Greetings growers worldwide. Jordan River here back with more growcast All the M's because it's so delicious. Today we've got Mary Beth Sanchez back on the line. We've got an episode all about maximizing your soil success with secrets to supercharge it. Very excited about this episode. She dropped some really good knowledge. The show is going video. We've got a video component coming with every episode, starting next episode, hopefully. So make sure to stay tuned. Go to youtube.com/grow cast to sign up, subscribe there and see all of our new videos drop. You'll also see them at growcast.com/episodes. Of course. Before we get into it with Mary Beth though, shout out to AC infinity. That's right, AC infinity.com. For all of your gardening gear needs, they've got tents, lights, fans, the best in the game. And you can use code growcast One five at AC infinity.com. Better yet, you can go to Amazon and use grow cast one zero on Amazon as well. You know, with all the supply chain issues and the tariffs, there's huge shipping fees associated with a lot of these items. But for right now, as of the time of this recording, you can skip those large shipping fees on the larger items from AC infinity by going to their Amazon store, ordering there, getting prime and using code grow cast one, zero, you'll still get a saving on Amazon. So if the shipping is too high, hit up the AC infinity store on Amazon. The code is grow cast one five on acinity.com and grow. Cast one zero on Amazon. Get what you need. They got everything. Like I said, the best fans you can get your hands on and grow tent kits so you can expand your garden easily. Go and get it. Everybody that acinity.com code grow, cast one five or avoid those shipping fees. Get on Amazon and get prime use code grow, cast one zero at checkout on Amazon. Thank you to AC infinity, all right, everyone, let's get into it with Mary Beth Sanchez. Enjoy this awesome show, and thank you for listening. Hello, podcast listeners who are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today. Before we get started, as always, I urge you to share this show. Tell a friend about growcast, or turn a smoker on to growing that's the best way you can help us on our mission of overgrow. Make sure you're subscribed wherever you listen. Check us out@growcast.com There you'll find the episodes as well as the classes in the seed and memberships and everything is up there@growcast.com Special. Thank you to the members for making this all possible. Very excited for what's going on at growcast. I've got some really big, important updates coming at you, but for today, got an awesome and educational episode lined up. You know, I was thinking about the importance of soil health. When you are a soil grower, or a syngenic grower, or really, any type of grower, in certain aspects, a healthy soil system, a healthy medium, always makes a plant thrive. You know, assuming that everything else is even close to optimal, that healthy soil system will make plants happy. I can't tell you how many times I take a, you know, deficient root bound plant all sad. You throw it in the good soil system, and even before the leaves have a chance to green back up, that thing's praying. And maybe you've heard of that phrase as above, so below, well, that's called the hermetic principle of correspondence, and there's no better example than soil. So today's episode is designed to help you supercharge your soil health, because if you got a healthy soil, it's going to give you a way better shot to have a healthy and heavy harvest. So there's no better guest to discuss this with than today's guest, longtime friend of the show, Mary Beth Sanchez, is joining us. How are you doing today? Mary Beth,
oh, we're doing absolutely fabulous in the Pacific Northwest California.
Yes, fantastic. Welcome back to the show. I know I needed to have you on for this one. You've got so much it's just a wealth of knowledge. You know, this is the stuff I love. You taught me so much over the years. Mary Beth,
yeah, well, you know, like, that's the neat thing about this whole community that we have here Jordan, there's so much knowledge and so much sharing, and that's what the world needs.
I love that. I super love it. So we're going to talk about it all today. We're going to get into, you know the basics of what makes a healthy soil system all the way into some more advanced stuff, how microbes and different things operate. And then talk about micro nutrition, which is a huge subject and more so before we get into all that, though. Mary Beth, how are you doing on your lovely regenerative property and all your projects that you're doing this year
pretty darn good. And let me apologize in advance. If you hear a cat bring in the background, I just have the really persistent animal will not leave my lap. But the garden is going fabulous right now, because there's so many different things out there. Like when I go through and start listing them in my head, it's kind of it's amazing to me that, you know, what we have is three acres. But since we started moving in here, originally, it was basically like just some forest land that it had a little bit of logging done, but there were still a lot of trees here. And so we've been planting continuously. And as the years have gone by. The landscape is really matured. So you know, that's when it really starts looking good. You know, where the things aren't just two or three year old trees, there's several year old trees now, and that putting out lots of fruit and lots of flowers and everything is going through that cycle during spring where there's always something flowering and something that just done flowering and something they're just about to go into flowering. And so it's just a riot of life and color and oh man, I've been having so much fun catching bouquets and things, and I've been watching for which insects are out there. And it's just the diversity is so amazing. And that's the thing. When you have more diversity of plants, you have more diversity of insects, you have more diversity of the things in the soil that, you know, everything is part of the circle. It's, it's just really going off out there. And the weather has been impressive to where we've been having a lot of really, really warm days. You know, in Fahrenheit, we've been in the low 90s, high 80s, and just today and yesterday were, like, in the 60s. So it's like, okay, now let me get something done that I don't want to do when it's 90 degrees outside. It's just too hot, but it's it's been really neat watching how everything evolves and trying to keep up with the weed pulling, because I have a wild flower thing. You know, you know how the English gardens are, where everything's just kind of, you know, smooth, haphazard, and
I've heard that phrase, as opposed to the French gardening style, which is more organized and going
on, yeah, yeah. It's not the gardens at Versailles at all. We're
more with the let's try to keep up with it before it overwhelms us
and devours us. Oh, no, that's great, but it's it's really nice, because at least, even if you have tons of weeds, what that means is you have things to put in your compost pile. You need things to put in your compost pile if you want a compost pile, so you got to have some organic matter
to go. Yeah, that's so true. And you know, we're doing this more plants challenge for our members in Grow cast membership trying to give out some prizes to people who are growing more plants, because, you know, it ties into a lot of this. And maybe we'll do a future episode on biodiversity. There's so much influence. Mary Beth, starting with the diversity in the soil, and then, like you said, diversity of plant life, which then multiplies the diversity in the soil, which is pretty crazy to think about. It's one big loop, yeah. And
the diversity of the different insects. So you bring in more predators and more more different kind of prayers you shouldn't attract before, necessarily. That's right. Love that pest. It's always been bugging you. For instance, the
next thing you know, you got perfect soil, and you plant your cannabis seed, and it just takes off. So, oh yes.
And that's just it, too. When we first moved here, the soil is so primitive here. I think I've complained to you before, it just rocks in clay. But as the time goes by and you get more and more and more organic matter added to it, it gets to the point where it's almost useful. So you can tell that, like, for instance, just the weed pulling. It used to be I'd have to take a pickax to get weeds out, and now I can just pull and up they come. This is something that only happens after years, putting in that effort, not plowing and all
those mineral deposits are going to harbor a lot of minerals long term, and that clay will be good for cationic exchange, as long as you can kind of get it going.
Yes, exactly up here real different challenges.
