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THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN THE MARCH 2009 ISSUE OF HIGH TIMES

Subcool’s Super Soil Step-by-Step

Master bud breeder and longtime grower Subcool reveals his tried and true tips for stirring up the perfect organic-soil mix for pot plants that taste amazing, smell incredible and pack a potent, intoxicating punch.

by SubCool

Fri, Aug 07, 2009 1:51 pm

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Story by Subcool, photos by Subcool & MzJill

"There’s nothing that compares to the flavor of properly grown organic pot: The subtle tastes and aromas created by using only “Mother Earth” are overwhelming to the senses when it’s done properly. As with vegetables, a rich organic soil can bring out the best in cannabis.

Over the past 20 years, I have tried almost every possible way to cultivate our favorite plant. And while hydro is certainly faster and the yields blow soil away, I’ve developed an organic-soil mix that consistently performs extremely well, with very little guesswork involved (i.e., I don’t have to worry about pH or ppms ever).

I spent a few years developing the recipe for this Super Soil mix, and using it in 7-gallon nursery pots, I can run from start to finish adding only plain water. Other than a bit of sweat equity every 90 days or so, using this soil takes a huge amount of the science out of gardening and puts nature back in charge. Also, the recipe is always changing in slight ways as I continue to fine-tune it in my efforts to achieve perfection.

The Base
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Start with at least six to eight large bags of high-quality organic soil. This is your base soil—i.e., your regular potting soil without the additives. The selection of your base soil is very important, so don’t cut corners here. I can’t begin to discuss all the different products out there, but I will mention a few in this article. A good organic soil should cost you from $8 to $10 per 30-pound bag. Since I want to give you a very specific idea of what I consider to be a balanced soil, take a look at the ingredients in a product called Roots Organic:

Lignite, coco fiber, perlite, pumice, compost, peat moss, bone meal, bat guano, kelp meal, greensand, soybean meal, leonardite, k-mag, glacial rock dust, alfalfa meal, oyster shell flour, earthworm castings and mycorrhizae.

Another local product we’re trying out now, Harvest Moon, has the following ingredients:

Washed coco fibers, Alaskan peat moss, perlite, yucca, pumice, diatoms, worm castings, feather meal, fishmeal, kelp meal, limestone, gypsum, soybean meal, alfalfa meal, rock dust, yucca meal and mycorrhizae fungi.

So far we’ve found that Roots Organic produces a more floral smell in the finished buds, while Harvest Moon generates larger yields.

If you have access to a good local mix like these, then I highly recommend starting with a product of this type. We’ve also had decent results using commercial brands, but never “as is.” The best results we’ve had to date using a well-known commercial soil has been with Fox Farms’ Ocean Forest soil combined in a 2-to-1 ratio with Light Warrior. Used on its own, Ocean Forest is known for burning plants and having the wrong ratio of nutrients, but when cut with Light Warrior, it makes a pretty good base-soil mix.

You can also just use two bales of Sunshine Mix #4, but this would be my last choice, since plants grown in this mix may not respond well to my “just add water” method of growing.

After choosing your base soil, the Super Soil concentrate is placed in the bottom one-third to one-half of the container and blended with the base soil. (With strains that require high levels of nutrients, we’ll go so far as to fill ¾ of the container with Super Soil, but this is necessary only with a small percentage of strains.) This allows the plants to grow into the concentrated Super Soil layer, which means that in the right size container, they’ll need nothing but water throughout their full cycle. One of the things I like best about this soil mix is that I can drop off plants with patients, and all they have to do is water them when the soil dries out.

Stir It Up
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There are several ways to mix these ingredients well. You can sweep up a patio or garage and work there on a tarp, or you can use a plastic wading pool for kids. (These cost about 10 bucks apiece and work really well for a few seasons.) Some growers have been known to rent a cement mixer to cut down on the physical labor. Whatever method you use, all that matters in the end is that you get the ingredients mixed properly.

