Northern California Outdoor - 400 Gallon Raised Beds

[GlaZed420]

Prepping for next year. This is going to be a fun and colorful grow.

6 x 200 gallon Geopots

Strains from seed:

2 - Blueberry Syrup
2 - Cookies and Cream x Million Dollar Baby GDP
2 - Sunset Sherbet x Million Dollar Baby x GDP

Gonna germinate seeds around February which should be enough time to sex.

Still not sure what im going to do with soil... I'll take recommendations

 

[JDubsocal]

Sounds like a tasty grow. for soil, everyone has their own way, but fox farms ocean forest has worked for me. I wait until the spring time change to plant seeds because I run 6 autos outdoor from fall time change thru spring's change. Good luck. Can't wait for the pix.

 

[GlaZed420]

Sounds like a tasty grow. for soil, everyone has their own way, but fox farms ocean forest has worked for me. I wait until the spring time change to plant seeds because I run 6 autos outdoor from fall time change thru spring's change. Good luck. Can't wait for the pix.

Thanks i want to run organic soil with some top dressing and foliar feeding.

 

[GlaZed420]

Anyone have good luck using Coots Mix?

 

[MedResearcher]

Coots works well, but he highly emphasizes that it needs a high quality worm casting/compost input. It needs strong microbiology to get those slow release inputs available.

Personally I have been using Ph-Patrols, rich as fart mix recently. He also recommends high quality compost input. I like this mix a lot, I have used Coots, and I have used Tom Hills mix, and many many other creations.

Really there are a large handful of nice soil mix's laying around here waiting to be tried out. Could choose one that you can get the ingredients some what locally and easily, and also that fits your budget. Splurge on the castings/compost.

I would emphasize, using good compost in it also. Good microbiology from the start and the rest is downhill.

Bagged soil, is not bad for a percent of a mix. I would not go straight bagged though, you will end up needing to feed tons and the microbiology will poor. Also there is randomness in the big bagged soil companies. There batch's are typically uniform but you never know really.

Sounds like a nice seed line up, and 100 gallon pots will be killer. February is very early to pop seeds. Even in 1,000 gallon pots, I think February is to early. Mid/Late March should be plenty early enough if you are on the northern hemisphere.

GL and HF,
Mr^^

 

[GlaZed420]

Coots works well, but he highly emphasizes that it needs a high quality worm casting/compost input. It needs strong microbiology to get those slow release inputs available.

Personally I have been using Ph-Patrols, rich as fart mix recently. He also recommends high quality compost input. I like this mix a lot, I have used Coots, and I have used Tom Hills mix, and many many other creations.

Really there are a large handful of nice soil mix's laying around here waiting to be tried out. Could choose one that you can get the ingredients some what locally and easily, and also that fits your budget. Splurge on the castings/compost.

I would emphasize, using good compost in it also. Good microbiology from the start and the rest is downhill.

Bagged soil, is not bad for a percent of a mix. I would not go straight bagged though, you will end up needing to feed tons and the microbiology will poor. Also there is randomness in the big bagged soil companies. There batch's are typically uniform but you never know really.

Sounds like a nice seed line up, and 100 gallon pots will be killer. February is very early to pop seeds. Even in 1,000 gallon pots, I think February is to early. Mid/Late March should be plenty early enough if you are on the northern hemisphere.

GL and HF,
Mr^^

Thanks so much for all of the info. I appreciate it

 

[CrushnYuba]

Why only 100 gallons?
You can have a dope soil mix for around 100 a yard. Go bigger. 200 gal is the minimum for an outdoor plant on the west coast. More like 300 for a big plant that doesn't need to be fed every day

 

[GlaZed420]

Why only 100 gallons?
You can have a dope soil mix for around 100 a yard. Go bigger. 200 gal is the minimum for an outdoor plant on the west coast. More like 300 for a big plant that doesn't need to be fed every day

I've got a 20 x 30 space and I'd like to keep them at a manageable size. 100's will get me a decent sized tree

 

[GlaZed420]

Why only 100 gallons?
You can have a dope soil mix for around 100 a yard. Go bigger. 200 gal is the minimum for an outdoor plant on the west coast. More like 300 for a big plant that doesn't need to be fed every day

I've got a 20 x 30 space and I'd like to keep them at a manageable size. 100's will get me a decent sized tree

 

[Mengsk]

