I’ve got a 3x3 grassroots living soil container that I’ll be using for my indoor grow. I’ll have 4 plants in there as well as an accompanying cover crop for diversity. I was just wondering on the best way to water it for a healthy environment for the soil and plants to thrive. This is my first go at a truly organic living soil set up and I’m so excited about it I can’t wait to do it. I was thinking of all the different ways I’ve seen about watering and how to water when I came across some thing I’ve never seen before. The blumat carrot system. Is that something to consider? I was wondering if anybody had any experience with any kind of trial and error with watering a living soil container like this and what worked for you. Thanks
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So i have no experience with living soil or the blumat “carrots” personally.
But last year before settling on autopots, i did alot of research on the "carrots " they work great when they work.
If you can get it setup and working it could work very well I imagine.
They should keep soil moist and not damp and never produce much runoff and from what i understand, that would be ideal for organic growing.
That’s my 2 cents and thats probably about all its worth in this area 
That’s basically what I’ve heard. Once dialed in your good. I saw the carrots come in different lengths for depth also. Was interested in thoughts on that as well. I saw a great sale locally for the 5 inch size but I’m not sure if I should pull the trigger just yet. Is that a sufficient size for my application or do I need the longer ones and how many for my size container with the plants and cover crop? So many questions…that usually lead to more lol.
I would either water by hand or with drip lines on a timer.
Organics is the only way to go. We do the living soil approach and have had great success. Once you get a good cover crop going and some life in the soil things will move along real nice. Once the cover crop gets to be a few inches tall cut it down and choke it out with straw. This create a great green mulch layer for healthy bugs to thrive. Worms love to munch on this area.
With living soil you always want to keep the soil moist. Every now and than you can ant to give the soil a nice flush. We feed with fresh teas once every month and stick to straight water for every other watering. No need to adjust the ph.
Once you learn to grow your soil the plant will fall into line.
Happy growing….
The auto watering setup is something I’ve also considered. I’ve got everything I need to set up a 20 gallon reservoir was aerated water that all runs on timers and have either six 9in halo rings or adjustable sprayers that run along tubes to dispense the water. Being new to living soil it just makes me nervous that I might underwater where the micro organisms and such as well as the plants aren’t doing well or may be overwatering causing the same problems. Besides never creating and using living soil, I’ve never used a container so large. I’ve used 7 gallon pots previously which I could easily just grab and feel the weight to help determine when to water. I’m definitely not doing that with an almost half a yard container. I just want to really do this right and try to eliminate any mistakes I may cause. I’ve also just started leaf composting as well a red wiggler vermicompost bin which is really taking of (they love to multiply❤️) and just created and successfully used a small biochar chamber that was very effective. This will all also be part of the media.
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