Share your living soil recipe

[MG_Canna]

Here’s my recipe at the moment:

I have two containers going, which is enough for two grows with six 7gal cloth pots.

25gals recycled Roots Original, mostly made from coco coir, worm castings, perlite, and amendments

3gals worm castings

3 cups Roots Organic Terp Tea 1-1-7

3cups One Shot 1-10-2, 15% calcium

1cup kelp 0-0-13

1cup each Extreme Mykos and Azos

1 cup Azomite

1 cup oyster flower

Wetting solution is 1gal water with 1 cup molasses and 1cup epsom salts.

Several batches of heated compost with eggshell, coffee grinds, banana peels, and any other inedible, vitamin packed vegetable and fruit matter. Using low heat compost kills all insect larvae.

2gals of compost are mixed in with amendments and molasses water. A layer of bokashi is added to the top. Once a thick white fuzz is growing, I coat the top with another layer of pure compost. Once that is fuzzy, I add one more layer of compost and allow the beneficial bacteria to do it’s thing. Then I turn the soil once every two weeks. Batches cook for about 3 months, sometimes longer. This is a high calcium amended soil.

Pic 1: compost via Lomi composter

Pic 2: bokashi grain growing beneficial bacteria on soil

Pic 3: 3 days after adding first layer of compost, the fuzz is goi g to town!

[rasterman]

I don’t have a recipe, I just buy living soil or Happy Frog and reamend with Craft Blend and the following from my homestead: Composted chicken poop and aged goat poop as mulch. I also add pine needles and soil from the forest and have all kinds of life and little creatures scurrying around under the mulch.

[MG_Canna]

Living soil comes in many forms. Pine needles a very acidic. Do have any problems with ph? What your water normally test at? Mine is high at 8.4. I might mess around with pine needles so I can stop ph’ing my water.

[HeadyBearAdventures]

@MG_Canna elemental Sulphur will bring pH down with the quickness.
Good compost will do it over time.
Pine needles are acidic, but they don’t actually change the soil pH when they decompose.

[Loggershands]

Peat (40%), worm castings (30%), rice hulls/perlite/pumice (25%), Wetting agent, homemade Biochar (5%), Diatomaceous earth, dolomite lime, Gaia Green amendments, Malted barley, home made bokashi

[MG_Canna]

Good to know. Thanks.

[rasterman]

I don’t test my pH. My well water is exceedingly hard and adjusted to 7.0 by a salt-based water softener. I also use rainwater. The plants don’t seem to care which water source I use, so I’m happy.

[Rumblephish]

Promix, Worm Castings, BAS Craft Blend, Kashi Blend, Rock Dust(basalt and/or glacial). Pretty damn simple.

[HeadyBearAdventures]

I just started utilizing recycled BAS Light Mix reamended with Neem meal, langbeinite, kelp meal, bone meal, and humic acid.
JADAM Microbial Solution to get it back to life, and good to go.

[Cannacryptic]

Last run went well with a base made from:

1 part coco (large fiber)
1 part promix organic
0.5 part soil from a native old growth stand
10% pumice (small) 2% pulverized
Dolomite
Amended with inputs to ~15% of base volume
Rabbit and Alpaca beans
EWC
Mushroom compost
Kelp, Soy, and Alfalfa Meal
Insect frass (only top dressed)

10 days before flip top dressed with same except Alfalfa meal reduced to half, kelp increased by half and added crustacean meal or Sea Bird Guano. 5 days before flip top down watering with RO water fortified with PK booster and cal mag total of 200 ppm for bud set.

Sub irrigated in 3gl pots I made from coco mats with wicks reaching from bottom to just under mulch layer. Once a week watered top down with a light tea of Craft Blend and Recharge brewed in RO Water fortified with 100 ppm Jack’s 3-2-1

Plants saw a real nice senescence turning all kinds of purple, red wine, and black at harvest.
Some will balk at my use of synthetic nutes, but I feel my plants and microbes can better utilize the organic inputs when given a very dilute, comprehensive baseline to work with, also fills in any gaps that may occur and reduce chance of pop up deficiencies.

