First Grow - Norcal - Outdoors - 3 plants

Awesome you have most of your bases covered now. "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", you are smart to spray neem before the bugs get on your plants.

Ibechillin said:

That looks fine, i dont think you can add to much in my experience lol.
Down To Earth kelp meal is good, same stuff im using. I mixed 1lb into a yard of soil (200 gallons) at half directed strength (1/4lb kelp meal per 45 gal pot for you). I also plan to top dress and foliar spray with it.

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thanks for yr experience!



three types of kelp in the wild. don't know the product in question.



my experience is that kelp flakes added directly to soil ... when the kelp is a high Potash variety for foliar spraying during flower ... will assist enormous growth but flowers will not develop as they should. just too much Potash.


also burnt a Mango tree when I spilled some kelp in its root zone.


nice to share knowledge with you all! Cheers!

Update.

Topped all 3 plants a few days ago. And I watered a day ago, very lightly. I had a 17 oz bottle of filtered water and I only used half for the 3 plants and all 3 seem to be doing okay.

I plan to move the plants into bigger containers (right now they're in 1 gallon pots).

I also plan to LST soon.

Thinking of moving the plants outside, permanently, sometime this week. I'll build individual, PVC enclosures covered with plastic for each plant during the dark hours.

If anyone wondered why I have so much soil for only 3 plants, I'm going to plant my tomato plants in Fox Farm soil for the first time, and I plan to grow 3 more cannabis plants later in the season once the 3 i'm currently growing go into flower. Also, I plan to light dep the first 3. It depends how fast they take off outside.

Update.

I've been really careful with my watering and everything seems to be going well.

After my last update I started LST. I was a little too rough with the Blackberry Fire and the stem folded a bit, so I left it as is and continued training the branches. I tried a few more times with the stem of the BF plant with no luck. Thankfully the stems have a way of repairing itself and I've decided to stop trying to lst the stem. The stems of the other two plants I had no problems with.

I've also re-potted into much larger pots and that same day the plants started staying outside permanently. This was about 2 weeks ago. I re-potted in a blend of happy frog / ocean forest / worm castings / bat guano / kelp meal / lime / diatomaceous earth / perlite.

The weather has been real nice, mostly in the low to mid 80's.

I started using Fox Farm grow big and big bloom. I'll use them every other watering and see how that goes. So far I used them one time, 2 waterings ago. I'm excited to use that combo again next watering lol. I've also used all the same amendments and fox farm fertilizers for my tomato plants. So far so great!

The plants are getting pretty bushy. Dark green in color. LST seems to be paying off, with what appears to be the formulation of many colas ... lots of vertical growth.

A change in plans?
I haven't built any kind of greenhouse / enclosure for the plants at night. However, once there is a chance of rain, I'll make some kind of shelter to prevent the plants from getting wet.
And I no longer plan to light dep the plants as planned. However, I still plan to grow a few more clones later on in the season knowing they won't grow as big as the plants i'm growing now. I'm thinking GG#4, Blue Dream, and an Indica will be what I chose for the other plants. We'll see how it goes. These plants will go in much smaller pots.

Also, when I first got the clones I used only bottled water with them. Then I purchased a Hydrologic GroGreen Garden Hose Water Filter that I've since been using with all my plants (tomatoes, cannabis, pollinator garden). When I got the filter I tested it out on myself and could notice a good difference in the water compared to the unfiltered faucet water I usually drink. Our water usually tastes like bleach and the filter seemed to remove most of it.

I think that's it for now. I'll get some updated photos sometime today.

Happy growing!

Update
Plants have gotten real bushy and the branches have gotten pretty long. So I've increased the LST.

And I had the wonderful idea that I'd defoliate a bit. So I removed a bunch of fan leaves from all 3 plants. And being the smart guy that I am, I decided to refresh what I'd previously learned about defoliation AFTER I did it to my plants. Uh yeah. So now I wish I hadn't removed anything. Nothing bad has happened, I just wish I had done some recent research BEFORE I removed anything.

Perhaps it's just a noob mistake of thinking that I needed to do something to my plants instead of letting them be.

There was a reply in one thread I found on google that made me think twice about my decision.

"The leaves are not just the gas tanks they are the motor too! The motor drives performance just like a car, more is better that's all there is to it. How many farmers do you see pulling leaves off their crops? How many wives tails are there about pulling off leaves to get bigger fruit? Weed growers are the only people who have some strange ideas about how to make bigger plants and buds.

Some people skipped this class in high school, leaves have Stomata on them and they drive the growth of your plant, the more the better. Learn more = grow better."

So at this point I'll just let them be! They were growing great. Nice and dark green. Feeding them Fox Farm grow big and big bloom every other watering. No issues whatsoever since my over watering / gnats issue.

Also, I had the urge to do a 2nd topping but i'm not. From this point on I just want to cruise through veg into flowering. The only thing I need to do is re-pot the plants from their 10 gallon plastic containers, into the 45 gallon fabric pots which I might do in the next few weeks. Sound about right? I still plan to let nature take it's course with the flowering but we'll see since I can't let the flowered plants grow above fence level.

About to transplant into 45 gallon fabric pots ....

Here's what they look like now.

I have a question before re-potting into the 45 gallon pots..

My plan was to make a mixture of 1 bag happy frog, 3 bags ocean forest, a little kelp meal and approximately 12 lbs of worm castings in each pot (i have a 37 lb bag).

Recently I purchased a 50 lb bag of Bio Live fertilizer since I wanted to use it when transplanting / re-potting my other non cannabis plants.

