Sending my compost and worm castings to a lab...

MustangStudFarm

Well-Known Member
I prefer water holding aeration (vermiculite, pumice, etc) over the normal displacement aeration (like perlite)
This might be a problem. I really cannot find anything but perlite and expanded shale. The shale is heavy and it makes the pots heavy to where it is hard to tell the moisture content!

Also, my soil has been drying out in between cycles. I bet that is not good for the microbes?
 

greasemonkeymann

Well-Known Member
This might be a problem. I really cannot find anything but perlite and expanded shale. The shale is heavy and it makes the pots heavy to where it is hard to tell the moisture content!

Also, my soil has been drying out in between cycles. I bet that is not good for the microbes?
nah, from what I've seen cannabis likes a good dry-out period, obviously not ot the degree of wilting or drooping, but def dry.
you can get landscape volcanic rock and crush it
and use your finger if you ever need to see if it's dry, or scrape away the top layer of unattached soil
It's possible that your gavita is drying out the toplayer via convection, which may be fooling you into thinking it needs water
are the drainage holes on the 8 gal at the bottom of the container or sides?
or both?
Maybe consider using coco wool to use as "screens" for the drainage holes to keep em from getting plugged
you have worms in your soil too right?
those help
 

greasemonkeymann

Well-Known Member

Wetdog

Well-Known Member
hmmm... all those are probably better for keeping a ph constant rather than correcting it..
d-lime or oyster flour may work better?
either way this is all guesswork until you get your test back

My theory is lack of aeration and possible low ph. The latter of the two possibly being cause from the former.
If your clones and seedlings love the soil i'm really thinking it may just be simply not aerated enough media
DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!

First off, get yourself some D-Lime (pulverized, from Lowes or HD, or the feed store. Oyster shell, only if you are close enough to the left coast to get it in an actual store, for $10 or so. D-Lime is ~$4.50)

Snag a LOCAL 4cf bag of perlite. Should be $16 - $20. Just the regular horticultural grade, not the "chunky". Avoid the expanded shale, pumice, lava rock and any 'cool & green' aeration stuff till you know just how a well aerated mix should look and perform.

I KNOW GMM loves this stuff and I am NOT throwing shade here, far from it! What GMM has, that so many lack, is years of experience and plenty of fuck-ups along with observations and lessons learned from those fuck-ups.

I've been doing it for over 45 years and STILL fuck-up! But, usually, know what I did wrong when the memory finally kicks in. LOL At my age I'm pretty much pre compost.

Slow down a bit and get more basic. I mean, if you add rabbit poo and the plants look worse ...... That should tell you it's not ready yet, or, there is too much urine still in it (I'm betting on excess urine).

Have you ever made your own mix from scratch? Have never used a bagged mix, being extremely lucky trading sweat labor to learn a basic mix in 1971. Far beyond anything bagged IMO, since you aren't concerned with profit margins and adding just enough 'stuff' for it to work for a little while.

I'll add more when I get my thoughts collected.

BTW, besides using wildly different amendments, due to location, GMM's and my styles of growing are so similar it's scary. Just a casual aside can convey paragraphs of information on things.

Wet
 

greasemonkeymann

Well-Known Member
GMM- how do you do your leaf mold in volume? Tarp and leave alone? Tarp and turn?
well, it's sorta morphed into less and less of a chore (I try to see on the least needed)
but after it's composted, I fill a huge ass smartpot and top it with about four layers of cardboard, that gives it enough cover to keep it from getting soaked in the storms (smartpot helps with that too), and then the womrs have cardboard to eat over the course of time, and then I just use it when needed.
Honestly it's gotten to the point of making too much, I have at least 75 gallons of it right now, and it's got bazillions of worms in it, so it's basicly a huge-ass wormbin at this point, the worms are making the humus more and more "refined"
course now it's gonna be almost purely bacterial compost, which isn't so bad.
I suppose I could throw some oatmeal in it to fluff up the fungi
But at the beginning I used to be all scientific'y about it, concerned with this and that

actually is sorta how the evolution of my growing techniques and tendencies, at the beginning you try all sorts of stuff, brewing teas for al sorts of occasions..
maybe I'm just getting old
I feel like the least path of resistance is providing me with the best results, so it does feel almost like I should be doing more, but it's simply not needed.
The fanciest thing I do now, is get those coconuts from whole foods and stab out the fresh cocowater to give my plants, but even that I only do twice a grow.
all I do is make compost now. and clone, and clone, and clone (damn pheno hunts)
oh, and buy predator mites
 
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greasemonkeymann

Well-Known Member
DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!

