Coots Mix Advice for new living soil grower

kratos015 said:

That has to be a typo on the peat moss, most sites I've seen show between 100-200 so maybe they meant to put 150 instead of 15?

Truly bizarre, because everything I've read says peat has double CEC as coco and I found more than one site to confirm that as truth. Plus, the amount of people that use peat instead of coco for this exact purpose.

Even more bizarre, some of the links I found say coco has more than peat. So either some people are testing wrong, or there are some other factors at play here that I'm unable to find.

Links below for anyone interested.

link 1

link 2

link 3

Truly bizarre indeed. Until proven otherwise, I'll continue to use peat moss.

But the literal second that someone can conclusively prove that coco has better CEC than peat moss I'm going to switch back.

It took me years, multiple crops/harvests to get the hang of how hydrophobic peat moss is. Peat moss is like some high maintenance shit, looking for any reason to go hydrophobic on you and the instant you slip up on your watering practices you get dry spots.

Coco on the other hand is literally idiot proof in terms of watering. This is why I recommend coco for people new to soil/living organics, because coco is significantly harder to screw up watering with. Once one gets the hang of organics and how they work, then they can explore peat moss until they get the watering down pat.

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It depends on the units of measurement being used. Coco isn't presented here (for reasons that I think would be obvious), but it demonstrates how the CEC of any particular material changes, based upon whether or not it's being measured by weight, or volume. You gotta pay attention to the units...


Ignore the title, as it doesn't really relate to living soil systems...

kratos015 said:

But the literal second that someone can conclusively prove that coco has better CEC than peat moss I'm going to switch back.

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CEC with organic material like coco or peat moss (not talking about stable organic carbon) have properties that make their CEC unstable. I've read for example that the CEC of peat moss is hugely affected by pH, with the maximum CEC of peat moss achieved at a pH of around 8. But no one grows plants in that. CEC for mineral or stable carbon is a different animal altogether and helps buffer pH rather than be radically affected by it. Plain field soil might have a low CEC of only around 20 meq/100g, but it far exceeds pure coco/peat by about 100% when it comes to volume. It's the total CEC that counts for the plants growing in a container. Don't use straight field soil in a container though. lol

To initially increase CEC in my no-till peat-based soil, I added a small amount montmorillonite clay in the form of calcium bentonite to my initial mix as part of the mineral component. I found it really helps with its moisture retaining properties as well. I would avoid using too much though.

Does anyone have any experience using bat guano in their mix? Im trying to correct my nitrogen issue, and plan on adding it when I add my ammendments and minerals. Im planning on using 1/4 tsp per gallon, which equates to about a cup for 10 cu ft of soil. Also going to add perlite to my lava rock. How does adding 1 cu ft (7 gallons) sound? Would be adding 10% to the 3 cu ft of lava rock i have in there. What do you guys think? When I tested the soil, it was very low on nitrogen. I dont want to go overkill, and like the idea of being able to top dress later on if needed.

GrassBurner said:

Does anyone have any experience using bat guano in their mix? Im trying to correct my nitrogen issue, and plan on adding it when I add my ammendments and minerals. Im planning on using 1/4 tsp per gallon, which equates to about a cup for 10 cu ft of soil. Also going to add perlite to my lava rock. How does adding 1 cu ft (7 gallons) sound? Would be adding 10% to the 3 cu ft of lava rock i have in there. What do you guys think? When I tested the soil, it was very low on nitrogen. I dont want to go overkill, and like the idea of being able to top dress later on if needed.

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Use Neem Meal instead IMO, if possible of course.

Neem Meal has a 6-1-2 NPK, but won't burn like Guano has the potential to.

I loved using guanos when I did, it's just that the issue with burn from them made results rather inconsistent. Neem Meal, on the other hand can be applied liberally with zero negative consequences.

Plus, Guano prices are rather inflated right now it seems. I can get 5 lbs of Neem Meal for the same price it would cost me to get ~2.2 lbs of guano.

Down To Earth products have never steered me wrong, I've used their products for nearly a decade now.

For heavy feeders that need more than dry amendments, I use the following:

Fish Emulsion for Veg

Fish Hydrolysate for Flower

IMO, grab the gallon bottles of each. ~$30-35 a gallon for each product, and this ensures that you have plenty on hand. I'd much rather have excess than not enough, personally.



For your issue specifically, if I were in your shoes I'd grab some Neem Meal and top dress with it, then cover that with the same compost you used in your original soil mix. After, I'd water the 5-1-1 Fish Emulsion on top of all of that.

Then, just water as normal and continue to use the Fish Emulsion as recommended by the bottle and keep up with your top dresses.

