How bad is raw soil?

[Satyros]

I admire all the stuff I've seen about taking 20 gallons of improved soil, per plant, for growing outdoors in ground.


Let's say you don't have all that stuff. How bad is the typical unamended forest soil, where everything else goes through its life cycles perpetually? Less than ideal, or a really significant barrier on getting a decent harvest?

 

[Limeygreen]

Depends on your soil, what type of plants grow in that area other than the trees? Any fruits, berries, ferns etc. If you have a lot of pines in the forest it's probably acidic, lots of blue berries probably acidic if you see different deciduous trees and some flower plants around you should be fine. You may not get a big yield but you should get something, supplement some fish fertilizer or slow release and you should be ok.

 

[troutman]

In a guerilla setting, forest soil has been used for ages.

Check the pH 1st and balance the pH before adding nutrients.

It takes time, but if you put the work in it will work out assuming it's not all clay or rock.

Good Luck

 

[djonkoman]

I grow my guerilla unamended(well, I have a new spot this year which is likely pretty poor soil, sandy and already yellow/orange 1 spade deep, so dug in some chickenshit there), it works. yield per plant is not huge, but it's way less effort, so I just plant more to compensate(make my own seeds, so not limited by seed price). also my previously used spots have decent soil(riverclay, is within the area that floods in winter), although I did notice a clear difference between spots, one spot greatly outperformed the others.

 

[Teddybrae]

I grow my guerilla unamended(well, I have a new spot this year which is likely pretty poor soil, sandy and already yellow/orange 1 spade deep, so dug in some chickenshit there), it works. yield per plant is not huge, but it's way less effort, so I just plant more to compensate(make my own seeds, so not limited by seed price). also my previously used spots have decent soil(riverclay, is within the area that floods in winter), although I did notice a clear difference between spots, one spot greatly outperformed the others.

Yeah ... it's good to look around for the richest spots in the forest. you may not be able to grow in those particular spots but you can bring mulch/soil from these to your chosen grow place.


also the advice above to pH your soil (do this in each spot) is fundamental! as you test each spot you will also begin to understand where the best soil is.


And, how much decomposing in your forest is done by bacteria and how much by fungus? Find this out. In Oz the forest is maintained by fungus mostly and you MUST bring in bacteria in animal manure to get yr soil working.


Cheers!

 

[troutman]

Also cover crops are a great way to improve any soil.

 

[therevverend]

Native soil can be anything from unusable to killer. PH is the first test. Sandy is better then clay. Most ganja growers want big plants which means much more fertilizer then most soil contains. Which means hauling it in. I recommend concentrated granulated fertilizers because they're light. Carrying in 200 lbs of chicken shit is a big job but doable.
Normally lime and calcium need to be added. I used to have a special mix in my back pack containing N-P-K bone meal, cotton meal, kelp meal, lime, guano, and whatever else I could find. Left out stuff like feather meal and blood meal because it attracts animals.
Find good native soil near a swamp, river, or stream. Nice dark humus that's light enough to crumble. Mix in my mix and let it go for 3 months before coming back to add more.
The method won't break any records for yield but it'll produce tasty finished buds.

 

[Satyros]

Thanks for the replies. What I am looking at is heavily acidic/pine, but it seems to be a matter of distribution. Where there is nothing else besides pines, there are spots where nothing will actually grow. Looking for a deciduous/flowery spot is probably the first clue; they are a minority, but findable.


Thinking about this in terms of "more seeds than horticutural resources"...more plants, less effort. Lower yield per plant would seem to not matter from simply having more plants. I could probably trot out portions of lime or something, but large numbers of pounds or gallons of amendments is probably beyond me.

 

[Limeygreen]

If you have maple leaf or something of the like you likely will find leaf mold/compost which can be mixed right into your planting hole and you have onsite compost you don't need to haul in. I wouldn't clear the whole area of the leaf mold, just enough to help improve the soil, say a shovel full of the compost and a handful of bone meal per hole per plant would be worthwhile assuming your pH can be resolved. If you have any wetlands, streams or ponds near by, you will have some organic soil in the water possible that you could grab and mix in, if it smells foul use with caution as it is likely anaerobic, it might work still, trial and error.

If you have oak leaves then you will end up with more acidic soil again.

If you have lots of seeds to play with I would just say give it a try and see what comes of it, if you're not worried about no harvest from the plants, then any amount you get is a bonus but if you never plant anything you will never know.

If you're not sure what trees you have around you, you can look for your province/state/territory native trees/shrubs in google and likely you can easily start to find what trees and plants are around.

