I’m not too fussed about the white in there anyway to be honest. If someone stumbles on the perlite they stumbled on the plant. Humic acid won’t do any harm though so worth a crack big tree man definitely.
I planted 6 LD x LR the other day in Coco. Left with no heat or light source and 6 of 6 are up. Slightly elongated but absolutely fine. @ReikoX what kinda Dr Frankenstein are you. 10/10 for stress resistance so far. Definitely a good sign for old blighty weather
The cheapest soil I ever built that worked was:
1 part pumice
1 part “manure” (the $1 bag stuff that’s just the beef industry’s fouled cow bedding bagged up).
1 part dirt & as much leaf debris as was covering it.
A couple cups of all-in-one organic fertilizer.
The plants were nothing to brag about, but I still got decent results.
DE? Apols it’s a bit early for me this morning.
Diatomaceous Earth
Disco Eggplant 
Ahh, got it, thanks 
So it depends on what the DE is being used for, if it’s as a pesticide then yes it loses effectiveness when wet, but I typically don’t use it for this purpose so much outdoors but mainly for it’s ability to hold water and release it to the roots as needed as well as it’s cation exchange capacity.
Basically in this situation you WANT it wet as it absorbs a large amount of water relative to weight, and holds onto nutrients, reducing leaching and effectively releasing them to the plant as required. Also DE being silicon dioxide and typically finely ground provides a good source of accessible silicon to the plant, which if you live in an area where silicon can be locked up in quartz or soils high in kaolinite clay DE can be a very good source.
FWIW there’s a video on OG by Gabe Brown I’ve posted here whose farmland fields are close approaching 10% organic matter and he talks of a rain that lasted over two days and 13” fell on his land it pretty much held it all! Now That’s impressive! Good vid to watch!
I’ve read that biochar is fairly useless unless it’s charged first
Again, that is my understanding too, but I guess it depends on it’s purpose. If it’s more structure and aeration then not so much an issue I would have thought.
I probably should have left biochar out of it and just called it charcoal because as you have pointed out there is a difference. That said, activation is simply soaking in a good tea/soup of nutrients. In my garden I just throw the charcoal in a tub and drench it in organic teas and then let it sit for a few weeks, or months depending on how motivated I am. From my understanding charcoal/bichar again has good cation exchange capability, thus the ‘charging’ as you mentioned. So then my assumption is that this is a two way exchange, and free surplus nutrient cations will be bound by the charcoal rather than remaining free to be leached out of the root zone?
Thanks for this…I will be trying this out on a small batch, in the near future.
IIRC, it has a HUGE CEC! It’s a big porous chunk o’ carbon, provides homes for microbes, and adds acidity… and that’s how biochar/tierra prieta evolved.
+ 
+ 
= 
I can’t remember which, maybe in ‘teaming w/microbes’? or another soil book, but humic & fulvic acids have CECs of 400+ & 1400+!
I think you and I are on the same wavelength friend! Both of these work wonders in both soil and in hydro. These are the only adjuncts I use other than a pretty standard-ish Lucas formula.
They turn your tubs into this:
But the difference when using them is large in terms of overall plant health, growth, resistance to pests and disease but also overall plant branching and bud density. I’m pretty sure they cytokines in the kelp meal are a big part of the denser branching you seem to get.
I think I know what book I read those numbers in but here’s an online “reference” citing the same #'s Note: they are a sller of humic acid 
" humic acid has a CEC of 450meq/100g and fulvic acid has a CEC of 1,450meq/100g. "
Vermicompost is mostly humic acids (fulvic acid is a fraction of humic acid). I do love my Bioag Ful-Power (fulvic acid) though. It’s the only bottle I buy for my no-till grows.
Where do I read about this Lucas formula? Any websites I can check out?
Unfortunately it’s not organic but there should be plenty with just a google search, but here is a basic run down.
If you Maxi-bloom It’s basically 7 grams per gallon of water right the way through. If I use this alone, this puts my water bang on 5.8 and I don’t even have to check it. It works fine, but I do get better results with additives I mentioned earlier. That said, I have seen MANY full grows using 7 grams per gallon of MB from start to finish with hardly any nutrient issues. A few plants want more nitrogen, if so just add a bit of calcium nitrate.
I’m not being ignorant in this conversation @cannabissequoia @slain I’m literally trying to absorb all the information being presented here. Still breaking new ground for me.
Ordering the living soil book you linked there big man. Thank you I imagine that will make for good reading and is also worthy of joining our other slightly odd book collection lol
These guys are selling product so you need to read it with that in mind but this is a great resource if you are interested in living soils. It’s awesome to see this stuff being used in broad acre cropping.
I’m definitely interested in living soils but today my work consists of 14 tonnes of top soil shifting. So I’ll have a read this evening brother 
I’d recommend it with some hesitation-- it’s very academic and translated from Frenchaise 
and has humor in the side-bar notes. It is very dense reading but also had a lot of new info to me… it’s fairly “hardcore” 
The Table of Contents (via amazon ‘look inside’) is pretty inviting. heheh
But 
anyway. I hope it wasn’t outrageously expensive like a 'uni textbook 
.
Just out of curiosity…Do you think No-till, could work well on a hundred lite’s? I am planning on trying it out in my Grow Trailer (8 lite’s), before I attempt it on such a large scale. I am asking, because you have what seems to be a bit of experience with it. And I value what experience you have with the set-up. Thanks in advance Buddy!
