Mixing Synthetic & organic

[Cannabliss]

Have many of you gotten their feet wet enough in this category? I have been using Dr. earth dry amendments with a soil that me & the wife made with 1 part Canadian sphagnum peat moss, 1 part EWC, & 1 part perlite/vermiculite, and 1 part lobster compost.

Mixed in a few other amendments like kelp meal, bat guano, seabird guano, dolomite lime & langbeinite (For flower)

The plant came out beautiful, well she’s coming along great rather. She’s in her 9th week of flowering & still has maybe 1 more to go.

However she had a pretty sketchy start. Originally I thought to myself… I do not need all these clones, So I joked around & put 2 cuts with roots into a 2 year old bag of potting mix that was sitting outside & was hit with all mother nature has, and the occasional pissing from one of our small pups.

I didn’t think they’d last..

[Somatek]

Yes, I have no problem combining the two and often suggest hydro growers use b’cuzz to improve their taste.  There’s no reason to be a purist unless for personal reasons like being a tech nerd or hardcore hippy.  I’m not interested in my ideas about what plants or trying to mimic nature in an unnatural environment; I’m interested in accepting the limitations created by growing indoors and figuring out the best way to grow that fits my needs.

So I mostly rely on organic fortified soil and nutrients but also use a synthetic root booster and have some random synthetic supplements around in case I need them.

[Cannabliss]

I tend to get a little sloppy with what I feed. I have a bad habit of not logging what I do for each plant. When I grew 1 or 2 plants.. they’d come out greater than I could have expected at the earlier stages of my growing experience.

 

I have FF trio, GH maxibloom, FOOP liquid organics, advanced nutrients, and some plants have seen it all once the soil depletes.

Foop to start.. then ran out so I went to FF trio (Leftover bottles) .. for ease on some days I’d give maxibloom.

Or let’s say.. I need more N in my feed.. I would switch to a line that has more N in it.

It didn’t always play out great, but it didn’t kill them.

[Brad104]

Thanks for the post @cannabliss I have been wondering if it’s possible to do.Now I know the answer thanks to you @cannabliss and @somatek

Great stuff guys

[Somatek]

Sticking to organic methods outdoors where they can really be practiced effectively makes sense as you shouldn’t need any synthetic inputs which is how I grow in that context; indoors I don’t see the point of being a purest.

[Brad104]

I totally understand and see your point @somatek if you take it out of it’s environment to begin with and cultivate it indoors.I suppose that to each there own right 🤣

[Somatek]

People think about plants like animals/humans around stress or they romanticize the idea of recreating nature indoors, worse yet are people who think plants are simply mechanistic and if you add product x you’ll get big buds.  The more you understand them as their own distinct life form with a fundamentally different experience that react to specific stimuli, it changes your perspective on growing.  I’m not interested in pushing them to do what I want, I’m learning how/what they respond to so I can control those variables which allows them to do their thing; which is grow big fat sticky buds looking for pollen.

[Atom]

From how I understand it, it’s fine unless your in a true living soil, that can feed the plant its entire life. Even then most people using that method will still feed it teas but never salt based because basically it kills off the microbes your working hard to build up.

I personally go with soil to start, then I start feeding it bottled once the nutrition runs out in the soil. I have great results like this, everyone is different and along as your happy with it that’s what matters.

[Cannabliss]

I do the same. For the ease of just needing water only, I will up pot every 2 weeks to recharge the soil to prolong my “water only” dreams.

Lately I haven’t been doing this, so I am getting to use all the veg nutes I have. (I usually start feeding at the stretch)

[Somatek]

That’s not really true, mineral salt fertilizers don’t kill microbes but can create a dependence on using them instead of amending the soil.  Which is the real point, if you’re using a quality, balanced and rich soil with high amounts of compost/manure/EWC there’s no need to add more nutrients as the soil has plenty.  The marketing around “living soil” comes into play as a lot of companies sell peat based soil mixes that are meant to be used once and then replaced with the next crop.  That’s not a “living soil” ie organic soil blend relying on decomposition to make nutrients available; it’s a fortified organic soilless mix filled with readily available nutrients or a “super soil” as Vic High/Subcool called them (the difference being home made recipes need time to “cook” for the slower release nutrients to start breaking down so they are being released as the plant needs them).

Something like build-a-soil or black swallow here in Ontario are closer to a true organic soil as they sell supplements to amend and continue using the same soil mix where you can establish colonies of N fixing microbes so cover crops replenish it and create an organic system that’s dependent on external inputs.  Clackamass Coot should be the beginning point of anyone interested in living soil as his soil recipe and tea schedule is based on solid ag science as well as mostly using commonly available inputs so it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.  As well as reading up about vermicomposting and bokashi so all the kitchen scraps/food waste can be turned into EWC.

Edit: this reply was to @atom if it isn’t clear, I find the way posts are shown confusing sometimes

• This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by Somatek.

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