Sativa Kid
Member
Growing with peat based soils is a learning experience for me. And growing with peat based soils is where I headed from day one. And the first thing to overcome was the 4.4 Ph. As I said I’m still learning but my initial target was a soil with 6.5 Ph. I also decided to recycle soil as an initial direction which brought it’s own challenges and is a great discussion to have. But in getting back to the Ph I knew it was going to be a challenge and to be honest I don’t even measure anymore because my results are fine with the approach I’ve taken. I’m limited in all aspects of size because my grow space is a converted under space of a porch space that my wife approves of because I made it extremely stealthy. I have my Christian Friends over to BBQ right next to my porch and nobody knows, it's stealthy. With that said I can only use adequate size pots and cannot use giant pots where I can experiment with worms and feeding the soil. But as for today I use a few things I use in the main body of the soil and these are all geared towards raising the Ph naturally while getting some Calcium. For starters I started with commercial peat based junk like Pro Mix. I started gradually lowering my Ph by adding very small amounts of Dolomite to my Dechlor Barrell. This came with lessons of overuse and temporary funkiness of my plants. Now I only add I teaspoon per 25 gallons trash can(dechlor barrel). But now I run 35% Perlite because it’s 7.5 Ph and add a scoop of bone meal every time I load a grow bag along with a scoop of Gaja Green Bloom Booster which is mostly Bone Meal with other natural ingredients and they pulverize it for better digestion. The problem with bone meal in container soil is that it is not that bio available but I’ve learned that after a few grows in the soil enough Calcium is available in the residual bone meal. I have a few other minor amendments and fertilize with Fish Emulsion in Veg and a tad in Flower on occasion and use a lot of Banana Peel Tea in Flower and a little in Veg. The result is great tasting buds and I never struggle with lockout or lack of Calcium or Magnesium.