You know, either way you're trying to achieve, you're trying to achieve the same thing, and that's what's really interesting, and that's what we're talking about today. Outdoor, indoor doesn't really matter. You know, outdoor is more of a long term investment, and it may be a tougher start, but either way, you're going for a soil system that's healthy and correct in all aspects. And
I want to say, Yeah, whether you're growing indoors or outdoors, keep growing because there's just nothing there for the whole wide world and more
plants. Yeah, good point, good point. So we're going to go over this today. I actually want to talk about this idea that I've kicked around for classes and stuff. It's a good outline for this episode, but we're going to go into what makes a healthy soil system. And I used to teach this little kind of phrase and riff called the three M's. And we talk about minerals, we talk about microbes, we talk about moisture. And then from there, we can go a little bit deeper. And I want all of your thoughts on this. Mary Beth, because, you know, we talk about the minerals inside the soil. It's really interesting to think that when you purchase bottled nutrients, or, you know, even your organic soil inputs, a lot of the time, what you're paying for is for somebody to go out and then dig a hole in the ground and extract the stuff from the dirt, right? And therefore, if you go outside and plant directly in the ground, you're tapping into a lot of what are essentially free minerals. That's what you have. The benefit of it. Your farm, when you're planting in ground, you get those minerals for free. Whereas, you know, inside, we're buying a potting mix that's kind of been constructed, which has its benefits as well. Like I said, it's going to be really well balanced. It's going to be a really good mix. We'll have good air. Operation, but the minerals and the proper mix is important. Can we start with your idea of indoor versus outdoor when you're thinking about specifically the nutrients, the dry amendments, the minerals, what's the difference between indoor gardening and outdoor gardening when it comes to amending and things like that? It's really
the biology involved, because there's so many different bacteria and fungi that deliver the nutrients to the plants. Just you know, without a second thought out in nature and in indoors, you have to come up with it, because you don't necessarily have that bacteria in there or whatever to make it available to the plant exactly when it wants an exactly amount it wants. So you kind of got to come up with yourself, and you got to do it all soluble nutrients, so that you don't have a plant being deficient. And it's, it's not always easy to balance. It's a lot trickier when you're doing it all yourself. It's, I think it's the lazy person's way to let the biology do the work for you in an outdoor garden, but you know, you have to have the biology in place before you can just sit back and let them do the work, and all you got to do is maybe plant and harvest. Those are the the happy results you're looking for. But it does take some time and effort to get to that point, but indoors, you really have to make a greater effort, because you really are playing God, you've got all the environmental controls in your hand and all the nutrient controls in your hand, and all the drainage controls in your hand, and all the soil biology that you're going to permit is in your hand. And so that's, you know, the whole diversity thing, getting more of that that you can without accidentally overloading yourself on pathogens, which are, you know, part of the system, but we don't want them to be the predominant part in our gardens, for sure, you know, right?
So when you go for like a more biologically driven grow, for a cannabis grower inside, does that look like doing a really heavy compost mix and top dressing with things like compost a lot. I mean, heck, Mary Beth, we know some guests of the show who grow just in compost. Is that something that you think makes a healthy soil system is just having a really good, healthy compost base,
exactly, and that's your best bet, because your your compost just usually created outdoors, so you've got access to all those different things that probably found their way into it by the time that compost was done. So you've got a really good chance of getting inoculated in your indoor soil with the most beneficial biology. I'm talking about the bacteria, fungi and other things that are in there that are all helping to deliver those nutrients to your plant. They get it into a soluble form for you, and they can chelate it for you, and the humic acids are there, and so that way you prevent overdoses or underdoses of anything. And it's just, to me, like, what a gift, if you can just get that balance right.
Yeah, that's a really good way to to grow naturally and have that cycle going. Um, really good point. I totally agree. You know, outdoors again, in ground, it's going to be easier for that mineral delivery. Indoors, you just want to make sure you get a good cannabis specific potty mix. You don't want to get something that's good for cannabis but not full of enough food, like pro mix, you know, I mean, very light mix.
Well, you know, that's all right if you want to amend it, but just don't just count on that to be the thing that provides all the nutrients. It's not designed for that, really. It's designed to just help your clay soils be more aerated and more full of organic matter. It's not necessarily the quick nutrient breakdown stuff
that's exactly right. If you grab that, something like that, you're going to need to add food to it if you if you really want to have it last long term and flower big fat buds for you. Yeah. And then also, don't get, like, garden soil, like your home depot loaded with other, you know, a bunch of nitrogen in there, or whatever the veggie soil. Avoid that stuff too. Just get your local kind of best brand of potting soil, whether on the East Coast, bio, 365, or, you know, here we do Purple Cow in the Midwest, whatever that is, you know, I
don't know if they still sell them, but they used to sell some potting soils that were made from sewage sludge from cities. And I was real controversial when they used to do that, because the things that are found in the water that you can't filter out, you know, pesticides and drugs and just some nasty diseases and things. And it was, you know, I would be hesitant to choose another if you can find,
they call it municipal compost a lot of the time, or, well, it is your municipal compost a lot of the time it comes from your municipality, yeah, and a lot of times they allow that stuff, and it's not, if it comes from the sewer company, it's, it's not what you want in your cannabis garden,
no? Because, yeah, they have found some interesting things,
interesting things. So cannabis is a heavy feeding plant, and. The minerals are what it's going to uptake. So we want to make sure we have enough of those, and then from there, like you said, the microbes are the most important thing. And I mean, having your own fresh compost on hand is great. Mary Beth, but for a lot of people, it's intimidating and it's a little space consuming. How else can we get these microbes, either for free or for cheap?
Well, my, my first go to is get a friend that can make them for you. And
of course, that's not always available.
But you know, if you know anybody else that grows, ask them what they do for do you know sometimes there is a commercial product available, you know, to where you are that's sort of good at these kind of things. There was a company called nature's solution that made worm castings that I called the roll source of all worm casting you would just look at this bag and you'd want to lie down and take a nap in it. It didn't seem like genetic in a way. It was like gold, black, gold, fluffy
and soft and clean on your hands. So
perfect. And, yeah, just perfect. Not powdery, not hungry. Oh God, it was wonderful. But I've opened other bags of worm castings that were just like, you know, the brown crap from my clay. And I'm like, What the heck is this? And they're calling it worm gun. I don't know. It's not the same quality at all.
You know, though, a worm bin is a I would think a more really good, yes, a more cost effective and space not cost effective, a more space efficient way to make your own compost at
home. Yes, because they are really good composters. And the thing about worm manure is that it multiplies your nutrients, so they will raise the amount of nutrition in your soil, even if you have amended it with something like quite a few percentages, depending on the nutrient involved. But it's really, yeah, you don't need to feed anywhere near as much if you have worm castings, and you can always bring those indoors.
Yeah, absolutely. What do you have as far as tips for somebody who's going to get into worms. Well,
I know with worms, it's really important, because we tried to raise them out at the nursery. One they tried to set it up for me, and they thought, This is great, but they didn't really read the instructions, and so they just put in a bunch of stuff and hope the worms were going to get it. And the thing is, if you have more food in there then they can eat in three days, it begins to putrefy, and it makes a really unpleasant environment for the worms that actually can kill them because of the ammonia that builds up. And so that's what happens when I came back to this stinky, rotten mess of the worms dying. There were maybe one or two worms left. Oh, Jesus Christ. So that's the thing with worms. It's not just that, you know, you can put on infinite amounts of food. You got to kind of think about what you're doing when they are living things with their own deeds, wants and desires. But boy, if you do have them and they're and you do treat them, right? You know, don't over feed them and don't over water them just to keep them in a happy environment, they make just endless, wonderful, nutritious crop for you, which is really God's gift from the worm, and it is wonderful for most soils and most plants just love it.
