Man that looks awesome, you’re gonna kill it 
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Just a suggestion, since this is your first time growing organically: mulch. Even in veg. It’s pretty vital if you’re growing organically.
Also, are the internodes on those plants so wide because you were vegging under the T5’s? Judging from the comments here, I’m assuming thug pug genetics are expensive? If they are, it seems like they could’ve done a better job selecting parent plants. Those internodes are insane.
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Mulch? With just regular chips you buy in a bag at Walmart kind of mulch? And it’s funny at first thug pug packs were cheap $80/piece but since you can’t get them they’ve gone into the thousands of USD at auctions… and well worth it, I found an incredible “cactus breath” that I’ve held onto, I think 3 years now, and I think I have a good PBB as well, might be too early to tell I’m only in week 6… and as for the internodes, I’ve been trying to incorporate this new ish product (well new to me) called “ferminator” made by the good green earth company, it’s a fermented plant wash meant to keep away all kinds of pests, fungus, etc. And I had the T5’s only a couple of inches maybe 6 inches max from the plants, the first time I had used ferminator as a foliar spray I burned the plants a little, I assumed it was a combination of the lights being so close and the spray, so I raised the shit out of my trusty T5’s for a while, and then later learned I had just been mixing the ferminator solution a little too strong… but they should tighten up better under these new lights, idk I’m honestly not too worried about it right now I’ll likely run clones inside and put the seed plants in the back yard or something
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Ah, okay. Or you could just do the foliar right before lights off.
Yeah, you can get mulch at Walmart if you want. I personally won’t buy anything from Walmart (or Target). Wood chips work, although there’s a few kinds of wood you don’t wanna use, I can’t remember offhand what they are. Cedar, maybe? I just use straw (hay, whatever you wanna call it). I’ve used composted bark mulch, too. The thing with organic growing is, you’re relying on the life in the soil to do the work for your plants, as opposed to force-feeding the plants bottled nutes. Eighty percent of the microlife lives in the top twenty percent of the soil, so you don’t want it to be drying out or getting too warm.
What’s your soil mix? I know you said something about EWC and bokashi, but what’s actually in your soil? I’m not familiar with Gaia Green, except for their rock dust. I’ve used that in some of my soil mixes in the past.
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I know I know, it’s just their big claim to fame is that you can spray during lights on so I wanted to figure that out 
And okay for the soil mix I read and watched how other people were using these products and kind of built my own little version but in 25 gallons of pro-mix HP I mixed:
4 cups Gaia green 4-4-4 (combination of all their products)
1cup fishbone meal
1cup rock dust blend
2cups bokashi
5 cups ewc
And then when transplanting I’ll put a tablespoon of 4-4-4 and EWC as a top dressing
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Really? They say that you can spray during lights on with their product? Jesus, people will say anything to sell some shit… haha.
That mix is a little unusual. Pro mix is peat and perlite, right? For 25 gallons of that, you want waaaayyyyyyyy more EWC. Depending on the ratio of peat to perlite, I’d add probably 20 gallons of EWC. A lot more rock dust, too (I dunno anything about bokashi, so I’m not sure how much of that you’d want to add). Fish bone supposedly suppresses microbial growth, so you probably wouldn’t want to use too much of that, although I top dress with it if I’m using a new batch of soil. I’d add it at about half a cup per 7.5 gallons of peat/aeration/EWC.
Anyway, I’m sure that mix will work for this run, maybe, but if you plan on moving forward with organic growing, you may wanna adjust your soil mix. Rock dust in particular is a super-important amendment (acts as an “anchor” for the life on the soil); I add 8-10 cups of it per 7.5 gallons of base soil mix.
The problem with a lot of people who try to switch from bottled nutes to organic is they just use a hodge-podge of ingredients at weird ratios. Then, when they don’t get stellar results (or results comparable to salt-based grows), they go,”Organic sucks!” Which couldn’t be further from the truth. I can give you an organic soil recipe that I’ve been using for years with great success, if you’re interested. It’s all over the internet, too, it isn’t some big secret or anything haha.
