Organic Workshop: Making Italian Style High Brix Soil
Sometimes you're running low on soil, and if you don't use store-bought one like me, then you have to put out some moves, and start making it yourself if you really want to flower these gals. Fortunately I have a plenty of it just lying around, and waiting to be used. However, it needs to be corrected nonetheless, so I've done it #LOS and #HighBrix style 🐛 🌷 🍃
First thing I've done is I dug up some soil - it's a typical NorItal loam built of calcareous marl and organic matter, which is abundant in my area - from the meadow at front of my house, where I always see stinging nettles growing in bunches. And cause cannabis and stinging nettle like similar soil, you really can't go wrong here. So I tossed it in the bucket and brought it to my garden, where I worked it farther.
Then I sieved it a little bit to get rid of stones and roots.
After it was sifted, it looked like that.
Some earthworms got inside too.
Then it was biochar time, which I just collected from my garden as it's everywhere due to winter heating activities. You don't need a lot of it, 3-5% of total weight or even less will do.
After that I had to add calcium carbonate to raise base saturation, and I used powdered eggshells for that.
Then it was volcanic rock time! I powdered a handful of it using a piece of Brazilian marble, cause you have to roll with style 😎
In the end I just needed a touch of fresh compost to add humic acid, nitrogen, fungi and bacteria, so I filled a pot, and added it to the mix.
And now it has to cook for a few weeks while I need to get two more ingredients to have it just PERFECT when the time comes 🌋🌋🌋
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There is raw material for soil everywhere if you are smart & crafty. I have tried running wild dirt (with added aeration & a wee bit of cheap organic amendments) next to a very premium organic water only soil & the wild dirt performed better. Probably because it was outdoor & the wild dirt was full of life that had already been adapting and thriving.
I’d like to see some pictures of your Italian nettles, they grow ten feet tall in my yard if I don’t cut them down. Prime Nettle growing country
And I'm not really surprised! A lot of these potting mixes are not apt for growing cannabis. And 95% of them have the same base: sphagnum peat. And most of them don't have the right biology for any plant to grow. The nettles, man! THE NETTLES! When they are ready to harvest I make a delicious tea, which is a staple in my grows. It's basically all you need in veg!
The place I get my dirt, was started by an old school 2nd generation hippy farmer type. His son went and got himself & PhD in organics & they make the best dirt in the state as far as I have seen. Even better, they’re 3 minutes from my house 😃
I’d love to see your Nettle tea recipe
Following! Blaze it!!
Love it! It's a great mixture! Voted and following! Grow cannabis!
So is it like a curation project? Are you gonna get some power players behind?
@ganjafarmer is involved and yep if you want to help always open to it!
I know that you are, but I wanted to know I what the objective is and how it's supposed to be achieved?
Your potting soil mix is a lot like what goes into my worm bins. I even add the bio char into my worms bins to let it get nice and activated before it comes out and makes it into the planting. Another great way to do your bio char is soak it in worm tea over night. It will super charge your soil base. This is what mine looks like when it comes out of the bin.
Yeah I hear about people charging their biochar, but it's gonna be in the soil for very long time, so it's gonna get colonised with bacteria and fungi anyway. I mean this soil is already as alive as it gets... and it'll cook for at least 6 weeks to charge, but more like a battery. The objective now is to start mineral breakdown and adsorption, so there are no major problems till the end of plant's life. And the soil will get boosted later with compost tea and whatnot :)
It is good you have quality alive soil then. I had to start with sand 6 years ago and after years of hogs improving soil I almost have a type of soil that is not sand. I get really nice rich black soil where piles of hay have decomposed over several years and makes a nice base for my compost. Everything else has to be charged up with good worm castings because when it dries out here in the hot summers all the microbes in the sandy dry soil start to die off so I always use worm tea in my pastures and padlocks for growing to add good microbes back.
Yeah I get it's a hardship in many places in US. I saw Californian soil and I understood straight away the problems of agriculture such as low CEC and bedrock everywhere... so everything is on drip like grapevine and orange trees :) I mean there's no way it'd happen here, these plants have naturally long roots and they'll find water even in a drought.
I don't have a clue what you have to deal with in Florida though! But imagine that here I actually have to fight AGAINST organic matter in soil. There's so much of it and as en affect the soil is so saturated with nitrogen and potassium, that you need to be very careful with any type of compost. You can actually run 3-4 seasons of potatoes or tomatoes without any fertilisers and this is why #HighBrix soil is the best way to go for me. It's about finding the balance between major cations such as calcium and magnesium.
I am jealous! I can have nice rich looking dark soil and in one crop of corn it is all light sandy soil again. Never thought someone would be fighting from the other end with to much nitrogen. 3-4 season is wow. I know many farmers around here that spend 30k to 40k a year on fertilizer for hay or corn crops.
Hmmm it's interesting that corn is your original crop... native American to be exact, but it's been cultivated in Italy since XVI century and we used to have shitloads of heirloom varieties to make polenta from :D
It's still corn-growing country though, so it's everywhere and people don't really fertilise it if they grow it for their own needs... now intensive agriculture is a different story, we have it too and it's become a real problem for groundwater, rivers and lakes in the north.
I like to use corn because after I get what I want it still produces a good amount of food for my livestock. I toss soaked corn into my padlocks and pastures after rotating the livestock into the next. It won't produce corn in the 6 to 8 weeks before they make it back but the corn will be over waste high and produce a good amount of food for the animals.
I just seen that you are growing organic cannabis. Yeah good luck growing that were I am in the ground. Maybe in raised beds or pots with high grade compost. From all my reading I would almost say cannabis has close to the same requirements as tomatoes as far as the intakes. Would you find that is close. I have been working on growing DWC tomatoes with only worm teas as fertilizer waiting for them to legalize it here so I can start selling to growers.
Not very far, but there are few important differences... tomato is a fruit bearing plant and cannabis is a flower producing plant, where fruit is the seed, which we don't want if we shoot for the smoke :) This makes optimal nutrient absorption of cannabis slightly different. In a nutshell excessive potassium and phosphorus should be avoided while nitrogen and calcium/magnesium diet should be a priority. I use a refractometer to monitor Brix levels, so I know how efficient my plant is in producing carbohydrates.
It's gonna be hard to dial it in hydro though as you don't have the right root biology.
What do you want to sell to growers? Setups? Weed? EWC? Sorry, I didn't get that :)