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Small compost trial.


oldtimer1

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aye slim thats the one its good stuff!

Sweet! thanks fellas, thought i'd done all that running around for nothing. I shall be potting up the girlies with it later!

:guitar:

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thats a very notable difference pro libertate , just of out for some jab and will try and find some of ot1s ground rock and inoculant ( been using garden lime and canna tricodema to good effect ) got to say I never even thought that water saving gel could be salt based and have been using one from chempak also to good effect but cant find out if its salt or potassium based , to my last mix I also add chicken pellets ,blood fish and bone , bat guano ,and worm compost including the aforementioned lime and tricodema growing satori , white satin and ,early girl the white satin are doing ok but not brilliant the early girl obviously are finding things a bit warm under the lights but are doing nicley in terms of bud and the satori are well enormous doesn't do them justice ;) and they still have 4 weeks to go , superb thread been doing compost since Adam was a lad had a dabble with hydro :( and am now doing my damnedest to beat the 1 g per in compost and maybe looking at the satori this could be the one :D again a very informative thread .

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Ok Pro,this shows us a really good lession about growing skills and understanding plants . All plants top growth relates exactly to its rootmass, ie a big healthy rootmass = a sturdy plant with lots of flowers.

Your pictures in this topic here! They show your plants in levingtons not rooting out the pot properly and those in allmix fully rooting out, these new pictures show exactly what the result of flowering before the rootball in a pot has fully rooted out.

Once you change the lighting to 12/12 most of the plants effort goes into flowering not making rootmass, if the rootmass at the time of flowering is only half a pot full its much the same as growing in a 3 litre pot instead of a 6 litre pot.

Getting back to the trial I’m doing here, it shows why I was slightly concerned about the plants in the carrs compost, ie while all the plants in all the compost types had rooted out the posts unlike yours, the cars were a little behind. If I was just growing in carrs I would have given them a day or two more before moveing them to final pots, so to some extent potting on when I did was wrong for the carrs ie a little early, spot on for the JAB and a tad late for the Genie.

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Hi OT - Not much help now you've already started.... but I'm another sufferer of bad Westlands experiences.

I've tried just about every compost from the local garden centres over the last few years, - This year I decided to try Gem MP with added JI for my garden herbs and house plants.... I've never seen such happy campers. With this in mind I'm using the same compost for my little bonsai canna plant's next flower cycle - it's absolutely loving it :D texture and smell of the compost is very good :( Spinachboy is also reporting similar findings after my suggestion using Gem MP + JI with his grow IIRC.

Perhaps one to bear in mind if the 3 you are trying here dissappoint ;)

B.

sorry to butt in ot1, i tried this too and had really good results. blabblabberbab u are me...!!! ;) i was thinking exactly the same as reading this thread then i read what u said. great thread

jez

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;):yinyang: - Forgot to add - it's plain Gem MP I'm using, NOT Gem MP with added JI, my bad :mashed:

B

:yahoo: err ... i miss read... i thought u meant u mixed JAB +ji with the gem stuff, cos i bought the gem cos it was on offer and didn't like its texture so i bought the jab and mixed it half an half and added some perilite. got a lot better results. then i thought u were saying just mix em all together!!! :band: i cant read. nevermind

jez

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B and jez, I can only trial a few composts at a time, I think to be valid you need a minimum of 10 plants to get an idea how a compost does overall and to see how it does with different plants.

Although I had not tried it, several members over the last 4 years who had been using Westlands MP + JI with great success had also reported that both JAB [80% peat and JAB + JI [70% peat] did as well.

So I chose the JAB with the least peat as a standard to work from, all reports from members on peat free composts such as new horizon organic, b&q organic and Westlands peat free have been mediocre to piss poor. Personally I would like to find an environmentally friendly peat free compost that comes close to conventional peat based composts.

I can easily test a bag of any compost recommended by members as doing well against whatever compost I pick from this trial in a future grow, I do have some reservations about the Gem composts though, as Gem as a company has and is at present doing little to reduce its peat mining and the amount of peat used in their composts is the highest of any current manufacturer this year reducing it from 95% to 90% peat in their MP.

I understand that most growers do not care a dot about peat mining, or the environment, just how well their plants do and how much bud they get. Personally I care about the enviroment and the quality of the smoke comes way above the yield for me. I figured that if a peat free compost came even close it would be good to know if there was a viable alternative.

Once I start to feed I will use Bio Sevia bloom only. I will again do blind abc smoke tests for the end product. That may be the final arbiter for me on what is the the best compost for me.