Good way to supercharge your soil if you don't have any worms in there, to get those worms going, yes, yes. Amplifies the nutritional content. Goes in one end at a nutrient ratio, like Mary Beth said, and comes out the other end, actually more potent in nutrient content. And you need to get the right type of form, right, Mary Beth, you wanna talk about species? Yeah,
there's worms that they sell that are chosen for that job because of their ability to make good compost, but they aren't necessarily the hardiest worms of the all the worm,
yeah, the red wigglers is really what I see being thrown and there are others, but those are the ones I think, Well, like
I say, they're all good, but that does specifically sold as compost worms commercially. They're just not quite as hardy as the things you see in your soil. Now,
we can't talk about free microbes, though. Talking about IMO collection, it too can be very intimidating. Mary Beth, but I'll tell you the technique that I like that, okay. Callux talked about was simply taking some al dente, cooked rice, like a little bit undercooked rice, putting it in a little mesh sock or a panty hose or something, tying it up, burying it in the woods that is coming back a few days later. And listen, it's not, it's not as, you know, like, refined as the KNF version, but you're still going to be bringing in a ton of stuff with very, very minimal effort, exactly,
and it's already been, you know, hardened off to the real world. You don't have to say what's going to happen to this when it finds out what life is like, you know, in this temperature and climate, well, it already knows. It's already adapted. That's the best way. And another thing, use your observational skills and look around you and see which of your native plants that you're looking at looks real healthy, and just dig up some of the sort. From their roots zone. Just a little bit to add to your mixes, and you'll get whoops. Excuse me, just drop some you'll get that biology in your soil. You will begin to transfer, and it will begin to grow in yours. So
those are all super easy ways to incorporate microbes. I would have to say labs. The creation of labs is up there. Yes. And one of the things that I'll definitely say to highly recommend, if you don't have, like I said, if you don't have worms, adding those, and then also, if you don't use any sort of Bokashi, some fresh Bokashi in your soil mix. I am just loving this super simple, super simple soil formula that I've been working with Mary Beth for indoor growers, Farmer John is really the person who made it. You know, I made a few little tweaks here or there, but it really relies heavily on Bokashi when you're top dressing, to mix that Bokashi in. And of course, it's super visually impressive. You get this big bloom that comes every single time they
really it is a bacteria that grows and looks like a fungus, but it's it just is so good at breaking down organic matter and getting the nutrients out of it, and the plants absolutely respond so positively to it. So that's yeah, God send and and it's easy to make your own and also to make your own em one from your Bucha it's basically like Bucha juice is kind of what you're doing. But, yeah, it's pretty cool. You can do it without going broke, doing
it good little supercharge. And we'll talk later about, you know, a simple way to apply these things, but just going through and understanding the concepts behind each one. Yes, you know, what would you do to a compost let's say you had a compost pile and you're happy with it, you know, maybe it could be a little bit more thriving, maybe could be a little more active, but it's, it's not messed up or anything. What would you do to a good compost pile, to supercharge it into a great compost pile?
Well, two things, number one, that Bucha that we just mentioned, that's the best thing to do with it, is to first put it in your compost and then put that compost on whatever. But you can also supercharge your compost by it. You can add even soluble nutrients to it, you know, liquid salt nutrients, if you want to, but only at the rate of 10% of what you would have normally applied. Suppose, suppose you put x amount of a nutrient regularly on X amount of plants. Well, you would take the amount of compost you would use to cover those x amount of plants, and then you would put that fertilizer onto that compost, but only at the rate of 10% of what you would normally apply. That allows the bacteria and the biology in there to take all that up into their own bodies and store it in such a way that it's chelated and it's ready to go and they will release it as needed to the plants without you thinking about it, which is really cool
using bottled fertilizers to boost your compost. That's amazing, even
that, yeah, like, if you've got old stuff and you want to use it up, because you're going all the way organic, and you've still got these old things, yeah, you don't have to just take them to the dump. You can do that. Wow, perfectly cool. Our greater land Ingham even says so. So I'm calling good.
That's really cool. Super, super cool. And then the bukashi in the compost also makes sense. I didn't think about that, not just on the soil surface for top dressing or in the soil mix of the plant in
the compost. In fact, that's when I first heard of Bucha. It was just being sold basically as an accelerator for your compost pile to help get that thing
broke down. True, they have the little countertop composters does the same thing. Wow. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and also it does a really good job with meat and bones and stuff, right? Because that, that's kind of a touchy topic. Absolutely,
the things you wouldn't use in those in your compost pile at all if you were following instructions, unless you had the bocasci. So
why is it so important when we utilize this compost, or even for things like Bokashi, I know it's it's useful on the top and down in the roots. You really recommend. You know, when you do your transplants, yes, you should have, like, a nice inoculated soil, but when you do your transplants, especially in an indoor scenario where everything's not really interchanging with with with each other. Possibly you always say to throw your Myco, throw your compost or your Bokashi down in the transplant hole. Why is that so important that it make contact with the roofs?
Well, especially in the case of the mycorrhizal fungal it's usually comes in this granular form, which protects it during commercial shipping and storage and stuff, but it make it has to make contact with the root to get itself started. It doesn't just wake up and start looking for a root. It has to make up physical contact with the root before a chemical reaction starts that opens it up and makes it start growing and growing with the root and into the root, and that. Just doesn't necessarily happen. If the root is just moving haphazardly through the soil, meandering about looking for nutrients, it might, may or may not ever run across that little bit of mycorrhizal stuff, if you have it just stirred throughout the soil, but if it's right at the root ball where the roots beginning grow, it's almost impossible for those roots to miss it. So you've got a really good chance of getting a good inoculation, right, if you do that at that moment where, you know, that's where the most mass roots is going to come is right where you planted, you know, your little hole. Sprinkle that in there. It's
laying dormant essentially, until, basically, yeah, yeah. And, you know, the more I learn about endophytic bacteria and the idea that plants take up bacteria, the more it makes me think that putting the compost or people do all sorts of things in that transplant hole does make a difference in the plants. Because if there's all these bacteria kind of homogenized and evenly spread out throughout the soil, that's going to be good in its own right. But if it's concentrated in that root zone. I imagine things like endophytic bacteria, which is just a fancy word for bacteria, that go up inside the plant, they'll have enough access right there in their early stages, right? So I just think it's a good idea get
a lot right, a lot better chance of success if you can do that. And you know, later on, they can find things as they multiply and grow. But that initial charge when you're trying to get them established. It's really important. It really helps. Yeah,
good stuff. And then we move into our third M, you know, minerals, microbes, and then the most important M, a lot of people would say, Mary Beth. None of this matters. The mineral content, what type of compost you're using, warms. None of this matters unless you get your moisture right? It's crazy how the air to water ratio. I mean, that's like the it's the name of the game on planet Earth, right? And in the soil, if you over water that thing, you're going to drown everything and kill it, except for maybe some undesirables like algaes or something. And then if you under same thing, so it's just so important to get that even watering. Do you have? And let's just start from a 30,000 foot view, someone who's been growing for a long time but still struggling with watering. Do you have some good tips for even watering?
Well, you know that's going to alter from soil to soil, and especially if you're in the ground or or in a pot or indoors, because the soils are composed differently, and some will dry out faster than others. The nice thing about core Coca Cola is the way that you can water it. Every day, it'll drain away, and you'll usually get enough drainage that you're not drowning anything. And it's just not the case with every soil that they drain that nicely. And a lot of them, you could water them once a week or two, they'll still be moist inside. And sometimes in a ground soil, it's real different. Plus the other issue is your temperature, and that's always going to vary outdoors throughout the year, but indoors, it's it's usually a fairly dry environment. Things are going to want to evaporate quickly, and mulch, of course, will help with all of that. But the maintaining the soil moisture is so critical, because the roots need to stay moist, but not soggy, you know. And a cannabis plant particularly, I mean, there are bog plants who don't mind that, but not cannabis.
