Horizon Layers

[Guest]

Hey growers, smokers, vapers and all,

I suspect someone has already placed something here about horizon laters but I thought I would share my Blog post about it. Especially considering I am going to do a write up of how I have done mine and the reasons I have done it the way I have. I may be using something different to what some are used to as a more traditional method, so I am looking forward to sharing it all with you here to comment, learn, correct or whatever it is that sparked your mind.
So, without further adooo and all that mallarky, read on if you wish:


What does the actual earth beneath us look like, if we took a cross sectional view and split our planet in 2, what would we see around the earths crust?

This is becoming more common knowledge to people and more practiced day by day. When we are trying to build a living soil, we are attempting to have that living soil and keep it going through as many growth cycles as possible. Some argue that a living soil should last a human lifetime whislt others have said so many succesful harvests and you will need to re build your soil, again. If you are attempting to build a vegatable patch or a living soil for indoor growing and intend it to last as long as possible, then it is worth reading on and educating yourself more about this subject.

The horizons are typically lettered:

O Organic Layer or Humus

A Top Soil. Often called a mineral layer

E Sand and Silt layers as we get less humus

B Subsoil composed of deposited minerals and metal salts. More of a bulky structure.

C Parent Rock. Partly weathered/Lighter Rock

R Bed Rock. Consisting of large stones, slate and rock.

You will find pictures to demonstrate this online everywhere now. All with slight variations of explanation for the same thing.

You may ask, why put all this into the bottom of my plant pot, replicating the earths crust when little or no goodness/nutrients is going to come off these bottom layers. Very often gardeners use pebbles and rocks to guage drainage and cause better run off as you water through the soil. But! Has one ever heard of a microorganism called a Lithotroph? Well these little hard mining microscopic creatures can get through the rock and make use of these minerals for your plants, through exchange of different nutrients and minerals, which is happening within the soil all the time. We know there are fungi that can assist the roots in finding the nutrients it needs by feeding on the roots exudates, a little like a trade off. So having all these different rocks, sand, clay and various things for the organisms to mine and trade can be hugely benificial to a plant. So why aren’t we all doing it? Maybe the majority, simply don’t know or are blissfully unaware?

There is another advantage to using these various layers in our soil. Something called a Catain Ion Exchange, where + & - electrons can make atoms more available or less available to the plant. So cations and ions all help form various nutrients within our soil, which is how you synthetically feed roots, there are available nutients within the bottle with the correct +/- cation values, so the plant can absorb all it needs from what you give out of the bottle. So if we had a mass of ingrediants in our soil which were positively charged, this could have detrement to the plants health. We need to balance out these positive and negatively charged particles. Clay for instance is hugely under valued material in gardening, one of the main reasons is it holds both + and - charges.

A good soil has sand, silt and clay. 3 main ingrediants. Without that, the plant will not grow to it’s best potential. But with all these extra layers in the soil for the roots to find, things will happen in a more natural way, not just that, this gives home for many microorganisms to live, thrive and more inmortantly, re produce to colonise and create a natural balance in the soil.

All this is fine in theory, but to keep this soil for years to come, we need good quality amendments and inputs for us to helpfeed the soil, which in turn will look after your plant. Think of nurturing your soil to health rather than just feeding your plants.

You can find all good quality ingrediants too make a perfect living soil here at Green Hand Organic. Please head over and have a look and if you have any questions then you will always get help from the website or by visiting Instagram.

Thanks for reading and happy soil feeding,

DIY.Rik

www.organacanna.co.uk/blog/horizon-layers

[GMO]

I am going to do a write up of how I have done mine and the reasons I have done it the way I have. I may be using something different to what some are used to as a more traditional method

Is there a link to the how you made yours?

[Guest]

I am going to do a write up of how I have done mine and the reasons I have done it the way I have. I may be using something different to what some are used to as a more traditional method

Is there a link to the how you made yours?

Not yet GMO, sorry, I am currently gathering idea's and materials at the minute.

[Inactive account]

That colour is hard on the eyes hun


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Guest]

That colour is hard on the eyes hun


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There you go Polly

You are right it is a little hard on the eye. Dancing words

[Guest]

.....and here we go

....contrary on recently talking about climate change and being sustainable, I have obtained some various different stone, rocks, sand and gravel to immitate my layers and bed rock.

This I will keep going for as long as is possible and because these materials are going to be home for hopefully millions of various microbes, fungi and little critters of sorts. Another thing I have discovered recentl;y are the lithotrophs which can go mining in here. So if my soil ever depletes to a point I feel I need to start a fresh, as long as it doesn't appear to have bad microbials in there I would leave most of the bedrock and gravel there, then re build my new soil on top.
All going well I should never have to do that though.















.....and the thermometer is ready to go for the soil.

I will mix all @GHO materials only here and then start building a mulch layer and also a cover crop later on as my grow progresses.

So what is the thermometer for.....? Well if you have never mixed soil before with dry amendments you may know that you can get a thermophilic reaction as the microbes break things down and various elements react with it's surroundings. A hot composter can tell you all about this and is how you can kill all the bad bacteria in compost, especially if you have used animal inputs.

So, next bit will be mixing all the soil together and awaiting the heat.

Lovely Jubbly.

[Guest]

Leighton made a great video on FCP where he mixed and made a few raised beds with horizonal layers.

Even as a kid, I was always fascinated with the layers of soil as they changed in the hillside that had fallen away. Alway hoping to find a layer of dinosaur bones. Little did I know then, I was looking at a treasure chest of preserved soil history. In terms of its use for cannabis, I would argue the depth of the container has a big influence on the effectiveness.

Great post

Thanks @Chad.Westport nice one, means a lot.

Yeah like loess soil. 1000's of years of ecology right there in those layers. It is fascinating.

Yeah I watched one with Leighton on you tube last week to try get a feel for things. Seems to know his stuff.

I am going to water this layer in with some microbial input to give a head start. That is one thing Leighton said was very important, or you just end up with air pockets and potentially runoff around the edge of the pot and nothing in the middle.

[Guest]

Yes I agree with the pot size too @Chad.Westport This is the biggest I could get for the area I have, I think I may struggle with the height, may end up having to put the filter on outside to get light's high enough but I will be net training on 1 level with this too which will make it even more interesting.

[Guest]

I have continued this here:

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=15762&p=269684#p269684

[Klaus]

ive been looking for other growers thats doing the soil horizon system...my plants are now 4 months in this system and loving it...will send pics