Pro if you go back you will see I rooted these cutting in the original Westlands MP + JI moved them once rooted into plugs with the same compost, then when rooted out into 1.1 litre pots, from there, the Genie rooted out fastest, closely followed by the JAB and just behind came the carrs. For your purposes I can’t say as I have never struck cuttings in Genie, I can say once you have roots Genie is the fastest in rooting out pots and how. It has also been the fastest in the final pots. That does not mean it is a good compost long term or on other perameters.

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i would like to add, for those who havent read the other thread, what i expect out of my compost as its a little different to most as far as i know anyway ;)

i work on a perpetual flower so i need to know what my compost does as it has to be able to root plants and root out pots within certain times.

so the reason i potted the Levingtons on even with only half a rootball was purley to show that in perpetual this compost is no good and to show why

I could as ot1 said leave them longer to get them fully rooted but i did leave some and it took ages for them to root out, too long for me by adding between 7/10 days per pot on ,so if your not growing perpetual ie just growing out say 30 at a time and have the time to wait for the roots to show then you may be ok ;)

now with the old westlands making these times was never even a worry and the average height of the plants was between 1ft -1.5 ft when going into flower,but then all this change happened and for me the new westlands started to do what the Levingtons, as seen in the link from ot1 above, does for roots :(

so i know "stretch" and "u5" and what they are capable of doing with rooting in a great compost and im now trying to find a compost that will give me back those times , so far the all mix is the best for pot on but imho not great for rooting cuts in even with 50% added perlite.im getting roots showing at the bottom in 18 days and thats not acceptable here :guitar: so just so people understand the difference of what im wanting out of a compost compaired to just growing out a batch at a time :soap:

i have been turned into a compost snob by the westlands :yinyang: :wink: now i know what a good compost can do i wont let up till i find something that gives me as close to the old westlands as poss,sounds like the JAB MP with added JI might be the one but getting it around here isnt easy,but i still have homebase to try this afternoon.

i can get the orange one with the trace elements etc( as shown above by wasabi) easily so ill trial that for rooting cuts to as it looks like its doing well for fully grown plants

oldtimer1

so the genie roots well does it ? that is good news :)

im tempted to go pick some up this afternoon with some JAB mp with added JI ,as i would like to test these specifically for rooting cuts pure and with added 50% perlite to see what they are like.

which type of levingtons are you using? i've used the levingtons tomarite growbag compost, and roots grow like mad in the stuff. before i used to use just john innes no.3, and found it was rubbish for root growth, i tried some growbag compost and root growth was brilliant, but it doesn't keep hold of water so well, so now i mix the two together, and it works a treat! i still have a couple of plants in each different type alone, i'll try and get some pics up later

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also to people trying to root cuts in all-mix, have you tried with the light mix? i find the hotter the compost the longer it takes roots to cut. and all-mix is hot!

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first is gem, second is levingtons, both with perlite added by me, (a little too much)

might add, the one potted in levingtons is 5 days younger than the one in gem!!

post-24244-1184693067_thumb.jpg

post-24244-1184693086_thumb.jpg

Edited by scraglor
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managed to get 6 bags of jab with added ji 3 for 2 @ £4.95 a bag also got 10 ltrs plagron worm humos and 2 ltrs of bat cack , couldnt find the rock dust ot1 so I will just use the horti lime for now , I did find a bag of mycrorrhizal fungi for £2.95 and I will be adding that along with the usual blood fish and bone a bit of chicken poo and a pinch of canna tricodema powder , I usualy water the mix with a weak solution of seaweed feed and addvanced nutes carbo load and let it rest for about a week , this is my usual mix ( apart from the jab ) and the only other thing I will add will be big bud 2 or 3 times about half way through flowering .

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Ok the plants have just had their first full water since they were potted into their final pots and watered in 6 days ago, they are rooted out and I have flipped them to 12/12 as of now real time.

I side shooted them yesterday.

I picked the first similar 3 plants from the outside row to show how they have grown. 1st pic is from above 2nd from the side, its a bad pic but I can't be srsed to get them out again, the left hand plant is a sister to the two in the right and has slightly finer leaves, she is half an inch taller than the other two at 21 inches tall they are 20.5 inches tall. I know it looks different but the middle one is in a slightly taller pot and the compost in the pot on the right has compacted a little more, the least compaction is the Genie [left plant] then the JAB [middle plant] and most Carrs right hand pot. I might top all the carrs up a little the others don't need it, I'll see in a week or so once there have been a couple of waters.

All are equally healthy and taken strain by strain pretty even.

top:- tn_gallery_338_323_79752.jpg side:-tn_gallery_338_323_148237.jpg

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