Probably a noob question. There are lots of mix recipes here and at other places on the internet. For a beginner there’s maybe too many ideas. I found a link to this:
If that link doesn’t work look for Bruce Bugbee, Maximizing Cannabis Yield on YouTube.
He seems like a reputable authority on growing cannabis. He claims the optimal grow medium is:
For me, all these ingredients are inexpensive and easy to find. If it’s really the optimum then environmental concerns aside it’s a waste of my time to think about the mix any more.
What, if anything, are the shortcomings of this mix?
There are a few nutrients in there. He says starting from that medium a pretty generic 20-10-20 fertilizer is best. It seems like trace elements are coming from the medium.
He makes an interesting point about silica which was news to me. Apparently vermiculite will provide silica and perlite or coco coir will not, and he regards silica as an important addendum. In the perlite and coir recipes I don’t know where the silica is coming from. I did see a silica fertilizer on Amazon but I don’t recall seeing it on any recipes.
He claims it’s nearly impossible to over water with this medium. I think this medium is kind of a high-effort, high-effectiveness method of growing. You have to give the plants more water and nutrients than other mediums. But if you can’t over water and it just wants generic nutrients it may be harder to make mistakes.
He piqued my interest enough that I want to watch more of his videos
I’m starting a grow now following Professor Bugbee’s video as closely as I can. It’s remarkable how easy and inexpensive it is compared to lots of other ideas.
I’m kind of ignoring his instructions regarding light. Where I live there is abundant free sunshine year round so I’m just going to grow outside and hope for the best.
His mix is easy and inexpensive. For me, peat moss runs about $3.50 per cubic foot. Vermiculite is about $10 per cubic foot. The amounts of dolomite and gypsum are so small the cost is negligible. If I use 15 gallon grow bags it will cost about $13.50 to fill them with Professor Bugbee’s mix. I mixed a batch and checked the soil PH using an Apera GS2, and it matched the Professor’s recommendation exactly: 5.5. If I really want to go cheap I could use a smaller grow bag, but the Professor says you don’t have to water as often if you use a bigger one.
The closest fertilizer match I found is Jack’s Professional 20-10-20 PEAT LITE, which runs about $50 for a 25 pound bag. This is very concentrated. One bag will make about 5000 gallons of nutrient water. If I use 2.5 gallons per day per plant and it takes about 100 days for an autoflower, that comes to about $2.50 in nutrients per plant in total. I haven’t been watering every day, I’ve been waiting for the soil to get fairly dry before adding more water which is more like every other day or sometimes every three days. But the video says I will probably need to water every day. Maybe this mix dries really fast.
