I am most impressed and jealous man! WOW!
A very talented man my good fella, a very talented man indeed!
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Thanks for the compliments. 
So I’m about to start on the next upgrade to my LED cab and build a no-till bed. My plan is to copy the geo planter design which is a fabric pot supported by a PVC frame. The bed will be 30"x15"x10" which is about 15 gallons (2 cubic feet) if filled 8" giving me 2" for a mulch layer. Here is a model of the planter.
Here is a model of the cabinet with the bed in it.
I’ve always recycled my soil and add ferments to fertilize. Ive never done no-till or amended my soil before. I think I have a decent basic recipe from build a soil. I know @lotus710 is a good resource, so hopefully he can comment/guide me. I ordered some cover crop and a cannabis specific probiotic called Soil Balance Pro. I heard about the Soil Balance on Hash Church and wanted to try it out myself.
5 gal peat base
5 gal vermicompost
5 gal pumice/rice hulls
1 cup neem cake
1 cup kelp meal
1 cup crustacean meal
2 cups glacial rock dust
2 cups gypsum
2 cups oyster shell flour
2 cups basalt
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Perfect dude. Gypsum is a bit high. I only use 1/2 cup. But thats almost coots recipe. Which is great. Builasoil is a good start to a notill. About the bed. How long do you plan on staying where you are? Those beds are impossible to move like pots so if you decide to move youll have to dig it all out. I was gonna do 65 gal smarties but you cant move 65 gallons of peat, compost, and lava rock thats wet. XD
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Thanks, I based it off of the Coots recipe. I’m debating using my recycled soils my base (fox farms coco loco) or just starting over with new peat. I own my home and don’t plan on moving any time soon. In fact, I built my work bench in there and would have to demolish it to get it out of there.
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Do it up dude. Change to peat too
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I went out shopping last night and I got the stuff for my no till soil. I also picked up the eco felt and PVC for the planter. I will try to take pictures as I make it.
For the soil base, I have sphagnum peat, pumice/rice hulls, and worm castings. For the amendments I have kelp meal, shrimp meal, and neem seed meal. Finally for the minerals I have Gypsum, glacial rock dust, and basalt (I had to order it). I spent about $160 USD, but I will have lots of left over amendments. I had to go to a nursery for the peat, castings, pumice, and gypsum. Man, I thought the hydro store was over priced!
OK, I’m done screwing around with these thrips! I got some spinosad. I have decided I’m ok with spraying it on my plants. Thrips can easily kill one of these small bonsai moms. A few are struggling, and my precious Zak Haze is nearly dead. Luckily, I have a few clones of here.
Finally we come to the party cup hempys. After showing sex, we are down to two females. The third plant is a Crystal Candy that I will be trying to get pollen from using colloidal silver.
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Where did you get the castings? Thats one of the most imporant part of your soil. It can make you love notill. Or itll make you hate it. I made the mistake of payin 30 bucks for some at my local shop. Used it and it was horrible so i emailed the owners. Turns out they make it with peat moss… peat moss… why the hell would i want castings made with peatmossXD
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The castings came from a local nursery. I havent opened the bag, but it feels pretty dense unlike peat. I have no real way of knowing what good castings look/feel like. Eventually I will get a worm bin and my bokashi buckets going. For now I’ll just have to use what I have. Keep the advice comming, its nice to have someone steering me in the right direction.
I’m still debating what to run in there next. I have some Skywalker OG clones that I planned to run, but I may give them to my brother once I’m sure they won’t come with thrips.
I have quite a few seeds I want to pop. I have 150 Ancient Skunk#1 seeds. They are from the early 90’s so germination rates are pretty low. Maybe cast those over the whole bed and see what pops up?
A quick auto run could be a good test, but my male:female ratio has sucked with this batch. I could plant my feminized ones and pollinate them in there, but I prefer to pollinate in a seperate area.
I also got some Mental Floss x Block Head freebies that sound pretty interesting. Or throw some of thosr Zak Haze clones in there… So many choices.
