What's new

2011! Wassup good people!

Zarezhu

Zarezhu

Member
Hey all,
I been lurking forums for the majority of my free time the last few years, and I'm ready for this years outdoor season! Live near sacramento, california (NORCAL BABY) and am gearing up for a legal backyard grow at a buddys.

I'm in the process of going through Tom's "growing large plants outdoors" thread for the second time, trying to get as much knowhow before I plug my plants outdoors this year (first time outdoor growing).

I'm under the wing of an experienced grower, whose been growing pot outdoors for for 30~ years. However, he is nothing compared to what I see on these forums right here.

I feel like I should have posted this months ago as I'm trying to have as close to a successful outdoor this year as I possibly can, but sometimes you smoke a little too much of the lovely herb and you put things aside for another day. And again. And again. Lots of days.

He has his yearly 10 plant garden which has been taken care of for years and years with plenty of compost and amendments and always has managed to keep his rent paid for the last 5 or 6 years just fine. MY garden will be an extension to his, the fence brought out farther to make room for my 6 plants. However, its all grass right now and the soil under it has no nutritional value for my babies.

My first idea was smart pots. I have access to a pallet of soil which I will be using. Either in smart parts, or digging up the dirt and rototilling the pallet of soil in a nice soil bed for the 6 plants. I love the smart pot idea, but having to order the shallow ones just seems like just a hassle. Plus the mentor is kinda stubborn at heart and doesnt see any benefits to using the pots when I could plug directly into the ground.

What should I do? Smart pots with a pallet of Fox Farm Ocean Forest (roughly 700 gallons of soil I believe, only enough for the 100 gallon smart pots), or buy some RoundUp, kill off the weeds and grass, dig 24" holes for the plants and just dump the soil in there?" The reason I'm saying Ocean Forest is because it is readily available at my local hydro store and seems like it could do me some good. Of course I could add some perlite, chicken manure, bonemeal, maybe some lime/gypsum. I'm fairly certain I could also get Roots Organic from the hydro shop if I pay a bit more, but I don't have any experience with their soil let alone a coco based medium.

My goal is for all 6 plants to be at least 2 pounders. I have plenty of proven and outstanding clones at my disposal, I plan on rigging the supplemental lights to get the most veg outa the plants I can. Your views on this?

Sorry for the length of this post, but I have a tendency to be very thorough in anything and everything I attempt. I wanna do it right the first time and with the least bit of complications. Believe me there will be plenty more questions, as well as pics this season ;]
 
Zarezhu

Zarezhu

Member
Another idea. I could get 2 pallets of Home Depots Kellogs Plus for the same price as the pallet of FFOF. Guess it has chicken manure worm castings and kelp. I could dig 200 gallon holes for each plant instead, deeper and wider. Or preorder the 18" tall 200gal smart pots ;]

Kellogs Plus / FFOF at a 2:1 ratio would be 150 gallon holes.

Figure I'm gonna be giving the plants lots of liquid nutrients for bloom anyways, the "cheaper" soil should probably work just as great, yeah?

I feel like I'm making too big of a deal about my own soil recipe but then again I'm not even getting into any of the science behind the soil, I know all you good people can relate :p
 
doublejj

doublejj

Member
Veteran
Good luck bro, I'm in Sac also.

I'm going with smart pots this year & a mix of FFOF & Happy Frog.

Check out my carport greenhouse grow (link below)

peace
doublejj
 
Slangheat

Slangheat

Member
Sup mayne, bout 30 min outside of Sac here!

I expanded my outdoor grow to take up all of my precious lawn space last season.... I opted away from the airpots to save some cash, even though I had to replace all the soil I dug out.

My yard is on ancient riverbed, so when I dug up my grass I was basically dealing with tons of sand with a hardpan of clay under. After manually removing the pebbles, rocks, and driftwood, I realized I had a gopher issue. So...

Dug out 3'x3' holes about 2 feet deep. Got some hardware cloth/gopher wire to create baskets that fit snugly along the walls of each hole. Made a mix of Roots Organics 707 mix - added in lots of EWC, Dolo Lime, Guanos. Since I was dealing with a lot of sand in my native dirt, I decided to go without the perlite. Fed with compost teas. With lots of care most plants come out to be better quality than most indoor you'll find in the 'lovely' sac area clubs... lol.

This year my holes are still filled with the same dirt, going to dig out 1/3 from each hole, and replace with new ammendments and compost. For my 3'x3' holes I will dig them out to nearly 4'x4' this year, and then be adding smaller airpots on top of the holes. Each airpot will be 2.5'x2.5' at about 15 inches high. Part of this is because my damn gopher seems like he'll be going apeshit crazy in the yard this year, and I don't want to depend on the full depth of each hole to grow my roots if his ass is going to invade the space. The other reason is that I'm just curious to see the results with 'the best of both worlds' from the airpot/ammended holes combined.

Heres my new favorite place for dirt: http://www.thewormfarm.net

The guys at the wormfarm at just about 5-10 min south of Chico (Durham). The old man over there is great, can't remember his name at the moment.
 
Zarezhu

Zarezhu

Member
Nice. Do you have the shallow 18" smart pots ordered or are you using the regulars? I'm still debating on whether or not to order the pots. Another question. Why are you choosing smart pots this year? It seems that you had a very successful harvest last year in-ground and that the smart pots would just raise the plants giving you much less vertical room. I'm probably just gonna end up using 5' x 18" holes per plant and filling it with the Kellogg Patio Plus soil. A pallet of the FFOF would run me about $600, were a pallet of Patio Plus is under 300 and it has chicken manure, worm castings, kelp meal, and bat guano. I plan on adding quite a bit of perlite, gypsum, and possibly bone meal to the holes.

