Good call on the nematodes, they should find a healthy food source and get a good population going fast. Predatory nematodes are my go to choice for gnat control. I make sure to treat every soil ball in my home at least once a year and live a relatively gnat free life surrounded by many nice houseplants and medicinals.
Big ups for the soil reuse details. I do something similar. My cook times vary greatly and all my plants are great. One thing I do different is I make a serious effort to remove as many of the roots from the old rootball as I can. I find its best to take them apart within 3 days of harvest so the roots are still strong and flexible. Its another harvest time chore but I find it totally worth the extra effort in offsetting medium purchases for my greenhouse, outdoor, and soon indoor crops. Have you considered adding 50/50 coir/perlite to your tumbler instead of just perlite (or some more coconot)? It may help to give a fresh start with long coco fibers again to enhance the structure in a way that perlite can't mimic. If it ain't broke don't fix it tho, just a thought.
^^^^ I'm looking for ways to ditch perlite alltogether, if not simply for the sickening amount of dust it makes. I need to buy pure coco, i was using roots organic mix to get my coco, and my shop won't sell me coconot anymore except by the pallet which at this point would last me a lifetime lol. I need to find a feedshop around here that sells rice hulls.
Anyone in socal, specifically the IE know of a good feed shop?
No matter what i've grown in, high perlite content has always been key, and it's cheap and readily available, and lightweight lol, so it's easy to just keep on keepin' on with the damn perlite....
Where I live a compressed bale (about 20 gallons expanded) or coir is 10-15 (GH offers and OMRI bale). Also the coconut croutons might be awesome for what you are doing. I hear you on the perlite being hard to let go of. I have not been adding any since switching to veganics and wonder if its that or the nutes themselves which are causing my plants to yield a bit less. Perlite is organic based but it is not natural and it contains formaldehyde and other nasties because its a man made kiln product, and yeah the dust is dangerous to inhale on a regular basis. I think hydrofarm ditched the cocoNOT so it will be harder to get at hydrofarm supplied shops. I got my last bags on the cheap as part of their ditching it sale I think.
i use half beach sand from down by the water so it has lots of salt in it and mix it with lots of broken glass and sea shells. i top feed with dog poo. just water in some poo when it stops stinking and your good to go
Finally find some rice hulls (locally)! All it took was actually taking 5 minutes to search online and i found a home brewing website that has a storefront in riverside ca, rice hulls for less than $2/lb oh yeah, probably cheaper @ feed stores, i'm checking out a couple of those tomorrow also. Hopefully all grows well and i can edit my soil recipe to REMOVE the dusty ass perlite.
Wanted to add some minerals to my mix also so i picked up some gypsum and sul-po-mag (langbeinite I believe) to throw into my next batch i'll be whipping up tomorrow. I wanted more potassium in the mix and the sulpomag @ 0-0-20 will cover that, as well as provide magnesium, so i can take epsom salt out of the recipe.
Ok this is my mixture which works really well i also add nutrients every feeding anyways
15.2 cubic feet of pro-mix BX mycorise
3 bags of sheep manure <--- very good Slow release
3 bags of sea compost shrimp/ seaweed etc
3 bags of top soil
3 bags of organic soil
1 bag of perlite
2 bags of Sand
lime
and some peatmoss
4 cups of actual living worms
29Likes
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks