My Organic Grow-High Brix or Water Only Recipe?

I was initially going to make my own water only soil and hopefully be able to reuse it. Through my research I have seen alot of different theroies/recipes, and then stumbled upon High Brix. From what I saw, it calls for lower NPK/High Calcium and weekly foliar feeds (or so.)

Im making a worm bin and homemade compost (I read Higb Brix says NO compost?) I want to start off simple, but want diversified componenents in the soil. I have some recipes written down but want some other opinions.

Theres C Coots premixed amendments you add to base soil that would be easy and cheap.

I wasnt sure if itd be better to do a basic Soil Base with a diversity of a few ammendments to begin with and try a "High Brix" Recipe later on.

I seriously cant find any local places so ill be ordering online, Dr. Earth and Down to Earth have a vast line of ammendments I was going to order out of.

Im making my own compost and EWC but will have to order some to begin with, I heard Worm Power is a good brand over the basic EWC brands.

Kind Sir said:

I was initially going to make my own water only soil and hopefully be able to reuse it. Through my research I have seen alot of different theroies/recipes, and then stumbled upon High Brix. From what I saw, it calls for lower NPK/High Calcium and weekly foliar feeds (or so.)

Im making a worm bin and homemade compost (I read Higb Brix says NO compost?) I want to start off simple, but want diversified componenents in the soil. I have some recipes written down but want some other opinions.

Theres C Coots premixed amendments you add to base soil that would be easy and cheap.

Click to expand...

I am not a fan of any mix that specifies that you don't add compost.
If you have a compost pile, when you make it, add fish bone meal, fish meal, alfalfa meal, kelp meal, and crab meal. Then wait for it to compost and you are done.
That's the easiest form of a water only recipe.

greasemonkeymann said:

I am not a fan of any mix that specifies that you don't add compost.
If you have a compost pile, when you make it, add fish bone meal, fish meal, alfalfa meal, kelp meal, and crab meal. Then wait for it to compost and you are done.
That's the easiest form of a water only recipe.

Click to expand...

Don't forget to water with JSW.

Kind Sir said:

I was initially going to make my own water only soil and hopefully be able to reuse it. Through my research I have seen alot of different theroies/recipes, and then stumbled upon High Brix. From what I saw, it calls for lower NPK/High Calcium and weekly foliar feeds (or so.)

Im making a worm bin and homemade compost (I read Higb Brix says NO compost?) I want to start off simple, but want diversified componenents in the soil. I have some recipes written down but want some other opinions.

Theres C Coots premixed amendments you add to base soil that would be easy and cheap.

Click to expand...

like high brix molasses high brix??

I'm a fan of the water only and high Brix way, especially outdoors or no till..

Been tinkering wit dis way for a minute, and its true, Def need your meals and plants love their calcium, but its amazing how little you can do once your mix is well rounded..

I would only use outdoor compost outdoors as the natural predators out there regulate things like thrips etc, but fresh indoor EWC is, imo, a weapon in many organic ways no doubt..

These girls from seed just saw a good 1-2.5 months straight of just water.. Depending on strain and when they entered the notill..Zero ppm Ro the entire veg and a little aloe misting here and there last couple weeks is all they ever saw so far.. First tea and maybe only tea gets applied today..

In fact, No coconut water or BSM quite yet but should be upful if applied..

Above: no till bed on wheels, Pre flowering shot..

Above: This is a sour diesel specimen from DPs bagseed .. One of them is about 40 inches wide and on Day 3 of flower .. Being the Third run in this soil..Should be crazy smooth if anything like @DonPetro's first run!

Yea one of you guys has a big thread in the organics section. Thanks for posting that.

I was debating on buy a premixed mineral and nutrients kit to save money on shipping unless I end up finding a local shop. I wanted to have leftovers to use for teas, but I could just buy an extra few boxes for teas. Ive found a cew different premixed, the most well known being the coots mix. Whats in your mix?

Im making my own worm farm and compost and theyll stay inside. Will be fun to research different items for better quality EWC/Compost.

High brix would be that the plant has a high sugar content and got it from living life to the max potential. I'm a bit skeptical that you can get high brix from water only. The plants need constant foliar sprays of probiotics and molasses, fermented fruit extract, and has been growing in soil with probiotic compost. Itll need compost teas, fish aminos, etc. Basic TLC. Jokes. Get a refractometer for the ability to prove your methods. The farm I interned with specialized in probiotics and high brixx! It was "the way". But no, seriously the boss got his orphans to be eating solids real abnormally young by feeding them this kinda food. Oh yea.....subbed btw this is right up my ally

Kind Sir said:

Yea one of you guys has a big thread in the organics section. Thanks for posting that.

I was debating on buy a premixed mineral and nutrients kit to save money on shipping unless I end up finding a local shop. I wanted to have leftovers to use for teas, but I could just buy an extra few boxes for teas. Ive found a cew different premixed, the most well known being the coots mix. Whats in your mix?

Im making my own worm farm and compost and theyll stay inside. Will be fun to research different items for better quality EWC/Compost.

Click to expand...

African night crawler poo on the surface. This means you can scrape the top to get pure castings and don't have to worry about harvesting worms too. Then when it comes time to refill the bed just dig out one half long ways, pour in the new feed and cover a little with the old. Should be about a foot tall. At least with African night crawlers. Canadians don't do that though and red wigglers you gotta bait the worms and catch them to save your colony. Granted there's a bunch of methods to do that and some a pretty efficient. Down side to African night crawlers is they won't survive a frost.

What do you use to grow organically? I have not done foliar spray yet and was thi king itd be best to stick with something tried and true than to try something new when I just started growing. Your opinion?
I was looking at trying the coots kit from buildasoil, your opinion once more?

I am starting my worm bin soon, itll stay inside. Is that a problem?

I use EM-1 probiotics and culture more bottles from it. So actually I never use the original culture for sake of cost. 30mL EM-1 and 30mL molasses into 1 liter of nonchlorinated room temperature wat mix it well and cap it for a week. burp it once or twice towards the end of the week. After it has fermented for a week you have a new bottle of what you bought. Only issue is you cant culture from the second culture unless you only want lactobacilli cultured. We will call this new bottle EMe

Bokashi is a soil amendment, compost activator, source of nutrients (depending on what you make it from.)
To make bokashi, you will start with some source of carbon and some source of nitrogen. Each have to be small particle sizes. I like peat moss and coffee grinds (spent). I mix about 30 gallons of this at a time because I use it in everything I do. . Ill use 15g of peat and 15 coffee with about a cup of EMe and a cup of molasses. Then, I wet and mix this until its about 60% moisture. (when you squeeze it there should not be any dripping) add peat if if it drips. pack this into5 gallon containers for 2weeks and then use. It should have white mold growing . I'll mix this into the soil at a half gallon per 15 gallons of soil. Then I top dress with about a cup every week to two weeks. (for adult plants) seddlings can get their nutrients from the soil until their older as far as im concerned. but I have had success feeding seedlings low amounts of food. I focus more on getting them transplanted into larger amended soils.

Mix boxasi in with a pile of compost to speed the process up. I have useable compost in 3 weeks from assembly. I turn the pile every week to keep this process moving and so nutrients don't burn off but are more readily available.

EMe can be used to extract nutes from organic sources as well as keeping things from rotting and actually will cause things to ferment if kept in a sealed container. For example I have made a banana peel extract from a gallon of peels and the rest water with 60 mL or so of EMe and 60mL of molasses. This extract works great as a high potassium fertilizer and since it is liquid you can spray it at a 1:100 ratio without burning your leaves off. This is an example of a fermented fruit extract. For high brixx however, you can simply get a few pound of fruits of whatever is cheap and sweet (aim towards sweet). For a common DIY recipe you can use about 30mL of EMe and 30mL of molasses in a liter of water per pound of fruit.

For amino acids you will be looking for cheap fish. all the parts will work and I preffer skins and heads. Mix equal parts molasses to fish. about a pound of each. add 30 mL of EMe to prevent spoiling and mix this into a liter of water. and ferment in a sealed container for two weeks and spray or soil drench at 1:100 parts.