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Oh holy shit okay so I am waaay off, I haven’t really even used much of it yet except for seedlings so I can still add a shit ton of castings, I’ll grab a couple bags… I’m not exactly sure of the perlite ratios either but what you’re saying basically is that if I’m using the promix as a base I should do almost 1:1 EWC? And truck yeah give me that soil recipe brother, I’m into organic growing for the long haul, everytime I’ve ever tried it in comparison to my hydro it’s just.,. Better lol to me anyways but shit, thank you for the advice!
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So I looked at that Gaia Green all-purpose, it kiiiind of has everything you need in it. The thing about it is that it contains feather meal and blood meal. Blood meal is literally scraped off of the floors of slaughterhouses. There’s a good chance that that blood contains all kinds of growth hormones and things you really don’t wanna be ingesting (and I’m saying this as I have steaks marinating in the fridge right now that I’m gonna grill later today haha)(but they’re grass-fed cows 💁). I believe that the same goes for feather meal: feathers taken from industrial poultry places. Also, with that Gaia Green all-purpose, I didn’t notice at what ratios everything is added.
With the Pro Mix, you probably wanna add more aeration, too. I’d have to see it to have an idea of just how much you wanna add. Basically, you want a base mix that’s equal parts peat, aeration (I use pumice, but it’s kind of difficult to source) and EWC/compost. The EWC/compost part is the most important thing; you want really quality castings/compost. The stuff they sell at, like, Home Depot or most gardening centers isn’t very good. A lot of commercial worm farms feed their worms mostly cardboard, which obviously has no nutritional value. If you can find an EWC brand that lists what they feed their worms, then you’d have a better idea of what’s in it. Obviously.
If you live on the West Coast, Bu’s Blend (Malibu compost) is easy to source and really good for the humus third of the base mix. And I found a good gardening place near me that sells excellent EWC, can’t remember the name of the brand offhand, but I can take a look in my garage if you want.
Anyway, to that base mix of peat, pumice/perlite and EWC/compost, you wanna add this to every 7.5 gallons of the base:
1/2 - 1 cup Neem or Karanja
1/2 - 1 cup Kelp
1/2 - 1 cup Crab/Crustacean meal
1 cup MBP (Malted Barley Powder)
1/2 cup Gypsum (nice sulphur source)
4-6 cups Basalt
6-8 cups Biochar
You can skip the malted barley powder if you want, I only started adding that to my mix a couple years ago. But if you wanna add it, it’s easy to find at any home brewer store, costs like three bucks for two pounds. Just buy the malted barley and grind it in a coffee grinder and then mix it in with your soil.
You can also skip the biochar if you want. I’ve had it in my mix before and I’ve omitted it from other mixes. I don’t have any in the mix I’m currently growing in, although I did just buy eleven gallons that I’m gonna charge at some point and add to my soil. If you do add Biochar you need to charge it before adding it to the soil. I can tell you how to do that, too, if you’re interested.
So what I do is take a 45 or 65 gallon Rubbermaid container (best to get the kind that has wheels on it, in case you need to move it around; 45 gallons of soil is pretty heavy haha) and drill a bunch of tiny holes all over the bottom and sides of the container. Then I take a five gallon bucket, fill it three times with the base soil mix and dump it in the container. That’s fifteen gallons of base, so then double up the above amendments, add that to the container and then mix it up as well as you can. And I repeat that process until the container is filled up. Then I dump some clean water on it, mix it up some more and then keep it moist. I sometimes will also water in some compost tea to a brand-new batch, just to add a little more life to it, but I don’t think it’s necessary.
This mix doesn’t need to “cook,” either. You can plant seeds in it right away, I’ve done it multiple times with zero issues. I’m not sure about clones, I only grow from seed, but I’m pretty sure you can plant them in there right away, too. But yeah, this isn’t some kind of “super soil” deal where you need to let it “cook” for a month before you grow in it.