Cannabis, that's my type of I don't know any bog
but, yeah, you do really need oxygen. They like moist air, but they need an air exchange, because air gets stagnant, just like water does, and they need their water to be circulating. They need their air to be circulating. And that's true, not only of canopy, but in the root zone. So whatever you know, you if you have to do percolation tests with your soil before you get yourself really established, you can do that. You know, even for your indoor soil, run tests with water through it and see how it's draining. Put your hand down in and see, is it getting in the middle, or is it just going on the outsides. Because you know that when a peat based soil, peat moss base is the primary ingredient that stuff. Boy, when it dries out, it is so difficult to rehydrate. You have to take dramatic efforts to get it hydrated and, you know, slowly moistening it things where you you really, you know, could save yourself a lot of trouble if it hadn't happened. But, you know, you've been through some of that yourself.
Oh yeah, you know I have, oh yeah. So we all have, let me just say, you know, you do amazing work in the Grow cast member discord helping people with their garden problems. You when you go on the internet and you ask for garden advice, I just cannot tell you, yeah, you're gonna get the correct answer, but it's gonna be one correct answer buried a bunch of other under a bunch of other incorrect answers and just mean comments and helpful ones that don't really make sense and all this nonsense and. You really do a good job, and have taught me also how to do a good job taking care of these members. Mary Beth, and let me just run something by you when it comes to watering, and you tell me, if you agree with this, I think that people underestimate how much watering changes as your plant fills out the pot that it's in. Yeah. And I also think that people don't transplant soon enough, especially in soil type grows. Because, you know, you taught me a long time ago, you got to plant in a solo cup. You want to know when it's ready to transplant. You want to know when the roots have hit the edges. Well, just look at it from above and wherever the wherever the leaves stretch out to, should be where the roots have stretched out to. And as soon as they hang over the pot, you could up pot it right then, if you wanted to. So that always blew my mind. Mary Beth and what and what the problem becomes is, if you let it get root bound in there, it starts drinking so fast that it wants water four, five times more often than it did when it was a little seedling. And people don't account for that. They keep the seedling alive with gentle watering, and then the plant gets big, and they're not watering frequently enough they need to transplant that thing. Would you just say, in general, bigger pots are more forgiving, and go bigger, go better to a
point, yeah, because at a certain point it's weird, how you you put a plant in a giant pot of soil and think you got this whole place yourself. Aren't you going to be overjoyed to have it? And it's like the plant is thinking, I'm so lonely. I'm all by myself. I'm just Well, I'm I have no protection, nobody to talk to. They don't like it that much. They either they want to have a little more root boundness before they go into their next size pot. And then the rule of thumb is like the next size pot is only an inch or two or more bigger than the one you took it out of it to me, that's just way too much transplanting. I can't go that far, but you don't need to put it in the hugest space, because you could just sometimes lose your plant that just like failed to thrive. And it is kind of weird, because you think I gave you everything and all the space in the world, and yet the ones that were crowded up with others did better. Did
better. I would agree with that, like one in a bed, especially, like you said, if you throw it in there too early, can sometimes, sometimes you go to take it out, and it's like, man, the roots really didn't fill this out. There's a bunch of loose dirt in here. Yeah,
you can't figure out why you think everything else seemed equal. Yeah,
that's, that's a good point, too. I think there's a sweet spot. I think a lot of people try to run soil grows, you know, in under 10 gallon pots, and they run into issues. I think 1015, you're getting closer. I think cannabis plants love a 25 gallon pot. And yeah, maybe a little bit of extra life in there. Maybe a little, a little, you know, something, something growing in there. Or putting two plants in an Earth Box. I've got, I've got some earth box going, and I really like the way that they perform with two plants. And yeah, by the way, sub irrigation a great way to get your watering on point, if you're if you're not confident in your watering, getting a Sub irrigated planter is a good way to avoid that. But no matter what, you got to keep that watering even because soil systems will not thrive unless they have even watering. I liked your suggestions. Mary Beth of using your senses like really getting in there and squeezing the soil, feeling the soil, lifting the pot, feel the weight of the pot as you push it exactly.
Get used to that weight, because that's a huge thing when you when you get your plant growing, and you can't just co dig in there anymore, you need to be able to tell by the weight that it's either wet or dry.
Come and join the greatest cannabis community cultivation on Earth. It's growcast membership, and it's waiting for you. Go to growcast.com/membership, and join our lovely family of cultivators. If you have any problems in your garden, come to us. We will diagnose and solve it for you. We love helping growers in their garden, even the toughest issues, or if you've just got a ton of beginner questions, you can ask us questions all day long. It's what we're here for. Plus, for the more advanced gardeners, we've got so much going on in membership. You can connect and meet with other growers in your area, chat and trade with other growers across the globe. In our community, we've got resources that'll help you up your gardening game, a hash rosin guide you cannot miss. Plus a ton of members only content, like videos every Saturday, live streams every single Wednesday, and you get access to the Grow cast member discord where I'm hanging out. Mary Beth is hanging out. Everybody on team grow cast is up in there every single day. So come and hang out with us. And best of all, maybe you got members only discounts, huge discounts, like 35% off SD microbes, 15% off Bucha earthworks, 20% off, okay, calyx, we've got discounts on rain, science, grow bags, sex, testing, 20% off. HlG lights. These are member only codes, and they're available at growcast.com/membership, come and join. Not only are you joining an awesome community of cannabis cultivators, but you're also helping support overgrow. Every single day I wake up. And try to turn cannabis smokers into cannabis growers, because if everybody who could grow did grow, we would all have enough to go around. That's our mission. And you can feel good about supporting grow cast membership, because you're supporting the mission of overgrow. Go and check it out. Grow cast membership.com. I'll see you there, everybody. Thank you so much to the members for making this whole mission possible. And then again, we say it a lot, but getting a moisture meter is a really good investment, 80 bucks just, just even if you're not going to have one in every pot, just so you can kind of learn what 60 M bars, fully saturated, optimally saturated soil looks like. And then you know, water again. When it reaches 120 the higher, the drier. Hits 120 water it again and see what that looks like. You know? So I totally agree. So to just quickly recap, you know, you need to have minerals in your soil. Cannabis does eat a lot of minerals. You need to load it up. If you don't have enough, just in the soil, like you're not outside. For instance, you're going to need to be adding some you need some microbes in there. And best microbes are free all those ones that we mentioned, Bokashi, such a good top dress additive to break down those things. Super charger soil with worms, supercharger soil with Bokashi and homemade compost. Use all of this during transplant. Always get all of those microbes moving and grooving in there, especially the mycorrhizal fungi keep that moisture even. And then the fourth M mulch. You mentioned it a little bit. Mary Beth, but the mulch layer so important. When I see people struggling with watering, and they go too wet and then they go too dry, what mulching really does is, yeah, holds on to that moisture longer. That's sure you're capping the soil, and therefore it doesn't evaporate as readily. But what I really feel like it does is it just kind of evens out the moisture. You know, that cap maybe adding a little bit of like pressure capture or something, I don't know, but it seems like the whole soil system just works better when you have that mulch layer on top. Can you explain why the why the mulch layer is so important?
