Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Try to always avoid touching new roots to bone-dry soil mixes, and don't forget to inoculate with some
Mycorrhizal fungus and get that plant and beneficial fungus relationship up and running.
Balancing Your Soil Mix and Your Water Source
Itissuperimportanttokeepthequalityofyourwateronyourmindallthroughyourgrowingperiod.Ifyou
are not using a pure water source for some reason, and you think your water is low enough in dissolved
minerals to be able to use, then I'll trust your judgment. Just make sure to use carbon filters if it is city tap
water, because chloramine will devastate a living soil mix.
Say for example you want to use your city water; you have the carbon filtering all figured out, and your
water registers about 60 PPM on a TDS meter. Since most of the dissolved minerals in any city tap or
spring/well water will be calcium and magnesium, you just have to compensate for this by tweaking the
dolomite lime ratios in your TLO soil mix. Your calcium and magnesium ratios are very important, and
you need to have considerably more calcium than magnesium at all times. If you are using spring, well, or
city tap water and you are having problems it could very well revolve around these ratios; it is not uncom-
mon for well water or city water to be pretty high in magnesium. Too much magnesium in your living soil
mix and the whole soil structure seems to break down; the soil takes on a real “crusty” state and becomes
choked of good air flow (aeration), which is of course über-important for a living soil mix to have. Plants
tend to die slow and horribly when magnesium levels are too high.
