Which Base For a Fresh Mix

[MindSoup]

Sounds like a good recipe mate. For this mix I went for 

 

30L dalefoot potting mix (really beautiful stuff)

4L WCs & 3L of biochar (mixed and steeped in a bucket with Ecothrive Biosys for 48hrs) 

180g of Life Cycle 

 

I've potted up one seedling so far and it looks a wee bit rich for such a young plant, I'll probably mix a bit of coco or something when I pot on the others. 

 

[Guest]

@MindSoup Thanks for sharing, mate. Doing to make a diary or record all here? 

[Guest]

@Cajafiesta do you have a diary, mate? 
 

P.S. @MindSoup sorry for the spam mate, just searching for peat free recipes as well ... 

[Cajafiesta]

@Canna Denfour20 yeah, two running at the moment in the diary section. Have a look if you wanna know how to almost kill plants and then sorta revive them. 
 

 

im apparently good at that 

Edited December 18, 2021 by Cajafiesta

[MindSoup]

@Canna Denfour20  

 

E2A it's a rolling diary so skip to the end if you want to follow the current run. 

Edited December 18, 2021 by MindSoup

[Guest]

@Cajafiesta Per aspera ad astra  

[blackpoolbouncer]

No need to own an alpaca guys don't panic

 

 

As many of you know I do a fair bit of other organic permaculture gardening too on a commercial scale including making tons and tons of living soil, compost, biochar, ewc etc from absolute scratch using nothing but materials produced on site. I work on a total closed loop system. Nothing organic leaves the site or comes in which means no shop bought compost whatsoever and a lot of work 

 

This is true sustainable permaculture and from what I can see the first documented living soil mix that doesn't contain any peat whatsoever.

 

Anyway. I waffle. 

 

So the soil mix is incredibly simple. You don't need a million ammendments and only a few ingredients that even you at home can make at least 70% of the mix.

 

 

First off we take 200l of fine grade biochar I made using hawthorn brash I've taken from hedgelaying. (I will document my methods in another thread) 

Then we add 200l of quality finished homemade diverse source compost.Then on goes 200l of homemade wormcasts. This is actually just the same compost as above thats had worms go though it thoroughly concentrating it.athen goes on 100l of finest amended top soil I dug up from a veg bed thats had compost incorporated previously Then on goes the dry ammendments. This is the only part that I don't produce entirely myself and are actually optional and not essential at all as I used the basic base mix already and works excellently.

3 cups of dolomite lime

18 cups of seaweed meal

20kg volcanic rock dust

8 cups of elixr soil conditioner.

Then mix, congratulations, give yourself a pat on the back for saving the world.

Notice the colour .....primo. 

So yea, here we are 6 days later after going into the fresh soil mix and things are growing very quickly indeed and we should be ready to flip in a couple of days.

 

 

 

 

 

1/3 compost

1/3 ewc

1/3 biochar

 

Simples. 

 

E2a. As fir over 20% biochar hurting yeild. That's cobblers. There becomes a limit but that limit is when there's too much biochar it displaces the food source for the life and the soil system is collapsed indicative of a host of other issues. 

 

People are running 30% perlite which is essentially a much less useful version of biochar. 

Biochar does the job of the perlite and pumice and then some.

If you were so inclined you could run hydroponically using my biochar the same way people grow in perlite.

There is the argument that it displaces space for roots which adding perlite or aeration to a traditional 100% peat compost does do and is what I don't recommend it but in our living soil system the biochar is needed for primarily texture and aeration/drainage and plays a key part allowing the compost to maintain a healthy biome mostly down to the particle size.

People add rice hulls(which are some decomposed) pumice (which is expensive)

Or perlite........which is shite.

You could replace some of the biochar with perlite or with the better alternative of vermiculite.

 

My seedling/cutting mix is just riddled fine compost/ewc and instead of using the coarse biochar I use vermiculite at a rate of 50/50 

 

 

Edited December 19, 2021 by blackpoolbouncer

[inceywinceyspider]

What about using leafmold in the mix? 

[MindSoup]

Yeah leaf moulds good. I've never used it indoors, but it works great in a guerilla growing situation and I've seen plenty of people using it in their no till beds. The thing with wild sourced stuff to keep in mind is that alongside the beneficials there will be some stuff you might not want in there as well, so keep an eye out for nastys. 

[blackpoolbouncer]

18 hours ago, inceywinceyspider said:

What about using leafmold in the mix? 

Great stuff. It used to make up 30% of my mix and still makes up  a large percentage of my compost.

 

Creme de la creme input that

[Cajafiesta]

@blackpoolbouncer  What are your thoughts on made-at-home biochar compared to purchased, lump charcoal.  I'm speaking of real charcoal, not the compressed briquettes with binding agents and burning additives. It would have to be broken up to an acceptable size, but that's not much of a chore, really. 

 

 

Are you aware of any negative impacts when using commercially made, natural, hardwood lump charcoal?  I'm currently using small pearlite, and I don't think it's as good as something else could be.  It does that annoying " float to the top of the pot" thing.  I'd much rather use charcoal.  It's very cheap.  I don't really have the ability to rig up an oxygen poor burning environment without neighbors looking at me weird.  So making it isn't much of a viable option, even though I'd like to.  It's a neat process. 

[blackpoolbouncer]

@Cajafiesta yea mate that's fine. Make sure it's clean hardwood charcoal and free from any additives and your good to go to get that shit smashed up and added. Worth precharging in a slurry overnight definitely

Edited December 20, 2021 by blackpoolbouncer

[Cajafiesta]

@blackpoolbouncer Good tip, I didn't consider pre-saturation.  I bet it's a pain in the dick to wet thoroughly if not presoaked. Especially if I have peat in the mix.   Thanks for the tip.  I'm gonna give it a shot next round of soil mixing.  

 

I'd like to get on your level of self-sufficiency re mix ingredients.

 

 

I just gotta work out finding one of those Alpacas...

 

Alpaca Shit, Rocking Horse Shit...seem to be about the same degree of rarity.  

[MindSoup]

@Cajafiesta if you don't charge biochar it will absorb a lot of nutrients (mainly nitrogen) from your soil so either soak it with WCs etc or mix your soil a week or 2 ahead of needing to use it.

[Cajafiesta]

@MindSoup Got it.

 

Curious now what aspect of the biochar makes it into a situation where, when nutrients are absorbed by it, they are unavailable to the plant.  Sounds like that's what you're getting at. 

 

What about the nutrients located in the biochar matrix makes them unattainable to the plant, I wonder?

Edited December 20, 2021 by Cajafiesta
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