Yeah, not only is it providing you that cap to help prevent the evaporation, but it's also full of soil life, which help maintain the moisture in there because of their own biological functions, and they're helping to inoculate your soil with themselves, so that you're getting that interface where you're getting, you know, they're moving into your soil and making everything better in there, your nutrients should be more efficiently utilized after mulching regularly, and the longer you keep it there, like, especially if you've got an outdoor garden, you're not going to have to weed problem that You may have had in the past, where, you know, you put a nice thick layer of mulch, Weeds don't go through it anymore. Mulch will tend to be more fungally dominated, whereas your soils may be more bacterial dominated, especially you know that if you're growing a lot of weeds, and one of the ways that you know that with just looking is that bacterial soils are alkaline, and bacterial soils grow weeds, and if you have a fungal dominated soil, the Weeds don't like it. The fungal likes the acidic soil, and the bacteria likes the alkaline soil. So you can tell something about your pH just by whether or not you have a lot of weeds or a lot of fungus. But you know, the mulch is going to make a difference with all that too, because the more mulch you have, the more fungal you're going to have.
What do you think about choosing a mulch? You know, I'm a big fan of rice holes. Some people say, Oh, rice is the holes are where they store their arsenic. Some people do wood, but they say that wood can steal nitrogen. What are your thoughts on covering your soil with different materials? Well, as far
as the arsenic thing goes, I don't think it's an amount that anybody needs to worry about in anything, because arsenic is all over. It's in our soil. It's in our water. Just every once in a while they find some in a concentrated little bit, you know, kind of get emotional about it. But you know, how many times have you heard of people just dropping dead because they're overdosing on arsenic? Well,
I'll tell you this. Mary Beth, I haven't seen anybody pop hot in on a cannabis test for arsenic just due to, just due to Rice holes yet. And please write, maybe after I post this, I'm gonna get five messages from people who said, I used rice holes and I popped up for arsenic. I died arsenic poison. Yeah, so far, I have not seen that, but most of these, you know, systems with a rice hole mulch, are using a living soil system. So that's that's a good point, too. Straw is a popular one. I know people love using straw, correct?
Now, some people fear the straw because they'll say, I get fascin when I Well, this is a possibility that can happen if that straw came from a place that had fusarium, but there's no guarantee that it did or didn't. You have to talk to your farmers and hope and pray they're not lying to you. But I've never gotten a fusarium problem personally from using. Straw mulch, you know, whether chopped or not. And if you're rulers, and you don't have a huge garden like suppose you're just doing your little tint, you can always take this straw and sterilize it by either putting it in boiling water or baking it, so to speak, not burning it, but baking it. And so that you kill off anything that might be there. And if you're over 140 degrees, you're not going to burn the rice or the straw, but you will definitely kill off any fungal or bacterial things that may be alive.
Interesting, I had not heard about straws, ability or propensity to carry fusarium will I
just tell somebody complained? And so then I started to investigate it a little. And so I thought, well, you know, this is an occasional problem that can happen, but it can also be avoided by just sterilizing or by, you know, even if you're laying it out on your big outdoor garden, make observations. Maybe, if it's a new supplier that you don't know, and it's questionable. Don't put it on all your plants before you doubt if it's going to make somebody sick. But personally, I haven't had
that happen, sure, or I guess that's why people, when they get inputs like that, they'll solarize the thing. They'll spread it out on like a tarp, exactly.
Yeah, don't forget sun, Solarization, anything that you lay out there, and heavy sun for you know, for days you can no night comes in between. As long as it's thin and it's getting that hard sunlight, it'll kill, yeah,
right, life on it. Lay that straw out thin and just let the sun bake it.
That sun, it brings life and death to us. Yeah, old school.
So there you go. I mean, that's a lot of M's to go over. We got minerals, we got microbes, we got moisture, we got mulch. And then another m we're talking about is micronutrients. These are the things that really play into a healthy soil system, though, Mary Beth, you cannot have a happy plant in a living soil system unless these things are taken care of. You know what I
mean. And don't forget, Mary Beth and manure, yes.
Oh. Holy cow. Cow. Get it manure.
Cow manure. I
want to get through the micronutrient section, and also just get into diagnosing micronutrient deficiencies a little bit. You're so good at it. I mean, sure, you know, it's hard to tell from a picture, and sometimes it takes a little investigative reporting, and nobody's 100% but with all that being said, you are super, super talented at identifying what's missing and how to fix it. Well,
you gotta, you gotta look for a while. Sometimes I don't get it right off the but first I'll have my suspicions and I'll go, but what about that? And did, ah, well, you know. And so it's not always instantaneous, but like you said, it's a little tricky, because there are such subtle differences, and especially between overdoses and underdoses. That's right, it's really subtle. So it doesn't usually just if you keep obsessively, you know, studying and trying, you'll get it eventually.
Well, we're here to help you, dear listener, with just a few today, because I want to talk about micronutrients. These are the ones that are required in tiny, tiny amounts,
the trickiest to balance, too, yeah, because trying to figure that out on your own, and you're hoping that the thing that you're purchased commercially has got a good balance. And who knows? And,
yeah, so when you look up plant minerals, you get like, your primary macronutrients, your n, p, k, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. And then you get your like secondary macronutrients, which are, like your sulphurs and your calcium and your magnesium and stuff. And then you get this huge broad category of micronutrients, and we're talking a huge long list of manganese and zinc and iron and boron, and even things like
copper. And it seems like every mineral is needed in some minute amount. You know that they just have to find out later. First they thought it was just so three, then they thought it was just so six, and now they think it's all that, and then some. And now, like, Okay, I mean, they know that we even need chloride in our plants. Who managed to think chlorine was going to sure kill them, but turns out it didn't.
It has a specific function. Is exactly chlorine. I had plants
that suffered from chlorine deficiency. I didn't even realize it until I started wore him with water that was chlorinated. I went, Hey, that's weird. They actually look
better. That is so wild. And it You're right. It's just we haven't discovered exactly what the use is, and what, what we've really learned Mary Beth is that it's not even so much sometimes about there being, in the case of a micronutrient, especially a significant amount there, but just the presence of this mineral is required in some form for a function or process to happen.
If you, if you don't have the bacteria, they can utilize it and give it to the plant, and somehow you have to get it into a soluble form where it'll go. And yeah, and better pray that you don't have too much, because then that can be too
much. Yes, that is exactly true. So when we see deficiencies. Here with indoor growers who are growing with all the good stuff that we now have available to us. You got an AC infinity Grow Tent kit, and it's all kitted out, and your environments on point. You get yourself an Earth Box, which is easy for watering. You get yourself some cannabis blend, some roots, organic 707. You throw that in there. You're on easy mode. Things have gotten so much better. You're using a bottle nutrient line that's like a modern bottle nutrient line, some something like rooted leaf, who we promote like you're going to run into way less deficiencies, specifically the ones, the bigger ones. I mentioned your macronutrients, because for years now, people have been dialing this in. Soils have gotten so much better. If you're top dressing. You know what I mean, your plant is going to feed on these macronutrients, and so we don't see those as much. They still do happen sometimes, but we don't see those as much as even just a few years ago. As people get better at balancing these products for cannabis, what we see more and more are deficiencies skewing towards these micronutrients, exactly which were always there, but now it's like, kind of all that's left are these little ones that maybe your plant just needs a little more of this or a little more of that, exactly.
And remember, it wasn't that many years ago people were growing like, was miracle growing stuff. So weirdest combination, exactly.
