New release: ACDC

Day 0 - September 26, 2023 Today I mixed up a new batch of soil tweaked a bit from my last batch which aims to help with the latest cal-mag deficiency that set in earlier than usual. We have a few ingredients in there this time to help with that. Let me describe the base ingredients of my soil first, and then I will talk about the amendments. I am using a mixture of 40% worm castings, 30% perlite, and 30% sphagnum peat moss. This is the combination of base ingredients I arrived at after trying several other ingredients with mixed results. I am afraid to add humus or compost material in this batch, because I had good success not doing so last batch. The batch before that with compost brought a large fungus gnat infestation into my grow room that I finally was able to find a solution that works, 3 months later. After fully eliminating them and cleaning my grow room, I don't want to bring compost into the mix this time (even though their eggs can be present in any organic material). The worm castings I'm using are actually very rich and dark. They also weigh considerably more than comparable bags from other vendors, so the moisture content is higher and I'm probably getting less product, but more of better product. I tried to track down a good supplier that packages it right from their in-house worm farm. I'm using perlite this time instead of rice hulls, pumice or black lava rocks for aeration. While I don't like that perlite is a finite natural resource being used in large quantities for agriculture, and I also do not like that they are effectively glass shards in the form of an airborne powder anytime you use it, and also that it floats on water so will shift to the top of a pot over a period of time...I still chose this because it has worked the best for me so far and I can't afford known set backs. The last ingredient of my base mix is Canadian sphagnum peat moss. I actually never used this yet, so I am sort of taking a gamble. I previously have substituted either coconut coir or "PitMoss", which is a recycled plant fiber/paper material that is a sustainable alternative to peat. I'll try the real deal this time because it's what everyone swears by. To prepare my soil, I fill a fabric pot up with measured amounts of each, and I shake it for a good few minutes thoroughly blending them together. I then use this base mix to amend with nutrition, plant-benefiting organisms, and soil tilth promoting ingredients depending on the stage of growth and size of pot I am transplanting into. And I then blend them again thoroughly. For amendments I'm using a few simple things. Dolomite limestone. It's basically CalMag in natural form. Pay attention to pH though. I needed this more than anything for this new soil mix, as the nutrition I'm supplying as part of my separate vegetative growth mix blend is not yet enough in neither nitrogen or calcium. This is not blended into the soil. It is used as a top-dressing. Lignite. It's a rock containing a super potent source of humates and carbon. This greatly helps build soil tilth by promoting the growth of beneficial root promoting fungi and bacteria. It's also basically pre-charcoal, so it adds carbon to your soil. By the way, a plant's whole purpose in life is to try to produce as much carbon as possible. Adding a little carbon can't hurt in any case, especially if it helps the rhyzosphere. You only need a very tiny amount of this stuff. I got a 5lb box that will last me a few lifetimes, haha. Green Mountain Veg is a product by Roadside Organics, a small organic cannabis farm in the US. I use it as the base in my nutrition mix, but I also add other things too which I will explain further below. Green Mountain Veg contains the following ingredients: Feather meal, soybean meal , alfalfa meal, crab meal, fish meal, bone meal, neem cake, langbinite, oyster shell flour, basalt, green sand, and gypsum. These are most of the nutrition my plant will need for its entire vegetative cycle, all mixed into the soil to start. Shortly after flipping to flower, we will top-dress with my bloom mix of nutrition, which includes another Roadside Organics product as a base. The NPK ratio of Green Mountain Veg is 2-2.6-2. Down To Earth Bio-Live is amazing. It is a blend of many beneficial fungal and bacterial spores, ready to colonize my plant's root system the moment it starts germinating. It includes 18 different mycorrhizae strains, and 8 different bacteria, all selectively chosen to promote a healthy root system with seedlings or transplants. The idea is to expose the roots themselves with this innoculant, so it makes more sense to target the application to the point of sowing or transplanting, rather than mixing it into the soil. This product also includes several nutrients for effective propagation of new growth, many of which are also included in Green Mountain Veg and my veg mix. The NPK ratio is 5-4-2. And that's pretty much my current soil mixture, minus a few extra ingredients I experiment with to possibly tweak the next batch with. I loaded all of this up into a 2-gallon plastic pot. That will be its secondary home after a tiny cup of a light seedling mix consisting of mostly peat. We will be sowing directly into this tiny pot and transplanting after its first set of leaves emerge. I sowed the seed shallowly into the peat cup with a slight bit of Bio-Live innoculant around it. I then misted it with a spray bottle lightly, and will continue to do so every few hours as needed until we have lift off. Edit: Oops. When cleaning up I accidentally dropped another ACDC seed in a pile of peat moss. I couldn't find it so I made another starter cup for it. This diary will be showing off both plants.