Frequently Asked Questions

We start with top quality organic potting soil and add earthworm castings, mycorrizhae, organic nutrients, minerals and other amendments – more than 15 in all.

After this, the mix sits in a warm compost tumbler, where it is tumbled daily for several weeks. This portion of the process breaks down the nutrients, distributes the minerals and other amendments and allows a healthy microbial ecosystem to develop.

Next, the mixture is cured and partially dried before being bagged or added to the BudMud SuperPot and SuperPot Pro.

• loads of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium from natural sources (kelp meal, bone meal, Saskatchewan alfalfa meal and others)
• broad spectrum of minerals and trace elements to maintain plant health (ground oyster shell, glacial rock dust, azomite and others)
• rich organics to promote a healthy living soil and beneficial fungi and microorganism development (mycorrizhae, steer manure, earthworm castings and others)
• the right balance of amendments to promote root aeration and water retention (perlite, Canadian sphagnum peat moss, coconut coir)

Nope!

BudMud comes pre-loaded with organic fertilizer.

In our pre-processing, we add and break down organic nutrients via composting. This ensures even distribution throughout the super soil and also helps them to be used more easily by your plant.

To boost your grow and ensure nutrient availability throughout, we recommend applying a compost tea every week or two, and occasionally adding organic top-dressing – but even if you add nothing but water, BudMud contains enough nutrients to sustain a cannabis plant from start to finish.

Mixing soil that is amended to meet the particular needs of the cannabis plant has historically been called “super soil.” BudMud is one type of super soil, although our recipe is unique.

Cannabis growers have been creating super soil for decades. The term was originally coined by a talented California grower who goes by the handle SubCool.

The Grow Weed Easy website has a really excellent article exploring the pros and cons of growing using Super Soil (either a pre-made type such as BudMud or Kind Soil or by making your own) learn more about super soil here.

When a plant grows in nature, there is a complex web of microbes, insects, fungi and various processes that make its nutrient uptake, water usage – and its very growth – possible.

BudMud and the BudMud SuperPot mimics this ecosystem on a small scale to allow cannabis growers to grow healthy, bountiful plants in soil indoors and in containers.

In the excellent book True Living Organics, author The Rev describes this growing method, referring to the soil used as “Supernatural Soil.”

For those of you who want to delve deeper into the science behind this method, the book Teaming With Microbes and its companion Teaming With Nutrients are also excellent and offer a deeper dive into the microbiology behind BudMud and other cannabis-targeted soils.

Kind of.

Cannabis is a demanding plant. It grows quickly (one might almost say like a weed) and in order for her to grow dense, beautiful buds, she consumes a ton of nutrients.

To grow in regular potting soil successfully you would have to add plenty of fertilizer and other additives to grow a healthy, abundant plant.

With BudMud, everything you need is already contained in the soil.

Sure, you could start with regular potting soil and blast it with liquid nutrients – but the nutrients are only part of the story.

The true cannabis plant magic happens because of a rich micro-ecosystem of microbes, beneficial fungi, minerals and available nutrients. This is the purpose of BudMud – to create this little pot of magic to help home growers produce their own cannabis affordably and easily.

You bet! We don’t share our exact recipe for obvious reasons but if you’re a DIY type, the process of making a super soil at home is well documented.

Advantages of Making Your Own Cannabis Soil

• if you go through a large amount of soil, you could save money long-term
• allows you to tweak the recipe (to cater to a particular strain for example)
• it’s fun! If you enjoy literally playing in dirt (as we obviously do – we started a dirt company, after all), making cannabis soil may be your bag

Disadvantages of Making Your Own Cannabis Soil

• getting it wrong can ruin your crop – we tried dozens of formulations before landing on the current BudMud recipe, which is not only lab-tested in an independent agronomic testing facility but also tested with real cannabis grows and proven to be effective
• many of the ingredients can be super difficult to find (jersey greensand, ground oyster shell, azomize, glacial rock dust, etc.)
• getting set up with all of the amendments you need will cost hundreds of dollars and probably many shopping trips
• to work properly, the soil needs to be broken down over a period of about a month, and ideally cured for longer than that – with BudMud you can start growing today

Of course we think BudMud is the best cannabis soil out there, but we are all about supporting the grower community, whether you use our products, someone else’s or make your own.

The BudMud SuperPot is an all-in-one container for growing fantastic cannabis by just adding water.

The SuperPot is a self-contained growing system (okay okay it’s a black plastic bucket but it just seems more impressive when we call it a “growing system”) and includes a few unique features:

• the bucket (sorry I mean the growing system) has pre-drilled drainage holes on the bottom and the lid can be used as a drip tray underneath
• the bottom layer is “spiked” with unprocessed raw nutrients (organic sources of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium) to ensure your plant is well-fed throughout the grow
• the bulk of the SuperPot is filled with BudMud supernatural cannabis soil
• the top layer of the SuperPot is organic, untreated cedar mulch (mulch helps retain moisture and reduce watering) along with a top-dressing of raw nutrients
• included inside is a seedling cup – regular BudMud is much too potent for a young seed or seedling – so the seedling cup is filled with a mellower mix (BudMud cut with peat moss, perlite and coco coir) to sustain the young lass until her canopy (top leaves) are about 4” wide (or equal to the width of the seedling cup)

But yeah. It’s a bucket filled with special dirt to grow special cannabis 🙂

Alfalfa meal is awesome!

One of the most important ingredients in BudMud is 100% Saskatchewan alfalfa meal. Alfalfa is used as an organic fertilizer. It has a unique 3-1-2 ratio (nitrogen-phospate-potassium) and also adds a broad spectrum of vitamins, minerals and amino acids. All of this together makes alfalfa an ideal fertilizer for cannabis and an essential component of BudMud.

If you want to maximize your per-plant yield, hydroponic is the way to go. This is why most commercial cannabis producers grow hydro. When it’s a cash crop, maximizing yield is obviously important.

In almost every other conceivable way, growing in dirt (organic) makes more sense:

• it’s cheaper (a SuperPot and a seed is all you need)
• it’s easier (with hydroponics you’ll need to monitor levels regularly, add liquid nutrients regularly, flush the whole system weekly, etc.)
• it’s just as good or better quality (many users swear by the quality of organic bud over hydro)
• it’s familiar (if you’ve grown tomatoes in dirt, you can grow cannabis in dirt)

You’re not guaranteed to grow big, fat sticky icky ganja with either method on your first try (it’s a plant and plants are not foolproof) but in our experience, organic growing will be less frustrating and more rewarding (bias alert!).

Mostly because of rap music lyrics 🙂

Nope.

Most soils amended for growing cannabis include a lot of bat guano. And for good reason – guano adds loads of nitrogen and phosphorous, both of which the cannabis plant is hungry for.

However, at BudMud we have chosen NOT to include guano, for a few reasons.

The main reason is it’s difficult to source in Canada, and our goal is for BudMud to be 100% Canadian sourced. There are also questions surrounding the sustainability of harvesting from bat caves and the safety of handling guano. No judgement to anyone who chooses to use guano but at BudMud we’ve made a conscious choice to amend using other sources, such as Saskatchewan alfalfa meal.