Osmocote Seed & Cutting 👎

[Billygoat]

Steer clear of this stuff.

I sprouted some seeds Last month. Put them in rock wool cubes and the took off fine.

Potted up to this mix, they stalled, yellowed and I was almost gonna bin them

Anyway just to make sure it wasn’t something else, it is getting cold…

I removed one, washed all the dirt off under the tap and threw it in a 70/30 perlite/ vermiculite mix.

Well a week later it is starting to take off. Others are still shit.

 

[afghan bob]

Strange, i used their long acting beaded ferty before on normal plants and worked well

 

[Kee Mao]

I’ve used that for seedlings last 2 seasons. Had no issues.

 

[Billygoat]

Maybe I got a bad batch, does have a fair bit of bark in it.

 

[Pikey]

Maybe I got a bad batch, does have a fair bit of bark in it.

I know a few of the 'big name' potting mix brands resorted to using a lot of shit in their mixes over covid due to supply chain issues. I'd put money on that having something to do with it. A couple of brands I'd previously considered as quality just pumped out sour, pine-filled rubbish (both raw and from fucking pallets) that wasn't even properly decomposted. They either got greedy or desperate and sold their name down the river for a quick buck. Would have been better off just limiting supply and keeping it quality stupid cunts.

 

[Pikey]

The most fucked thing about it is that 'red ticks premium certifcation' thing in the bottom left corner. They were allowed to keep using it even though the shit they filled the bag with had fallen well below the requirements for displaying it I'm guessing some prick got a fat brown paper bag for covidmas

 

[frankreynolds]

Aged pine bark has always been used in these mixes in Australia.

I use that seed raising mix for veggies 0 issues, and always has a pine bark base with peat and coir and sand added.

Having said that the orange premium potting mix from osmocote has had it's composition shifted a bit from what I can tell using a compressed wood type substrate to bulk it out. Same thing used in Europe in there greenhouses. Had 0 issues with the new formulation.

 

[seeded]

I've tried a bunch of soils from bunnings to grow all manner of plants and the one universal truth I discovered is that no matter how you spend or how much they pat themselves on the back about their quality, in 100% of cases you're going to need to fertilise to get what you want out of the soil. Some will be good for a couple of weeks, most of the more expensive ones around a month, after that though you might as well consider the soil depleted and start adding ferts. It got so bad that I just went fuck it and started throwing in slow release pellet ferts when potting anything up. On smaller stuff like seedlings though I would use a soil sifter to get out all the bark and shit and then give them an initial water with a full strength mix of thrive as it's immediately available to the plants and after treating the soil like that the difference was night and day. Things not only grew but they were growing with gusto and in perfect health. It instantly hit home why farmers use so much chemical fertiliser because I'd tried being organic with compost, worm piss, etc. which don't get me wrong massively helped but in no way did it compare to the toxic to soil life shit that science has provided. I should mention that the only time I ever grew plants with soil was when I was living in tropical queensland and during the wet season the pellet ferts were useless as they'd get washed away in no time at all. During those months I ended up just using thrive or left over coco nutrients I had from when I stopped growing. I'd wait for it to look like it was going to stop raining for at least a day and then hit everything with those chemical ferts because even if they got washed away again the plants would get force fed between those times well enough to keep them going for a couple of weeks or more.

@Billygoat if you can be arsed give the soil another go and give it a feed on day one with water soluble/liquid ferts and you should get the results you were originally looking for. I know it's cheating treating it like you would coco but it works and needs far less nutes unless you're growing monster mullies or something super hungry.

 

[One Drop]

I got cuttings n seedlings in a mix of that and coco perlite but I washed my seed mix out a few times first seems to be ok haven’t had a problem did you flush it out well before you used bro ?

 

[itchybro]

Steer clear of this stuff.

I sprouted some seeds Last month. Put them in rock wool cubes and the took off fine.

Potted up to this mix, they stalled, yellowed and I was almost gonna bin them

Anyway just to make sure it wasn’t something else, it is getting cold…

I removed one, washed all the dirt off under the tap and threw it in a 70/30 perlite/ vermiculite mix.

Well a week later it is starting to take off. Others are still shit.

