I’ve grown chilis and cannabis without really knowing what I am doing, now I wanted to learn to grow any veggies, but finally learn about soil and prepare it well myself.
I naively tried to use coco substrate with tap water and killed off my tomato seedlings pretty fast. Then I’ve did some research into soil and learned about more organic approaches, and also that pure coco is a bit like dry hydroponics and needs a lot of understanding, and that I probably both over-fertilized and starved them at the same time.
I’m going to start from seeds in Mel’s mix with 1/3 coco 1/3 perlite/vernaculite 1/3 compost. Is this kind of substrate to be treated as organic or as mineral approach? The compost probably adds the typical soil properties including the buffering of pH and EC and taking care of fertilization.
But I do not want to re-pot all the time, it is messy and inconvenient. I don’t really like working with soil. Instead I want to use mineral fertilizers. Once the compost is depleted, can I consider it to be like a non-soil grow? I got a pH/EC sensor to check my water and the drain coming out, diluted a pH- down based on diluted citric acid to normalize my water to 6,5pH, which seems like a good starting point for any situation.
Does it make sense to follow some generic approach (like keeping pH/EC in certain ranges in certain growth stages)? I do not want to use commercial fertilization formula schemes. I want to work with standard off the shelf mineral fertilizers. Is it possible to get decent results with that?
And where can I find that kind of information for general vegetables, like tomatoes or cucumbers etc.?
The whole soil business is pretty overwhelming, but I want to learn enough (without getting a degree in agriculture) so that I can do this not blindly but improvise with available substrates and fertilizer. How to get this knowledge?
Soil Science For Gardeners is great (especially for free).
Teaming With Microbes is another great one.
Oh great, thanks! I’ll check them out. All the blog tutorials only scratch the surface (while copying from each other), but it is hard to find a suitable book that is reasonably comprehensive, written by someone who really understands the topic, but also approachable for someone without a lot of experience.
You’d probably have better luck reading some college textbooks on the subject. Plant physiology, Soil Science, Soil Microbiology, and Agronomy textbooks would give you a more rounded understanding on the subject.
Thanks for suggesting the right search terms.
I almost expected that someone would say that.
I often end up reading university level stuff when researching a topic, but in areas that are far from my own academic background it’s pretty painful to try and piece together the kind of semi-rigorous understanding I’m looking for.
Wish there was more material available on that level of “studied some other STEM field, but did not and will not study this field so lacks a lot of details taken for granted in that area, yet wants to learn more depth than pop-sci and dummy tutorials provide” for various disciplines.
