Vermicompost as primary compost source?

I really appreciate everyone here chiming in. I’m picking up a lot. I’ve got the right people responding here. I happen to be an expert at some things that aren’t related to growing cannabis and I get fed up with newbie questions quicker than you guys. Thanks.

So I’m convinced to abandon my 1:1:1 zone of comfort.

Wet, could you please tell me a little about pine bark fines, perhaps sell me on it? If I can skip hot composting altogether, I’m all ears!!

I feel like I’d be a total fool if I didn’t ask you what you add to your soil mix!

Dman- I’ll look up aact and labs now. Thanks

I just don’t want to grow any other way. I don’t want to add liquid nutrients or chemicals to my plants at all. I’m not doing a big outdoor grow, but I’ll be consistently growing small scale indoors and I want fresh beautiful rich soil that’s it.

LOL, I haven't a clue as to the "why" of pine bark fines, only what happens when tey aren't included.

I was taught by rote and sweat labor on how to build a mix back in 1972 when I first got into exotic plants by other growers. They let me tag along to a greenhouse supply and told me what to purchase (exactly what he did). Then, I mixed up several wheelbarrows of mix as he directed amounts. No recipe, just eyeball and feel.

Anyway, it was "a couple of shovelfulls" of the pine bark fines. The wheelbarrow ended up a bit over 2cf (~18 gallons), when I measured years later. Back then you could actually find graded pine bark fines. Now, the mulch is the closest I can find in size. I like the "Evergreen" brand from Lowes for size, but have used the mulch from HD with no issues.

You may be able to find the graded stuff if you aren't too far north. I lived in Miami back then.

Anyway, it's always been a part of my mix. Except once. I listened to some "experts" here, ranting that it was waaay too acidic for cannabis and growing in general, so I left it out. Shit was a disaster and nothing but problems with that batch. Two things happened, I never left it out again and I quit paying attention to self proclaimed "experts".

I'll have to walk myself through making my mix and write it down, then I'll post it for you. It's just so much from memory, I just do it without thinking about it much.

Wet

You can use it as a primary microbe source, but I think it would fall as a nutrient.

You’re the man. Thanks!

Going to the worm farm today. I’m going to see if he will let me out of there with 40lbs of worms and a barrel full of “outbound”- the finely-sifted stuff that’s left after harvesting the worms from their beds. Those beds are well aged, deep, full of eggs and new carbon is added to it daily. Leftovers from the cotton gin, peat, etc.

I’ve got my 3-bin-system set up outside, and a f*king enormous amount of carbon material collected and shredded. I’m going to compost horse, cow and chicken manure, all obtained fresh myself, with kitchen scraps, leaves, no grass. I’ll turn it once a week and keep it damp, and keep it covered... and I’ll make as much as fast as I can.

I’m going to mass produce castings as fast as I can too, with (hopefully) two huge worm bins with 20 lbs of worms in each. I can sell castings locally and I’ll have plenty for all my garden beds too.

Maybe a silly question but that’s why I’m here... all the things I’ll be adding to my soil, like the kelp and oyster shell and rock dust or basalt, bone meal fish meal etc... do I add those after I have my finished compost and am building my mix? Or do I add them TO my unfinished compost or worm bins to include them in the process?

Thanks again!

ANC said:

You can use it as a primary microbe source, but I think it would fall as a nutrient.

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So I can feed my worms exactly what i feed my compost pile, but my compost pile will produce a longer lasting more sustainable microbe source, whereas the castings act more as a fertilizer and deplete of nutrients more quickly...

Are worm castings, then, even ACTUALLY “compost”?

If you think about compost as something you feed plants with... then, no.... It is awesome when stuff passes through a worm's guts as this seeds it with microbes that would not otherwise live there.
What the plants "eat" is the secretions and excretions from microbes fungi and slimes in their various processes of life and death.

ANC said:

If you think about compost as something you feed plants with... then, no.... It is awesome when stuff passes through a worm's guts as this seeds it with microbes that would not otherwise live there.
What the plants "eat" is the secretions and excretions from microbes fungi and slimes in their various processes of life and death.

