Soma Style Organic Growing

Hello RIU, hope you all doing good today...

Hey, are any of you familiar with one of Soma's methods of growing? I saw this on a video on youtube where he is giving a lecture at the CC!

He says to pull the plant up as to expose the top root ball and let it stay in air... This in turn makes the plant more vigorous and healthy..

any thoughts?

thanks

Hey bud I got his book organic growing soma style . He builds large 4x4 beds 10" or deeper fills the bottom with coral and puts in a air vent tube in two corners fills with a organic list of goodies high in guano ( he reccomends some Dutch guano then goes on in the book to reccomend budswell witch is my personal choice) then he plants similar to BOG's ( he is awsome )double potting method exposing the upper root ball to drier conditions to encourage vigorous side branching . But soma goes on to say that he has even noticed decrease in fungal infections ( he would know growing in an out in Amsterdam! Yikes) rep to you for even bringing this up

Interesting. As a general rule I usually plant most (not all) woody and herbacious plants with a slight rise. It keeps the base area well drained and directs water percolation further out towards the outer circumference/drip line of the plant where the non structural water absorbing roots are more concentrated. It also develops a stronger root base due to the less acute root angles. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but the side branching sounds like a response to the way/shape the roots are growing. You can seen this in natural settings where plants have to deal with different soil conditions.

Can you recommend a good online Soma read? Oly, I've noticed you are putting a lot of time into your growing research!

Edit: Didn't realize I had read up on his beds, didn't do much for me.

Ive done the soma style beds. i did smaller ones than soma. I learned smaller ones are no good. you want to go the same size as soma's or larger. i do kjust pots now. i applied the soma method to the pots and it works great. hydroton on the bottom, weed mat seperating hydroton n soil. once 1 inch pvc going down to the hydro ton. what i hated about the soil beds was clean up after wards. it was the biggest bitch ever

Hey, thanks Joedank!! I am really interested in the root out method... Have you used that before?

Joedank said:

Hey bud I got his book organic growing soma style . He builds large 4x4 beds 10" or deeper fills the bottom with coral and puts in a air vent tube in two corners fills with a organic list of goodies high in guano ( he reccomends some Dutch guano then goes on in the book to reccomend budswell witch is my personal choice) then he plants similar to BOG's ( he is awsome )double potting method exposing the upper root ball to drier conditions to encourage vigorous side branching . But soma goes on to say that he has even noticed decrease in fungal infections ( he would know growing in an out in Amsterdam! Yikes) rep to you for even bringing this up

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yup about 50% of the time i am running roots pots for the reason above the clean up on the beds is overwhelming. bear in mind with below ten gallon pots it is easy to over do the raised potting method and make it a bitch to get even water on my rootball that is raised i would post pics but i cant seem to get my photobucket account to jive so heres some stolen pics on of bushy old grower stlye cant dig pu a good one of soma style but it is easy to do and gives good results but is not a cure all for bad nutes

here is one of mine in soma style as it gets bigger i top dress with guano castings and other organics but the root ball gets more and more pronounced.

Thats what I was talking about! Joedank! Thanks! And do you just tug on it just enough to expose the upper roots or how do you do it?

Joedank said:

View attachment 1677712here is one of mine in soma style as it gets bigger i top dress with guano castings and other organics but the root ball gets more and more pronounced.

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No! No pulling just put enough soil below it so the upper root ball is just exposed I start early and by three weeks into 12/12 it is busting out of the rockwool rooters! I will update with my whole spin on soma style planting tonight let me snap a few pics

Thanks ill be looking out for your update

I watched that vid and he does say pull them up a little but WTF ? I will show my style I guess tonight sorry for the mix up but in his book not the vid is the process I follow.

Yea his book kicks ass! I learned a lot from it, its the "soma organic style growing" right or along those lines... No problm on the mix up, im guna go soma style growing my next grow. Im had just begun one before I got his book.

Ill be looking out for the update, thanks

Joedank said:

I watched that vid and he does say pull them up a little but WTF ? I will show my style I guess tonight sorry for the mix up but in his book not the vid is the process I follow.

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here we go first i use rock wool mostly but i also have an easy cloner the rockwool achives quicker results and more branching sooner but the cloner catches up quickly whith its massive rootsystem first i plant in 1-3 gallon pots being as careful as possable with the roots such as they are then the only transplant i do is once the pot is filled out i transplant into a seven or ten gallon leaving the top of the rockwool cube or stump if you will above the rim of the container then fill near and inch to the top with soil or coco not all the way up or watering will be tough. heres some pics tio help. and some tips are dont water the shit out of the top ball just back and forth evenly the point is not to expose roots but to encourage side rooting and devolopement of feeder roots that dry out quicker than the rest of the rootball preventing drowning. these are things i observed not from soma.
one pic is of a plant that i did not not put enough soil in you can see i need to top dress with more super soil it actually works out great cuz they are fading a little

organnic grownin soma style is great just enough info to be complete without confusing the issue

So you recommend using rockwool for cloning? I tried it once but it didnt work out... i use those jiffy starter pellets... those are some nice pics, so the idea is to keep about 1/3 of the rockwool out of soil, correct? Please correct if im wrong, that is how i am understanding..

thanks again...

Joedank said:

organnic grownin soma style is great just enough info to be complete without confusing the issue

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olylifter420 said:

So you recommend using rockwool for cloning? I tried it once but it didnt work out... i use those jiffy starter pellets... those are some nice pics, so the idea is to keep about 1/3 of the rockwool out of soil, correct? Please correct if im wrong, that is how i am understanding..

thanks again...

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don't use rock wool. they are horrible. don't use jiffy pellots. they retain to much water and rot your cutting. use ready plugs or rapid rooters. both made from tree bark. they are both ph'ed and everything grows faster and roots faster in those plugs rather than rock wool. i swear the rock wool changes the taste. you don't want it to stick out of soil. you want soil to cover it. when light hits the top of rockwool or what ever, algae can form and if roots are exposed the roots can die.

i recess the rockwool a little in the first planting , then transplant leaving it raised , then the cubes as you can see from the pic eventually break away and i can pull it out from aroud the stump .i bury the ez cloner roots deep it is when i transplant that i leave thee first rootball raised enough to allow subsequent waterings to wash away the dirt just a little will do alot. i dont promote rockwool use i use a ezcloner almost 100% of the time (i got a few from some bros in rockwool so i added it) since i allow my plants to dry between waterings so algae is never an issue. but listen to noone about matters of choice follow your gut and do what works for you!
ps i added more supersoil around the plant in the pic as it settled more than i thought it would i dont reccomend exposing that much of the roots i just wanted to show the method i feel exposing some at the right point on hardy plants adds to vigour just another tool in the arsenal
happy growing bro heres a budshot from my room four weeks in

when I've had ones like that, they're not as stable in the soil and tend shift in the soil and tend to lean a lot or even fall over

Very good point i should point out that I use tomato cages in my flower rooms to open the canopy and to provide support

I don't use anything unless I have too. I used use trellis nets but they don't work for shit. I'm less than 2 weeks from chopping and I just had to stick in bamboo stakes because the buds are to heavy for the plant itself to hold it up.

When they do shift like that it tears at the roots closest to the stalk. I've had 2 plants die on me a year ago when that happened.