Living Soil : My beg borrow & improvise vermicomposted mix - Comments & Advice ?

Greetz from Africa

Hi folks

My first legal grow ... our local laws have recently changed
My first grow in 10 years ... I've been a bit of a slack b*st*rd

My first totally organic grow ... going with a living soil outdoor grow

I'm actively looking for advice and suggestions

• Am I missing anything important
  • anything recommended to add ?
  • anything recommended to reduce ?
  • anything recommended to remove ?
• Any general suggestions
  • about my soil ?
  • about my process ?

The more input ... the more I'll learn.

Cheers
Rich

- - -

My Grow

I'm doing an outdoor grow

• a mix of inherited & gifted & bag & harvested seeds
  • mostly sativa
  • some indica hybrids
• southern hemisphere
• 5 month grow period (slightly later start)
• half the daylight is direct sunlight
• half the daylight is ambient but not direct sunlight

My Season

• October
  • INDOOR
  • Germination in paper towels
  • OUTDOOR
  • Seedlings in polystyrene coffee cups
• November
  • OUTDOOR
  • Transplant into 4.5 litre / 1 gallon black planter bags
• December
  • OUTDOOR
  • Transplant into 25 litre / 6 gallon food grade drums

My Soil Preparation

I've gone with a combination of reading & research and my past experience with cannabis & psilocybin mushrooms & homebrew.

I've developed quite a good nose for healthy shit ... in all senses of the word ... and have incorporated as much variety as I can forage, beg, borrow, or improvise.

My theory is that if I combine as much variation in raw materials and diversification of little creatures and micro-organisms ... the whole living ecosystem should balance itself out. If anything tries to take over or invade, there's something else that will chow down on it for breakfast and get it back in the healthy line.

• 25 litre / 6.6 US gallon pots
• 50% nursery potting soil
• 25% nursery compost
• 25% living soil
  • vermicomposted all of this through my worm bins
  • ( red wriggler earthworms )
  • ( endemic african garden earthworms )
  • ( and a bunch of companion digester composting bugs and maggots )
• - - -
• excess fruit & veg collected from my local supermarket
  • broccoli
  • spinach
  • eggplant
  • cauliflower
  • baby marrows
  • - - -
  • apples
  • paw paw
  • strawberries
  • avocado pear
  • - - -
  • limited amount
    • potato
    • tomato
    • oranges
    • sweet potato
• kitchen waste from our house
  • rice
  • bread
  • teabags
  • weetabix
  • wheat germ
  • crushed egg shells
• - - -
• rabbit pellet droppings from our pet bunnies
  • & bedding hay
  • & red wriggler earthworms which live naturally under the bedding
• racing horse manure from my local race course
  • & stable straw
• - - -
• wood ash from my local pizza parlour
• coffee grounds from my local coffee shop
• spent brewer's grains from my local craft micro-brewery
• crushed prawn & crab shells from my local Chinese takeaway
• - - -
• epsom salts
• - - -
• fresh sea kelp collected from my local beach
  • chopped & pounded & mashed
  • added molasses & brown sugar
    • half fed to my worms
    • half brewing into tea
• - - -
• compost from our garden
  • mostly small brown leaves
  • & endemic african pink earthworms which live naturally in the compost bin
• hand ripped cardboard
  • corrugated cardboard boxes
  • egg cartons
  • toilet rolls
  • newspaper
• - - -
• and of course harvested from my worm bins
  • castings mixed into my soil
  • vermicompost mixed into my soil
  • & worm castings tea with molasses & brown sugar
• - - -
• using rainwater wherever possible
  • & including some algae growing in the rain barrel
• - - -
• a bit of mushroom compost to kick off mycorrhizal fungi
  • aged chicken manure
  • composted straw
  • infused with mycelium
• and supplemental molasses teas to kick start rhizobacteria & microbial life
  • worm castings
  • chopped crushed pounded fresh kelp
  • spent brewer's grains and enzymes
• top dressings to be applied as my grow medium settles
  • more vermicompost
  • more work castings
  • more aged manure
  • more dried aged kelp

Grow Medium : Final Mix

• 50% nursery potting soil
• 25% nursery compost
• 25% home-made vermicompost as above
  • all of the above has been through my worm bins
    • for between 6-10 weeks for all the fresh stuff

Where I am at now

This past weekend I completely emptied my worm bins

• I dumped everything out into a basin worms and all
• I removed everything I could identify as chunks of recognisable food
  • all the vermicomposted stuff went into my final mix barrel
  • 90% of the undigested stuff went back into my worm bins

I now have a 50 litre barrel (13 US gallons) of 'living soil'

• it is going through its last 2 weeks of earthworm feasting and breakdown
• I have already infused with
  • fresh kelp pieces sliced small & pounded & fermented for a week
  • kelp tea made with molasses and a little brown sugar

I'll be loading and filling the pots with the final substrate next weekend after this

• removing 90% of the worms out of the living soil
  • they will go back into their bins where the undigested stuff is waiting
• adding my brewer's spent grains which is rich in a different family of microbes & enzymes
  • 2/3 of that into the living soil
  • 1/3 into the potting soil

And then letting that all settle for one more week and begin to integrate and bloom with invisible life

2nd week of December is transplant time

That's when my girls will move from their 4.5 litre black planter seedling bags into their final home

- - -

Discussion, comments, suggestions and recommendations welcome !!!

5 months in a 6 gallon pot outdoors? And these aren't autos correct? I think with that pot size, you'll want to plant them very late so that they veg for no more than a month or so before the declining sunlight hours trigger them into flowering.

One plant outdoors in 5 months could easily fill a 100 gallon pot with roots. I used 20 gallon pots for about 3 months of veg time up here in Canada (short summers here) before flowering started, and it was so root bound it was a world of problems. I certainly didn't enjoy watering it twice a day either.