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So no other form of compost is needed, other than worm castings?

Compost is something you add to dirt to give it a kickstart. Real living soil needs nothing more than 2 inches of decaying leaf matter per year to nearly fully replenish itself.
If you are starting with composts and biochar, I'd give it a full 300 days or so to really get things where they need to be... It will still grow weed in the meantime, just not as good as it is going to get.

ANC said:

Compost is something you add to dirt to give it a kickstart. Real living soil needs nothing more than 2 inches of decaying leaf matter per year to nearly fully replenish itself.
If you are starting with composts and biochar, I'd give it a full 300 days or so to really get things where they need to be... It will still grow weed in the meantime, just not as good as it is going to get.

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Compost+WC+Peat+Aeration+Minerals= Soil
+Age= Living Soil
Yes?

I imagined I’d take my fresh compost, my worm castings, peat, perlite, bat guano, glacial rock, oyster shell, kelp, blood meal, crab meal, basalt, and a couple other things, and tarp it or bin it up for a month or two. Then it’d be ready to use and I could keep using it for plants afterwards with little to no replenishment needed

Miyagismokes said:

No disrespect meant, testing is wise, but these tests giving results in elements is actually superbly stupid.
Specifically for reasons like this.

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Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but this statement is riding on the edge of superbly stupid. How is it superbly stupid that these tests give results in elements? I'm not even sure what that means.

Almost all professional farmers and even most serious gardeners get soil tests and rely on them to be accurate. Weed growers are the oddballs out of professional growers for not getting their soil tested. There's some that do, but the percentage is really small.

Really @MustangStudFarm is right. If you have high amounts of sulfur and/or sodium in your mix it's best to wash them out. The excess sulfur will hinder phosphorous uptake and the sodium will get taken up by the plant in place of potassium. If you don't, can you still grow plants? Probably, especially if you're doing 40%+ aeration, but it's more ideal to have a balanced mineral profile in your soil.

If you guys want to see how great your mixes really are leave out the aeration. That will give you the real observational data you need. I grow some fairly large plants in plane old clay based dirt on the property I live on. No aeration added. If my soil was as hot and/or unbalanced as a lot of the soil mixes on the website my plants wouldn't even live past a week in the ground. All the aeration people use saves a lot of peoples' plants from being poisoned to death. That's not a blanket statement for everyone, but it's true for plenty of people here.

If anybody is interested in getting their soil tested you're welcome to message me. It is a very useful and a fairly inexpensive investment IMO. MustangStudFarm uses a different lab, but apparently he is happy with his place too.

rikdabrick said:

Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but this statement is riding on the edge of superbly stupid. How is it superbly stupid that these tests give results in elements? I'm not even sure what that means.

Almost all professional farmers and even most serious gardeners get soil tests and rely on them to be accurate. Weed growers are the oddballs out of professional growers for not getting their soil tested. There's some that do, but the percentage is really small.

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It's wonky because plants largely take up ions, not stable elements. I'm not hating on testing.
It's just hard to judge availability this way.

rikdabrick said:

If you have high amounts of sulfur and/or sodium in your mix it's best to wash them out.

Click to expand...

My soil Ph started at 5.8 last week and I have been watering it everyday for the last week, right. So, I took at Ph reading 2 days ago and it was at >6.2.



I continued watering my new soil mix and 2 days later I have the Ph right where I want it. So, after watering my newly mix soil for 7 days my soil went Ph 5.8 to 6.5. I would feel bad for someone if they claim to garden for 45yrs and still doesn't understand this! I guess that is what happens when there is no scientific evidence of what you are doing! I just got tired of listening to people who claim that their word is as good as God's word and you should be ashamed to even question them. This was my exp with GreaseMonkeyMann, and I think that I chased him off somehow?