Hopefully they grow just fine, although the pots definitely do seem like a good idea. Just haven't had anybody convince me on them yet haha.

I just read through your whole 2010 thread, freakin beautiful bro. That white widow clone is a beauty, I'm jealous. On my search for some great outdoor genetics for this year :] Do you think you would have pulled much more weight with amended holes 4x the size you used on those monsters?

So far, here are my clone ideas for this year.

I have a bubblegum I picked up from a local club a week or two ago. They say it's the sativa pheno, and my clone is SUPER branchy and pretty narrow leaves so it looks like it'd be a killer outdoors. I'm gonna flower one indoors within a week just to get a feel for the strain before I put her outdoors.

Also have true Alaskan Thunderfuck. Needless to say, I want at least 2 of these plants outside this year. Maybe even 3 (in a 6 plant garden). Super branchy, doesn't need topping to maintain the "bush" shape. Narrow leaves as well, and the high/taste/look of ATF is just incredible.

For the other 3 plants I'm not too sure, lots to chose from. Need something more indica as well. Seeing as how purple is in such high demand over here, I'm probably gonna throw in a Luscious Purp (Humboldt purp x Meno purp cross) or even a sweet tooth (oh so tasty). Probably a NYCD as well.

Maybe a blue dream, but the mentor of mine had one last year that grew okay, but didn't bud out nicely. Somewhat disheartening.
 
Zarezhu

Zarezhu

Member
@slangheat - I hear you man. Most of my outdoor growing friends SWEAR by organic outdoor bud. You take a nug and sure it's darker colored, not as crystally, and not as dense as them sexy indoor buds, but it'll get you ripped like no other. Everyones always bashing the clubs concerning lack of potency in their BEAUTIFUL buds. I respectfully disagree with most people as I love indoor club weed, but I'm definitely not as seasoned a toker as any of these good folk neither so maybe they're onto something :p

I heard about the worm farm. It just seems like suuuuch a far drive though. Quick look at the website and I could get a cubic yard of 80% compost 20% worm castings for $60. Would cost me under $200 to fill 6 large holes. The downside is I'd need to make a good three trips out to Chico >< Might have to go there though just for the bone meal/crab meal/oyster shells. Enticing.

I bet you get much higher yields with the 4x4 holes. How much weight were you pulling per plant last year and what strains did you run?

Glad I don't have to deal with gophers though
 
Slangheat

Slangheat

Member
Zarezhu said:
@slangheat - I hear you man. Most of my outdoor growing friends SWEAR by organic outdoor bud. You take a nug and sure it's darker colored, not as crystally, and not as dense as them sexy indoor buds, but it'll get you ripped like no other. Everyones always bashing the clubs concerning lack of potency in their BEAUTIFUL buds. I respectfully disagree with most people as I love indoor club weed, but I'm definitely not as seasoned a toker as any of these good folk neither so maybe they're onto something :p

I heard about the worm farm. It just seems like suuuuch a far drive though. Quick look at the website and I could get a cubic yard of 80% compost 20% worm castings for $60. Would cost me under $200 to fill 6 large holes. The downside is I'd need to make a good three trips out to Chico >< Might have to go there though just for the bone meal/crab meal/oyster shells. Enticing.

I bet you get much higher yields with the 4x4 holes. How much weight were you pulling per plant last year and what strains did you run?

Glad I don't have to deal with gophers though
Click to expand...

Yea I hear ya on the drive.

Last year the holes were 3'x3' and 2'ish deep. Green Cracks in each hole because I had no coverage for the later rain season over the yard garden, this early strain was brought from inside garden to finish early Sept. Not the most impressive yielding strain so your results may be better: I got anywhere from 2-2.5# per plant. One was close to 3.5 and she got the best sun each day. Keep that in mind too!

This year I'm going to expand the holes to 4x4, with an airpot about 15inches tall above them.

Since we're talking yield make sure you have a plan for them caterpillars. I used BT this past season with great success.
 
Zarezhu

Zarezhu

Member
Slangheat said:
Yea I hear ya on the drive.

Last year the holes were 3'x3' and 2'ish deep. Green Cracks in each hole because I had no coverage for the later rain season over the yard garden, this early strain was brought from inside garden to finish early Sept. Not the most impressive yielding strain so your results may be better: I got anywhere from 2-2.5# per plant. One was close to 3.5 and she got the best sun each day. Keep that in mind too!

This year I'm going to expand the holes to 4x4, with an airpot about 15inches tall above them.

Since we're talking yield make sure you have a plan for them caterpillars. I used BT this past season with great success.
Click to expand...

Wow those are some nice yields for a hundred gallon hole with green crack, hopefully this year is just that much better. The smart pot idea is interesting, you're gonna leave the bottoms empty though correct? Seems like it would work superb if the roots grow through the pot and directly into the soil bed underneath.

Definitely gonna plan for cats too. The location I'm at has had yearly 15-20 pound harvests with maybe 10 or 20 caterpillars found during the trim, but even 10 cats is 10 cats too many haha.

Me, I'm only hoping for 1.5# a plant. That would allow for plenty of funds for my winter indoor sesh, even at our ridic cali prices ;] Can I get more than 1.5? Definitely. But this being my first attempt at outdoor, I'd be happy even with just 1 per.

onthaherb said:
I've heard Air Pots are superior to Smart Pots because it eliminates root circling... But as a hydro grower I couldn't tell you for sure.

http://www.amazon.com/Superoots-8-0...5?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1297888389&sr=1-5
Click to expand...

I've heard the air pots are superior as well but it can't be because it eliminates root circling because the smart pots do that too. They prune the root tips soon as they hit the oxygen which encourages lateral branching of the roots opposed to circling.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Latest posts

Top