That's why Neem and Liquid Fish are such amazing ingredients, your biggest "issue" with these ingredients is that applying them too much only results in diminishing returns. You could legit dump the entire 1 gallon bottle of fish emulsion in one of your plants and you'd experience zero negative effects, you'd just be wasting ingredients. Not ideal, but certainly not as awful as hurting the plants!

Thanks for the advice! If the neem provides nitrogen, once I add my ammendments to coots recipe, I might not need any added nitrogen.
Right now I'm at 2 cups of ammendments/minerals where Coots recommends 6.5. What i need to bring it up to par will be here Wednesday. I went with thus neem/karanja mix Neem Karanja mix I already ordered the Guano, but I'll hold off on it. I'll add everything, mix it well, and let it sit for a couple days then retest the soil and see where my nitrogen levels are at then I believe everything except the basalt dust was from Down to Earth. Ive read a lot of good things about them.
Thanks for recommending the fish products! Right now I use the Alaskan Fish fertilizer and Alaskan Fish bloom, but the bloom isn't organic, so i wouldn't want to use it on my new soil. The girls ive got in flower get the bloom, but theyre in a different soil that I was using. I picked up both things you recommended, great prices. Thanks again for all the knowledge and advice! Finally somewhere that I get enough service to watch the video with Coots that was posted at the beginning of this thread

Got my most of my ammendments today, as well as the Fish emulsion and hydrolysate.

Let me tell you about how good Neptune's Harvest smells when the cap isn't on all the way tight and it leaks inside the plastic packaging for a few days Once I tightened the cap and washed the bottle with hot soapy water, it was tolerable. Honestly the product itself in the bottle didn't smell bad at all.

Instead of my Oyster Shell Flour i got 5 lbs of Neem Seed Meal, will be a few days before the flour shows up.

Feeling good about this mix Gonna hit it with the ammendments ive got as well as some malted barley.

GrassBurner said:

Got my most of my ammendments today, as well as the Fish emulsion and hydrolysate.

Let me tell you about how good Neptune's Harvest smells when the cap isn't on all the way tight and it leaks inside the plastic packaging for a few days Once I tightened the cap and washed the bottle with hot soapy water, it was tolerable. Honestly the product itself in the bottle didn't smell bad at all.

Instead of my Oyster Shell Flour i got 5 lbs of Neem Seed Meal, will be a few days before the flour shows up.

Feeling good about this mix Gonna hit it with the ammendments ive got as well as some malted barley.

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What brand SPM are you using?

I believe it was Lambert

Just double checking to make sure you weren't using a brand of SPM that comes pre-limed. As Lambert offers several products, you might want to double check that yourself. Look at the ingredients list on the bag.

I would also suggest that you get your well water tested. You need to know if it contains appreciable amounts of alkalinity (usually bicarbonate), or problematic dissolved solids (like sodium). Alkalinity in irrigation water will affect soil pH over time. This effect is compounded by growing in small containers.

In your first post you claimed the soil pH AND the well water tested at 7. This is well out of range for cannabis production...

Did you cycle your soil for any appreciable amount of time before using it?

Hey thanks for the advice! I tested my well water when I first started growing, bought a kit from Lowes that came with 2 tests. Ran me about $30. I ran a second test after I had problems with my first coots mix, results were the same. I cant remember the results off the top of my head, but there was nothing out of whack with the water.
I thought a ph between 6-7 was optimal for cannabis? My girls in flower are in an organic potting mix from a local nursery, they get the same water, and they are thriving. As soon as i switched my plants from my first coots mix into the miracle gro performance organics soil, all the problems fixed themselves and they took off. Thats what makes me think my first coots mix was lacking nutrients.
Coots calls for 1 cup kelp, 1 cup neem/karanja, 1 cup Oyster shell flower, 1/2 gypsum, and 3 cups basalt per cu ft. My first mix had 2 cups of each per 7 cu ft. So I was almost 8 cups short per ammendment, and almost 30 cups short on the Basalt, according to Coots.

I mixed the ammendments and minerals when I mixed the spm, ewc's, and aeration. Added some Barley, then watered it once a week for a month. Gave it an ewc tea about halfway through the month. The seedlings weren't happy from the very beginning, and only looked worse. Very light almost yellow coloring, and they were starting to get some pretty gnarly brown spots. As soon as they got into their new mix, problems went away, and they have been looking great and growing fast.

Here is one of my plants in flower, Dracarys by Katsu.

I don't have the spm bag anymore, but I made sure when I purchased it, that it was plain spm, no additives.
I've learned you have to check everything, seems like every company wants to add something "special".

