As a result of this the large “chains” here in the UK such as Blooms, Wyevale etc, turn their attentions from the garden, to decorating the living space with garish electronic Santa’s and vulgar, fake LED Christmas trees displaying more bling than a stretch hummer full of Eminem and his associated entourage, in a bid to draw in the cash-spending public.
And speaking of rapping (or is that wrapping), you can find every type, colour, texture, size etc, of gift wrapping paper making it possible to disguise even the most ungainly, unlikely or unruly of Christmas gifts.
To sum up, at this time of year, garden centre’s are to be given a wide berth unless you intend to turn the outside of your council house into something resembling Santa’s grotto as “she who must be obeyed” once again competes with the Jones’s next door, in a bid to create a display of outdoor lighting which is clearly visible from space!
From a cannabis growers perspective this causes us some issues as, we don’t have an “off-season” as such. Our growing schedules tend to be constant for the most part, transitioning from outdoor to in, seamlessly, with the passing of the seasons.
So when the time comes to pick up supplies for the forthcoming winter indoor campaign, there are a few details we need to bear in mind to ensure we get what we pay for, whilst retaining some semblance of sanity as the plants grow on to maturity.
Dry/bottled goods
If you have been growing your own weed for any period of time then chances are you already have your chosen lotions and potions safely ensconced about your covert growroom. Cannabis specific fertilizers abound in the market place and as long as you are sure of the efficacy (shelf-life) of your chosen nutrients, chances are you wont be hitting the garden centres in search of a bottle of tomorite, a box of Technicolor blue miracle-gro, or a bottle of maxicrop +fe.
Dry soil and garden amendments are susceptible to damp and need checking out. But as long as your boxes of garden lime and Epsom salts are still in crystal or powder form, as opposed to a twinkling solid calcite block requiring a hammer drill to apply it to your plants, chances are you (and your plants) are well sorted, meaning you can spend your Saturday afternoons in front of the rugby on TV instead of witnessing it at first hand as you fight your way through the “ruck & maul” of Christmas shoppers, while “Rudolph the red nosed reindeer” plays on a constant loop in the background, interspersed with announcements for the parents of a little girl called Jenny, who’s wearing a red bobble hat, to come and collect her from the sweet counters.
If you dare to venture to the outdoor displays, (the bagged goods including, grits, gravels and other aggregates as well as soil and composts), it’ll most likely look like a Siberian wasteland, with only the foolish and those nipping out for a fag whilst ‘her indoors’ waits in the unfeasibly long pay queue, to keep you company.
Chances are the pallets and piles of bags will look like a plague of locusts has recently landed, gorged and departed, leaving only the broken/split bags for us to pick through, and with 3 or 4 months of time invested in our indoor projects, frankly this stuff isn’t good enough at full price, half-price, or any price, let alone the knock-down 3 for 2 offers they come up with in a create to sell off old stock to the unsuspecting public.
Indoor
As indoor growers, we have to provide absolutely everything the plant requires to see it through to a healthy conclusion and the first thing which needs taking into consideration is the medium in which the plants live and grow.
If you’re planning on using an enriched compost as opposed to an inert medium such as coco coir or perlite, this material is going to sustain your plants through what is (in my opinion at least) THE most important phase of the entire growth cycle. The first few weeks.
Get it wrong at this early stage and your plants will struggle and under perform, not only in the early days, but later on too as a result of their poor start in life.
Soil/compost/loam - call it what you will but the fact remains if the medium is in some way “gone off” or out of date, your life is going to be a chain of frustrations which see’s your plants struggling to maintain a healthy eco-system at the root zone and as a result, your yield will suffer, that is, if you manage to get the plants to flower at all.
With this in mind I was asked to come up with in insight into what to look for and what not to look for when it comes time to buy your compost from the garden centre. After all, the signs are there. You just need to pay-heed to them, to make sure you’re not buying stuff which is worthless (at best) and downright useless as well as dangerous to the plants in a worst case scenario.
Its worth mentioning at this stage, that this doesn’t only apply to cannabis. All of your potted plants will benefit if you take the time to find a reliable and healthy supply of composted material and its not only garden centre’s who will happily foist their old stock on you.
If your local grow shop is always empty when you visit, it makes life easier for the paranoid grower but chances are, the pallet of all-mix the shop owner ordered in over 8 months ago, which has sat in a warm arid growshop (or a baking hot store room/shed) for the entire summer, is not worth the plastic its packaged in, and is best left well alone, especially so at a tenner+ per bag!
Buying compost isn’t as simple as looking for the “best brand”. We don’t even know what a best brand is, as region to region the manufacturers will change the names/packaging etc to suit consumer habits.
To better understand why compost goes off, we need to have something of an understanding of whets going on inside the bag when we buy it. With this, everything becomes a whole lot clearer.
Up close and personal
Before struggling to hump bags of compost down to the checkout on trolleys which would have failed their MOT (ministry of transport) test long ago, we need to know whets going on inside the mix and to do this thoroughly you need to get inside the bags you’re going to buy.
This plays a big part in why so many bags of compost get split, as the punters rip open the bags to check out the contents.
Just by examining the mix, its possible to glean all sorts of information which hopefully helps you the grower, make a balanced and calculated decision as to whether or not to buy the stuff and a degree in physical science is not necessary. Just the tools we use on a daily basis are enough to help you decide.
“You only get one chance to make a first impression” or so the saying goes and in this instance never has a truer word been uttered so rip the bag, stand back and take stock of what you’re seeing.
The texture should be loose and crumbly without any signs of uncomposted material such as wood or bark etc.
