Cover crop was starting to get pretty unruly so it was time to chop n' drop. All clover, alfalfa, fenugreek and some large borage leaves chopped and removed. Both feed jars were shaken and turned sideways to mix before adding to the top of the soil, then gently massaged. This was then covered with a thin layer of compost and watered in with water, 200x aloe, LAB, EM1 and Mikrobs. The chopped cover crop was then laid on top as a much layer and watered lightly again to get the microbes started on the mulch.
Manifolding is complete with 8 tops on plant two and 12 on plant one as kind of an experiment, with any leaves blocking tops removed. From here on in they will be low stress trained only for a few weeks.
Yarrow, basil and borage were left to grow as normal. I had to order some more nettles as none of them germinated=/
Top Dress
1/3 cup - Kelp meal, Lobster/crab meal, Basalt rock dust, Gypsum, Oyster shell flour, biochar (uncharged), Bokashi
1/2 cup - Ground malted barley, Karanja cake
1 Tbsp - Insect frass, Alfalfa meal, All Purpose
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