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Mixing Soil for Transplant-RC Article

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Soft Secrets
29 Aug 2011

Mixing several commercial soils is often the best option to get a soil that drains well and holds nutrients too. I prefer organic soil so do medicinal cannabis plants. You have many different soils available. The main thing to look at is the consistency of the soil.

Mixing several commercial soils is often the best option to get a soil that drains well and holds nutrients too. I prefer organic soil so do medicinal cannabis plants. You have many different soils available. The main thing to look at is the consistency of the soil.

Let's make some soil. I went down to the store and I bought some good soils, Fox Farm, Roots Organic and good old Black Gold. I also bought some Ancient Forest from General Hydroponics, it's really full of ancient compost and it is packed with life too!

Mixing several commercial soils is often the best option to get a soil that drains well and holds nutrients too. I prefer organic soil so do medicinal cannabis plants. You have many different soils available. The main thing to look at is the consistency of the soil.

I will also add a few expanded clay pellets. This brand is called Hydroton. Clay pellets go by many different names. The pellets hold water on the inside as well as air, so these things are really good to mix with your soil and they don't break down - well, they do, but very little. I'm going to put a few shovelfuls of clay pellets in the mix today.
Take a look at this Roots soil. Here's a handful, it breaks up real easily, it's got plenty of white Perlite, about 30 percent, in the mix. And it's got peat and other compost and coco too. This is a light mix that drains quickly. All that Perlite really makes it drain.

First I toss in a about a quarter of a bag of Roots soil. We've got a little bit of this Black Gold, an old classic formula; we used to grow with this in Oregon years ago. It's full of peat moss and sometimes that stuff bunches up or balls up a little bit.

 






You can see this is a completely different soil. Let me compare the two. This one's Black Gold and this one is Roots Organic. You can see Roots Organic is darker and it's got a lot more Perlite. Black Gold is real light. It's full of moss, peat moss, and it's got a few other things but, there's a lot of peat moss.

Black Gold holds ton of water, so it has to be lightened up. When I mix the two soils together like this, I get a little lighter mix. There is a lot of Perlite and peat in the blend, so it holds water a little bit better. That's a better mix and I'm gonna mix a couple more things with this.

I'm will use my little sawed off shovel to mix the soil. Once you plant, you can't dig it up and mix it again. Next I will put in a quarter bag of Ancient Rainforest soil - Alaska humus and 100 percent organic.

The Alaska humus is about five percent of the mix. Look at the humus. It looks and smells like dirt that you dig up next to the old tree that's been in the shade for a long time. it is black, earthy and sweet.

I'll be damned. There's a rock to toss out. I'll mix up a bit more. Notice I'm mixing each element separately and then at the end, everything's way better mixed. Perlite just seems to surface all the time.

Let's put in another little bit of Fox Farm Ocean Forest Potting Soil. It is full of Perlite that's a little beat up. There's a few branches in here from a compost mix and bark chips. The chips make it acidic and the pH has to be corrected.

So it's pretty good stuff, it's a little rough. That's why I'm mixing it with these other soils, so we get rid of some of this stuff or at least dampen it down a little. So let's throw a little bit of this dirt in here - soil as it is, and look how the soil color is different, it's darker.

That Black Gold has tons of peat in it, you can really tell. We're gonna have to lighten that up a little bit more. This Fox Farm will darken the soil and you know it's gotta be full of good organic compost since we saw little branches in it.

Oh boy, this container is pretty full. It will be a job to mix soil now. The main thing is to get a real good mix until this soil looks pretty homogeneous, so it's all the same color, same consistency and such.

Let's go to our next element, Hydroton. It holds hold air inside as well as water and does a great job of aerating the soil. I will put a few handfuls, maybe as much as 5 percent, probably less, of clay pellets in and mix. I'm just guessing. This is not totally scientific.

See that dust? Dust can get to you. I'd better sprinkle a little bit of water on it to get rid of that dust. A little water makes the dust go away. You don't want to put too much water in, just enough to settle the dust, and too, if you put too much water in, you'll learn real fast, the mix gets very heavy.

 

See that dust? Dust can get to you. I'd better sprinkle a little bit of water on it to get rid of that dust. A little water makes the dust go away. You don't want to put too much water in, just enough to settle the dust, and too, if you put too much water in, you'll learn real fast, the mix gets very heavy.
See that dust? Dust can get to you. I'd better sprinkle a little bit of water on it to get rid of that dust. A little water makes the dust go away. You don't want to put too much water in, just enough to settle the dust, and too, if you put too much water in, you'll learn real fast, the mix gets very heavy.

 


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