Hey all
Well, it’s that time of year again – spring preparation! Actually, things got started a while back, but are really picking up steam now. First off, everything’s going in the ground in trenches filled with good soil. I have red rock soil that is very compacted and, quite frankly, sucks, hence the trenches. Anyone that followed my grow last year knows I tried to overcome this with containers. This worked to a degree, but left a few things to be desired. Namely:
1) Root space is limited. Even with containers in the 250-300 gallon range, I felt I was limiting growth and when I dug up the containers they weren’t “root bound”, but very consolidated.
2) The containers tended to dry out pretty quickly, especially on windy days.
3) The raised nature had the sides of the containers getting pretty hot in the dog days, and I believe this limited some of the formation of oxygen feeder roots around the outside. This could have been solved with a little reflective foil, but I just never got around to it...
4) I think the containers contributed to the buildup of “nasties”’ from my well water the year before. This year I hauled water and it made a huge difference.
5) Lastly, my plants started at a bit below waist level so almost all the work was above my head...many times I needed a ladder to reach the tops and then even then had a scary time of it. Imagine standing on the top rung of an eight foot ladder precariously balanced on uneven ground surrounded by your entire summer’s work waiting to break your fall.
The Plot
So, this winter I’ve enlarged the space to 45 x 75 feet and dug three trenches perpendicular to the slope of the plot. In total, there’s 75 yards plus of soil made up of the following:
I started with 60 yards of premium worm mix soil (Light, fluffy mix fortified with 20% worm castings, compost tea applied at a rate of 1 gal per yard, chelated minerals, micronutirents, soft rock phosphate, humic acid, and trace elements) and added 150 lbs hard rock phosphate, 150 lbs greensand, 100 lbs Dr Earth Organic 7, and 15 yards of perlite (for a 20% perlite/soil mix). I had all this mixed up for me and hauled in by truck. It took three truck and transfer loads to get it all here and, overall, cost me a large chunk of change. However, I don’t expect to have to add a whole lot for the next couple years, so I look at it as an investment rather than an expense.
The Plants
I started plants inside back in February and had them slowly veg’ing and training as I collected more strains to choose from. This year I’ll be running some combination of the following (alphabetical order, not rank so far):
Bubba Kush
C99
Cheese
G13 x Hash
God’s Gift
Master Kush
Ogre
Purps
Urkle
Snowcap (HS cut…sounds like it might be bunk. I’ve not been real impressed with any of the plants I have)
Soma
…also expected to be run, but not yet in hand is White Rhino x Trainwreck.
There are individual shots in my gallery.
I started things in the garage grow-room and then put them out in the “halfway house” where the smaller cuts got 1000watts on a track and the remainder got the spillover to keep them in veg. This space is 12’ x 12’ and has a roll down cover so the 1000 didn’t light up the whole county!
The Water
The last key to this puzzle is going to be my water and I’m embarrassed to say this project still isn’t done. My water quality is really a weird thing. My iron tests at 1280 ug/L and my manganese came in at 2560 ug/L. As a point of reference, the SMCL (“Secondary maximum contaminant level” means the advisable maximum level of a contaminant in water which is delivered to the free-flowing outlet of the ultimate user of a public water system.) for iron is 300 ug/L and 50 ug/L for manganese. A quick shot to show what 4x the iron and 51x the manganese will do to a plant. This is after a single watering...
So, I did my research and came up with the following system to get the nasties out:
The whole process begins with the ozone. Ozone is really an amazing gas. Ozone contains three atoms of oxygen rather than the two atoms we normally breath. This ‘extra’ atom decays off really quickly and forces other molecules to “flocculate” and settle out. Essentially it makes the iron and manganese clump together so they can settled and/or filtered. So, the well water is ozonated as it enters the system and is distributed through a series of small holes in a pipe about knee-high off the bottom of the 5,000 gallon tank. This will reduce the turbulence in the tank considerably. Remember that we are looking for very still water to get very light particles to settle. When water is not being added via the well line, there is ozone being pumped into the tanks via airstones. This continues the oxidation process within the tanks and further precipitates the gunk. As water is used up from the 1,250 gallon tank, it is refilled from the top of the 5,00 gal tank. The water is best ~6” below the waterline, so there is a floating intake valve to pull from this depth no matter what level the 5,000 is at. This float isn’t shown in the drawing. The series of valves are to ensure total availability of water in the tanks. Post settling, the water goes through a pleated paper filter, then a woven cloth filter, and finally through charcoal. I’m awaiting test results on the finished water, but it looks really good.
So, that was a lot to type up, and I’m stopping there, but the season has definitely started in earnest!
