Post your Soil(less) mix!

i use just FFOF (1 bag) equal amounts of pro-mix, a bag of perilite, a bag of EWC and a bag of epsoma garden tone organic fertilizer.... seems to do well for pretty much a full grow

oh and a few cups od lime to stabalize PH and add cal/mag to the soil, epsoma brand as well

Love it, that's the thing, it can be very simple and very successful i have a bad habit of over complicating/thinking things, but as long as i enjoy it, am peaceful doing it and am learning it's all good!

used to buy bagged soil.....
any ways

i do a coir peat mix 50/50 (doint know about 30 gal?) 3cft of ea. perlite and verm. 1tbs per gal os soil mix of lime, and whatever i make with that i mix with a soil mix 60/40 70/30 about something like that.. i eyeball everything and mix it till its the consistency i want, add a little here a little there just depends.

bout the only nute i do add is small amt of green sand and bonemeal. cup of ea. for like 60 gal of mix.

I used to use all the "Big $ Crap", soil, nutes - whatever. All that stuff was a little hard to find (in person, especially in a fairly small town/city), not to mention a bit pricey. The results were wonderful, but where's the fun in that? Where's the challange? I decided to go Organic, cheap and generic (for the most part). Part of my decision was due to reading many posts here at RIU that basically said "I can't find so & so anywhere" or "Brand-X is so expensive!". So, my goal was to come up with a DIY soil mix that was cheap, simple, and made up from ingredients that could be found at any decent Garden Center or Hardware Store. In general - something to give Foxfarm's "Ocean Forest" a real run for the money! Here is what I came up with:

The basic soil mix is called "Four-way Mix", it's not my baby, I found the recipe years ago. It consists of equal measurements of four basic ingredients:

"Four-way Mix"
1 part Topsoil.
1 part Compost.
1 part Perlite and/or Vermiculite.
1 part "Composted Steer Manure".
The Compost can be either "store bought" or "home grown", but the Topsoil should definately be "store bought" not something you dug up out of the back yard. Store bought topsoil tends to be more "Fluffy".

To each gallon of the Four-way Mix I add two things:
1. About 1 Tblspn. of dolomite lime, it varies according to ingredients, so check your Ph.
2. A good "All Purpose", meal based, organic fertilizer at "about half the suggested strength".
I actually use a combination of three ferilizers to get a wider variety of ingredients; FoxFarm "Marine Cuisine" (10-7-7), Whitney Farms "All-Purpose" plant food (5-5-5) and Kellog's Organic "All-Purpose" Fertilizer (4-4-4). Between the steer manure and the dry fertilizers, I get all the beneficial bacteria (mycorrhizae, etc.) I could want.

The stratigy is for the soil to provide a well balanced (but not overly strong) amount of nutes for the plants to grow in from a couple of weeks old - all the way through harvest. Each repotting allows you to add more fresh soil.
During the Veg stage I spike the water with a little "Mexican" Bat Guano Tea (high N) and Alaska fish emulsion (5-1-1).
During the Flowering stage I spike the water with a little "Indonesian" Bat Guano Tea (high P) and Alaska "Morbloom" fish emulsion (0-10-10).

So there you go, not just a soil recipe - but the whole stratigy to back it up!

In less you live in a real small town; everything should be easy to source locally, except maybe the bat guano, especially the Indonesian bat guano. Buy it on line, if you have to, it's worth it!

FYI Marine Cuisine and Fish Emulsions are not organic.

Hey BlueJ nice thread idea! Heres my current iteration:


Kalyx's NOT VEGAN SOIL MIX for Rize up! Veganic Gardening


From what I've read (CANNA also confirms) FFHF and other less hot peat mixes tend to fall short for BIO CANNA based veganics so I based my mix on FFOF. Then I switched to Roots Organic Potting Soil for few reasons but either will work. Also, with (Rize up!) veganic gardening techniques (super-alive mostly vegan amended soilless) perlite has been referred to as a lifeless void in the rhizosphere. Thus, I have tried to keep (chunky... always chunky) perlite use to a minimum. Now perlite only shows up in base bagged soil, and in my reused mix.