[Toker1]

I use Foxfarm Happy Frog
15 bucks for 2 CF
Excellent results, over and over again
In same soil.
I use to flush it and reuse but I don’t even bother
With that anymore lol. I just feed less hehe.

[Loggershands]

I’ve been doing a lot of work on soil lately so I thought I would expand on my previous response. My goal lately has been how to compost and manage food waste in a cold climate (I mean seriously cold) without it going to a landfill. I recently learned that food waste is a surprisingly large part of the global warming problem and the methane produced is believed to be 100x worse than Co2.

This might seem like a lot of work to some people but the vast majority of the time involved is letting it sit and do its thing. I enjoy it as it allows me to limit my waste and create fantastic soil for zero (almost) cost.

This is a breakdown of how I made composted soil indoors.

Stats with making LAB and bokashi grain. They are both really low effort to make.

From there I bokashi compost our kitchen food waste indoors in 5 gallon buckets.

After the bucket is full I will wait 4 weeks and then add the bucket of bokashi compost to a 25 gallon tote of recycled soil. I bury the bokashi in the middle of the tote and cover with soil. Hit with JMS for additional activity.

After 6 weeks in the totes the food with be (almost) 100% broken down back into the soil. The only bits left in the tote below were nectarine stones.

Test soil for PH at this stage. I re-amend old soil with dolomite lime (oyster shell would be better) often so my PH always comes out between 6-7ph

Bokashi grain and LAB also make a fantastic addition to your garden as stand alone products. Water plants with LAB (30mls/litre) for a microbial boost and top dress with bokashi for awesome results.

[DirtySlowToes]

I really appreciate this detailed description. Really amazing @Loggershands tossed some finished soil I made and put into 2, 15 gallon containers to prep. Will be used for seedlings and beyond go earth

[jesuswearsflares]

I do my measurements by eye and smell. The ingredients I use in order of volume are;

Base compost/sooil from the garden
Worm castings
Bone.blood and meal
Calcified seaweed
Bat guano
Mycorrhizal
Perlite if needed

[MG_Canna]

Looks great. I use the Lomi composter to avoid fruit flies. Do ever have problems when bokashi composting?

[Loggershands]

I have not seen any fruit flys in the bokashi or the worm bin but I definitely have them in the grow so maybe that is coming from those area originally? In terms of smell I was really surprised at how low the bokashi odour is. With the lid closed I cannot smell the bin at all, with the lid open you can a bit but it stays closed.

[MG_Canna]

I have no smell at all and no fruit flies with the Lomi. My friend from LA stopped bokashi composting because he had flies, but still top dresses with bokashi. Because of cost, I don’t top dress my grow containers anymore. Just give them a dose of jms every week. I think it works better because it penetrates the soil. Bokashi dies if over watered or if the top layer of soil dries. It’s a little tricky as a top dress, unless blumats are used.

[ThePotanist]

Literally just soil, organic matter, and manure. Add different meals if necessary, but I generally don’t.

What I do that is different is grow them high density. When talking living soil, the moree roots you have the more you feed the soil and the healthier it becomes. I average under a gallon of space per plant in containers ranging from 5 to 15 gallons. After a run I will plant some buckwheat for a few weeks to help break up broadleaf specific diseases and then use any number of different species as an intercrop, usually clover because of shade tolerance. Everytime I harvest biomass (taking nutrients away) I try to supplement them with a cover that’ll help. Also will occasionally add more composted manure but its mostly a simple recipe.

I focus on cultivating the soil more than the plant. If your soil is healthy your plant will grow!!

Loving this thread!!!

[Gumbert]

@Loggershands

This might seem like a lot of work to some people but the vast majority of the time involved is letting it sit and do its thing. I enjoy it as it allows me to limit my waste and create fantastic soil for zero (almost) cost.

@Loggershands Thanks for posting this information! I have been a hydro grower since 2008 and have recently (6 mos ago) made the decision to move to full organic growing on my small farm. You have given me some very helpful information.

[bevestaldo]

Hey I just shared Subcools SuperSoil Recipe the other day on here augmented with a clover cover crop, red wrigglers, European night crawlers together with a bio-dynamic compost should have you ready to roll with a water only no til gnarly living soil!