So now we don't see as many, not nearly as many toxicities, and as not as many macronutrient deficiencies. And what you see a lot are these plants missing tiny, little micronutrients. So let's talk about three that I think are three of the most common we see in the discord, the ones that I see you diagnosing a lot, and just really quickly, we're going to describe on this audio program, and then later follow up. That's right, we're going video. We're finally going video, folks. We're gonna later follow up with these on a video program as well. But the way that we describe them, you will absolutely know what we're talking about if you've seen them. So let's talk about three of my favorite micronutrient deficiencies, zinc, boron and molybdenum. Isn't that funny. 123, let's knock these out. Mary, about the zinc is easy. This one's great. You told me about it. What are we looking for? Where on the plant are we looking and what symptom is the dead giveaway of zinc? It's
normally going to be first occurring at the top of the plant and start working its way down, or as the plant grows, you know, it, you'll the previous damage is still there, and the nuke damages more so, but it, you'll start noticing some slight deformities, but not so much. The deformities immediately. They'll come later. You'll, you'll notice the leaves begin to look very creased along all the seeing lines of the veins and such, so that it it's almost like somebody ironed a pleated skirt. It's a very, very different kind of creasing than the more relaxed looking leaves of ones that aren't suffering this, and then the same time, they'll have that inner, venal chlorosis that's very distinctive, almost like, I call it zebra striping, where it's just very your green and your pale green are just like, really stripy looked in on the leaves. So that, combined with the pleating, makes me just some to zinc. And if I look at the growing tip, and it seems the leaves are not quite perfectly formed, I'm thinking, yeah, zinc. And,
you know, I love a deficiency with a kind of a dead giveaway, and the pleading combined with the interveinal chlorosis, yeah. I mean, in layperson's term, it looks like zebra stripes. It's so pronounced, it looks like zebra striping. And here's the easy moniker. Is that? What it's called, moniker, pneumonic, sure. Mnemonic is it? Moniker is like a pseudo the acronym, the mnemonic is zebra zinc. Stripes is z for zebra, Z for zinc. Zebra zinc. Easy. You will know this when you see it. It looks like those. Those leaves are literally striped between light green and dark green. Looks like zebra striping. And your plant isn't in need of any big dose of macronutrient at all. In fact, like you said, Mary Beth, if it's not capable of uptaking zinc, it might not even need more zinc in the soil Exactly.
It could just be that nobody's given it even though it's there. So giving it more might not be the answer, right? And
we will get to that in a second, but that is how you identify zinc. And like I said, I love the ones that have a dead giveaway, and it kind of gets less so as we move on. So, so moving on to boron. This is one we see a lot, and is is one that I get wrong quite a bit. Where are we looking on the plant and on the leaf for boron?
Well, boron, it's like the center of everything. So it'll be the very center main stem, and it'll be the very center mid veins, and it will be the the core of of if you're talking about the flat part of the leaves, like the part between the veins, it'll be the very center of those little patches between the veins. And so what'll start happening slowly is. You'll start seeing maybe necrosis in those areas, or things start to turn sort of brownish or orange, or looking pale and looking not green, and so then with boron, it tends to create great deformity. So you'll see a lot of twisting and deformity, especially on the growing tips, because it's always in the center, and it's always on the growing tips, particularly, and it tends to have a sort of effect of almost making the leaves look tough and like polished cork, sort of as it progresses. It can have a real toughening, weird kind of look on this, on the older leaves. And it can also make a lot of what I want to call brown patches on the leaves scorcher. See that intervene? Yeah, it'll be from the center of that interveinal zone, and it's usually caused from bacteria not being active in the top quarter inch of soil, because that's where the bacteria that likes to process the boron, for us likes to live only in that top quarter inch of soil if you're feeding soluble boron, hopefully it's in as you know, I don't know, because I'm I'm used to growing in the ground, and you don't usually have this problem growing in the ground, unless you're in a really super hot climate, without any mulch, you know. But if you're growing in a moderate climate, oh, you're growing with mulch to protect that bacteria in there, it'll it. You shouldn't ever suffer from abroad division. You get indoors, and, you know, you've got the hot lights and, you know, you get the artificial soils, and who knows what's in there, which bacteria and how much mineral. So there are a lot of things that can work against you. And so that's why I think we're seeing it so much on the indoor grows. Absolutely.
I've so many thoughts on what you just said. It's all so good. You're right, that top layer of bacteria in a soil system, if you have a soil grow and you're not mulching, a mulch layer may fix your boron deficiency. It could Simple as that. And so that's what's really interesting, in the sense of a modern grow you're so, right? Mary Beth, I think these super high powered LEDs, they really drive those plants to feed hard. You know, the more you saturate that plant with light, the more than it's going to hunger for nutrition in general. And when there's enough macro nutrients to go around, but then there's just not enough boron, it's going to show and it's going to show fast, right? And so that that's really
connected. So the lack of one will create the lack of another. So there's always going to be those. I want
to describe what you just said and try to describe it using my hand, which is basically when you're looking at a fan leaf, when we when you talk about the center of the leaf. You literally mean, like, if you're, if you just plucked a fan leaf and laid it on a table and then poked it in the center, kind of where the leaves meet the petiole. Like, if it's your hand, it's, it's down towards the bottoms of your fingers, almost to that punching knuckle, you know what I mean. And, and when you point out a lot of these plants, they'll be, like, super withered there, super thin. They're
like, almost as if it was pinched at the bottom of the leaf where it's emerged from the main stem. It's like, really pinched looking, yeah, that's a real strong sign, like, taco, yeah,
yeah. Um, cork screwing Absolutely. There's another one that you you've pointed out boron plants that that corkscrew, and then the crazy part about the whole center of things, like you said, what happens when you harvest that plant? What do you notice with that boron deficient plant right
away, can often have that hollow stem the center of Yeah, crazy, the case, the cause of that yes, for sure.
So crazy. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. Fixing the top layer of your soil, very important in a soil grow in a in a soluble situation, you know, if you're using like a product, like micro blast, you look at the back, it's got such little boron, and that's because it's easy to overdo. And, I mean, we're talking about fractions of fractions of a percent. Super, super interesting, that that's the fail point. Yeah,
it's definitely not a macronutrient. It's one of those things that you will kill the plant with too much. But if you don't have it, your plant is definitely suffering and not thriving at all. So such as the nature of poison
a little, but you
don't need a lot. It's like the Princess Bride. You know what I mean? You make yourself strong poison. And so look to the center of things for the boron, and also that interveinal scorching. There's some tips on spotting boron. Let's talk about my favorite one to pronounce molybdenum. Okay, this is the Isn't it fun? Isn't it fun? This is, this is the micronutrient that's often associated with purple plants. It's used in anthocyanin production. It's needed in tiny, tiny fractions of a percent, again, and it's got a bit of a dead giveaway symptom, but it's easy to confuse with some other things. So what is the dead giveaway of where. Lived in them. Damage appears on a leaf.