I got tired of my test results coming back skewed because I had too much Na or S and the Ph was too low. I bought myself an $80 Ph tester that was not made in China so that I would know when my soil is ready to be sent to the lab, which is now. So, I will have test results back within a week. I really don't feel like sharing my findings anymore though!!! You guys can keep on guessing at what you are doing. I have scientific facts about my soil. I'm so tired of know-it-alls telling people that their way is gold and that everyone should be doing it like them, but they have never had a soil test done.

One important fact that I left out, the scientist at the labs that I was submitting my soil samples to told me to wash my soil before I submit it next time. I would take the advice of that lab tech over ANYONE in this forum!!!

...I check everything to make sure it is operating the way I want it to. Why wouldn’t I check my soil ph?...

What does it hurt to check?... Pride?

Going to put a lot of work and love into building a living soil and all the plants that grow in it. I’m confused as to why this is even a conversation. How can you use logic to explain why you don’t check the functionality of the heart of your operation, idk.

I’ve lived lots of places here in the US, and most universities or suburban ag-community org’s offer free soil testing.

rikdabrick said:

Really @MustangStudFarm is right. If you have high amounts of sulfur and/or sodium in your mix it's best to wash them out. The excess sulfur will hinder phosphorous uptake and the sodium will get taken up by the plant in place of potassium. If you don't, can you still grow plants? Probably, especially if you're doing 40%+ aeration, but it's more ideal to have a balanced mineral profile in your soil.

If you guys want to see how great your mixes really are leave out the aeration. That will give you the real observational data you need. I grow some fairly large plants in plane old clay based dirt on the property I live on. No aeration added. If my soil was as hot and/or unbalanced as a lot of the soil mixes on the website my plants wouldn't even live past a week in the ground. All the aeration people use saves a lot of peoples' plants from being poisoned to death. That's not a blanket statement for everyone, but it's true for plenty of people here.

If anybody is interested in getting their soil tested you're welcome to message me. It is a very useful and a fairly inexpensive investment IMO. MustangStudFarm uses a different lab, but apparently he is happy with his place too.

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What do you suggest to avoid high levels of sulfur and sodium, proactively, to avoid any washing of anything? Would another remedy be to add potassium, if it were battling against high sodium levels? Or is that faulty logic?

But if too many nutrients are the only reason to use “so much” aeration, it sounds as if you’re advocating for no aeration and... no soil amendments?

Surely I can’t just grow my plants in some outside dirt and expect Dank.

You will get to know which members will lead you to where you want the girls to be. Wetdog is one of those for sure. He knows his stuff!!

Miyagismokes said:

It's wonky because plants largely take up ions, not stable elements. I'm not hating on testing.
It's just hard to judge availability this way.

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I'm still not understanding what you're saying. Plants take up cations or anions which are both ions and they are both the elemental forms of minerals/elements which is what soil tests results give you. I use the Mehlich 3 and Ammonium Acetate pH 8.2 tests which both give results in the available elemental form of the elements based on the extract process. The Mehlich 3 test, for example uses a solvent with a pH 3.5 which is the same acidity of plant root exudates so the test lets you know what elements the plant roots can extract from the soil. I only use the Ammonium Acetate for calcium in all soils and for all major base cations in soils with a pH higher than 7 because most of the time it's carbonates and bicarbonates causing high pH in soil and the Mehlich 3 test won't give as accurate of results as the AA pH8.2 test in higher pH soils. Carbonates and bicarbonates can also skew calcium readings so that's why I use the AA pH8.2 test for my calcium readings.

I do this all year long flip-flopping between 2 20'x40' greenhouses straight in the ground with clay based soil. I've never added aeration. Most of the plants in there are 8-9 feet tall. If I ran my soil as hot or unbalanced as a lot of guys have their mixes on this (and other forums) my plants wouldn't stand a chance. Leave out the aeration out of your mix (and water properly) and see how happy your plants really are with your soil mix. Abundant aeration saves a lot of plants from unbalanced soils


Some of the shorties in the front right of the top pic were late fill in plants because I had a couple large plants that had to get cut for turning she-male on me, just FYI in case you were wondering what was up with the small plants.