Also, this mix can be recycled and re-used over and over and over again. So once you have it, you have it. I’ve used one batch of soil for like five or six grows and could probably use it for much longer than that. I just get bored sometimes and mix up some new soil every couple years.
And I just realized I said I added 8-10 cups of rock dust for every 7.5 gallons of base mix. I meant to say every 15 gallons of the base mix.
Anyway, yeah, you can use this mix for a long-ass time, you just need to re-amend every other grow or so, which is super-easy and really cheap, too. And if you’re in a no till situation, you can use that soil mix for as long as your airpots stay intact haha. That dude Bluejay, the Mountain Organics guy, has used his no till pots for like 40 cycles, years and years, same soil mix. The older it gets, the better it gets. I don’t grow no till personally. But I’ve used this mix in 3, 5 and 7 gallon airpots and never had any issues (except for fucking fungus gnats, which are easy to get rid of). Some people will tell you you have to use ten gallon or fifteen gallon pots and if you’re going to do no till, then yeah, you need to be doing it in big airpots (I wouldn’t use anything smaller than a 20 gallon pot). But this works fine in smaller airpots.
To recycle it, I just dump the soil from the pots, roots and all, back into the rubbermaids and let it sit until I need it again (be sure to keep it most). It helps if you always have extra, too, that way the used soil can sit there and the roots can break down while you’re growing the next round.
Anyway, yeah, this is a really, really easy way to grow. So much easier than hydro.
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FYI, as a former horse owner: straw is inert, while hay has nutritional value. Straw is the byproduct of a grain harvest (often wheat) and works well for bedding and mulch. Hay is harvested in the field - a combination of various plants such as alfalfa, clover and grasses - then is dried and stored to be fed to animals.
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Cool, I didn’t know that. I use barley mulch, what kind is that? I guess a grain harvest, right?
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If it acts like a dry layer, I suspect your mulch is made of the plant material that remains after the barley has been harvested. Barley itself contains lots of sugars/carbohydrates which is why it is used in brewing beer.
I suppose there might be a way to incorporate barley in a living soil to feed the ecosystem. I haven’t delved into that realm…
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I usually have a little barley growing in my soil here and there. Nothing major, not like a cover crop or anything, but a few blades in each pot. I assume there’s seeds in my bags of mulch. I could be mistaken, but I think I’ve read that barley’s a “nitrogen fixer” like clover etc. Honestly, I read and read and read before I started growing, figuring out exactly what I wanted to do and how. But now that it’s been a few years (or more than a few haha), I’ve since forgotten why I do things the way I do it, why I add this or that amendment, what those amendments do etc etc. I just do it haha.
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Jesus thank you man, I’m going to pick up a few more bags of castings before I get too much further into using my mix, I don’t even know what pumice is lol but I can get perlite from my local nursery fairly often 
And as for compost teas that is above my realm of knowledge right now, I just kind of started looking into it but I havent actually tried to make it or anything, yeah of course I want to know about bio char! Man anything you or anyone else can tell me about organics from personal experience is more than welcomed, write me books ffs but what does bio char do? Is it just thoroughly burned coals from any old fire i could have in my back yard? Thank you for taking the time out of your day to share all of this 
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I kept the one queen sugar that I liked though 
This is pumice: How to Use Soil Amendments-Pumice | Organic Gardening Blog – Grow Organic
It’s basically just tiny rocks that aerate the soil the same way perlite does. Pumice stays “anchored” in the soil, though, whereas perlite will kind of float around and eventually end up at the top of the pot. Also, I’ve seen pictures of both perlite and pumice under a microscope. Perlite looks like a barren wasteland where nothing could live haha, while pumice has all kinds of little nooks and crannies and holes where the microlife can take hold. Perlite works, though, plenty of organic gardeners use it. If you can find a local gardening place that has pumice, I’d go that route. But if you can’t, no big deal.