I have 8' x 3' x 15" raised beds which hold about a yard (200 gal) of soil each. Great size for gardening and being able to reach the center easily to harvest carrots for example. Could also be filled up sea of green style. I may continue using them and it'll become a challenge of how large or rootbound a plant can go. For full season outdoor plants I would go bigger, 200-300 gal. When you look at the scale of cannabis plants (1 oz under a cfl or 10 lbs in the sun from one plant), it's almost like you can treat the 100 gallon as a veg cube that you stack onto the next larger size. Planting lettuce or tomatoes is one thing, you amend the soil in between each planting and rotate crops. But when a cannabis tree extends several feet in all directions from the soil container it may need watering several times per day in the summer heat. You can do the math or reason it any way you want with yourself but more soil = larger plants which is just about always going to be worth it. You went to the trouble and expense of putting everything else together, might as well add 100 gallons at that point. It's the easiest up-sale or the safest bet. Adding soil should not affect your overall budget that much and it guarantees they will not dry out as fast and yield more to a certain point. The small beds (1 yard each) can be used for tomatoes or something else. I'm not sure if I will try the fabric round pots like most people use or boxes using fence boards or plywood with panda film on the inside. The fabric pots look beautiful and efficient when they are perfectly spaced out but I still like the idea of shared root space instead of containers and using the soil more intensively. Put into perspective, instead of 2 x 100 gal pots some drip systems will use 100 x 2 gallon pots. But here we are talking about 2-5 lbs per clone instead of 20 clones per lb. The professionals have worked out the best practices I believe which are going to be different outdoor vs greenhouse vs indoor. If your space is unlimited then you want the most from each plant which will give you the largest return on investment. If your space is limited then you more or less want to fill the space with as many small plants as possible to maximize yield and return on investment for your space. If your limiting resource is is money but you have unlimited seed you could just plant more, but even then there is a fair argument to be made for building a 300 gallon pot/mound for each plant.

 

[CrushnYuba]

I've got a 20 x 30 space and I'd like to keep them at a manageable size. 100's will get me a decent sized tree

It's not that simple as a smaller pot will just give you a smaller plant. They will be so much harder to keep healthy the whole year. That plant will grow and grow until it runs out of nutrients. Either it won't be healthy, or it will still get just as big as a bigger pot. Only the plant will just want to grow tall and skinny. because it has no lateral roots. Plants naturally only want to grow a little wider then their roots. It would suck to have a 16ft tall, 4ft wide, unhealthy plant that can't fight off disease come flower time. Larfy buds with rot from dying leaf can be likely. If i wanted smaller plants, id use a 100 but plant a teeny tiny clone like July 1st. You can plant a clone june 1st that will totally max out a 300 gal.

As far as coots mix goes, i think it's wayy expensive and won't do anything a cheaper mix wont do. That rock dust is going to take 100 years to break down to do anything for you. But i really like the texture of the coots being 1/3 compost, 1/3 drainage, 1/3 fluff.
I follow the same ratios with less expensive ingredients.
I do something like
1 part lava rock
1 part perlite
1 part coco
1 part fir bark or peat
1 part cow manure compost
1 part green waste compost

For amendments per yard
37.5 lb of shutzman chicken pellets
10 lb of fishbone
2 lb calphos
2 lb langbeinite
1 lb potash
10 lb alfalfa
Ph balance with lime if necessary. But that should be balanced without it.

No compost tea, no liquid feeding. A couple light top dressings if you are feeling frisky. That will give you more nutrients available the first year at 1/2 the price. Next year get a soil sample and balance minerals to Albright ratios.

That's just what has worked best for me over the years. Kind of part coots mix, part Tom hill mix, with a dash of my own style.

 

[GlaZed420]

Alright I may go 200's. Local place will do custom blending just need a 10 yard minimum order...

 

[GlaZed420]

Im going to pickup 10 yards of soil. 6 for dope and 4 for vegetables, tomatoes and other fruit. This is a local soil sold that claims to be pretty decent. Any thoughts? They want $144.00 a yard

 

[dank.frank]

For amendments per yard
37.5 lb of shutzman chicken pellets
10 lb of fishbone
2 lb calphos
2 lb langbeinite
1 lb potash
10 lb alfalfa
Ph balance with lime if necessary. But that should be balanced without it.

No compost tea, no liquid feeding. A couple light top dressings if you are feeling frisky. That will give you more nutrients available the first year at 1/2 the price. Next year get a soil sample and balance minerals to Albright ratios.

That's just what has worked best for me over the years. Kind of part coots mix, part Tom hill mix, with a dash of my own style.

For amendments per yard - cubic yard of soil = 173.57 gallons

300 gallons is 46.67 cubic ft, so if you want assume roughly a 7'x7' area of soil mound, so to keep it easy, we'll just use 50 square foot.