Calcium phosphate extract takes 30 days but is not a fermentation. Charred or blacked bones (crushed) and cheap vinegar. just cover the bones and let it sit for 30 days. this will need to burp though if you do decide t cover it. again 1:100 is a safe dilute using this whether it is foliar or soil drench.


ok that was the basics and when mixing these together for a full bodied fertilizer you don't need to over dilute. you can mix them all together and then dilute this @ 1:100.

1tsp = 5mL
1T = 15 mL

probiotic tablets can be a substitute for EM if you are lazy or out. Its better to add a little more EMe/mol then less when making a new fertilizer, like 50ml in the fruit extract or even 100mL just so you can see what you are looking for.
Stop foliar fading after flowers start getting orange pistols and just use a soil drench. This stuff does not need to be very exact except for the EMe culturing. I'd recommend mixing these ingredients in the morning before you want to spray or water in and put an airstone in the container to get everything active. Make sure it sinks, so if you need to tie it to something do that.. if you are outdoors you'll want to wait until 6pm or later to spray so the light doesn't burn them and if your indoors then use your judgement.

As a new grower it is your job to learn how to use NPK appropriately with your cannabis plants and be able to read what the plant tells you. itll do this with its leaves. stay weak for now and make weak adjustments.

message me for more info and iv got a thread on from scratch.

Soil for seedlings
1:1 peat and vermicastings . this makes a great soil block and can start seeds directly. you can start seeds directly in vermicastings if you want. you can add an equal part sandy loam dirt (from the ground) (1:1:1 ratio now) for plants in solo cups. (poke holes)


soil recipe for the rest of the growth
5gal:5gal:5gal:5gal vermicastingseat:compost:sandy loam dirt (from the ground) with up to a cup of mineral mix rated about 5-4-4, a handful of gypsum/lime and a half gallon of bokashi. Mix well. If you don't have a mature worm bed to get that much poo from just leave it out or add what you have and don't fret.

Kind Sir said:

Yea one of you guys has a big thread in the organics section. Thanks for posting that.

I was debating on buy a premixed mineral and nutrients kit to save money on shipping unless I end up finding a local shop. I wanted to have leftovers to use for teas, but I could just buy an extra few boxes for teas. Ive found a cew different premixed, the most well known being the coots mix. Whats in your mix?

Im making my own worm farm and compost and theyll stay inside. Will be fun to research different items for better quality EWC/Compost.

Click to expand...

If I may humbly offer some advice on creating your compost pile, I found it to be fantastically easy to amend my compost/leaf pile as I was assembling it, meaning the whole typical "lasagna" method, but only layering high nitrogen inputs along with the regular organic amendments. Works perfect to where you never have to add anything to your soil mix other than aeration and maybe peat, but with enough compost even peat isn't needed.
For example.
layer of leaves, then grassclippings, then amendments, I like the super slow release ones, like fish bone meal, crab meal, hair clippings, dog-hair, greensand, etc. Don't forget to add the normal ones in there too, like neem, kelp , and alfalfa meals, etc etc.
I guesstimated on the total amount, but I found that when fully FULLY aged and composted, it's really hard to overdo it.
My compost pile is pretty much gone now, but I stupidly made it at the base of a redwood tree... what a dumbshit move that was...
the redwoods roots grew up INTO the pile like three feet high into the pile, I have these massive wirey globs of roots that are sucking all my precious compost up...
If you are short on grassclippings any high nitrogen input will work to activate the thermophilic composting
fish meal, guanos, blood meal (yuck), alfalfa (awesome to use fresh from the animal feed store)
For informational uses only, I added roughly about 20 cups of amendments to my pile as I was making it, but I also added more when tuning it too. My compost pile made probably 4 or 5 cubic feet of compost, maybe more.
I keep saying this, and sorry to the RIU veterans that keep reading it, but a compost pile is perhaps THE most important thing I have .
I also have a wormbin as well, but I really think my compost is the best shit I've ever done for my plants.
Not to mention it literally makes growing almost idiot proof.
OH and ALWAYS make your compost pile three times the size of what you think you need... it's amazing how much it "melts"
Good shit though man, I wish I would have discovered it back in the 90s