Well, it's usually kind of in the mid to lower range, but it on the of the plant. Well, of the plant, yeah, but on the leaf itself, which you'll start seeing, is spots that go, like small spots around the outer margins, but, you know, not, not narrowly around the outer margins, but just it doesn't emanate from the mid vein of the leaf. It's more like coming from the margins and inward. You'll start seeing spottings there. And you'll notice, if it's really bad, you may have secretions coming from these spots on the undersides of the leaves. And you will also get some of that cupping on the margins. Yeah, in some cases, not necessarily, but it does sometimes occur when I
see that serration tip, like, you know, you have those serrated teeth on your leaf
right where that necrosis is, like, just right on the tooth and nowhere else, I mean, or that's where it's super, super pronounced. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
I think people can confuse it with like a potassium deficiency, which also appears on the margins. I think that sometimes even nutrient burn can look like molybdenum deficiency, right? And then I've seen like fungal damage start on the serration tips sometimes too. So it's very confusing
with molybdenum, yeah, these little, little, tiny things like that, where, you know, just the way it spreads and where it starts from, as opposed to, you know, what it looks like after it's well established,
absolutely. And this one's interesting too, because we're going to get into how to correct a micronutrient deficiency, and ensuring that they can uptake these nutrients is important. Most of them are uptaken at a lower pH. Molybdenum is not Mary Beth. It's one of the micronutrients that's uptaken at a compared to the others higher pH. That's interesting to think about, yeah, and I can't get them all, yeah,
I think, you know, sometimes if people actually think they have that deficiency and they want to add some pH the water and then pour it in and hope that will help a little. But here's the thing, if you have your organic soils that have all those micro, new Microbiology in it to take up all these micronutrients, they will get it to you. You don't have to worry about the pH, because the biology that's in there, along with the plant, work together to change the pH, just where and when they need it, just for such occasions. So that's why that system works without too much interference. That's
exactly right. So the things we can do before we go and pour on more mineral nutrition and more micronutrients, like you said, pH your water, or check your, at least check your pH, like maybe your soil pH, for some reason, is completely whacked out. That's that's probably the first thing. Make sure there's enough microbes in there. Mulching will help the microbes, and then humic acids. You always say, throw in some additional humic acids, whether it's compost tea or nourish L or whatever.
Yeah, it sure can't help hurt at all. It definitely helps.
So those are all ways you can correct a micronutrient deficiency without doing anything else. Right?
I do have to make my my usual, you know thing about the humic acids, they aren't all alike, and the cheap ones are usually cheap for a reason. But the very cheapest is the one you make yourself, which is actually the best and most valuable of all. You just you can leech humates from your own compost, or, you know, use your own compost and water through it, and those humates will be provided to your plants that way. And that's doesn't cost you anything, but if you go to the store to buy them, it almost everybody will say, we have humic acid in here, but it's usually the kind that's cheap and plentiful, and that, although it will work for you, it takes time in the soil. It takes, like, six months before it's really, really ready to go to work for you. And if you need something to work for you now, go to your compost, or find somebody with compost that's good, like compost, you know, put it out there in a neighborhood bulletin board or something, you know, find out what if there's any local source you can get it, because that's really where you get a lot of good things for your garden from nearly nothing. Do
you just pass water through it? Or would you do it multiple times? Yes, just No,
you just pass it through passively. In fact, you don't like take a thing and try to squirt it and make it go fast. You just try to let it run slowly through. And that way, the water that comes through includes the humics with it and a fairly decent amount of good biology. You get a sort of an extraction that way. But, you know, not the same as if you had really massaged the thing and done something for, you know, to get more biology out. But you'll definitely get the humid by just passive. Slow dripping of water through that compost.
Well, that's just fantastic, and that that could cure your problem instantly, totally. Now, one thing I'll say about super charging soil and micro nutrition and deficiencies in micronutrients, this all kind of plays in together. I know this is a hot subject with some growers, but to me, Mary Beth, the incorporation of the sea, or specifically aquatic aspects, seems to carry with it a lot of benefits that we need in this scenario. So the aquatic microbes are going to add to your diversity and add to your nutrient uptake. And then when you talk about micronutrients, sea water has all of these micronutrients in it. So, you know, there's a lot of products you can choose from to fix your deficiency. I like micro blast. It comes in a bottle. It's all natural, yada yada. They're not sponsors, but that's what I use. It's a really good product, and it's natural. But if I didn't have micro blast, I would 100% be using something. In fact, it comes from the sea. It's like a algae and seaweed extract or something. All of these micronutrient products are linked back to the sea in one way or another. You can go use actual diluted sea water. You can use a product called Sea 90. Sea 90, it's just dehydrated sea water. It's just, it's salt. It's like butcher salt, but it's loaded with, it's good butcher salt, essentially. And Mary Beth, you recommend seaweed powders. You know they're going to be high in potassium kelps of
all kinds. Yeah, they're taking up those very nutrients that you spoke of that are in there. And so, yes, it and their microbiology will as they're decomposing the kelp. There you go. It's all in the system now, and the plants get it whenever they want it. And
what I noticed is they're not all on the guaranteed analysis. They might not like even test for these things or
well and that, and a lot of it's in such tiny trace amounts that it doesn't really show up enough for them to list it. But yet, it's in there. It's in it's in a mic. I mean, really, really trace amounts, but that's often all the plant needs. But it's like we said about the arsenic and the and the chlorine, you know, we we need these things to live in tiny amounts, but we don't need very much,
because very much will definitely kill us quite well. That's
why you don't drink sea water, right? But don't, don't you always say it, though, it all. It all flows back to and from the sea.
It all flows to the sea and the and the kelps take it up and say, Hey, want
some more. Just pass it around again. Do it one more time.
You know, supposedly, back in Ireland, in the old days on the islands where they had very little soil, they would just take the kelp and pack it into the crevices and the rocks, and as it decomposed, it would become soil, and that's how they could start building soil there. And it was kind of took a lot of years, geez, but now they have actual soils. Did not know
that. That's really cool. That's so cool, yeah, and it's interesting that, again, the minerals that we pay for, whether you're buying your top dress kit or you're paying for bottled nutrients, they probably came from either a hole in the ground or something in the ocean. And so the closer you get back to the source, you know, getting, getting your humic acids from your own compost, and, you know, getting calcium, maybe from your own chicken eggs and things like that, absolutely, that's that's really where the magic happens. That being said, obviously, people have their own lives, have their own situations and things like that, and you do not need to do any of those things to grow great organic cannabis at home. That's why we put together the guide for beginners@growcast.com and that's what I work with Farmer John on. So I just really quickly, Mary Beth, want to tell you my way of how we recommend somebody grows organic soil at home, indoors. I don't know if I've ever like laid this out for you. You ready for this? I'm excited. I want to hear it. Jordan again. Huge shout out to Farmer John 13. He's an incredible cannabis community member, and he really put this together. I made a few alterations and put together the guide itself. But anyways, here's how to get all the action. And I kind of alluded to it before. You buy a Grow Tent kit that has everything you need. Obviously, your lights are tend to get fancy. Yeah, you get an Earth Box. Guys, if you are not completely satisfied with how your grow is going, switch to this style and tell me how you like it. You buy an Earth Box. This is a Sub irrigated planter. You don't water the soil anymore. You just pour water down a tube. And there's water underneath the soil that the plant drinks from, and it wicks up naturally. It's perfect watering all the time. You fill that earth box with whatever your local cannabis soil is, roots, organic, 707. On the west coast. Purple Cow here in the Midwest, bio, 360, but whatever, there's a bunch of good ones. Get the good stuff. Fill it in there. Get yourself some high quality genetics, maybe some femmes, so you don't have to worry about males. Plant that bad boy. You can go through veg, just in the soil. Maybe add some green aminos. Okay, you can look up green aminos. That's the one thing you could add in veg. After that. Here's all I'm using. I use Photo Plus. Every time in my water, it's like a $16 bottle. It will get you through your whole run. That keeps your water clean. I use build a flower from build a soil, which is a top dress. That's my top dress, one single top dress, and you there's a code grow cast for that. And then I use Bokashi from, okay, calyx to break it down. Okay, other than that, maybe throw in some phosphorus, like some mineralized phosphate. That's all I use build a flower in Bucha photo, plus in an earth box full of cannabis soil, maybe some extra mineralized phosphate. And if you want to get into the goodies, the whole high grazine line would be where to go from there. But if you just want three products, it's Bokashi build a flower and photo. Plus, I use, okay, callax is Bokashi. You can get a fresh from him. And code grow cast works for him too. Members get 20% off. So this is, like, this is how we've built an easy grow system. Mary Beth and and really, all it is with that build the flower top dresses. All that is is, like, it's mostly compost, super rich in calcium and then a bunch of dry amendments. You know what I mean? It
sounds wonderful. It sounds like you just, yeah, you're very nearly doing the best possible thing that you could do outside of being in a glorious soil outside. Not all the soils outside are glorious. Sometimes you know about water quality and soil quality in different areas is just absolutely horrible. So a potted plant is your only option sometimes. And you know when you can put together something like that, like you just described, and just like, wow, takes the the agony out of the whole situation, and you little tweaks here, and there might be all that you need, like, and those could be things as simple as the light was too intense, or the water was insignificant, or, you know, you needed more of a slight bit of adjustment. But it really is a good healthy system for healthy plants. If you don't have the nutrients, you aren't going to get any, you know, we got a nutrient cycle. We got to have nutrient rich stuff. And that sounds really great. Jordan, well,
thank you so much. And yeah, you're absolutely right. It's like replicatable. It's going to cost you more than planting in the backyard. It's not going to be the long term investment, but this is how you get started growing that indoor living soil cannabis today. And good point. Mary Beth, thank you for saying you know you top dress every two weeks is a good cycle.