43560/50 = 871.2, so this is our volume multiplier.

37.5 lb of shutzman chicken pellets (4-3-2)
37.5 x .04 = 1,306.8
37.5 x .03 = 980.1
37.5 x .02 = 653.4

10 lb of fishbone (3-16-0)
10 x .03 = 261.36
10 x .16 = 1393.92

2 lb calphos (0-3-0)
2 x .03 = 52.27

2 lb langbeinite (0-0-22)
2 x .22 = 383.33

1 lb potash (0-0-50)
1 x .5 = 435.6 (I'd consider increasing this to 2.5 lb total =1089)

10 lb alfalfa (3-2-2)
10 x .03 = 261.36
10 x .02 = 174.24
10 x .02 = 174.24

N-P-K = 1830-2601-1647 (2300) per cubic yard (174 gallons) ratio of 4-5.7-3.6 (5)

So you do this mix TWICE for each 300 gallon soil mound?



dank.Frank

 

[CrushnYuba]

I think more like 1 to 1.5 times for each mound. You can always top dress once in late veg and a few times in flower.

1.5x puts it at 50lb of chicken, 15 lb of fish bone, 15 of alfalfa. I don't ever put more then that into a single hole the matter how big it is. If it's a small mound, i just top dress more.

The potash possibly could be increased a little, but may be better off as added as a top dress later. You have to remember that all the fishbone P is slow release and the only instant P is from the chicken. 80% of the chicken manure N and all of the alfalfa N is organic nitrogen and needs to be broken down to be available. But all the K in the chicken, langbeinite, and potash is water soluble.
Also, depending on what your base mix is.. If it's your first year in that soil, and you made it 30% compost or cow manure, there is a good deal of nutrients in that.

Glazed420: that looks like a nice fluffy potting mix. Possibly to fluffy depending on your taste. Doesn't seem to have ANY compost. Also with the main 2 ingredients being peat and fir bark, when that top layer of soil dries out, it will become hydrophobic. Seems like a better depp mix then full term.
Maybe check out one of your local landscaping companies. 150$ is the most i would spend for soil. More like 110 usually. Figure 20$ per yard is amendments and the rest of the cost is the medium.
Off hand, any landscaping company in my area charges per yard
40-50 for any compost
50 for lava rock
80 for perlite
100 for coco
140 for peat.
They Will mix it and add amendments for free. If you bring in your own amendments from an outside source they charge a 5$ per yard mixing fee. All that it's kind of standard pricing.

 

[Noonin NorCal]

Go to Cloverdale and see the Soil King, Get the big rootz soil!
No need to ammend anything to it, its light and airy.
If anything throw in some extra perlite and mix the shit out of it.
I add some neem cake/meal to it and add the perlite as well

I think it cost 120-130 per yard. But they hook it up with extra...

 

[Noonin NorCal]

Or SoCo Blend out of Sonoma County. Its a bit heavier though.
What ever the soil though i always add extra perlite, the neem cake/seed meal. and a some worm gold plus as a top dresser along with mango mulch. Before adding straw to the top soil

 

[Noonin NorCal]

Those 2 soils i mentioned come with enough not to add anything for a few weeks.
I transplant my clones june 7-10, incase of pre flowers.

Ill add some Peruvian Bat guano as a top dresser for Veg thats high in N and P, A few weeks after transplanting.

Another month later come early mid August i add Age Old Organics Dry Fruit as a top dresser. its a slow release PK that you need until the very end. Scratch/scrape it in good to your top soil.

I also give them compost tea once a week

 

[CrushnYuba]

You can get royal gold mixes in bulk over there for around 100 a yard. You would have to throw some amendments into it, but it's a great base medium.
The kings mix is pretty dank. Does come somewhat amended but not enough. I can only get it bagged here and i have to pay top $$

 

[dank.frank]

@CrushnYuba - I know you run successful trees, which is why I wanted to break down your mix ratios a bit and see what your NPK levels looked like. I run organic soil as well and have been working out a new mix based on 4-6-5 as a profile base. I reviewed my old mixes for a base and adjusted accordingly. 740-1110-945 is what I'm amending my indoor soil bed to.

You are running basically 4-5.7-3.6, which is fairly close to my target goals, which I find interesting. The biggest difference, must be a result of a sun, as your soil is much richer. I'm surprised by the nutrient levels. You use 59.6% more nitrogen, 57.3% more phosphorous, and 42.6% more potassium. Just find it interesting what big trees take vs indoor plants.



dank.Frank