What up DGC! I need some advice!
I’m getting ready to start my second grow and am looking to simplify things but still grow some dank. I follow a guy on Youtube Mr Canuck’s Grow (you guys have talked about him before on the show) and the more I watch his videos, the more I’m super hyped to try some of his techniques, especially the organic dry amendment strategy. Heres the breakdown for me-
I’m a pretty busy guy and I’m looking to mainly simplify the nutrient side of things for my grow and would love for it to also be organic. My first grow was with GH 3 part but I ended up buying gallons of RO water the whole time because my tap water PPM is about 460. Im trying to avoid doing that again, and also not ready to shell out the cash for an RO system (I would rather put it into better lights at some point). I installed an excellent carbon filtration system a few years ago that takes care of all the chlorine, chloramine, particulates, and lots of other nasty things, but my PPM is still high.
So if I can mix dry nutrients into my coco, top dress throughout the grow, and simply water with pH balanced tap water, I’m going to be super stoked. Of course I will throw in some Recharge, Mammoth P and other beneficials as well.
NOW, here’s where I need guidance (considering that my scenario sounds like a good plan) – Which dry nutrient line do I use? Mr Canuck’s Grow uses Gaia Green but I can’t get that shipped to my home state of Michigan unless I want to pay over $50 in shipping which I’d rather not do. There doesn’t seem to be that many options and I want something quality. I know Mr Canucks Grow kills it with his ES300 lights as well, but damn he grows some fire with seemingly low effort on the feeding side of things.
What do you think? Any feedback or other ideas is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!
Highly recomend finding a different method to follow. We’ve had numerous people posting here that are having a lot of issues trying to follow Mr Canucks methods. (Use the search button and you’ll find several recent grow talk questions from people having lots of issues with coco + dry amendments.)
Plain coco and organic amendments are not designed to work together. Organic dry amendments won’t break down readily without a lot of organic material mixed in there too. You need some compost or castings or some other ingredients in there to break down the dry amendments to make them available to your plants. Otherwise you end up with nutrient availability issues and unhappy plants.
Coco can be used plain with liquid fertilizers, but when you plan to use dry organic amendments it shouldn’t be more than a third of the total mix.
Making soil is all about balance. You should shoot for roughly 1/3rd coco or peat, 1/3rd compost or castings, and 1/3rd aeration material like pumice or rice hulls. Then add nutrients and minerals and allow them time to break down before planting.
If you want to make a coco based soil with dry amendments, I recomend checking out the coco mineral kit and the nutrient kits from buildasoil.com. They’ve done the research to make a balanced coco based soil, it’s a good idea to follow their lead.
Or if you wanna try a peat based mix, here’s my recipe and a guide to making it yourself
https://growerslove.com/blogs/grow-tip-of-the-week/make-your-own-soil?_pos=2&_sid=e030bf032&_ss=r
^^^What Soup said.
Soup
Thanks for the valuable information about coco. I’ve been using Roots Organic original potting soil which is coco based with quite a bit of perlite. I like the coco because it seems to re-wet better than peat if I wait to long between watering. I am considering going back to peat based soil.
Why do you prefer peat over coco?
Peace and thanks again
Peat has a high enough cec to hold onto nutrients while coco doesn’t and you loose the nutrients in the runoff. Yes we have all tried to figure out how mr. Canuck achieves his success. Even mentioned not really using microbes. Started talking about making compost teas but he didn’t use them before. Not sure how he gets the nutrients to become available as mentioned above. Dr earths all purpose 444 is a similar product as the gaia green.
If your dead set on trying dry amendments the green sunshine company who makes the es300 lights has a organic dry amendment they have made called earth dust .it a 2 part just like gaia green. I’ve been looking to trying dry amendments as well and feel there pretty reasonable option if done correctly
Hi, I’m a newbie, so I started with Fox Farms Ocean Forest Soil, it has EVERYTHING already in it. I’ve only topped a few times with fish meal, alternating ph tap water & RECHARGE, every once in a while, I use fox farms big bloom which is just a concentrated tea of worm castings etc….keep’n it REAL & SIMPLE and my light is a mars sp250 in a 2X4 tent and fans, no air filter, my house, my rules Peace! love the DG!
