Nomaad's Outdoor Adventure 2009 v1.2

Hey all. I'm a newb. Not only to this forum, but to marijuana cultivation in general. I am also newly of Northern California. New new new new noob.

But I promise, I'm not fucking around. I am, however, prone to rambling. I'm going to be a crazy old fucker some day.

I have been in exile for the last five years. Been hiding in a Central American cloud forest, mostly concerned with raising my human babies and, on the horticultural tip, all things bamboo.

Early this year I realized that, with the other wing of the neo-fascists firmly in control of the federal government, there would never be a better time (legally speaking) to make a contribution to the world of medical cannabis. Its a medicine that I have passionately believed in for a long time. being a guy who gets bored of ANYTHING at about the 5 year mark, me and the willing wife found some good friends to house-sit the cloud-nest for a couple of years and headed for her native state of California.

I left the family with the in-laws and their 4 televisions over 40" in socal and headed north to stake out a claim. For three weeks, I got up earlier than every other motherfucker that was lurking on craigslist looking for a place to grow and found a pretty amazing place for the family and for growing. All it needed was 450 ft of "we're just a family who likes to frolic naked on our slip and slide" fencing before we could get our seven pallettes of dirt delivered.

Good friends provided us with our genetics, some already close to rootbound in 3 gallon pots. Some not so much.

Being my first time, I've made a number of mistakes and nature has fucked with us pretty heavily. The three weeks immediately following transplant to their smartpots were cold and cloudy. So before they could fully recover from the transplant shock (I should have watered them in with more B's, Bennies and Catalysts to shorten this process) the weather started almost everything flowering to different degrees. So... the best wisdom I could acquire from Covelo to Cobb was that I had a choice between letting and helping (N and hormones) the plants revert to veg and lose a week or two, or plucking off the flowers and losing a week or two. I chose the latter.

So the plants got all f*cked-up looking and a bit stunted and are, just now coming back. I feel like a crucial 2 weeks of growth was lost. And that makes the baby jesus cry. I'll get over it.

Lesson learned. Next season I will be in control of my own genetics from my own moms. They'll be weened off the halides to perfectly mesh with the natural light cycles at the time they go out.

Anyhow... here is the grow. 18x65 gallon smartpots in 2 light deprivation hoop houses. 6mil black plastic and DuraTarp Silver Sun Blocker. Tarp pulled at 8am and 8pm. 10 days in and they are looking great. Early flower pornography at the end of the pics below.

Strains are Sour D, Headband (not the real deal Chemdog #1), True Headband (real deal clone only), Grandaddy Purple, Bubba Kush, and 3 strains called "Maui" "Blueberry" and "Skunk" that are not what they are called, but I have seen them all grown out and they are all great yielders that have the qualities that their names would suggest. The "Maui" is a particularly sick looking plant that I would love to ID.


vigorous growth of the mystery "maui"


These pots are filled with a 2:1 mix of Roots and Roots 707 mix.


Light Dep A

lite dep B

Bubba Kush @ 10 days 12/12 lite dep





There are 18x200 gallon smartpots that will go the full season.

(2) AfPak
(1) Og Kush (Tahoe cut)
(1) Headband (Diesel #1 cut)
(1) Trainwreck
(1) Blue Dream
(2) Bubba Kush
(1) Grandaddy Purple
(2) Grape Ape (Kyle Kushman cut)
(1) Razzberry
(1) Berry White (clone only- very special pheno of Paradise seeds White Berry)
(1) "Blueberry"
(1) Sour D
(3) "Maui"- turns out to be the Goo

Here's shots of some. Strain names are below the pic they refer to. They look a little strange because they were denuded of all of their early flowers and they are all just bouncing back into normal vegetative growth. There have been a couple of substitutions in the full summer side of the garden. There were a couple of plants that fought hard to keep flowering no matter how many times they were deadheaded or how much N i fed them. So we stuck em in the light dep and subbed in some other plants... they have yet to really settle in.



BlueDawg


Bubba Kush


Headband


Razzberry

There are also 18 smartpots out there filled with veggies and the same potting mix as our light dep. We originally had 36 in the light dep but the sheriff came and made us take some down. Them's gonna be some siiick heirlooms in that soil.