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This can be a lot of work, so be careful not to pull a muscle if you’re not used to strenuous activity. On the other hand, the physical effort involved is good for mind and body, and working with soil has kept me in pretty good shape. But if you have physical limitations, you can simply have someone mix it up for you while you supervise. As far as the proper steps go: Pour a few bags of base soil into your mixing container first, making a mound. Then pour the powdered nutrients in a circle around the mound and cover everything with another bag of base soil. In goes the bat poop and then more base soil. I continue this process of layering soil and additives until everything has been added to the pile.

Now I put on my muck boots, which help me kick the soil around and get it mixed up well using my larger and stronger leg muscles instead of my arms. The rest is simple; as my skipper used to say, “Put your back into it.” This is hard work that I obsess over, even breaking up all the soil clods by hand. I work on the pile for at least 15 minutes, turning the soil over and over until it’s thoroughly mixed.

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Then I store my Super Soil in large garbage cans. (And before using any of it, I pour the entire load out and mix it well once more.) Once it’s placed in the cans, I water it slightly—adding three gallons of water to each large garbage can’s worth. Though it makes stirring the soil harder, adding water will activate the mycorrhizae and help all the powders dissolve.

Before Planting
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So we’ve added the water, and now we let it cook in the sunshine—30 days is best for this concentrate. Do not put seeds or clones directly into this Super Soil mix or they will burn. This is an advanced recipe to be used in conjunction with base soil. First you place a layer of Super Soil at the bottom of each finishing container; then you layer a bed of base soil on top of the Super Soil concentrate; and then you transplant your fully rooted, established clones into the bed of base soil. As the plants grow, they’ll slowly push their roots through the base soil and into the Super Soil, drawing up all the nutrients they need for a full life cycle. The Super Soil can be also be used to top-dress plants that take longer to mature. I’ll use this mix for a full year.

Buds grown with this method finish with a fade and a smoother, fruitier flavor. The plants aren’t green at harvest time, but rather purple, red, orange, even black—plus the resin content is heavier, and the terpenes always seem more pungent. This method is now being used by medical growers all over the world, and with amazing results. The feedback I’ve received is really positive, including reports of hydro-like growth and novice growers producing buds of the same high quality as lifelong cultivators. So give it a try! You won’t be disappointed.

The Mix
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Here are the amounts we’ve found will produce the best-tasting buds and strongest medicines:

8 large bags of a high-quality organic potting soil with coco fiber and mycorrhizae (i.e., your base soil)

25 to 50 lbs of organic worm castings
5 lbs steamed bone meal
5 lbs Bloom bat guano
5 lbs blood meal
3 lbs rock phosphate
¾ cup Epson salts
½ cup sweet lime (dolomite)
½ cup azomite (trace elements)
2 tbsp powdered humic acid

This is the same basic recipe I’ve been using for the past 15 years. The hardest ingredient to acquire are the worm castings (especially since many people don’t even know what they are. FYI: worm poop). But don’t decide to just skip them: Be resourceful. After all, worms comprise up to ¾ of the living organisms found underground, and they’re crucial to holding our planet together. Also, don’t waste money on a “soil conditioner” with worm castings; source out some local pure worm poop with no added mulch."

Subcool is the author of Dank: The Quest for the Very Best Marijuana, available at dankgearonline.com.

Take care

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Interesting reading :)

It makes me remember my first time i grow the plant. I just had to make it perfect. I made my very own mix. And the result was outstanding. I will always remember the first time i breed the plant as a perfect grow. All thanks to my sense of perfection. Though, there is way more stuff available now than when i made my mix. But still, all those ingredients i used.. Everything from egg shell to worm casting was well worth the hassle in the end. The strains i used was Mazar and Skunk Passion. I wont grow Skunk Passion again because it was way to bushy for indoor environment, but the Mazar was very easy to grow and strong stuff, still the best iv'e smoked. But could be the placebo effect. My fellas that got some of it said it was the best they ever smoked too. But nowadays there is better strains than Mazar.

Now I hope to find my love in the strain Super Lemon Haze :wink: (which did not exist back then). I'm pretty sure i will after everything i read about it. Thank you for sharing this. I will most certainly make my own soil sometime again, and this guide can work as a base for my own mix when i decide to do so.

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  • 11 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

This Post is what Ive been wanting to find.