If you are looking at compacted lumps of “compost coloured stuff”, chances are all of the oxygen has (with time and handling) become depleted from the medium and the aerobic bacterial activity within these tightly compacted lumps will have long ago ceased. Not a good first sign.
If the compost is full of woody material then chances are, when you put your plants into it and water them in, the water will fire up the composting processes which were not completed at the composting facility, and what this means is the aerobic bacteria within, will set about attempting to compost the material, instead of creating the fuel necessary to feed the plants.
The side affect of this, is yellowing on the older leaves (nitrogen deficiency), even though you have just potted on into brand new compost straight from the bag.
Frustrating!
How the compost looks also helps in the decision to buy, or not to buy.
Look around the piles of bags which have been opened by others doing the same as you are. You’re looking for compost which has had time to dry out a little - difficult as the weather is at the moment, but seek and ye shall find.
We’re looking for a dark brown or black material predominantly.
Anything which is a light brown/beige in colour probably contains to much carbon (browns) and not enough nitrogen (greens) and can lead to the delayed composting mentioned above.
In a healthy compost the nitrogen sources (greens) create the majority of the organic matter which the aerobic bacteria needs to feed and thrive. As a result of this healthy bacterial existence they also create the food which the plants need and if your compost is too light in colour, chances are its of no use to us.
Remember, if organics is your thing, we feed the micro-herd (the bacteria) in the pots, and the micro herd feeds the plants so if your friendly bacteria are struggling to colonise your root mass because the medium is depleted in one way or another, the plants wont get fed.
Weight and see..
When thorough watering practices are in use by the grower we use the weight of the pots to establish as and when the plants need watering and we can use the same system to gauge how healthy the compost is.
One of the primary benefits of using material which has been composted (as opposed to loam based granular mixes) is the fact that it holds up to 2 and a half times its own weight in water. So if the bag you are picking up is light as a feather then chances are the medium has dried out to a degree.
On the flip side, if the bags are well heavy then chances are the contents are sodden and saturated with water - not so much a “value” issue in the UK as the majority of composts are sold by volume (litres) as opposed to weight. But if the compost has sat out the back of your local B&Q for 6 months plus, some of the bags at the centre of the pallet could be so wet as to being well on the way to anaerobic (without oxygen).
This can also cause the pH of the medium to sway. The ramifications of this include chemical lock outs of certain nutrients depending on what the pH is.
If you’re potting on plants with a small or under-developed root mass, and you water them well in, the water will not get used as the plants needs are modest early on. So the water can stagnate, turning your root mass into a slimy, stinking mess, especially if it gets cold in your grow room. This is made even worse if you put small plants into large pots to early.
Smelling of roses..
When you split open a new bag of All-Mix (for instance) which has a happy, healthy micro-herd, the first thing you should become aware of is the smell.
Clean composted material has a wonderful earthy smell about it, (think forest floor) Unfortunately this isn’t a reliable test with a bag which has just been opened in the garden centre as the plastic packaging goes some way to nullify this wonderful odour by not allowing oxygen to get right through the medium to the microscopic organisms which give off this aroma.
That said, if it smells good when you open the bag and scoop a handful up to sniff it, chances are this is a particularly good mix with plenty of oxygen in. In this case rush to the check out and pay for it (before someone else see’s it and does the same) whilst deploying your partner in the role of linebacker protecting his quarterback as she runs for the endzone (checkout).
Conversely, if you can smell any sort of chemical odours such as ammonia, methane or a smell similar to a sewer outfall etc, this is a sure sign of an immature compost - one which was packaged before the composting procedure was allowed to complete.
In this instance if you don’t like what it is your smelling, or if it puts you in mind of something you would not like to smell on a day to day basis, then I would be wary about spreading it on my garden, let alone sealing it up in an enclosed grow room in which you intend to spend the next 4 months of your life.
Information overload..
Read what it says on the bag, and not only in big letters.
By law, manufacturers have to inform of whets in the bag. Goes without saying really. But to get around this manufacturers have taken to using different fonts and font sizes in a bid to sell more.
For instance, its not unusual for a bag to read;
“Garden Compost”, in big bold letters, with the word “base” or similar underneath, type-printed a lot smaller.
In passing the gardener picks up what he thinks is a bag of compost, when in fact he has bough a base ingredient for a custom mix which offers absolutely no use to us as indoor gardeners unless you spend time mixing your own.
Another example is “Peat Compost” ideal for the garden.
In fairness it is, if you have a hard-to-work-with clay based garden soil, which will benefit from having some of the composted peat dug into it in a bid to help break down the clay and aid drainage.
But if you mistakenly buy this and put your plants in it in pots, peat holds absolutely no (or very little) nutritional value whatsoever as is, and is simply used as a “carrier” - a delivery vehicle for the composted material packaged with the peat. So pure peat has no value to us as indoor canna-growers, unless you mix it with something else.
If you are looking for an “off the peg” compost which you can buy and use as is, the words “multi-purpose” are a good sign you are buying the correct material for what we intend to use it for.
If you carry out the tests mentioned above and it comes through with flying colours, you can look forward to months of trouble free growing.
If you don’t do your homework, and inadvertently by the wrong stuff, its highly likely your growing will be a hugely frustrating time which is not only unenjoyable, but ultimately unproductive too. A waste of your time and money.
Soil/compost growers are a lazy lot, and enjoy nothing more than sitting watching the plants grow, while their hydro-growing counterparts constantly check this life support system or that.
Making sure your medium is going to do the job for which you’ve bought it is the very least you should do, so check it out before parting with your hard earned and look forward to months of trouble free growing.
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