My last grow was in 2007. A lot has changed, which is exciting. I want to grow soil, perhaps starting with a tent and working my way up from there. The space is 13’ X 10’ and has a vaulted ceiling. There are two windows, one with an AC unit.
Ironically, I knew barely enough to help others years ago. And here I am lost. Everything has changed.
Welcome to the forum! There are a lot of knowledgeable growers here to help you get back up to speed!
Hi @novicedave
Welcome to GN. Sounds like you have a good space to start growing, what advice do you need?
Thank you for responding to my plea. Would it be best for me to start out with a tent? I feel like I could eventually do a lot with this given amount of space, but I would like to get “something” going quickly.
It all depends on what lights u have. If windows r fully covered for no light leaks ect. If the room is total blacked out a tent wont be necessary and would give u thebqhole 10x13 ro play with. Start off in a corner and branch out from there. Wish i had a full room to play in. Lol. Welcome and good luck plenty of help to get u moving on a freat grow
What Mark said…but another thing is with a tent for inside you have all the reflective walls to aid in light distribution inside the tent. It helps with getting more light to the mid and lower parts of the plant so better bigger buds a little farther down the plants. You can go plain and simple or you can go ultra tech. It depends on how much you want to spend or have to spend. Give us some parameters of what you want to do. How many plants, amount to spend etc.
Marty
Do you plan to do living soil or are you going to trash the dirt afterwards? The size of your pots/beds will have a huge determining factor on whether or not living soil is an optimal choice.
Highly recommend build a soil for easy to access, but slightly pricey organic soil amendments. They also show you how they make a most of their stuff on YouTube if you want to take the time to do it yourself.
If you’re trying to keep it cheap, espoma organic 333 fertilizer and azomite as your main two amendments. That covers most of your bases.
If you have the space, composting bins and worm bins will help keep cost low and can be maintained with minimal effort, but may take sometime to be usable.
Stratiolaelaps/hypoaspis is a great all rounder soil predator. Once they’re there, they’re there forever. They are opportunistic eaters so they switch from carnivore to detritivore as necessary. They are great at annihilating and preventing fungus gnats and root aphids. They are, and I cannot stress this enough, horrendous at hunting plant based pests.
Other wise dr zymes, lost coast, spinosad, and insecticidal/castille soap are you best options for vegetative pest control.
Thank you, that is very kind. Money isn’t much of a restraint since I understand that you get what you pay for. I just want to grow for my own use and have a little to put back. I like the idea of starting out with a tent and going from there.
Thank you for the reply, this is very kind of you.
The way I did it before was to trash the soil after I used it. I baked it in an oven with perlite to kill the bad stuff. Living soil? With worms? Yes, I’m up for anything! Back when I did grow, I guess I was lucky and didn’t have any issues with fungus or gnats. But I am also not in that same location, so I’d rather be prepared.
So you can purchase this living soil if you do not want to make it yourself and then reuse it over and over again?
That a bit hard to answer, in a sense yes in a sense no. Once a bed is well established more so, and even then you will likely use different types of teas to sway what kind of microbe activity occurs. Starting new you will need to establish the rhizome ecology which is generally determined by what kind of fertilizer or organic material the bed is mainly comprised of. You will also need to add back nutrients for the microbes to eat Whether its top dress, mulching cover crop, ferments, teas, or any mixture of them. The dirt gets washed out if you don’t and the life inside starts to die. With living soil we are trying to emulate what nature does from the ground up, no pun intended. So you will be performing some maintenance but you will not be discarding the dirt.
Fair warning there is a bit of a learning curve to living soil but there are many YouTube gardeners that can get you started. Searching basics of knf, jadam, or permaculture should get you to a pretty decent starting place.
When doing living soil you will need 5 gal container minimum but preferably 10+ gallon containers.
If you don’t plant to till, bigger is much better and you will likely want some kind of cover crop, such as clover. These are used as nitrogen regulators then mulched back into the top layer of soil to feed the microbes. Also you will definitely want a soil conditioner and wetting agent using this method. This reamends the soil after use. Aloe, yucca, or quillaja extract in addition to a worm tea.
Otherwise you will have to dump the dirt, amend, and repot. And from what I’ve seen is people have extra storage totes of dirt they are readying so that they have no downtime on their dirt in between harvests.
My method is mostly the first, with the addition of ferments and aerated teas, and a small bit of composting.
I will say that hydro has evolved very far and if that’s something you’re interested in it has a lot of advantages. Plants display toxicity and deficiency much quicker, soil pests are for the most part non existent, and an extremely wide variety of nutrients lines to pick from and they are a great deal more straight forward. Not to discourage you in anyway from your soil quest!
I tagged you in a post another user made for organic nutrients lines that are built off of the knf/jadam philosophies. A bit more expensive than a three part hydro series nute line but looks like a great all inclusive organic starter nutrient line.
I love a grow tent. I have 9 tents. I staryed growing outdoors and inddors in 1998.