Happy growing all - Butte
Well, it’s that time of year again – spring preparation! Actually, things got started a while back, but are really picking up steam now. First off, everything’s going in the ground in trenches filled with good soil. I have red rock soil that is very compacted and, quite frankly, sucks, hence the trenches. Anyone that followed my grow last year knows I tried to overcome this with containers. This worked to a degree, but left a few things to be desired. Namely:
1) Root space is limited. Even with containers in the 250-300 gallon range, I felt I was limiting growth and when I dug up the containers they weren’t “root bound”, but very consolidated.
2) The containers tended to dry out pretty quickly, especially on windy days.
3) The raised nature had the sides of the containers getting pretty hot in the dog days, and I believe this limited some of the formation of oxygen feeder roots around the outside. This could have been solved with a little reflective foil, but I just never got around to it...
4) I think the containers contributed to the buildup of “nasties”’ from my well water the year before. This year I hauled water and it made a huge difference.
5) Lastly, my plants started at a bit below waist level so almost all the work was above my head...many times I needed a ladder to reach the tops and then even then had a scary time of it. Imagine standing on the top rung of an eight foot ladder precariously balanced on uneven ground surrounded by your entire summer’s work waiting to break your fall.
The Plot
So, this winter I’ve enlarged the space to 45 x 75 feet and dug three trenches perpendicular to the slope of the plot. In total, there’s 75 yards plus of soil made up of the following:
I started with 60 yards of premium worm mix soil (Light, fluffy mix fortified with 20% worm castings, compost tea applied at a rate of 1 gal per yard, chelated minerals, micronutirents, soft rock phosphate, humic acid, and trace elements) and added 150 lbs hard rock phosphate, 150 lbs greensand, 100 lbs Dr Earth Organic 7, and 15 yards of perlite (for a 20% perlite/soil mix). I had all this mixed up for me and hauled in by truck. It took three truck and transfer loads to get it all here and, overall, cost me a large chunk of change. However, I don’t expect to have to add a whole lot for the next couple years, so I look at it as an investment rather than an expense.
The Plants
I started plants inside back in February and had them slowly veg’ing and training as I collected more strains to choose from. This year I’ll be running some combination of the following (alphabetical order, not rank so far):
Bubba Kush
C99
Cheese
G13 x Hash
God’s Gift
Master Kush
Ogre
Purps
Urkle
Snowcap (HS cut…sounds like it might be bunk. I’ve not been real impressed with any of the plants I have)
Soma
…also expected to be run, but not yet in hand is White Rhino x Trainwreck.
There are individual shots in my gallery.
I started things in the garage grow-room and then put them out in the “halfway house” where the smaller cuts got 1000watts on a track and the remainder got the spillover to keep them in veg. This space is 12’ x 12’ and has a roll down cover so the 1000 didn’t light up the whole county!
The Water
The last key to this puzzle is going to be my water and I’m embarrassed to say this project still isn’t done. My water quality is really a weird thing. My iron tests at 1280 ug/L and my manganese came in at 2560 ug/L. As a point of reference, the SMCL (“Secondary maximum contaminant level” means the advisable maximum level of a contaminant in water which is delivered to the free-flowing outlet of the ultimate user of a public water system.) for iron is 300 ug/L and 50 ug/L for manganese. A quick shot to show what 4x the iron and 51x the manganese will do to a plant. This is after a single watering...
So, I did my research and came up with the following system to get the nasties out:
The whole process begins with the ozone. Ozone is really an amazing gas. Ozone contains three atoms of oxygen rather than the two atoms we normally breath. This ‘extra’ atom decays off really quickly and forces other molecules to “flocculate” and settle out. Essentially it makes the iron and manganese clump together so they can settled and/or filtered. So, the well water is ozonated as it enters the system and is distributed through a series of small holes in a pipe about knee-high off the bottom of the 5,000 gallon tank. This will reduce the turbulence in the tank considerably. Remember that we are looking for very still water to get very light particles to settle. When water is not being added via the well line, there is ozone being pumped into the tanks via airstones. This continues the oxidation process within the tanks and further precipitates the gunk. As water is used up from the 1,250 gallon tank, it is refilled from the top of the 5,00 gal tank. The water is best ~6” below the waterline, so there is a floating intake valve to pull from this depth no matter what level the 5,000 is at. This float isn’t shown in the drawing. The series of valves are to ensure total availability of water in the tanks. Post settling, the water goes through a pleated paper filter, then a woven cloth filter, and finally through charcoal. I’m awaiting test results on the finished water, but it looks really good.
So, that was a lot to type up, and I’m stopping there, but the season has definitely started in earnest!
Happy growing all - Butte
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