Here’s a quick little rundown of the benefits of biochar: Five Reasons to Use Biochar in Your Garden - Storey Publishing
Yeah, basically. You don’t wanna use, like, charcoal briquettes that you use for grilling food. It’s basically charred wood. Not thoroughly burned, you don’t wanna use ashes. Biochar is just black, burned wood. I know people make their own all the time, although I wouldn’t. But that’s just because I’m super-lazy haha. If you do make your own, you don’t wanna add big ol’ hunks of burned wood to your soil. Smash it up first.
There’s all kinds of different ways to charge it. I’ve always just dumped it in five gallon buckets, filled about halfway, and then poured a compost tea in it. Then let it sit for a few days before mixing it in to my soil. I’ve used a mixture of water and my own urine before, too haha. That actually works, believe it or not, but I think it’s kind of gross and try not to do that. I think you can just use fish hydrolysate, as well, at the same rate you’d use if you were watering your plants with it (I believe that’s a tablespoon of fish per gallon of water). Basically, you wanna charge it with SOMEthing before you add it to your soil, although you may be able to just mix it in with your soil, uncharged. However, if you’re gonna do that, then you actually do need to let it sit there for a couple weeks before growing in it. I don’t even know if that’s an option, to be honest, I’ve never added uncharged biochar to my soil mix. There’s all kinds of different videos and shit re: charging biochar, just google “how to charge biochar.”
Anyway, speaking of compost teas, this is the brewer I use: The Best Compost Tea Brewer On The Market
I bought mine from buildasoil, though, not from KIS. If you’re handy, you could easily make one yourself for way cheaper than what these places charge. I’m not handy (and, like I just mentioned, I’m also lazy), so I bought mine for I think around eighty bucks or so. Buildasoil doesn’t even sell them anymore. I’m pretty sure the reason they don’t is because compost teas have kind of fallen out of favor with organic cannabis growers the last few years, not too sure why (probably because Coot made fun of compost teas on grasscity)(after advocating for them and encouraging people to use them for years)(people are such fucking sheep haha).
Honestly, I don’t think compost teas are necessary. The castings/compost you use in your soil mix should bring a ton of life with them. I used to use them religiously, once a few days after my seeds had sprouted; once a few days after I transplanted from my little starter containers and into their half-gallon veg pots; and then again after I transplanted from the veg containers into their final flowering containers. Now I just kind of use them whenever. Never when the plants are, like, weeks into flower or anything, I always try to use them before I’ve flipped or just a few days after I’ve flipped. Sometimes I won’t use one for an entire grow.
Anyway, if you DO buy or make a brewer and wanna make a compost tea, it’s super-easy. Five gallon bucket, four gallons of clean water (RO or distilled), 1.5 cups of fresh EWC/compost and a third of a cup of molasses. Let that brew for 24-36 hours and then water your plants with that.
Mine, too haha!! Seriously, this isn’t some kind of mystical science or anything. I mean, I don’t know HOW or why this works anymore (I did at one point), I just know it does. I have a bad habit of retaining information only for as long as I need it; once I don’t need it anymore, I forget it. There was a time I could’ve explained why we add this or that to our soil etc etc, but I can’t remember anymore. I just do it.
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Good luck finding pumice in Canada. I’ve looked and looked and can’t find any. Other than for a crazy price for a small amount.
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Oh, I didn’t realize @Terpfiend97 was in Canada. Also didn’t realize that pumice was hard to find there. Is it possible that it’s known by a different name in Canada? You know, like how neem meal is called “neem cake” everywhere but in the US?
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Im not sure if it goes by a different name. I have found it listed for sale a few times but was totally unaffordable, can’t think of the prices off my head but it made perlite seem like pennies on the dollar
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Yeah, if you have to get it shipped, it’s ridiculously expensive. If you can find a local place that has it, it’s not any more expensive than perlite is, I think. I get a one cubic foot bag (7.5 gallons) for about fifteen dollars, not sure how that compares to the price of perlite.
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Can you get lava rock in Canada, @Chronickyle? I know people have used that, either as it’s sold, in those big pieces, or they’ll take a bag of it and smash it up into smaller pieces. I’ve even read about people slowly driving over a bag with their car a few times to make the smashing process easier haha.
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