Organic, pro-biotic and organic growing without bottled nutrients

[DoNothingGarden]

Seen the pics, no doubt you make a good soil, ingredients say so too.

Just interesting to see how different people, environments etc go.

I'm not really striving for a water only, and I'm not commercial just super interested to run other soils to benchmark my own. I grow lots of veges and flowers too so there's always something getting seeded or potted up etc.

Any feedback on your soil used for veges and flowers?

Will defo check your insta.

Awesome, check out the various vege bed pics. Fast growing food crops grow vigorously, yields are high and nutrition is super dense with a nice complexity of flavours... The terpene production from herbs is insane. Been making pasta every night, richest tasting sauces Ive ever had! Currently growing varieties of beet, leafy greens, tomatoes, capsicum and lots of herbs. My friends have a big chilli collection growing at the moment too which will be great... I've grown many different types of chillies successfully in this soil, flavour and heat is out of this world. I re-amending once or twice per cycle with kelp/Neem meals and worm castings with mulch and covercrops.

[DoNothingGarden]

Can't believe you got Billy to go away from Coco,

I even offered him soil but he was like "I love the Coco"

You must have flirted with him or something?

I hope you sent him the "Auto" mix?

Lololol

Any experience with a heavy feeding auto with your soil?

! The beauty of a properly constructed living soil is that the plants will take whatever element they need when they need it via exudes which signal to the trillions of microbes to solubilise the nutrient they need. Check out my photos from a page back... 4 different phenotypes and 2 cultivars, all thriving to their own potential. I don't know much about autos, but it's all about genetics with living soils... Make sure they are good.

[Carbcon]

Newer crop of Autos are bigger and hungrier than ever!

 

I hear you on the herbs, never had basil so pungent.

Surely that's helping with the beneficiary insects being attracted from further away? I do Chervil, Coriander and a few others to help with this.

 

I have a French lavender that is intoxicating.

 

I have started corn. Super fast growth, heard it's a Nitrogen pig.

 

Anyway, a real question, I have a plant with in a 20l, has vegged a bit long, probably rootbound.

Showing slight N toxicity I reckon.

 

Could this be because it's rootbound and some kind of lockout or something has caused this? A block of something else leading to extra uptake of n? Is that even possible? I thought it would go defecient?

 

Do you think that in use, the natural cycle of the soil breaking down N to become available for the plant has got high? Even though the plant has grown well the whole time? And being a consumer of the available N up to now leads me to think there's too much N in there at mixing? Both available and not available yet?

 

Hope I'm making sense, get pics later

[DoNothingGarden]

Newer crop of Autos are bigger and hungrier than ever!

I hear you on the herbs, never had basil so pungent.

Surely that's helping with the beneficiary insects being attracted from further away? I do Chervil, Coriander and a few others to help with this.

I have a French lavender that is intoxicating.

I have started corn. Super fast growth, heard it's a Nitrogen pig.

Anyway, a real question, I have a plant with in a 20l, has vegged a bit long, probably rootbound.

Showing slight N toxicity I reckon.

Could this be because it's rootbound and some kind of lockout or something has caused this? A block of something else leading to extra uptake of n? Is that even possible? I thought it would go defecient?

Do you think that in use, the natural cycle of the soil breaking down N to become available for the plant has got high? Even though the plant has grown well the whole time? And being a consumer of the available N up to now leads me to think there's too much N in there at mixing? Both available and not available yet?

Hope I'm making sense, get pics later

Hard to say without knowing what your soil mix is, also container size needs to be adequate for the length of season you intend to grow. Full season outdoor should really be minimum 120L or something...

And your herb garden sounds amazing!

[bakedcake]

Well I’m really hoping they will perform as the goat will advise if they do not haha

[micmac]

Here's a quick n easy way to tell what's happening in your soil

From earth worms to fungi, there's plenty of visible animal and plant activity you can see that should serve as an indicator of a healthy, living soil. Besides the worms and the fungi, I might add that color and structure can tell you an awful lot.

