True Living Organics - The Ultimate Guide to Growing All-Natural Marijuana Indoors (2012)

Both bird and bat guanos always need to be composted before use; hot composting is always best if
possible. When handling dried or fresh bird or bat guano, you should always wear a respirator mask,
which is designed to keep fungi spores out of your lungs. Things like dried-up chicken guano can
really cause you huge problems if you inhale it. There are some nasty fungi that like to hang out in
dried bird and bat poop, so wear your mask anytime you mess with it. Please get a good mask, as
many of the things you will be mixing, like perlite, can be hard on the lungs without having anything to
do with fungus. A higher quality mask is a must have, and the slightly higher cost will seem negligible
when you realize how dangerous such things can be. In my opinion, the painter/surgical-mask type is
not good enough.
Manures
Manures are great for TLO growing. I love to use steer manure in the lower areas of my containers
mixed with coir, perlite, and crushed oyster shells. As with bird and bat guanos, you always want to
use hot composted manures, as using fresh manure can easily kill your plants. Hot composting kills
any evil microbial life that may be lurking in barnyard manures and wild manures especially. Regular
slower styles of composting are all good, and normally just fine, as long as you know the animals
who donated the manure are very healthy. Still, it’s better to be safe than sorry, so always hot compost
if possible!
Sup R Green chicken manure by Stutzman Farms is a favorite manure of mine
Shredded bark mulch
This is a very important part of any living soil mix, period. Avoid anything from a walnut tree here,
and cedar bark is still questionable to me for indoor use. Always try to locate composted bark mulch,
preferably shredded, because it will cause there to be less decomposing of that mulch and will
therefore preserve some of the nitrogen that would otherwise be temporarily unavailable to the plant.