New to organics

[Cannaficionado]

So Im making the switch from syn/organic fox farm line to going 100% organic. Im still using fox farm happy frog soil for a medium until its used up.

With that, can I add my dry amendments while prepping, or should I wait for the 2-4 weeks of nutrients in the soil to be just about used up and top dress after 2-3 weeks and go from there? Trying to avoid toxicity and I know with organics you gotta wait for the biome in the soil to break organic components down into available nutrients. I just dont know if adding them to already amended soil would just increase the amount of time before needing to top dress?

Thanks in advance

Ps the nutrients I purchased were down to earth veggie garden 4-4-4 and down to earth flower garden 2-6-5. Both seem to have the right blend of macro, secondary and micro nutes. I dont know if any of this matters but just in case.

 

[Waira]

So Im making the switch from syn/organic fox farm line to going 100% organic. Im still using fox farm happy frog soil for a medium until its used up.

With that, can I add my dry amendments while prepping, or should I wait for the 2-4 weeks of nutrients in the soil to be just about used up and top dress after 2-3 weeks and go from there? Trying to avoid toxicity and I know with organics you gotta wait for the biome in the soil to break organic components down into available nutrients. I just dont know if adding them to already amended soil would just increase the amount of time before needing to top dress?

Thanks in advance

Ps the nutrients I purchased were down to earth veggie garden 4-4-4 and down to earth flower garden 2-6-5. Both seem to have the right blend of macro, secondary and micro nutes. I dont know if any of this matters but just in case.

I do a similar thing with KIS Organics Nute Pack, and their Bloom Booster using Roots Organic original soil...
HF is pretty mild, I'd mix a light charge in...
So the first fork in the road is either do top dressing and/or teas, or mix-in and let cook for few weeks... The latter is what I do to get near-water-only soil.
Top dressing will be done with less inputs vs. cooking up a rich soil. Some really fine ground brands can actually get watered in fairly efficiently ( Roots Org. Terp Tea Grow and Bloom). The KIS stuff in a mix of particle sizes, less desirable for top dressing IMO...
But top dressing lets you watch and read the plant, make changes if/when you have to, like transition into blooming... Downside, it's slower to get in.
The 4-4-4 is pretty rich, N being twice what I see in the Nute Packs NPK #'s (2.5-3.5-1). With auto's, I found the N content can linger too high too long, even some mild toxicity symptoms showing occasionally. The 444 could be wicked if too much gets put in!
This year I tried their BB product (2-8-6) only in the auto's soil, and first round is encouraging in results-- better budding basically, as too much N can adversely effect bud qualities...

It's tricky at first, a learning curve to climb for sure. Mineral salt nutes are largely right now available, which makes tinkering and treating faster in effect; organics that's not the case as you know... And so much depends on your soil life, as they are the chemists at work in there!

 

[Cannaficionado]

I do a similar thing with KIS Organics Nute Pack, and their Bloom Booster using Roots Organic original soil...
HF is pretty mild, I'd mix a light charge in...
So the first fork in the road is either do top dressing and/or teas, or mix-in and let cook for few weeks... The latter is what I do to get near-water-only soil.
Top dressing will be done with less inputs vs. cooking up a rich soil. Some really fine ground brands can actually get watered in fairly efficiently ( Roots Org. Terp Tea Grow and Bloom). The KIS stuff in a mix of particle sizes, less desirable for top dressing IMO...
But top dressing lets you watch and read the plant, make changes if/when you have to, like transition into blooming... Downside, it's slower to get in.
The 4-4-4 is pretty rich, N being twice what I see in the Nute Packs NPK #'s (2.5-3.5-1). With auto's, I found the N content can linger too high too long, even some mild toxicity symptoms showing occasionally. The 444 could be wicked if too much gets put in!
This year I tried their BB product (2-8-6) only in the auto's soil, and first round is encouraging in results-- better budding basically, as too much N can adversely effect bud qualities...

It's tricky at first, a learning curve to climb for sure. Mineral salt nutes are largely right now available, which makes tinkering and treating faster in effect; organics that's not the case as you know... And so much depends on your soil life, as they are the chemists at work in there!

I kinda though it would be a little rich. But I was planning on doing a 2 month veg minimum. I really only grow photos so I figured if I didn't mix in the reccomended amount and say put 50-75% if the reccomended amount that after about 2-3 months it would be pretty depleted. The plan was to top dress about 2 weeks before the switch to flower with the flowering blend. The blend that down to earth makes isnt very finely powdered or anything. Do you think it would be better to forego the 444 and just use the flowering blend? I figured with a higher p and k ratio that might adversely effect veg, and possibly lock out magnesium and sulphur as it cooked in the soil and became more readily available, but as you already know I don't know much about 100% organic gardening.

It may have been foolish but what I was trying to do was sort of copy what I see on a lot of YouTube videos about organics. I wasn't gonna follow those recipes to a T but I was gonna try out a 50-75% dose to start and look at the plant to see when to top dress. I was thinking about including Recharge brand bagged compost tea as it doesnt have a lot of food just bene microbes and fungus plus food for the microbial colonies. Im not the biggest fan of fox farm soils anymore. Even using soil conditioners after about 2 months the soil just becomes insanely hydrophobic even with surfactants. So I will be looking for a new medium after I use up my last bag which will be on this next grow. With that said I don't have many options for potting soil around me. I habe gardening stores but WI is a backwards state. There's no hydro or actual gardening stores anywhere, its either big box stores or half assed gardening stores, so I will be looking for a good big name brand of organic soil to switch to. Its too expensive to order dirt and have it delivered, and so far all the choices I have are Fox farm HF or OF, some miracle grow organic lines and theres this one from a company called purple cow, that one is supposed to be blended for cannabis/hemp but its 30-40 bucks for 1 cubic foot. I know with organics you can reuse the soil and its actually better to because the soil is only suppose to get better the more you use it, but I was planning on ditching the happy frog after one use if the quality of the soil didn't improve over the coarse of this grow, even a little bit. Maybe I just wasn't watering enough but at the end of every grow so far the soil was barely holding any water, it would just shoot straight through by mid flower using yucca every watering.

You're definitely right it is a learning curve and it seems to be something Im gonna have to figure out on my own. I've been trying to look stuff up on organic gardening and theres not a lot of info except super basic stuff. I haven't even looked into compost teas. But you are right I wanna get as close as I can to a water only situation. Im horrible with synthetic nutes, I always have issues with magnesium deficiency during the flip to flower or shortly after the flip. Ive adjusted how much I feed, how often I feed etc and I always end up in the same place by the end of every grow.

Thanks for the detailed response though. Ive been holding off prepping my next grow till I can get a solid direction on where to go.