Fast forward to week 5, sorry I missed a few weeks in the middle but things were growing and I wanted some nice growth on the cover plants before posting again. This will be round three in the same soil (which smells amazing btw), currently sitting at a PH of 7.1 so I'm pretty happy with that.
I found a comparable additive to Recharge, called Mikrobs so the plants were watered with that for a few weeks.
Both plants were transplanted at week 4, then topped 4 days later and will be growing as a mainline on both plants. I will be removing the 2nd nodes after they grow out a bit more since more leaves = move solar panels and I don't want to slow them down too much.
Pretty happy with the cover crop so far; as follows:
White clover
Red clover
Yarrow
Borage
Thai sweet basil
Alfalfa
Fenugreek
I also planted nettles but none of them popped so I've ordered some more and will plant them properly this time by just spreading them on moist topsoil. I just added some bokashi to increase the mycelium and it's starting to take off in the dark spots under the foliage.
The plants in the middle are Chemdog Millionaire by Next Generation Seeds, which are for a breeding project and will be out of the tent as soon as they start showing sex traits.
Hey man I'm about to switch to an earth box soon as I harvest my OG kush. I was curious what your base soil is, I was planning on using Promix BX+ with Gaia Green then top dressing with worms and wormcastings. I also wanted to use the plastic mulch cover and bokashi to essentially compost any trimmings I take off the plant. Does this sound like a good plan to you? I'm familiar with BuildASoil but I was curious if you had any other good sources of information on this specific topic?
@PhunkyPhallus,
Sorry for the late reply.
My soil base is 1/2 Happy Frog, 1/2 Ocean forest, mixed with worm castings, rice hulls, and seaweed compost. I moved away from Promix when I started the Earthboxes because I wanted to maximize the microbiology. This is actually my first grow without the mulch cover, they work great though and you get nice mycelium growth if you put Bokashi and ground barley on top of your top dress nutes. Things tend to break down pretty quickly under the mulch cover since it's always dark and worms/fungi love that.
I have a 1 inch mulch layer from chop and drop stuff on my current grow. A bit late posting it actually=/
Everything I learned about Earthboxes came from the BuildaSoil 10*10 grow series.
I learned soil microbiology from several books and vids, mostly Dr Elaine Ingam