Anyhow... that will do for tonight. I'd like to talk about nutes. For now I will just include an image of my nute collection. You will probably be like "what the fuck" but thats ok, cuz even i am like "what the fuck" when I look at it. "what the fuck" is written intentionally without punctuation. I am not sure if its a statement, a question or an exclamation when I say it. Funny, that. I have a good friend with a grow shop who just gives me stuff. I guess I have to pay for it at some point, but the guy is a mad scientist and pulls down crops like no other. So if he says a little of this and a little of that, I'm listening this time around. Its a great opportunity to try a lot of things and figure out what works and what is bullshit.



For instance, I have a theory about beneficial microorganisms... assuming that "you can't overdo" the bennies, you should should use a ton of different products. Some of my research suggests that no matter which of these products you use, with no matter how many different strains of MY, TR, BT etc, only a handful of these species will survive and will consume the others in doing so. If that's so, it would follow that the more species you put in, the stronger will your final four super-species be, having beat out the last 4 super-species...

I am here looking for constructive criticism. If you think I'm doing something wrong, or you'd do it differently, let me know. I just wanna learn how to grow good medicine.


the pixelated pixie, the floating pants and chocolate lab we'll call "The Scion"


night falls

nice set up bro .....looks like the girls love it....and ur strains are greet

u will have a lot of trimming to do in a few month...sticky fingahs

pecae

the garden is looking great man, lookin forward to watchin you finish this year out, i see your workin with all the local strains that have been rollin around recently, but definitely lookin forward to seein that berry white finish out, ne ways take it easy and puff er easy

Looks excellent brother, despite the early flowering...had to deal with some of that fun stuff here as well. It can be tough to get em to veg right away, especially if they're already of some size when they go out. Some actually say it makes for bigger plants if they start to flower for a week or two in may then revert...

Some fun strains you're running there. Bet that bluedog is some chronic And I'm hearing great things from my folks on the berry white, should be some super tasty blueberry smoke.

Your light deps look good too, I gotta pull tarp here soon, as you'll probably be doing as well. I need to get some braces between the hoops on my setup like those I see you have. What exactly did you use and is it just screwed into the PVC?

I dig your attitude and determination. Reminds me of a good friend back home... I'm sure you'll learn a lot this first year, but it looks like things are on track for a nice pull. I'll be checking on your progress and shooting the shit for sure. Tarp time...

Just got in from pulling tarp.

The braces between the PVC are 7/8" Hat Channel with self-tapping hex screws to fix it to the PVC. I used it instead of simple wood lathe because it does a good job of overlapping itself to extend its length... if that makes sense. I'll run out and take a photo.

I forgot to take a pic of how they overlap... but you should get the idea. Let me know if you need futher pix.






And here is a couple of Berry White shots I couldn't help but take while I was out there. They are just off the stems, to show the colors that are coming out on that lady. She is for sure one of the plants that I will be taking cuttings from to preserve a mom for the winter indoor shenanigans. So far the keepers are True Headband, The Tahoe OG (I already have a mom of the Fire cut in a 10 gal) and the Blue Dream. I'll probably clone most of the gentics out there, just in case something suprises me later in the season, but I can tell you for sure that those three ladies will be with me for a long time to come.

Buddah and Dimebag... thanks for stopping by and showing support! Hopefully I won't botch this whole thing too badly.

Headfuck of the day: major feeding of both sets of plants.

My concerns for the Lite Dep 18 (LD18): Am I still in the "transitional" phase, or should I start feeding full-on flowering nutes?

Right now, I am planni9ng on feeding them:

Base nutes- either Botanicaire pro Bloom or Baicor Pro Bloom
Humic Acid
Fulvic Acid
Advanced Nutrients Bud Candy (flavor and aroma enhancer- has some fruit extracts that are suggested to be essential)
Roots Trinity or Liquid Karma
Silica Blast (I want to keep my stems strong since they are going to be getting heavy)
HygroZyme- dissolves dead matter. What could be not-good about this.
Maybe some Nirvana Bloom enhancer... or some Floralicious...

Now... I'm having a general problem with feeding... It was so cool after I initially saturated my pots, and the Roots OG soil I am using is great at retaining water (apparently,) So I really only have to water every 10 days...

It was suggested to me by a truly A+++ indoor/outdoor/greenhouse grower that I not mix my beneficial microorganisms with my base nutes. So... how the f*ck am I supposed to get them in there? I can't foliar microorganisms and expect them to get into the root zone.

