Soil for Life – Peat Free Organic Living Soil – 45L

Soil for Life is our original recipe Peat Free Living Soil, based on CoCo Coir rather than Peat Moss, it is made by hand in house at Indoor Organics HQ, and cooked in small artisan batches for those who want the very best. We started making this for ourselves based on recipes learned from growers in Northern California and adapted to the UK. It is designed to give plants everything they need from start to finish, to sustain optimal health and vigour, as well as maximising the potential for yield, flavour and aroma due to the extra nutrient density you can achieve in your crop, along with many other factors like secondary metabolites and essential oils. It is an Organic Living Soil, alive with microbes ready to work with your plants to build a soil food web, an ecosystem in your pots, to replicate what’s been happening in nature since the dawn of time. Bacteria and Fungi will begin to break down the inputs as the plant requires and Protozoa and Nematodes make them available for the plants to uptake, in exchange for the carbohydrate based exudates that they produce.

The idea is that you keep it forever. Try not to disturb the soil and it will get better cycle after cycle. We add Neem Meal, Kelp Meal, Fish Meal, Krill Meal, Ecothrive Charge & now Alfalfa Meal for nutrition plus Gypsum & Volcanic Rock Dust for all other essential minerals. Some are broken down a little faster than others, providing short, medium and long term nutrition, but once it is composted into the final soil mix it is stable and then down to the plan to work with the microbes to make the nutrients available as they are needed. This means there is never any deficiency or over availability of nutrients in the soil, just exactly what there is meant to be at each and every stage of growth.

The driving force in all living soil systems is humus, some sort of microbially decomposed inoculant to bring the life to the party and allow populations to expand and diversify. We use a custom blend of our special Cow Manure, Straw, Wool & Bracken Compost and some super nice Vermicompost. We use Buckwheat for aeration which also means that whilst the soil is going through the cooking process we can develop the microbial herd better because we are feeding the soil plenty of nitrogen, as well as plenty of carbon, which is what you need when feeding microbes (if you give them nitrogen they want carbon and if you give them carbon then want nitrogen, give them both and they can thrive). This also means extra nutrition is locked up in the carbon rather than being lost, providing a long term reserve of nutrition for the soil.

Our soil is designed to do all the hard work for you, in the front end ahead of time, so it’s easy to grow amazing plants with just water alone. The soil needs to be kept moist but not wet and the minimum volume we recommend is 60gal/220l per m2. This works out at either four 15gal pots or one of our 245l ones per m2 to have enough volume to drive a full canopy of growth above and maximise your yield potential. Smaller pots are harder to keep constantly moist and makes it a challenge for the grower to maintain the optimal conditions. The bigger the container the easier to maintain an even and constant environment for the microbes. If you keep it in good condition, add continuous mulch and occasionally a top dress of amendments, you can use the same body of soil forever. A couple of table spoons of our Notill Amendment Kit per 15Gal should be enough each cycle, at the end on top of the soil and watered in as usual. If at any point you feel the soil needs further nutrition, introduce a second top dress at the start of bloom as well as the one at the start/end of the cycle, a couple of tablespoon per 15gal pot is usually enough.

We advise 1 bag of Soil for Life per 15gal Fabric Pot – add 250g Live Worms per pot – plant a Cover Crop of your choice, cover with some Mulch and water carefully until the plant is well established. Keep the Mulch topped up, use all of you waste plant material either directly or composted first depending on your situation. We recommend if slugs are a problem for the crop then to compost first, if not then good to lay directly down. The worms will feed on what you put on the soil so try to feed them nice good nutritious food. Some options are Alfalfa, Comfrey, Nettles, Malted Barley Powder, Kelp, Neem etc. If you are unsure, Dragonfly Earth Medicine offer fantastic blends for you to try.

Ingredients:

Dalefoot Compost (Bracken, Wool & Comfrey)
Vermicompost
CoCo Coir
Buckwheat Husk
Bio-Char
Kelp Meal
Neem Meal
Krill Meal
Gypsum Granules
Gypsum Powder
Calcium Carbonate
Basalt Rock Dust
Alfalfa Meal
Mealworm Frass
Fish Meal
BSF Larvae

If you have any questions or want any advice on how to get the best from your Soil for Life – call 0330 133 3063 or email info@indoororganics.co.uk