View attachment 23849

another possibility to what's already been mentioned

sometimes seedlings or cuttings won't grow past the media they are in , in this case rock wool
because the air to water ratio is better in the rock wool than it is in the seed raising mix , maybe why she stalled
i'm not saying the seed raising mix is faulty , it's just different , air to water wise

you say the seedling then did ok in the perlite mix because , maybe , the air to water was better than the rock wool

was there many roots growing out of the rock wool into the soil when you pulled it up & washed the soil off ?

i've heard of this happening when growers start in a hydro type system for seedlings or clones , once sprouted / rooted
then moved to soil & stuggled from there , roots didn't want to grow past the rock wool cube

as far as bunnings bagged potting mixes go , imo most should be treated like an inert media , in general very little is living in the bag
look at ingredients , coconut coir or peat moss, pine bark, and vermiculite or perlite (none of which provide much if any nutrition to plants).
in fact i think it's treated for pathogens before bing bagged , a bit like using a broad spectrum antibiotic = it does not discriminate between
good & bad bacteria / fungi or soil organisms , as for those wood chips / pine bark , i think they are there to help stop the soil from compacting
once it's in pots

using home worm farm leachate or making a compost extract will help to try & activate the soil , of cause the extract will only be as good as
the starting compost , as your extracting the organisms from the compost into water which is different to making / brewing compost teas
allot quicker & simpler to make a compost extract , starting material is important whether making teas or extracts

in general with wetting agents & slow release fertilizers added to off the shelf potting mixes i would avoid personally , but that doesn't mean you should
or they don't have there place in home gardening , it's just there are benefits to plants working out there own food via the use & promotion of soil life

 

[frankreynolds]

They pasteurize the potting mix through heat during the composting process. They reach certain temps that kill off weed seeds and harmful pathogens but not hot enough to kill off good bacteria.

I do agree that you need to treat them more like inert mixes as the fertilizer they have generally isn't enough for more than a few weeks for a very heavy feeder like cannabis, a seedling mix will have fuck all fertilizer.

 

[itchybro]

Potting media is pasteurized to kill weed seeds, soil-borne insects, and pathogens.
Pasteurization destroys most organisms and is done by applying heat until the soil
reaches 180oF (82oC) for 30 minutes

 

[itchybro]

you might be mixing pasteurize & thermophilic composting which are a little different
same but different

 

[frankreynolds]

You're right, wrong word, too early in the morning. Lol. Point still stands, potting mix is treated same way all commercial composts are.

 

[itchybro]

yep agriculture antibiotics

 

[frankreynolds]

Note: 'SuperSoil' is a type of ‘Hot’ compost, meaning that you should never allow a plant’s roots to be touching 'SuperSoil' when transplanting.

"Super Soil' Compost Mix

Our ‘SuperSoil’ Compost Mix is a modified version of the popular SubCool recipe. It is ideal for lining the bottom half (½) of the pot and using regular potting mix for the remaining volume of the pot. The idea behind 'SuperSoil' is that in mimicking the richness and diversity of a...

www.organicgardeningsolutions.com.au

I have a feeling organic 'super soils' made with the same ag antibiotics /shrug

 

[itchybro]

super soil has a higher N to C ratio making it hotter so to speak
a standard compost with a higher C to N is not quite as hot but you still wouldn't put plants in it while its at it's highest temps

& yes it is a type of antibiotic but again not quite the same as pasteurization is
thermophilic has a cooling down period that isn't killing organisms & in fact promoting them
& for the record it's the organisms creating the heat in the first place

 

[frankreynolds]

Sorry I did not mean all of these mixes are pasteurized as I said I used the wrong term. They are cooked the same way as supersoil mixes in windrows.

Companies such as nurseries tend to opt to pasteurize there mixes as an added preventative. As storage and transport of these mixes can lead to weed and pathogen pressure. They often use steam for this. But commercial potting mix isn't steamed from the factory

 

[itchybro]

super soil compopsting as mentioned by OGS is def not the same as windrow composting
& windrow composting is not the same as square meter biodynamic composting

once again , same but different

what leads to pathogen pressure is not having beneficials to out compete those pathogens
killing all organisms leaves the compost open to attack with no defence so to speak

 

[frankreynolds]

Windrows are just a way of maintaining temps within the composting media, they aim to hit certain threshholds of temps to kill bad pathogfens and weed seeds. then use the windrow shape to mix the material and bring temps down.