Hello guys. I’m getting ready for my 1st run at growing cannabis and I’ve already chose the spot. This spot used to be a garden but it’s now full of weeds and I don’t know if the soil here is good enough for my plants so I just bought some canna terra professional soil 3 bags of 50L each and I’ll put some of this soil on the top part of where I’ll grow them. But I think the roots can grow under the soil I bought so what do you recommend to do to the bottom soil? Should I add any thing there? Like perlite or mix anything there? Or it is okay since it used to be a garden and had some weeds growing there? I’ll start probably in the next 1/2 weeks to germinate my seeds and getting ready to transplant them to here. I would really appreciate the help from you and I hope to get something out of this project. Thanks in advance guys. I’ll post here just a pic of the terrain.
I’d say take a spade and see how easily you can push it into the soil is the soil clay, sand , or silt or a combo? You might be surprised how soft it might already be, is it aggregated ? Does it look like black cottage cheese? Does it break apart easily when wet?
I’ll check that on monday when I’ll be there again, removing the weeds, but it seemed a good soil. And yes I could put an hoe there quite easily and it looked like black cottage cheese and it was aggregated. I’ll try to take some photos of it closer so you can see it better and also test it when it is wet to see how it does but from what I see it seems good.
I’m thinking your good to go then look forward to seeing the soil pics!
I went there today as I said and got the pics my friend
Just a small pile of soil
This one above is after putting water into the soil and then digging a hole there. It was still wet tho.
this one is after watering the soil, it was really wet.
This is a dry top soil sample This is a sample from underground, before watering
a big chunk of dirt together that i picked up but i guess with the hoe I can avoid this ones, and a water bottle
because there were like 26 degrees centigrade, probably more under the sun, already here in Portugal. A little bit too hot to work but you can handle it for your plants atleast I wont need to dig in the summer lol and for the last, it’s a photo of tons of bees coming together after a huge bee swarm since we have some beehives there. First time I saw it and it was really beautiful but I hope they go away from that branch since it’s really close to our growing spot and my friends doesnt like bees ahah.
At first glance the soil looks pretty good IMO the soil appears to have been cover with various plants which is good , is there a good number of worms in the soil when ya dug around? Worms are always a good indicator of soil health . Clear the soil of weeds do as little soil disturbances as possible no rototill , plant and mulch to help conserve moisture and control weeds and see how it goes.
I’d be a little nervous about the bee hive and maybe have it moved by a bee keeper.
Thanks for the answer my friend. I didnt find many worms in the soil but thats probably because im not looking for them, I’ll have more attention next time. I also didnt understand Whats rottotill because english isnt my first language. And for the beehive, no worry they already left that spot and went away into a man made beehive which is in a safe place. im curious to see how the honey will turn out.
thats how it currently is. What do you recommend to use as mulch? Could the removed weeds be used for that?
Edit: is rottotill like using a rake to loosen the soil?
Deep turning of the soil , plowing etc here in America lots of gardeners use these machines to work there soil which more are learning destroys microbiology, soil structure and creates hardpan in the soil at the bottom soil profile to the depth it digs down to.
Mulch any organic matter leaves , grass, etc go ahead and lightly take but no more than a few inches deep
Thanks for the tips,im almost good to go,just one last question, should I mix some perlite in the spot im going to plant since its cheap and it seems useful to help with aeration?
I personally don’t like perlite has a tendency to float and with rain it’ll probably come up and blow away id go with vermiculite
Hmm I didnt know about that. Everywhere I read it said that perlite was better because vermiculite would hold too much water and I believe it will still rain a lil bit probably next month and it would cause mold problems. Since they are the same price I can go with vermiculite no problem if you think its better .