THE BASE:


1.5cu ft Roots Organics Potting Soil (about 10 gal, 50%)
Coconut Coir (2 gal, 10%)
"Aggregate"--Dyna Rok Silica Stone OR some chunky perlite (2 gal, 10%)
COCONOT(2 gal, 10%)
EWC(2 gal, 10%)
Ancient Forest Alaska Humus (2 gal, 10%)


*if you cant get COCONOT, and dyna-rok you could easily substitute chunky perlite (4 gal, 20%) instead of the harder to find two as the "Aggregate" in this mix. You just lose the non-synth silica from dyna-rok and the increased volume for your microbes that the COCONOT offers opposed to perlite. If you cantfind Ancient Forest you could substitute any high quality compost with high microbe diversity. Or you could just up the EWC (no fungi in EWC though).


AMENDMENTS (can go this high but I didn't):


2 cups Dolomite Lime (1 cup/ ft3)
2 cups Baseline Granular Concentrate Peat Humus (1 cup/ ft3)
2 cups Alfalfa Meal (1 cup/ ft3)
1 cups Powdered Glacial Rock (1 cup/ ft3)
1 cup soft rock P


1 cup Kelp Meal (.5 cup/ ft3)
1 cup Azomite (.5 cup/ ft3)
1 cup neem meal
1 cup karanja meal
.25 cup Epsom Salts
Complete Inoculant (Bacteria and Fungi and Myco; whole SPORES are better than propagules!) like GreenGro Granular Plus Mycorrhizae


I mix everything thoroughly and water in about 2 gallons of RO or AACTwith liquid kelp and micros. Ideally I let it sit for at least two weeks as it will be a hotter mix. I use Extreme Gardening Mykos dusted onto the roots and under the rootball at transplant. I cut this mix 50/50 with used soil of the same mix for small veg transplants and go straight into this mix for large veg and soon to bloom plants.

Thanks Kalyx, I figured there's about a dozen threads started in just the first couple pages asking about soil mixes, why not get a thread going to condense the information so you can just scroll down and pick 'n choose what might work best for you and what's available. Pics are also great so people can see results one is getting with any particular mix/setup.

That is a great mix Kalyx! Good to see someone else using coconot, and i bet more people would use it if they never called it cocoNOT, everyone associates coco with positive grow results so why would i want to use something that is NOT coco? They should call it what it is, anyways.

I have 20 bags or more of coconot in my reused mix, and I also get coco through the roots organic bagged soil in there also. Once I find a feed store around here I will get some rice hulls and replace the perlite with that.

It's awesome not having to buy more or any bags, just a few bags of the vermiblend or ewc once a month or so and the grows keep getting better. I find that what I do is actually farming soil and plant growth is more of a side effect. Most of my work is all in the soil and keeping it fresh/alive.

I have a VEGAN MIX I haven't tried yet but will eventually do a side by side. Here it is anyways.

1 bag COCONOT
1 bag VERMIBLEND

1 cup VEGAN MIX (down to earth product)
1 cup dolomite lime
1/2 cup alfalfa meal
1/2 cup kelp meal
1/2 cup neem meal/cake
1/2 cup greensand
1/2 cup azomite
1/4 cup dry humics
1/4 cup empsom

That coupled with AACT's, alfalfa teas, nettle teas, Mycos @ transplants and supplement some biothrive or biocanna and you're growing in vegan heaven!

I like what you have to say about reuse. I cant believe more growers can't pitch the disposable economy mindset, f-ing grow shops spreading misinformation (soil sales get customers in to hear the new hype).
Agreed cocoNOT is a stupid misleading name, but this stuff is on the opposite end of the spectrum from coco so I guess I can follow their rationale. Make sure to source the rice hulls that have been burned/charred already, Matt said they are better for soil mixing.
Thanks for starting this thread, now I hope everyone finds it and contributes their mix, and yes there are still people who have trouble clicking and reading; starting threads like whats a good soil mix. lol