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The only way to know is by emailing them. You can post om craigslist or whatever looking for thermo compost that would be better then the castings you bought. I have to ship my castings… 25 bucks a bag. 37 to ship itXD buildasoil can ship you good compost, castings, and anything else you may want. Also you should add powdered malted barley. Powderize it yourself.
And for the plants. Im a haze man. Throw those haze clones in there. They dont need as much food as some wide leaf varities.
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Thanks, I’ll check out the castings and contact them. I have a feeling they will be fine. Funny you mentioned the malted barley, I bought a pound of rice hulls and a pound of two-row from the homebrew store. How much do you suggest I add, for the 2 cubic feet (15 gallons) of soil I’m making?
The Zak Haze isn’t really haze type plant, though it does have SSH in it. Really, the name is in honor of a fallen cannabis warrior named Zak Hayes. That being said, it’s one of my favorite cultivars right now.
If I go clones, I’ll stay the course and stick with the Skywalker OG. If I go with seeds I will try to get some Ancestral Skunk#1 to germinate. Something about my old school self really wants some Skunk to puff on!
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I use 1 cup per cuft of compost. I amend my compost and then mix with peat and lava rock.
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That zak haze sounds dank ssh is a good strain i got some shatter of it a bit ago
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First I built the frame out of PVC, then I measured and cut the bottom felt. It is 16"x31" so I have room for a 1/2" seam all the way around.
Next I measured out the felt for the sides. This piece is 13"x92". I folded and pinned 10 1/2 inches up, making the top loop for the PVC, then pinned it around the frame to mark my circles for the joints and the corners.
Next I cut out the circles for the joints and sewed the top seam. Then, using the marks drawn for the corners, I sewed the two pieces together all around the bottom piece.
Everything was put together and fit in the cabinet. The fit is good, but I was covering about 1/2 of each intake.
Well, nothing a little sawing can’t fix! I enlarges the holes as much as I could, and I’m pretty comfortable with it now.
Finally I mixed up the soil and filled up the bed. I watered in some of the Soil Balance according to the labels directions.
So the soil bed itself was only about $20 to make and I have enough fabric to make several more. The soil cost me about $185 for two cubic feet, and I have a bunch of peat and amendments left. While I was mixing up soil anyway, I also amended another two cubic feet of my recycled soil with the same recipe.
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Hell yeah goodjob makin that pot! Makes me wanna make a little chamber like old days
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I got my cover crop from build a soil yesterday. According to their directions, I want 6 grams per square foot, so I weighed out about 20 grams of seed. Then I loosened up the top 1/4" of soil, sprinkled the seed, and lightly watered it in.
I need to be careful with watering the new bed. I got a tiny bit of runoff in my veg chamber. I noticed when I went to water my clones that the top of my T5HO was damp. In theory I won’t have to worry about runoff once the microherd are established.
I also have an issue with my ventilation circuit. Either my fan controller broke or came loose. The circuit is supposed to run the fan through the speed controller when the thermostat is off in order to keep negative pressure in the cab. Without negative pressure, smell tends to leak out of the cab. It still comes on when hot, but doesn’t run constantly. My small oscillating fan broke last round, that may have contributed to the issues I had in there. I found a new one on Amazon and will order it soon.
I mixed up some perlite and peat for a light mix and transplanted five Blue Dream clones into that. I watered the mother plants in veg with what was left of the Soil Balance Pro (SBP) I had mixed up. They are looking much better since I sprayed them with Spinosad. They will get a follow up spray in a few more days.
The party cup hempys got fed again. They are fully flowering already, autos are fast! The Crystal Candy is just growing the second set of leaves. This weekend I will germinate the other 10 autoflower seeds I have. Once all of the plants are above soil, I will move them all to the PC. It wasn’t worth it to run the PC with just a single plant. The Crystal Candy will start getting sprayed with colloidal silver once I see the first pistils and continue until fully formed male pollen sacks form. If the pollen falls freely, I will simply allow him to hang out with all the other girls. The only yield I am looking for from this project is seed.
The Bubba Kush S1 clones are looking very bad. This is the second time they have done this to me. I’m wasting time trying to get them healthy. This was going to be the run to determine if I was going to hang onto this plant, and I think the answer is going to be no. I am either going to toss out the clones and soil and start over, or cut them back hard and hope they make a comeback. New growth is still yellow and they are not drinking much. Ironically, a little sprout popped in one of the pots and doesn’t seem to mind the hot soil at all. It is likely an autoflower seed. I threw a few in some pots when I did my seed run to test germination. They show up every now and again.
I was running a perpetual SOG in one side of the workbench for a while and got tired of the work load. I would clone six plants a week. Once new growth was seen, three would get transferred to the SOG and three would be harvested. Watering all those plants by hand was also a lot of work. I was also not in compliance with my plant count when I was running the SOG. When the screens consistently out performed the SOG, I decided to switch both sides to screens.
Now my cycles are not very regular and I miss the more frequent harvests. So, I am thinking about running the whole workbench as one perpetual system. I keep six plants in there, so if I put two in every three weeks, I should be able to consistently produce nine week varieties. Every three weeks six plants of a single variety will be cloned (it usually takes three weeks to get good roots with my micro method). After rooting for three weeks, they will be put into a party cup to veg for another three weeks. After three weeks in the party cups, the two best will be transferred to the pots and screens (the remaining will be gifted or culled). After three weeks of training in the screen, they will be moved to the flowering side. After nine weeks flowering, they will be harvested.
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The party cup hempys are starting to get thirsty. They need to be watered every morning, and I may even be able to bump it up to twice a day. The flowers are starting to show, and at least one is starting to smell dank and sweet. The Crystal Candy seedling is starting to get it’s second set of leaves. Soon it will take off and I will start the CS treatment.
The Jilly Bean clone is still doing it’s crazy fascination thing. Notice how there are two sets of leaves on every node? Then there are two buds sites forming on each side as well. The other clone is going to make a cool mother plant. I topped her once and am waiting to get a bunch of clones off of her.
Here is a shot of this side of the cab. The two on the right are a bit taller, and have that sweet tangerine smell on the stem rub. The ones on the left have more of an earthy smell with a hint of orange, but is also a bit shorter and has fatter buds. From now on, this side will be where I flower. I have room for two more before the back two are done, so it shouldn’t be empty in there for too long.
On the other side are the Bubba Kush S1 clones. As you can tell they look quite bad, and they are not drinking. I ran twice my normal volume of RO water through them last time I watered them. They had runoff of 900 ppm, but only about 7.0 pH. They aren’t drinking still I doubt they will pull through, but they have a few weeks before I throw them out. If you look closely you can see the little seedling in the bottom right of the photo. From now on, this side will be where I veg my plants. I think I will even get a 4200K MH bulb for this side to match closer to the 6500K spectrum of the T5HO.
I found the problem with the ventilation in the no till cab, user error. I must have bumped the dial when installing the dimmer for the LEDs. When I noticed it not on, I turned it all the way to the right. When I went to inspect it, I saw that all the way to the was labeled 0%. That was an easy fix Now I just need to pick up a new ventilation fan and I will be ready.
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Looks good man. Id toss the bubba. You could find something way better in seed form! HSO even has bubba in seed form. And many crosses with it that are incredible.
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Yeah, I’m not too thrilled with the S1 seed. I grew it out a couple of times and it’s similar, but not really Bubba Kush.
About my no till bed… I’ve planted some cover crop but I don’t have any mulch layer. Should I get some straw from the feed store or something until the clover comes in? And what about worms? Can I grab some red wigglers or night crawlers from Wal-Mart to add in? I’m thinking the answer to both is yes, but I am still waiting. I have the lights on for 12 hours on the lowest setting right now. I am going to bump it up to 18 hours tonight.
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Yessir. You can mulch if you tend to forget to spray the soil to germ the cover crop. And yes the red wigglers and euros from wallyworld will work. But you can get em cheaper on craigslist or something. And not support the worst company ever
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Thanks! I am already seeing some germination, so may pass on the mulch for now. 
My daughter wanted some pet worms last time we were at Wal-Mart, so I have been looking at worm bins on Amazon
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