 

[Teddybrae]

If you have pine trees for sure your soil will be acid ... and the bare areas may be bare because they are so acid nothing will grow!!!


as Limeygreen says ck yr water supply and check for good drainage. Pines can grow with wet feet ... Cannabis cannot!


cheers!

 

['Boogieman']

Oak leaves by themselves can aid in making an acidic mix if mixed with pine bark and other acidic material or just piles of oak leaves but if mixed with grass, manure, maple leaves, and many other green/brown material it will balance out.

Grassy ditches can actually have really good balanced soil, leaves and straw break down and build up in those ditches. I have personally just used cheap ph tests when in doubt but im not a religious ph fanatic. If your soil is home too pine trees give it a cheap ph test and plan to add about 1/2 cup of lime or other ph buff ammendment, source some decent soil around, add some anmendments and all will be well.

 

[Satyros]

If you have pine trees for sure your soil will be acid ... and the bare areas may be bare because they are so acid nothing will grow!!!

Yes, that particular area is a "dead zone"; of course, we're not far from the Devil's Tramping Ground, where nothing ever grows. Overall, our yard has several "microclimates" only a few feet away from each other.


The greater surrounding forest is pine-dominant, without much undergrowth--that stuff is frequently burned where it builds up, but this patch of woods may just be too acidic for much of anything to get going. The odd spots where we find deciduous trees are so overgrown as to be almost impenetrable.


I guess it's mostly a mental debate about some extra seeds; the simplest answer is probably to try some "out there" as an experiment, and save some to do next year when I can tend them more closely in containers. I wish we had the liberty to grow some giants along with the grapes or primroses!

 

['Boogieman']

Why not grow in large pots above ground? I have done it many times easy to clean up when your done too.

 

[Satyros]

Well, there's one idea. I guess instead of mixing 20 gallons of good soil into the ground, you just go with a container of that size and drop it off? Or partially bury it?



I mostly have to do "stealth" and so I have to do pruned plants at most 5 gallons. Size is limited as well as the number. These are the ones in the nearby area that can be watched regularly, get all the benefits we can provide, and so forth. So there's already a weed garden, it just can't take anything else into it.



For me, individually, the only way I could let a plant run to full size would be out in the woods. So pretty much admitting that I have no intention to drag around anything bigger than maybe a small pack of lime. Kind of the theme of my question--can minimal effort succeed?

 

[Teddybrae]

Tie them down? have seen LARGE Sativa trained very low to ground ... mould permitting ...

 

[Teddybrae]

Kind of the theme of my question--can minimal effort succeed?

Seems to me the rule for Life itself is that you can only get out what you put in.



but a bag of cowshit is not heavy and it will grow a respectable plant.

 

[DenverJim]

Outside soil

Outside soil

Dont plant in clay. I have planted in some crappy soil with plants that were extra. Get a good root ball in a 1 gal container. I usually chop ite top to keep watering to a minimum. Put it in a hole with some peat, compost mixed with native soil( potting soil dries out to fast)
If you are digging a hole and see worms or roots growing in the soil it’s ok to plant. For acidic soil I’d add powered limestone a month before planting as a buffer.
Last year I planted a sativa hybrid 2 ft tall in mid July in a small hole in shitty dirt. After about a week it shot up. Finished in late Sept 10 @ 10 ft. I’d rather more variety than 10 lbs a plant I’m tired of harvesting large plants.

 

[green404]

Where I live it is clay soil very poor. I did a few tomato experiments this year mixing this and that with the clay soil.


The stuff I planted in nice peat soil is growing in so much nicer.. Good soil makes plants grow much better.

 

[Satyros]

Tie them down? have seen LARGE Sativa trained very low to ground ... mould permitting ...

That could be interesting...eight feet or more of stalk lashed nearly flat. Never thought of it as a "permanent" arrangement.


Clay is awful, we have a spot of that, whenever you dig, six pounds sticks to the shovel, and whatever you break out turns into bricks. Too dense for most roots.


Sort of like Denver Jim said, I mostly do small plants for variety. There just seems like a lot of forest that isn't doing any good right now. It might need a few experiments going.

 

[Easy7]

A lot of glacier drift here, minerally rich. Truth is all soil, even peat, needs amended. Local soil imparts a local flavor. It's just not practical to haul in peat for guerilla. Plenty of less bulky amendments can be worked in after hauling into the site.

The only thing wrong with clay is it's compact and lacks organic material. Gypsum, compost, biochar, and the usual amendments, can work into the soil and make it very usuable from the fall for spring.

I can grow in anything but rock.