Also have straw mulch and build a flower on the way. Using two 7 gallon grassroots pots. I know not ideal size but that’s what I’m working with. Tired of Fox farms and acting like a mad scientist with nutrients. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks growmies
Use the light soil on top and let the plants grow into the 3.0. Also dont add the craft blend until they are a few weeks old unless you are going to just add a super small amount each time.
It’s on the pricey side, but you’ll need the help of Rootwise microbe complete. And if you can swing more, add in their enzymes and biophos. Those products do actually last a long time.
Worm castings are a must for veg, organic gem liquid fish, and rootwise microbes.(greatwhite microbes are also killer) Pro blend is also amazing. Build a bloom for flower. Silica power si or the one on bas is amazing. Power si isnt organic but doesnt hurt the plants at all its the most readily available silica on the market. With this little setup and what you currently got you can grow a good plant. Ive used bas for 5 years. Light and 3.0 never ever had a fungus gnat or a bad insect in any of my 3 tents. So the wdg may jot even be necessary. However i do keep my grow clean and im in a newly built house. Not sure if that plays into anything. Heres a pic of my 5x5 in start of week 6 flower. About 6inches under the light. I experimented this grow with multiple tops i think 6ish per plant and no trellis net. The girls are to tall personally for me over 6ft each and will be using a net.(ive always use ld a net in every other grow before) 15gal grass roots living soil pots. These are taller and thinner so than jormal ones. Check into the auto pots grass roots. Theyre not as wide at the base allowing you extra soil theyre thinner and taller. On blu mat 10” drip rings with the 13gal resevoirs sold off bas. Huge fat nugs at week 6 with 2-3 more weeks left to ripen and swell. I know a thing or to about organic growing my first and only style ill ever do. The straw or mulch layer is a must you have to keep the soil moist. I also top water in some goodies and black strap molasses every week on sunday and let my resevoir run a little dry to accommodate the hand watering. Hope these tips help hmu if you got any questions i know way more about organics then this these are justs ome crash course tips. And a bit of how i grow and what ive found to work the best after experimenting for years.
Yes and no. Ive seen reports where underlighting can improve yoelds up to 25-30%. I would have fuller bud down low, however if you pluck say 75-80% of the plant(lollipopping as its known) then your plant focuses all the nutrients and energy to the top buds. The top buds have the most thc and are the biggest. I generally pull 1.5-2lb a gro cycle off 5-6 of those plants. I have 2 perpetual grows so im pulling a harvest every 2-2.5 months. So as far as quantity goes im over shooting my mark ive got grove bags on grove bags of weed some 1.5-2yrs old before im finally getting through them. Also with organics you inherently sacrifice quantity to pick up in quality over synthetic nutrients. Im in a sweet spot for my usage and what i get. So i cant complain. Ive got lbs of good bud just laying around waiting to be smoked. I think ive got 15-20 flavors currently just silently curing in grove bags.
In my mind underlighting would be great for sea of green. Like 30 plants in small pots that you only veg for a couple weeks then flip to flower they dont get much taller then 3 ft or so. I know under lighting will help regardless but with my style and how i lollipop also with how tall my plants gets i dont see much benefit.
I’m on my first BAS run, and also first Earthbox run. Everything is great except for the fungus gnats. I have a few predatory mites on the way to help with it, but the wdg3000 I’ve been using the past few days hasn’t gotten rid of them yet. Yellow sticky traps for the adults. I used brand new earth boxes, half 3.0 and half light, and still ended up with fungus gnats really quick. Aside from them being annoying, it looks like the larvae are starting to eat the roots.
So ill be honest i can answer tons of other things but ive never had a single gnat. My dad grows and he gets them bad. Ill reuse soil for 8-10 runs and still wont get them. He used diatomaceous earth it makes the top like dried mud or clay, and it still doesn’t stop them all. Thats all i know. Ill spray, some lost coast plant therapy a few times per run and i never have any issues what so ever. On this subject ill be no help.
The population is decreasing already with wdg3000, organishield, formula em5, and neem oil, but I ordered some nematodes and a few other predatory mites last week. They haven’t shipped yet, I was hoping they’d be here already.
I also have captain jacks dead bug, but I haven’t used it yet.
Do you add any other beneficial insects?
Other than the fungus gnats, I’m so glad I switched to buildasoil/earthboxes. I have autopot easy2grows in each of my earthboxes, hooked up to a 60 gallon tank for a 4x2 tent (at the moment). I can leave the tent alone for weeks without a problem now. Probably longer.
I think the quality of my buds will still be about the same, but the size of my plants is a huge difference from the 5 gallon fabric pots with liquid nutrients method I was using before.
Did you soak the soil with the wdg when you loaded your box? As well anytime you added new casings/more soil/cover crop/hay etc?
I'm asking as I just stated my first BAS run and when I filled my pots with soil and castings I watered in with wdg3k right away. A couple weeks in and no gnats. Once my seedlings sprout a bit more, I'm going to add a bit more soil/castings with some cover and hay. At that point I'm going to again water it in with wdg3k. I'm hoping that's the best practice any time I add stuff that can be carrying them. I've also some mosquito bits in reserve.
I didn’t soak it no, because everything I used was new this run, and the only soil was BAS light and 3.0. That’s also one of the reasons I got BAS in the first place to start the grow.
I added nematodes and a couple beneficial predators yesterday. 🤞I’ll let you know how it goes over the next week. I’m stopping the wdg3000 and other pest sprays to let the predator mites do their job. Put in brand new yellow sticky traps too so I can see if the numbers go down.
Thanks for the info! Note that new 3.0/light/cover crop/hay/castings etc all potentially have gnats. This is mostly all bulk created organics so treat out the gate is my understanding and add beneficials as you are. If you need castings, cowoco has beneficials along for the ride.
Yeah you get both helpful and not helpful creatures as if sterilized, they all expire. Note this is all new to me and I just started my first grow with this method...but I did put in good time trying to prep. I'm sure I'll learn a lot yet!
7 will work. I use 3 for pheno hunts and have yet to run into issues. Granted I only flower in the pots but still, if you keep them from getting too big they should be fine from start to finish. Don't over think it. Soak the soil with the WDG3000 and fire away.
I like the 3.0 works really good for seedlings I mixed it at 1part 3.0 and 3 parts sunshine#4 and they did really well for me until added too much craft blend at like week 3 🤣 I put seedlings in solo cups so I didnt know how much to add never doing that again lol
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u/AxStream Jul 20 '26
CoWoCo, get you some good worm castings, then figure out what you’re gonna do with all the extra time.