Also have some perlite coming to up my aeration a little. The articles linked in this thread had some great info. Im planning on adding 1 cu ft of perlite to my 3 cu ft of lava rock.

My compost probably wasn't the highest quality either, seems like a crap shoot with that. Im gonna start my own compost bin so next time I mix soil, I know exactly whats going in

I just reamended some of my supersoil yesterday.

Looking at post 1, im not arguing with anybody here, i do not run Coots mix per se, but those pictures and that description imo is 100% why it is suggested NOT to transfer seedlings into supersoil.

Month 1, imo, should be done in a more basic soil, lighter, gentler. The plants want to build up some bulk and growing ability first.

My first grow went right into my cooked supersoil...it made it fine, but it did not grow remotely as well as starting in gentler soil for the first month from seed.

Im not exactly sure how "Clackamas Coots" became the go to expert in developing a supersoil...i think its foolish to worship any particular persons mix.

You start with whatever mix you make, run it and can then see what is was missing...amend, run it again, it improves every time.

If coots mix works well... great, but nothing about that mix impresses me, nor does the attempt to suggest a different rock dust has some special significance. Just grow it out and amend it based upon the deficiencies you and the others are seeing.


I think it would work fine it just would have benefited from a lighter starting mix.

Coot is legendary for steering growers correctly and backing his reasons with science and experience. I agree that idol worship in general is foolish but do some research. Clackamas Coot has shared more good info than most of the rest of us combined and he deserves respect.

Are supersoils and living soils the same thing? I don't think anyone has an altar dedicated to Coots, but the guy knows soil. When i visit Clackamascoots.com, I don't see anywhere I can buy his products, because as far as I know he doesn't have any He's old school, and I like that.
I wanted a simple living soil mix, and Coots looked like a great place to start. Ive read tons of threads from people running his mix and have great results.
I dont want to reinvent the wheel, I just wanna grow good pot in good soil. Im not a big fan of shooting in the dark, which is why I chose coots as a starting point. Once my soil has the proper quantities of ammendments and has had a few weeks to do its thing, ill test the soil and go from there.
My first grow I planted seedlings in straight FFOF, and their symptoms were completely opposite of what I saw with the seedlings in my first mix. My soil tested extremely low in nitrogen, so im thinking it was a lack of nutrients as opposed to a surplus.
I do appreciate your advice! Thank you for taking the time to explain your perspective

“You don’t have my castings” clackamas coot.

I think of supersoils as mixes that have lots of ingredients that plants use, and the pants take what they want. Living soils rely on microbes and enzymes naturally present in worm castings and compost and or added such as !mammoth P and other brands. Living soils may be supersoils but don't have to be complex mixes. Coot s Mix is simple. Supersoils almost always use compost or castings and teas but many more ingredients than some of us prefer. Coot s ingredients for his mix are neatly packaged at build a soil. I got the reammebdment kit to try f for the first time. I sound like a shill there. I built my soil mix but I saw the reammend d kit and it's just all there ready to use so I thought I'd try it.

Thanks for the explanation

GrassBurner said:

Are supersoils and living soils the same thing? I don't think anyone has an altar dedicated to Coots, but the guy knows soil. When i visit Clackamascoots.com, I don't see anywhere I can buy his products, because as far as I know he doesn't have any He's old school, and I like that.
I wanted a simple living soil mix, and Coots looked like a great place to start. Ive read tons of threads from people running his mix and have great results.
I dont want to reinvent the wheel, I just wanna grow good pot in good soil. Im not a big fan of shooting in the dark, which is why I chose coots as a starting point. Once my soil has the proper quantities of ammendments and has had a few weeks to do its thing, ill test the soil and go from there.
My first grow I planted seedlings in straight FFOF, and their symptoms were completely opposite of what I saw with the seedlings in my first mix. My soil tested extremely low in nitrogen, so im thinking it was a lack of nutrients as opposed to a surplus.
I do appreciate your advice! Thank you for taking the time to explain your perspective

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Yes supersoil is just a lot of nutrients in a living soil to last a long period of time.

I like his mix, it is "classic". I was just saying the idea of 1/3 peat, 1/3 aeration and 1/3 compost is not his idea. It is though, the right idea!

Sounds like we're on the same page, im still wet behind the ears, you're probably further along the page than me I believe he said he got the mix from Cornell maybe? I think he tweeked it a little, but haven't really done more than a quick Google search on the subject.
What goes into your soil mix? I always like hearing what others use, never hurts to have a little more knowledge. I guess that's one good thing about us tokers, we burn enough brain cells that we get to learn things 2 or 3 times