What GMM has, that so many lack, is years of experience and plenty of fuck-ups along with observations and lessons learned from those fuck-ups.

I've been doing it for over 45 years and STILL fuck-up! But, usually, know what I did wrong when the memory finally kicks in. LOL At my age I'm pretty much pre compost.

Slow down a bit and get more basic.
BTW, besides using wildly different amendments, due to location, GMM's and my styles of growing are so similar it's scary. Just a casual aside can convey paragraphs of information on things.

Wet
you really are "a brother from another mother" man

You hit it right on the nail, NOTHING teaches you more than fuck-ups
like a kid being told that a pan is hot, doesn't mean a whole lot till he is burned, but after that?
well..
lesson learned.

And as always, this forum greatly benefits from your experience, too often the loudest here are the least informative

Sadly that's true about life as well...
 

hillbill

Well-Known Member
If you counted the perlite as pebbles, my mixes would really be almost a gravelly loam. I have used rice hulls but can be hard to find.

When mixing up soil use about any familiar base like Promix or metro mix or Fafard 3B. I treat them all about the same but always add more drainage. LEDs or COBs demand even more poracity.
 

greasemonkeymann

Well-Known Member
I have trucks of shredded leaves arriving that I'll moisten and tarp and let it do its thing.
oh hell yea man, especially shredded, shredded leaves will be all good, they also kickass for wormbin bedding.
Similar topic, I recently got this badass book on composting that has all sorts of cool shit in it, the macro values of different leaves, and all sorts of random organic inputs.
it's the "rodale book of composting"
I'm doing some nerdery at the moment
 

greasemonkeymann

Well-Known Member
If you counted the perlite as pebbles, my mixes would really be almost a gravelly loam. I have used rice hulls but can be hard to find.

When mixing up soil use about any familiar base like Promix or metro mix or Fafard 3B. I treat them all about the same but always add more drainage. LEDs or COBs demand even more poracity.
amazon has em my man, shit you guys are gonna think I work for them or something...

https://www.amazon.com/Natures-Seed-Rice-Hulls-LBS/dp/B01CUYJFJ0/ref=sr_1_1?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1479321257&sr=1-1&keywords=rice+hulls

3.5 cubic feet is a good amount too
 

MustangStudFarm

Well-Known Member
if it were me i'd get it, but all depends on fundage of course, maybe wait to see what the soil results are.
without seeing the mix it's super hard to give advice that i'm confident with
It might be a safe bet to get some aeration! I would like to see the results myself, I keep checking my yahoo because they will e-mail the results. I am confident that a few people on here will help me make sense of it when I get it back. We didnt send in a water sample this time because they wanted a special container.

Did you see the difference in the county fairs? Okla had a bunch of pigs, even on horses. Eugene had painted boobies and a cool fairy-tale theme going.
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Compared to


AND
 

MustangStudFarm

Well-Known Member
I feel like I am just passing time until I get the results lol.... My local store has a variety of perlite, its the other stuff that they dont have like pumice, lava rock, or even rice hulls...
 

greasemonkeymann

Well-Known Member
It might be a safe bet to get some aeration! I would like to see the results myself, I keep checking my yahoo because they will e-mail the results. I am confident that a few people on here will help me make sense of it when I get it back. We didnt send in a water sample this time because they wanted a special container.

Did you see the difference in the county fairs? Okla had a bunch of pigs, even on horses. Eugene had painted boobies and a cool fairy-tale theme going.
View attachment 3832309

Compared to


AND
well shit.. cant say I wanna go to the Oklahoma fair anytime soon....
buuuut i'll be damned if painted boobage isn't a grand thing to behold
hence my love for Halloween..
 
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