Chem Sis x topanga please! ...I was just thinking last night I should pop more of the topanga s1’s Ottoman made
been told by a few that there where gold in those packs.. i gave him the pk back a few months ago. not sure if he's working her again.
Chem Sis x topanga please! ...I was just thinking last night I should pop more of the topanga s1’s Ottoman made
i would humbly suggest cross braces to keep that wire from sagging under 50 gal. medium and WATER/plant weight.49" x 25.5" x 11" final interior dimensions for the soil bed. Exterior is 54" x 27.5" x 15" It should fit this time. Roughly 51 gallons of soil will fit. I'll likely only use 48 gallons. Giving me 6-8 gallons per plant depending how many I flower at a time. I'm content with this.
Using a heavy gauge wire mesh to hold the soil in the bottom. Will put a double layer of landscaping fabric on the bottom and line the sides with 6mil plastic sheeting. Underneath the bed is a 40mil PVC shower pan liner. Not entirely sure how to utilize it to the most efficiency, but it will be used to catch water. Still working on that conceptually. The bed itself has 15" legs, which leaves a 4" space from the bottom of the bed to the floor. Just enough to let it drain and get air circulation around the whole room.
The wood is all pressure treated 1 x 6 and 2 x 6 for the legs. It has been exposed to the elements for over a year, although not getting wet. It should be a non-issue at this point to use it.
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I never posted a pic with the darkroom louvers installed in the door of the flower room. The bottom of the louver is at 15" and they are 8" square. This means, any new airflow coming into the room is coming in at a height that is level with the soil and will flow easily under the canopy to ensure enough fresh air is moving through the plants.
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Eventually, I'll have some plants to put in this beast.
dank.Frank
@Nickman - Cobalt Haze is ABF Seeds, Whadezlrg's multiple cup winning SSH x [Mendo Montage x (Blue Dream/Williams Wonder F3)]. It's a mutli-poly for sure, and will toss out a wide range of phenos as intended, but they will all be dank I'm sure. Abja knows what he's doing. The BubbaDutch SSH x Digi Bx1 is in fact a blueberry haze, though, those seeds are pushing 6 years old. I'm afraid much of my seed collection has gone dormant.
@White Beard - Yes. It's all mixed into the soil at the very beginning before being put into the soil bed. I'll let it compost a couple of weeks while in the bed before anything is actually planted in it though. Transplants will go into this soil as they mature and need up-potted.
@Buddha - 22 amendments. ALL necessary! LOL. I know it seems like a grab bag, but the math is solid and sound. Plants should by all default love the mix. Time will tell. Maybe they hate it and I start over from square one.
I seriously doubt they will be unhappy. There are things I noticed with the NSPB I said I'd always fix. There was a version 2.0 of the NSPB made, but never progressed with. Wasn't really much of a need. There are things I noticed with the basic amendment formula based on my own experience and lots of feedback from other growers that needed adjusted. This new mix sort of addresses the issues with both the previous.
I'm very interested to see if things grow differently with all the potassium present in the new mix. I've run other mixes with these levels before and noticed better resin production, but they were outside plants, which means too many variables to really pinpoint anything. Sticking withing a set N-P-K ratio is completely new though. The 4-6-5 bit was gleamed from scientists in Israel and some of their published data. Again, time will tell. Building a mix by numbers instead of by plant dictated response is a huge shift for me in practice.
dank.Frank
That's why I went back and made another chart showing the NPK contributions of each item in respect to the whole. Not all of this will be available for uptake at the same exact time.
Keeping in mind, not all these items are actually there for "fertilizer" purposes, but for what they add to the whole, even if there are some residual nutritional values being added. For example, I use a food grade agriculture product called Red Lake Earth Diatomaceous Earth + Calcium Bentonite. I'm after the silica and the positively charged clay particles to increase CEC and to ensure mobile ions are held in place within the soil.
I only recently learned what the NPK value of dried molasses was. I knew it was sprayed on soybean hulls but I never knew what they really contributed to the whole, outside of the molasses being an excellent food source for microbial activity. However, the company (Stockade) I order from, finally caught on to how I've been using their product for the past decade or so and started marketing a soil amendment as well.
The basic amendment formula was a bit high in nitrogen when the plants first start growing in the mix and showed noticeable nutrient burn to younger plants. The NSPB could leave plants a bit hungry after 10wks of flower. The answer isn't really in reducing the amount of nutrition available in the soil, but rather, adjusting the ratio of which compounds are in the mix. For example, both the basic amendment recipe and this new recipe each have 1c of blood meal in them. One mix is 11 gallons and the other is 58 gallons. However, we only need so much quick, instant nitrogen, which blood meal provides. We'll get the rest of the nitrogen in the larger mix by using products that biodegrade at differing, yet slower rates.
One of the biggest factors to consider is an items hardness, which directly relates to how quickly organic inputs biodegrade and become available for plant nutrition. This is impacted by how (colony populations) much biological activity you have as well. Larger populations = faster decomposition = higher nutrient availability.
Ultimately, the confidence comes from doing something so many times. I've made hundreds of various soil mixes for hundreds of different people in different situations.
Building a soil from scratch is EASY compared to bio-remediation of acreage that has been mistreated and pumped full of chemicals for half a century. Imagine increasing the CEC of a sandy loam that sits at 3 with an organic matter content of actual 0. Try telling someone who has made millions farming that land they need to incorporate 20 tons of compost per acre for the next 3 years, while intentionally growing obnoxious invasive weeds. (dynamic accumulators). Many people who are insanely successful at farming have absolutely no idea at all what they are doing, especially when it comes to the soil. They just follow what the ag reps, market consultant, and risk management people tell them. They hire out the labor for nearly every task and their job is ensuring the programs get run and followed by all hands on deck.
I'll get a soil test done once this mix has sat for a couple weeks and post the results. I'll also not hold any criticisms when it comes to how this soil performs. I do fully expect it will be smooth sailing though. Just keep watching and if everything works, save the picture of the mix and file it away for a rainy day.
dank.Frank
I've seen your posts in other places expressing your curiosity about soil. I'm glad you found this thread and are following along. Some of the very basic need to know stuff is happening in these pages, for the very purpose of helping others grasp the concept.
If you really learn about soil, there is nothing you can't grow, no matter what part of the world you end up. Being able to look at dirt and understanding what it needs and how to make a crop perform, is without question, the greatest asset I ever picked up from growing cannabis. If I had only learned to read bottles, the only thing I'd ever grow is cannabis. Learning about soil made it possible to grow quite literally anything.
I'd know absolutely nothing about gardening if it wasn't for my rebellious use of cannabis. It's really quite a profound thought.
dank.Frank
When I first started growing, it was organic simply because it was worth 30% more. I used a homemade aeroponics system at first. I did that for two runs before I got tired of organic nutes clogging emitters. I switched to soil and the same set of bottles. Added lime because I got tired of messing with pH. From there, I started adding as much as I could to the soil before planting.
Every step of the way, Overgrow and ICmag have been a part of that journey and learning curve. Without forums, who knows where I'd be in life. It'd be different, I know that much for sure. The whole purpose of doing a thread in my opinion, documenting the process, is giving back to this community by contributing information that might help others.
dank.Frank