point if your water is devoid of it

@kevinmalone

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Yeah I was thinking to add Gypsum.
I anyway amend my coco with wollastonite for the silica

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But since most of the crf’s have ammonical nitrogen won’t that hamper the THC and the yield?
I think ammonical nitrogen gets converted into nitrate in soil, right?

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You wouldn’t be the only grower that is concerned about high Nitrogen towards the end of flower. I haven’t yet noticed too much difference between crf and GH feed in cured flowers yet, but Nitrogen sensitivity is a perhaps strain dependent trait.

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No I meant that cannabis prefers nitrogen in the nitrate form, does the nitrification process happen in a soilless media?
Otherwise we’re giving ammoniacal nitrogen which has been shown to decrease thc % and yield, right?

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Not necessarily. I mix a bulk soil with peat, pine bark fines, sand, vermiculite maybe the meals and it works fine.

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