In my original post, I talk about the Battle Royale of Microorganisms that I am trying to promote in my rhyzosphere. I am having trouble getting all this expensive shit into my soil.

Is it true that if you make a slurry of soil and water and put in some bennies, they will multiply, thus saving hundreds of dollars on overall promotional costs for the Battle Royale?

Any thoughts that anyone has on this would be appreciated. I'm going to feed the lite dep at about 7:30 tonight when it starts to cool off and before we pull tarp. I'll post in a bit about my thoughts on the Full Season 18.

Hat channel looks smooth...I get what you're sayin about it overlapping. Thanks for those photos.

Re: feeding headfuck; with that much going on I'd be hf'd too I like to keep my shit organic (flavor and aroma enhancer ) No liquid kelp in that nute barrage? Good source of K for yer stems. I'd think about brewing up some 55g drum batches of compost tea (28 cups compost or ewc/55g). Should take care of the humic/fulvic acids and lk. Unless your battle royal of mykes all explicitly say 'granular' you can add them to water for a soil soak. In a tea, they should be added at the very end, right before applying. I should say though, that using endomycorrhizae along with chemical ferts is quite possibly a waste of time and money. Chems destroy fungal hyphae by sucking the cytoplasm out of the fungal body.

I gotta go setup more dripline before it gets unbearably hot. Good luck, hope the head gets to feeling better

Nice job nomad, doesnt seem like your a newb to me at all man. Those plants are gonna be monsters! Good luck!

Very, very nice, you're in for quite the learning curve on your first year! Great attitude and determination man, that's half the battle right there!

Glad you got this thread up and running, I very much look forward to your success.....

Chalk up another 2009 monster mash!



PS-- Having heavy clay soil where I live it is also a challenge when it comes to soil moisture management and avoiding overwatering. One thing I do is consider my irrigation in two phases. Deep watering and surface watering. Deep water is about every 10-14 days and the surface is usually every couple days. It might help to try and employ something like that in your scenario where the pots are holding so much moisture down deep. That may free you up to incorporate your beneficials during the "shallow" waterings that you do more frequently.....just a thought I had that may help you bro! I do the same thing indoor in 15-20 gallon pots...seems to work great....

nomaad said:

I'm a newb. Not only to this forum, but to marijuana cultivation in general.

Click to expand...

lol....a pretty good one :smile:

Best growluck bro


P

Thanks for the info. I like the idea of the top/deep watering... do mu nutes today in a deep watering, wait for the first three inches to dry out (2 days) and water in a top dressed swarm of bennies. I think that is just what I will do. Thanks a lot.

Fisher- if what you say is trua and my nutes are killing my bennies, then I'm kinda screwed on that front. I will eventually migrate to a 100% organic process, but I'm going for max yield this time around. Moving the whole family from Central America was not an inexpensive endeavor and i need to come out on the other side of this grow in a good position. At that point I will be growing only what I would smoke myself. Purity and passion will come together at that point. I have a couple of Blue Dream clones veging at a friends that I will be growing indoor. I'm going to do a 3 plant vertical grow around a single 600HPS in a cooltube... 100% organic "superflushed"... for the head meds. I am going to experiment with a sealed cabinet that can be inexpensively climate controlled and can be bombed with Co2 to the tune of 8000-10000ppm for controlling pests as all my research suggests that this is the only absolutely foolproof method of dealing with insects.

Thanks all for your encouragement and advice. I have already tweaked my process and my plans for the future based on your comments, so keep em coming.

fisher15 said:

Looks excellent brother, despite the early flowering...had to deal with some of that fun stuff here as well. It can be tough to get em to veg right away, especially if they're already of some size when they go out. Some actually say it makes for bigger plants if they start to flower for a week or two in may then revert...

Click to expand...

I was thinking about this in the car... makes perfect sense that if they start to flower, they also go into stretch mode to whatever degree the genetics and conditions promote. So, veg-stretch-revert-veg-stretch is going to yield more, so long as the extra stretch is greater than what you lose during reversion... makes sense that it would be because some strains will double or more during the transitional period.

That reminds me... When it comes to today's deep feeding should I treat my lite dep plants as if they are in flowering or transitional stage? They are 11 days in and the flowers look, mas o menos, like the ones in the original post. Since we began pulling tarp I have been giving them half veg and half bloom on the base nutes. Should I go all bloom now?

