Back again, had some questions in regards to using Recharge in coco. I currently run a 70/30 combo of coco/perlite from Mother Earth. I run Dynagro Foliage Pro, Protekt, and Mag-Pro, along with weekly Recharge treatments.
Would adding earthworm castings to my coco blend, help the Recharge do its job more efficiently or better? If so, what ratio earthworm castings to my coco/perlite blend should I use?
If not, am I better off running Recharge in small amount with every feed, since I’m growing in coco, or is it still best to follow the once a week treatments?
Love the Recharge, just wanna make sure I’m using it in a way that will allow me to get the most benefits.
Also, had a friend who is fairly new to growing and has been growing autos without much luck. He struggled during the early phases of plant life, and usually ended up with stunted plants. I recommended Recharge, and he’s about halfway through his current grow, with plants already bigger than those that he harvested last grow. It seems the Recharge actually made the plant hardier.
Hey Brotha. Funny you asked this question. I was looking it up yesterday after listening to an older podcast of DGS. I was wondering the same thing about earthworm castings. I use recharge in my grow of Autoflowers in a 75/25 coco perlite. I just posted a 10 day update on my autos and the results from recharge are great. I am using 1/2tsp of Recharge with 1gal of water every other feeding. When i transplanted from 4in plastic to 3 gal radicle I sprinkled recharge on the exposed roots and inside the transplant hole. Didnt have any drooping leaves or any signs of stress from the transplant. Now hopefully someone will throw in some good advice on castings. I was thinking about adding it as a top dress before a watering? What benefits are there using earthworm castings with Recharge? Anyway. Great question and hope i helped somewhat with the Recharge at least.
Stay Irie!
I think we may have watched the same older episode, I seen the same thing!
Adding microbial life to your blend will not hurt and will only boost the productivity of Recharge. I can’t find a negative to the equation at all.
Do you recommend about a 1:10 EWC : coco/perlite ratio as well?
You will never go wrong adding worm castings to your coco as long as you don’t add too much. I think Scotty adds about 10% castings to his coco and I don’t think he used any form of supplemental aeration either since coco holds so much air. You can probably add more to your 30% perlite blend, but EWC can make things a sludgy mess in a hurry. When I first started growing, I overdid the EWC on a plant which choked out the roots and caused them to go anerobic and rot. It literally smelled like fecal matter when I broke open the rootball.
And I think you have it backwards in your thinking…. The EWC will not help the recharge work better, the recharge will help the EWC work better by adding diversity along side the biology that’s already in the castings.
As for your buddy and his autos… how dialed in is his environment? You REALLY need to control the night time / lights out temps and keep them above 70 degrees… Otherwise the vegging autos will slow to a crawl and give you an 8″ bud on a stick! If you just can’t control the temps very well, you would do better switching to a photoperiod strain. They will slow down as well, but you can still creep along in veg and get a sizeable plant.
Yeah,I’m not sure on his set up, he doesn’t take much of my advice so I usually don’t give it, but for whatever reason he went for it on the recharge. I’ve been telling him to grow some photos since his first grow, even offered him a couple of my extras.
So if I shoot for around 10 percent castings, do I mix it in completely or put it towards the top of my coco? Do I just mix them with my blend and continue to care for my plant like I was before adding them, assuming the plant is responding well to current strength of Nutes and watering schedule?
Mix it in and carry on as you normally would have. Top dressing is for when you already have a plant in the pot and only have access to the top inch or so of the media.
That’s part of what keeps me from going full-on living soil… I prefer subirrigating, but top dressing makes it hard to get anything in the soil from the top when all the water comes up through the bottom. I could do it with a no-till bed using earthworms and a heavy mulch layer to bring them up to eat the amendments off the top, but not ideal.
Awesome, that’s what I will do. What is the likeliness that I will end up having to dial back the nutrients from the nitrogen in the EWC? I usually start at 1/4 strength and work my way to 1/2 strength, will that amount of EWC add any extra nitrogen to the equation or does the bacteria make that a non-issue?