Tips for making the best substrate for your cannabis plants

Having a good substrate when starting your cannabis cultivation is ideal to ensure that your harvest is successful. Otherwise, your plants might have difficulties to develop, of course, that’s not what you want, but how to get a quality substrate, well, keep reading this post to take note of some tips.

The substrate is the means of transporting water and nutrients for the roots of your cannabis plants, and although it may seem difficult to make it yourself, it’s really very simple.

Select a base soil

To begin with, you must choose a base, either blonde peat or compost. It is necessary that the substrate is spongy, this way; it will improve the aeration of the roots and the retention of liquids.

Generally, the materials used to provide sponginess are perlite, vermiculite and coconut fibre, and they are very economical.

Enriches the soil

When you have the base and enough airing material, you already have a substrate, which after a short time you will have to enrich with more ingredients, because the amount of nutrients it contains is low. You can choose to add worm humus, although its nutrient ratios are not very high it contains humic and fulvic acids that help with water retention.

You can also acquire other materials such as wood ash, fish meal or blood meal, just keep in mind to adapt the dose and use to the phase that will complete the plant, for example, in the case of fish meal is ideal to provide nutrients required in the flowering phase.

Avoid overloading yourself with nutrients

It is recommended to start with small amounts of the ingredients, as it is easier to recover a plant that shows some lack of nutrients than to save another one that is over-fertilized.

The proportions of each of the materials for our substrate are very variable, it is recommended:

– 40- 60% of total base (blonde peat or compost)

– 10-30% coconut fiber, perlite, or vermiculite

– 10%-20 of worm humus

– 5 % of heavy meal or ashes.

Once you start stirring the ingredients, check the texture. Squeeze an amount of substrate with your hands to see if it becomes caked or recovers its shape. You can add more coconut fiber if you want to air it out a little bit more.