Wow great ramble and great plants!

Wow, lookin good! Definitely taggin this one... keep up the great work. Thx for sharing! K+

fisher15 said:

Hat channel looks smooth...I get what you're sayin about it overlapping. Thanks for those photos.

Re: feeding headfuck; with that much going on I'd be hf'd too I like to keep my shit organic (flavor and aroma enhancer ) No liquid kelp in that nute barrage? Good source of K for yer stems. I'd think about brewing up some 55g drum batches of compost tea (28 cups compost or ewc/55g). Should take care of the humic/fulvic acids and lk. Unless your battle royal of mykes all explicitly say 'granular' you can add them to water for a soil soak. In a tea, they should be added at the very end, right before applying. I should say though, that using endomycorrhizae along with chemical ferts is quite possibly a waste of time and money. Chems destroy fungal hyphae by sucking the cytoplasm out of the fungal body.

I gotta go setup more dripline before it gets unbearably hot. Good luck, hope the head gets to feeling better

Click to expand...

re: liquid kelp. The Roots Trinity and the Liquid Karma are derived from kelp, I thought. I'll look when I go out there. I'm open to a kelp extract... I'm thinking of doing an alternating organic feed later in the week. A top soak of the first few inches that dries our every day, with my bennies and an organic feed. If I see an amazing response, whop knows, i could totally rehab the whole crop into Orgasmicness.

I do Have a big ol bottle of Vegan Compost Tea from GH. I don't want to buy anything else and I can't see "Weed Santa" coming over again with another trunk full of nutes. I'm hoping to get the most out of what I've got at this point. I'll make you a list of all my OG products and maybe you can tell me what you'd do on a desert island with them. If you're game.

nomaad said:

Hey all. I'm a newb. Not only to this forum, but to marijuana cultivation in general. I am also newly of Northern California. New new new new noob.

But I promise, I'm not fucking around.

Click to expand...

You didn't even need to mention you weren't fucking around. The pictures say more than a 1000 words. Didn't need to say newb either. Could have just said, I'm here to kick ass and chew bubble gum.............and I'm all out of gum.

Nomaad- I'm sure you did them fine, but at 11 days in I'd say they're out of transition and onto light bloom nutes.

And sure, let me know what organic goodies you have to play with and I'll give you my two cents. Just looked up roots trinity, and I guess it includes kelp extract, among other things. Probably a good product but not pure cold processed Norwegian ascophyllum kelp like maxicrop, algamin, kelpak, etc

Are you doing any foilar feeding?

Oh yes. Lots of foliar feeding. Specially thru the cold weeks that came immediately after the soil's first crappy soak with plain water. Brought a couple of heavily shocked ladies back from the edge with foliar feeds.

Now that I am about to get aggressive with feeding, I will be doing even more. My next Feed is going to be organic. I am going to use the Roots Catalyst and some Earthlink 3-3-3, which is like thick tamari-sesame salad dressing and some of that Vegan GH Compost Tea I mentioned. I am going to top dress with some mixed bennies and water in with the nutes. I'll make you a list of my OG nutes tomorrow and you can tell me if you'd do it different.

I just got done feeding everything. Each 60 gallon pot received about 2.5 gallons of a 1100 ppm solution. The 200's got about 5 gallons each. The plants were all fed around the center of the pot. Does that seem like enough? I realize that eventually the root ball will fill the pot (one would hope) and the water consumption will be much higher.. but for now? I feel like the part of the pot with the most roots is getting soaked thru to the bottom... seems about right.

My feeling, from inspecting many root bound plants, is that the roots first grow straight down and then kind of wave out and then back in... So I am assuming that that they are now growing strainght down. Sometimes I can't help myself and a sort of dig inward from the edge of a pot, very gently to see where the roots that its shooting sideways begin. (I would LOVE to grow in transparent plexiglass pots so I can watch the root action.) Last time I did that, a plant that was showing really vigorous growth didn't have a whole lot of roots shooting out horizontally, so I can only assume that the growth is sort of downward and out from the center like a parabola or something.

Oh yeah, I did wind up going with a light application of bloom nutes. I threw in something with a little bit of N as well, mostly because I'm seeing some bottom leaves yellow up and I am not emotionally prepared for that yet. I went light on the base nutes because we're half-way to the full moon. if my range is .5-1.5ml/gal, I did about .75ml/gal.