Ill be starting up my first grow end of May, Cali. Your write up will be my initial guide. You make it seem simpler than I previously thought, maybe it in fact is, eh. Thanks

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This Post is what Ive been wanting to find.

Ill be starting up my first grow end of May, Cali. Your write up will be my initial guide. You make it seem simpler than I previously thought, maybe it in fact is, eh. Thanks

Subcool is a knowlegeable guy!

You're welcome! Glad it helped! ;)

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yeah i made a post about this a few months ago has anyone used this mix ive heard its really good like you dont have to flush your plants watering every 4 -5 days and from what ive heard it gives results from soil that will match hydro. if you watch subcool's youtube posts he visits alot of different indorr grows using this soil and the plants are just incredible. tga subcool in general is amamzing there plants are incredible ace of spades probably some of my favourite bud and i love brothers grim and he does alot of work with there old genetics the cinderella 99 and apollo 11 probably my two most favourite sativa plants of all times . apollo 11 is like cheese central it just stinks like parmasain whenever my club has it in i can smell the stuff from down the street same with the cinderella but it is alittle more fruity and sweet then the apollo they are both really nice and tga's version of trainwreck is so insane its called bloodwreck its not a arcata strain like greenhouse but its something different all together its really nice tho super colorful

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o and dust i know what your talking about with the jorge cervantes video, it isent the same mixture but its a similar consept, but really i meen even this mixture changes every time subcool constantly rewrites the ingrediants and says to exsperiment its like his attempt at trying to make a all in one soil mix. i think the concept is pretty cool but inorder to do it you need space and loads of money because the ingrediant list is super long and most of the stuff costs quite a bit one thing he says about storing the mixture is to let it sit outside with the cap on until when you open it there is a white film over the soil it'll loook like mold but it isent and is the only way to tell if you have activated the microbes. he says this can take longer then a month on his site tho ive heard him say a month is fine and ive also heard him say it needs to sit for 3 months but everytime i hear him say to make sure you get the white film if you wanna learn more about super soil and how it works he has a hole video about it

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  • 2 months later...

good soil mix quite similar to mine.

I use

1 bail pro mix with Microhazea

25L of worm castings

2cups Veg. Guano

4cups of Kelp

Shrimp compost

2 bags of Organic soil (25L ea.)

1 bag of coco coar

This usually gives me enough for 5-6 35L pots/ holes

Optional:

1 22L bag of mushroom compost

Or

1 25L bag of sheep manure

We have horses so I get the old manure and works great also.

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  • 6 months later...
  • 11 months later...

TGA Super Soil Instructions:

 

TGA Super Soil is a powerful concentrate so some caution should be taken with young or sensitive plants. We recommend filling the planting container about half full with the super soil and then add a “buffer” layer of TGA Soil (or whatever substitute premium soil you have chosen). Place the plant into the container and fill the top with more TGA Soil (or substitute premium soil).

 

Grow your plants under 18hrs ON/6hrs OFF lighting for 15-40 days according to container size. Then it’s flower time! Do not add liquid nutrients at any time! Use only carbohydrate and sugar additives during the flowering phase. For heavy feeding or extra large plants top dress the soil with 4-6 cups of Super Soil at day 25-30 for an additional non-burning nutrient boost.

 

Our recommend container sizes are:

#5, #7, #10, #15 pots according to plant size and garden design. Happy Growing!

 

 

copied and pasted from - http://fullscalesoilandhydro.com/wp/2013/11/12/tga-super-soil-tga-natural-organic-now-available/

 

Peace

Lams

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  • 9 months later...

heres a basic medium mix a grower friend of mine suggested .

 

mix water and bag or pile for 1-3 weeks

 

I was wondering what yall thought about it esp about mushroom compost.

 

to create 3cu ft of medium:

 

1 cu. ft. Canadian sphagnum peat moss

1 cu ft. mushroom compost

1 cu Ft vermiculite

3 cup Dolomite lime

into mixture of this mix

3 cup kelp meal

3 cup alfalfa meal

3 cup Dr Earth HG Tom/veg/herb fert

 

the next question is should 12 cups Granite dust be added during the initial  "cooking" process  or can appropriate amount be added just prior to potting?

 

TIA

GS

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