Being super generous. Yeah, every two weeks.
But what I like to do Mary Beth, is really watch that Bokashi bloom, and watch, this is what Farmer John told me, and watch it kind of die down and and look at the mix, and you can kind of see when it's ready for another round, before you even look at the plant's health. You can see by the soil. So interesting, really beautiful, science, easy, home grow guide. And again, if you're not totally satisfied with how you're growing, this is how I would do it. And you can go to grow cast.com, and get the guide. I only recommend you top dress twice in the beginner's guide, but that was for a specific reason. Working with first time growers, I think you could do more than that. And from that base, like I said, the entire hyzyme line is a good addition. The kind of sand that they use, hygrozyme itself, all that stuff is like, probably the next there's so many things you can do, so many products you can buy, so many that I could name that would that would change your grow. And it's really about like, you know, breaking down which ones are most important to you. Insect, frass, alfalfa.
I'm a huge fan of the hiker science series. Thank you. Sure they got my vote. I did them in side by sides and never stopped recommending them. So yeah, if you got the extra to get that next level, to get you some Haggards there,
yeah, that's great. And like I said, there's a lot of stuff you can add to boost your grow and definitely try it out. But if I had to distill it to my core line of products, I think that's the way to go. Some good soil, some build a flower, some Bucha and some photo plus so
and I want to mention, don't forget your macarasi funding. You always want a little handful in every transplant.
Yes, that's a very good point. You get a bag of mycos, like, they sell the stick pack at my coast, at my grow store. It's like $2.50
you know what? I love Michaels. It's really good because it's, it's strictly glomming. Listen to Radis, I believe. And it's just, it's the one that cannabis loves, and it's the one that 90% of the plants of the world also love. So it's really versatile and good stuff. I would just and they're a good company. They make a reputable product. That's
a really good point. You can't beat that $3 price point for that stick pack. So, I mean, come on, you're right. Jordan, so listen, there's a lot of ways to supercharge your soil. Most importantly, it's about keeping a healthy soil system with enough minerals, microbes and moisture. You got a good mulch layer on there, and then from there, you know, you can add worms. If you're not using worms, I highly recommend incorporating that into your garden. After listening to this episode, incorporating Bokashi, not just into your soil mix itself, but using it with your top dress and harnessing the incredible decomposing power of Bokashi and. And then making sure that you're supplying those micronutrients, the ones that can so easily run out in any cannabis cultivation system, use a good C product, or use micro blast. I even think that rooted leaf is about to drop their micronutrient product. I'm using that in my garden this run. That's good,
but I can say with with your C products, it's usually in there, and it's usually in minute amounts, but that's usually the amount you want. I mean, I've never, ever seen a plant like od from seaweed or kelp. If you put on the quantities recommended on the package, I'm not saying, like, dump your whole thing on there, that's, you know, not the way to do it. But yeah, if you're following package instructions. I've only ever seen it benefit. People have been amazed.
And same goes for microbes and humic acids. It's very hard to overdo these things, so use them in abundance. Use your own homemade compost. If you can leech your own humic acids from that compost, if you can or otherwise, get something that's like you said, you get what you get what you pay for. So get something that's high quality. And then remember, keep an eye out for those three big micronutrient deficiencies that are easy to spot, the zebra striping, Z for zinc, of course, the boron damage, which is located in the center of things, the leaf center, the hollow stems, things like that, and then the molybdenum, where the damage is really on the tips of those serrated teeth, very, very dead giveaway, and treat them fast, good clues. Jordan, hey, you were the one who taught me everything. So there you go. What can I say? This was a dope episode. Mary Beth, thank you for spending the time with me and smoking with me and having such a good time here, teaching all the lovely grow cast listeners, so much great knowledge. It's
a pleasure. Is always mine, Jordan, thank you for another lovely day.
You got it. And if you enjoyed this episode, come and hang out more with me and Mary Beth, we're in membership every single day. Thank you for all you do in membership. Mary Beth, super appreciate you and
vice versa. Back at you, Jordan River, you're pretty you're pretty hot stuff yourself. Hunter,
that's what they say. I don't know, though, it still blows me away. The
whole community is really, really good. I really enjoy the knowledge that we share and back and forth. And somebody's always coming up with things I've never heard of. The world keeps turning.
That's right, always learning something new. Well, I will see you in there. Mary Beth, I'll let you go for now. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jordan. Have a good one. Take care. Take care. Bye, bye. Mary Beth Sanchez, everybody, thank you so much to all you listeners. I appreciate you tuning in. That's all for today. Grow cast.com. Is where you can find everything. Come and join us in membership, everybody, we're having so much fun adding some new membership discounts you're not going to want to miss, and lots of good content in there just waiting for you. That's all for now. This is Jordan River and Mary Beth Sanchez signing off, saying, Be safe out there, everybody and come join grow cast so you never have to grow alone. Bye, bye. That's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to Mary Beth Sanchez, amazing team member. So grateful to have her on the team. Before we wrap it up, of course, rooted leaf nutrients. Rootedleaf.com code, grow, cast for 20% off. The best bottle of nutrients you can get your hands on. If you're not totally satisfied with your current regimen, go and try rooted leaf use code, grow, cast for 20% off. So much coming down the line. Guys come and join membership so you can see everything that's going on. Jump into live streams. I like to keep them update, up to date on everything I'm working on. And until then, make sure you're subscribed to youtube.com/grow, cast, because we got a bunch of video content coming out. I'll see you there. Be safe until then, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to the show. See you on the next one. Bye, bye.
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