Transcription of video tutorial for Substrates and soil Additives for growing cannabis :
Today we’ve come to the Alchimiaweb facilities, we’re out in the warehouse yard because we want to talk about substrates.
We’ve got all the substrates here at hand, rather than go up and down, it’s better to be here than to carry all the substrates up to the set. And I’m going to be helped by my workmate Alex from the warehouse, who’s here.
- Hello. Very good
- What's up, Alex? Here to lend a hand with the substrates, okay?
- I’ll do what I can…
Very good. Well, I’ll tell you what types of substrates we have at www.alchimiaweb.com
When we talk about substrates, basically we mean the physical support where the plant will grow and live. The most common, the one we all know, is soil. But there are also other substrates such as clay pebbles or coco fibre.
Let's see what kind of substrates are available on our website, starting with the clay pebbles. Here we have sacks of 10L and 45L, it’s a substrate that comes from volcanic lava and serves basically to grow hydroponically.
Alex, show me how clay pebbles are. You can see that they’re made of lava, and they’re balls, apart from usingthem in hydroponics they can also be used to aerate a dense soil or to put in the base of pots as drainage. If we put a layer of 2-3cm of clay pebbles, the soil will drain much better.
Coconut fibre is an inert substrate and we have it in 3 forms:
In sacks with fibre, in dehydrated brick or in slabs.
- Alex, show me a what the coco fibre looks like?
It’s normally used to mix into and to add more moisture to the base soil. Normally, coco fibre and most slabs and bricks, come with trichodermas, which are beneficial fungi for the roots.
We also have, as I said, the bricks, which come dehydrated. When we add water, they expand and we can plant directly into it but of course, adding the necessary nutrients at all times.
We use the slabs in a similar way. The coco slabs usually go in trays or in their elongated pots, because normally the seed is germinated in the coco plug, which is then inserted in the slab and here we would put the drippers. That’s coco fibre then.
Worm humus is not a substrate in itself but it does help the substrate to be well nourished. In this case we have AsturHumus that is castings from Californian worms. It’s organic, cow and horse droppings are transformed by worms into this type of “substrate” called worm humus.
It’s loaded with nutrients for the entire cycle of cannabis cultivation, and also fulvic and humic acids that are beneficial to our crop. As you can see, we have different sizes, in bags of 20, 10, 2.5 and 1 kg.
- Alex, please show us what the earthworm humus is like?
There are other elements that will also help us to aerate or hydrate the soil well, such as vermiculite. In this case it’s also a derivative of volcanic lava but it helps us to hydrate the soil.
Another element, but not to humidify, but to aerate, is the perlite. Which are these sacks of this fluffy white substance that helps us to have more air in the soil.
And another element also to hydrate, especially to save water in guerrilla crops, are polymers. These polymers usually come in a container like the one Alex is now opening… just add water and it becomes a gel. You mix it with the soil and the gel is generated.
We now enter the soil section itself, starting with Canna Bio Terra Plus in this bag of 50 litres, it’s a perfect substrate for those who want to control the feeding of the plants at all times as it has virtually no nutrients.
It’s perfect to start, for example, by mixing it with the AsturHumus.
- Alex, let's see how it looks…
- It has a lot of fibre.
- Yes, because it also has tree bark, blond peat and different organic components that are all perfect for organic cultivation.
- Exactly.
From the Bio Bizz soil range we have the basics… which are Light Mix and All Mix. Light Mix is a light soil to start the crop, for 1 or 2 weeks with the nutrients that are incorporated, and the All Mix is the soil with which we all began to cultivate, which already carries enough nutrients to last 3 or 4 weeks.
- True?
We have Light Mix in 50L bags, the All Mix is in 20L and 50L bags too. Show me some of the All Mix… we can see that it’s a dark and spongy soil, ideal for any type of crop.
And this is Plagron's range of basic soils, they differ in the levels of nutrients they contain. For example, the ProMix, which is this 50L bag that we have here, is similar to the Canna Bio Terra Plus we saw earlier. It is a soil made of peat but with low nutrients, so we can control at all times what we’re giving the plants.
The 2nd level of nutrients is the Light Mix also similar to the one we have seen from Bio Bizz, here we have it in 25L and in 50L, and it’s fertilised for a couple of weeks or so, to start the plants.
- If you want to open it Alex and we can see what the soil is like…
- This one also has a lot of perlite.
- Yes, it has perlite and it is also fibrous and dark. Very good.
And then if we go to higher levels of fertiliser, enough for 4 or 6 weeks, depending on the type of plants, we’ve got the range of the Royal Mix and the Bat Mix. They are soils enriched with organic fertilisers, the only difference is that the Bat Mix, as its name suggests, carries bat guano, very rich in Phosphorus and Potassium.
We’ve had an overview of all the types of substrates you can find on our website, from soils with different types of fertilisers, to humus, coco, perlite, clay pebbles…
- Just a little generic review, no Alex?
- Exactly. And then there’s the final touches that each grower adds to it, to fine-tune it for his plants. And as always, remember that you can find everything on www.alchimiaweb.com
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- What a handsome couple!
- It's just ... when you’re handsome. Hahaha!
- We’re born that way. No, no… hahaha!