Dry organic amendments are a great way to grow, but they need to be paired with an appropriate grow medium otherwise the nutrition won’t be plant available. (And plain coco is not a good match)
Coco is a great grow media, but it needs to be paired with appropriate nutrients. Coco behaves kinda like a sponge, so it does a great job when paired with liquid fertilizer, but it doesn’t work well with dry fertilizers.
Coco or peat can both be turned into a soil by mixing with compost and other ingredients. When you add compost to the mix, it allows you to use dry organic nutrients because the compost breaks the amendments down into forms your plants can actually use.
Peat typically works better for long term soil use because it holds up better over time. Coco tends to compact much more quickly. Coco also stores calcium and other nutrients differently than peat, (coco tends to hold on to a lot of calcium) which is why you want to use a different mineral mix when making a coco based soil.
What everyone said. Plus, if you decide to run dry organics in a more appropriate soil check out Biolive. If your hydro store doesn’t carry it they can get it. A 25 pound bag would run 60 bucks.
What up Frosty,
Have you looked into subcools nut mix pack? It takes 6 weeks to cook but will get you from seed to flower with only ph balanced water feedings.
Or even easier have you looked into build a soil?
I would recommend build a soul V3 and build a bloom. Simple system that can be run seed to harvest with recharge and build a bloom being added around week 3-4 of flower to help the girls sprint to that finish line.
What everyone has said makes sense. The fact is, though, Matt has success with this method. So apparently no one here knows how it works….as far as I know he just uses a higher pH to make the organic nutrients available.
Get Matt from Mr. Canucks Grow on the show!
That would be the shit if you got Mr. Canuck on the show.
Im thinking his water must be the key and taking care of the many micronutrient issues we see in other attempts with this style. Im going to have check which water source he uses. Think I remember him just airing out the chlorine.
Could be, JC. I sure would like to know….gotta trust what JMystro and soup said, but gotta trust my eyes too.
you guys are making this too hard! earth dust works great with happy frog . just wait about 3 weeks then top dress base in and i don’t ph my water. comes out after filtering at 7.0 if you’re going to veg more than 45 days just top dress again every 30 days . when you want to flower just add bloom a week before 12/12 and i recommend adding nothing additional
If simplicity is what you’re after while getting some tasty fire, I’d recommend what I’ve been doing the past couple of runs.i use Detroit nutrient companies water only soil and i mix in roots organics uprising line. I mix in the foundation and grow to start and then when i repot to 7 gallon pots i mix in foundation and bloom. Watering straight water. Once a week ill water in recharge or mammoth P depending on veg or flower. If ya really want to make life easy on yourself, get some Blumats. Doesn’t get much easier in my opinion while growing some dank all natural flower. I don’t know where you’re at in michigan, but if ya want to keep it in the michigan family, look up country roots for some bad ass natural inputs.
how much of the grow and hom much bloom would you pre mix into the soil?
Mr. Canuck does add worm castings from what I’ve seen, as well as buffered coco. I’m not a fan of his grows though, as he explains very little and shows a bunch of bud porn at the end. I can see the appeal, but like many above have said, stick with something simple, follow a feed chart and good to go. I use roots organics original for seedlings and half gals, then add half and half original and happy frog, then when i pot up to 5 gal, i use half original and half ocean forest. If you use roots organics dry amendments and their liquid organic nutes, follow their “master” feed chart, it combines 5ml doses of liquid with top dressing dry amendments, or the dry amendments can be brewed and watered in. If you want to run just dry nutrients, they have a great simple top dress chart too. I’ve had very little issues, using Recharge, mammoth P, and FishSh!t for microbes, never PH… Tap water is 6.9.. Simply mix in nutes to water, always calmag first, then use a submersible pump to circulate your 5 gal for 24 hours, and the PH should all stabilize to an acceptable range. They specifically state to wait to PH if you want, to just prior to feeding.