review of my micro organic plan

[Jimmy McGill]

Howdy guys,

I am currently preparing my first auto grow and I would need some insight on my plan.
It will be a micro grow in a space about as big as a full pc tower in 0.5l grow bags under white (neutral and warm) cob leds (about 60w nominal, probably around 30 real W). I will use coco as a base medium and I would like to make a full on solid organic grow. My access to commercial organic nutrients is very limited where I live so I will have to do with very limited resources, namely homemade vemicompost and organic potato fertilizer (if needed),liquid kelp extract (maxicrop), humates (humic and fulvic acid) and mycomadness (tryco, myco and bene bacteria).

So, my vermicompost is produced by red earthworms (Lumbricus rubellus) in a coco and potting soil medium. They are fed various vegetable scraps, coffee grinds, tea bags, egg shells and cardboard. I also gave them a couple of table spoons of fish blood and bone meal to make it more readily available by the worms processing it (hopefully) and I introduced beneficial bacteria and spores to the bin (mycomadness) in order to try and supercharge the mix and accelerate the processing of the food scraps. With all that, I expect my compost to be quite balanced and efficient, right?

Now, the questions. Would it be preferable to make a 25/75% compost/coco mix with potato organic fertilizer (pellets, NPK : 4/2.5/8) or a higher compost ratio like a 40/60% maybe and no pellets? I am unsure about the ability of the compost alone to sustain a full dwarf auto (8 to 10 weeks) cycle by itself, could it?. I would prefer to set and forget with only adding liquid kelp extract and mycomadness a few times during the plants life. Keeping in mind that my grow bags are very small (0.5l about as big as a 16oz solo cup) should I be prepared to add more compost or pellets during the grow as top dressing or tea? What about the mix itself, should I thoroughly mix the coco/compost/fertilizer together or stratify it?

That's it for now, any insight and help is welcomed.
JD

 

[autogogo]

a bag of potting soil is organic. nothing worse than trying to grow pot in garbage and paper shreds like I did one time. but yeah 25/75% is about right I use espoma potting soil and espoma flower tone and water. Compost and ewc is a separate operation. It takes a long time like over a year before the compost is indoor pot safe certified. EWC is always good to go anytime anywhere.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

Well, I'd agree that potting soil is supposed to be organic as long as it is not the black crap filled with general purpose chem fertilizer that I found around here. I swear ya can do "snowballs" with that crap out of the bag, it's that compact. Or, the "organic grade" joke made out of 100% "composted" bark, these are just plain fibers. Seriously, I'm not kidding, I tried growing in these years ago when a first started growing, it was plain horrible. And no perlite to be found unless you're willing to buy 50kg bags. Or, you can go to the only growshop where ya'll leave an arm and a leg for a bag of proper soil and a nice picture in the book of the cops watching who goes there.

I fully expect to be filtering proper compost out of my bin for a couple of hours, but seeing that I will just need a couple of liters or so, it is manageable. My bin has been running for some 4 months, I have enough proper looking vermi compost to start, I guess. When you say 25/75% is right, do you mean with our without added organic fert pellets?

Thanks for the input, mate.

 

[autogogo]

25% is about right for heavy compost and then if you can't find perlite 25%s so called fertilized perlite might be ok if you can't find a suitable substitute. I buy it from the bigbox store for $4/8qts. But only 25% compost is still pretty sterlie, so yes I would add your favorite fertilizer. If you can grow one crop in storebought, you then have a good medium for composting all the old roots especially if you can add some worms. I guess somebody grows without perlite but I can't imagine for myself trying to put together a good mix that is not 25% perlite. If it's really good compost as good or better than storebought soil then I would use 50% and 25%perlite and 25% peat or coco but yes that all needs a good low nitrogen fert for pot. Just my opinion. and then there are always some secret ingredients everybody has that you can also add. If it's old soil, it may already have enough perlite in it because perlite doesn't really breakdown that much. For that matter you could start with a bag of cheap soil and just compost it from the getgo. sorry for the rambling dream...I love growing soil more then I love growing pot.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

I get it, I actually really like making my own vermicompost. A living controlled micro ecosystem is very appealing to me.
Well, seeing that I already composted a few rootballs (coco and soil) that had a little perlite in them, I'll have some aeration to my final mix ( plus coco is pretty good at keeping lots of air around the rootball so I'm not too worried), there is not much of it, at all, like a wee liter in some 20l of compost, but it's better than nothing. I might boost a little bit the ratio of compost in the mix and see how it goes and add a few pellets at the beginning of flowering to make sure they are well fed. At some point I'll just have to stop procrastinating and jump right in, I may start some seeds tomorrow as my box is pretty much finished. Thanks again for the insight, mate.