The darker your soil, generally speaking, the more organic matter it is likely to contain. And if you pull up a plant, the roots are well-spread out, and the soil comes crumbling away—then you are doing something right. If the soil comes up in hard clumps and/or the roots are stunted, you may have a problem. (You can also look for water gathering on the soil surface as a sign of compaction.)

 

 

 

Posted from the OZ Stoners mobile app

[Carbcon]

My mix is basically a Coote type mix, it's almost identical to your own.

I don't have any bokashi or em1 or any of that but have started using aact for everything but also when potting up new soil, I drench it.

 

I also soak the Scoria in compost tea, used go go juice diluted for this in the past.Same Same.

 

So while my bacterial and fungi may be lower than yours initially, I'm confident those levels are good. I haven't seen it for a few days so should have grown out by now but I was surprised, thought I would have to add N.

 

All about the soil life for sure, barely any mulch left on it.

 

In contrast, I have an auto that needs a hit of Npk in the same soil but with 10l extra.

Companion comfrey plant bagseed plant showing nute burn. I planted cannabis into comfrey seedlings and it seems to give the canna a big helping hand. Got big in a small container, when potted up with the comfrey covered up (will eventually break through mulch layer) week later, yellow tips.

 

A Gsc I have showing lovely green but no burn. Auto laughing at me, "That all the Npk you got boy?"

[DoNothingGarden]

Here's a quick n easy way to tell what's happening in your soil

From earth worms to fungi, there's plenty of visible animal and plant activity you can see that should serve as an indicator of a healthy, living soil. Besides the worms and the fungi, I might add that color and structure can tell you an awful lot.

The darker your soil, generally speaking, the more organic matter it is likely to contain. And if you pull up a plant, the roots are well-spread out, and the soil comes crumbling away—then you are doing something right. If the soil comes up in hard clumps and/or the roots are stunted, you may have a problem. (You can also look for water gathering on the soil surface as a sign of compaction.)

Posted from the OZ Stoners mobile app

Pooling water is also a sign hydrophobic conditions... Like Micmac said, compaction happens when the soil food web starts to die off, combines with hydrophobic conditions you have a snowballing effect. Try to water as slowly as possible, introduce biology with worm castings and mulch. Sit fabric containers on a bed of perlite and water from underneath, allowing the soil time to wick up water and rehydrate itself. Definitely give yourself enough soil volume for a the length of time you are going to be growing.

[Carbcon]

Here's a quick n easy way to tell what's happening in your soil

From earth worms to fungi, there's plenty of visible animal and plant activity you can see that should serve as an indicator of a healthy, living soil. Besides the worms and the fungi, I might add that color and structure can tell you an awful lot.

The darker your soil, generally speaking, the more organic matter it is likely to contain. And if you pull up a plant, the roots are well-spread out, and the soil comes crumbling away—then you are doing something right. If the soil comes up in hard clumps and/or the roots are stunted, you may have a problem. (You can also look for water gathering on the soil surface as a sign of compaction.)

Posted from the OZ Stoners mobile app

Bang on Micmac.

Know what u mean, hard to explain too.

We gotta get some soil pics into this thread too.

 

Smell? Love to hear what you boys think? They say a sweet smell is good? I wouldn't call it that but there's defo a sweet ish hue to the smell of nice soil?

[DoNothingGarden]

Bang on Micmac.

Know what u mean, hard to explain too.

We gotta get some soil pics into this thread too.

Smell? Love to hear what you boys think? They say a sweet smell is good? I wouldn't call it that but there's defo a sweet ish hue to the smell of nice soil?

When we construct our blends, it smells very rich of kelp meal, Neem cake. As it cycles during the course of a couple weeks a thick mycelial mat grows on top... The saprophytic fungi, actinomycetes, bacteria etc are consuming some of these nutrients... Causing it to heat up. We turn it for a few weeks... Once it's cooled and smells like a finished compost pile it's done. It shouldn't smell at all.