Bio Live
https://www.downtoearthfertilizer.com/products/blended_fertilizer/bio-live-5-4-2/

Would I be able to use this bio live fertilizer mixed in with all my fox farm soil? Or would this be too many nutrients at one time?

I also have 0-7-0 bat guano I was planning to top / side dress closer to flowering. And or mix into the soil.

I also have about 150 gallons of organic compost I could use in the mix.

Any thoughts?

For some reason the pics I uploaded in post #26 are no longer displaying.

I'll try it again in this post.

Are my plants starting to flower? The growth where the buds will be has started to change. To me it seems like it's starting to form buds but I'm a noob. I expected to veg them out in bigger pots another month before flowering.

Alrighty, then.

So I re-potted the plants into their 45 gallon fabric pots yesterday. Not really knowing at this point if my plants are starting flowering or not I researched and read that it's safe to re-pot in the first few weeks as long as you're careful with the root ball. Usually when I re-pot any plant, I usually loosen up the root ball and work out some of the soil but I didn't do this last night out of fear of stressing them too much because I'm not sure if they're starting to flower. At this point, i'm not so sure now.

Any ways.

So here's what I did for each plant:

Ocean Forest - 3 bags + extra on top to level the surface
Kelp Meal - 1 Cup
Worm Castings 12ish lbs (1/3 bag)
Bio Live Fertilizer (5-4-2) - 2 Cups
Bat Guano (0-7-0) - 5 Cups
Lime - 3 Cups
Perlite - 3 Gallons
Diatomaceous Earth - 3 Cups

I didn't use Happy Frog as I intended. Originally planned to use 1 bag per container but I didn't take in consideration all the soil attached to the plants in the big plastic pots I re-potted from.

Note to self: Re-potting 3'x3' plants from big plastic pots is none fun. Next year, use 3-5 gallon pots before the final re-pot. lol.

24 hours after the re-pot all 3 plants look happy.

Pics of plants in the plastic pots looked really healthy, and yeah it appears they have started flowering by the way the pistils (white hairs) are forming in clusters at the tops of the branches. Dont worry about not using the happy frog soil, the bio live fertilizer has a good amount of beneficial bacteria to take its place. Your soil mix looks good to me, Looking forward to more updates through flowering.

Ranstedt said:

Note to self: Re-potting 3'x3' plants from big plastic pots is none fun. Next year, use 3-5 gallon pots before the final re-pot. lol.

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This is why i suggested transplanting into the 45 gallon pots sooner lol, last year i went from a seed starting pot indoor -> 2 gallon pot indoor -> once rooted into the 2 gallon pot it went into the 100 gallon pot outside. In my experience plants will veg much faster when put into the large final container earlier.

My plant last year went out at 1ft tall with no side branches on may 7th into the 100 gallon pot.

Picture of plant day it went out (may 7th):


Picture of plant 24 days later (may 31st)
3ft tall and about 3ft wide

Ibechillin

Thank you for stopping by again.

Since it is flowering, do you think I went overboard with the nitrogen? The combo of bio live + OF + castings isn't too much?

I mixed a lot of phosphorous into the soil ... when (if any) should I add liquid fertilizer? I used grow big + big bloom for veg and I had it planned to use tiger bloom for flowering. But since I got a late start on the final re-pot, I don't know if I should just ride it out with what's already mixed into the soil. I could also top dress some phosphorous in a few weeks but I don't know if that would interfere with flushing.

Next season I'll put my plants in their final pots in May instead of mid July lol. I put these plants outside fully until June.

Thanks.

The ocean forest and castings have minimal nitrogen and the bio live nitrogen is slow to release over time, should be alright.

Liquid nutrients are typically made to be available to the plants roots immediately/quicker than the amendments take to break down. The tiger bloom would be good to use through flower for a readily available source of phosphorous and potassium while the new amendments you mixed in break down and become available to the roots.

Since you have been feeding with liquid nutrients through veg (and are thinking of tiger bloom for flower) i would recommend you flush like normal. The flush is to try and get rid of whats leftover from the bottle nutrient's salts in the soil.

Alot of people suggest organic amended soils that are not fed bottle nutrients/salts don't need flushing, so i dont think the top dressing would affect anything (if you meant to add more guano 0-7-0 for example).

Thank you Ibechillin

So I went ahead and got some Tiger Bloom and more Big Bloom. I'd been using big bloom + grow big for veg, so I figured I'd continue with the big bloom for flower.

I have a few questions if anyone can help?

Is this something I should worry about? Is it mildew? I noticed it after I sprayed my plants with neem oil. I think I sprayed a little too late in the evening since it took a while to air dry.



And are these bugs bad? I've noticed them more frequently lately.




Thanks

Yeah that does look like powdery mildew starting on the leaves. It needs moderate humidity/stagnant moisture on a plant to form. Chances are it was already on the plants before spraying this most recent time. (PM spores are carried to plants by the wind)

Neem is recommended to help prevent and dispose of PM, When was the last time you sprayed neem on the plants before this?

And the small bug looks like a spittle bug/frog hopper, from what i looked up they shouldnt affect your plants much.

They look good. You don't have to always chase a problem. If you are feeding or watering regularly and that is the worst of what you see on the plants then I wouldn't worry. Try using a foliar kelp with yucca or something instead of just neem.

Ibechillin said:

Neem is recommended to help prevent and dispose of PM, When was the last time you sprayed neem on the plants before this?

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Thursday or Friday.

Thanks for your help.

Mengsk said:

They look good. You don't have to always chase a problem. If you are feeding or watering regularly and that is the worst of what you see on the plants then I wouldn't worry. Try using a foliar kelp with yucca or something instead of just neem.

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I'll look into using a kelp + yucca spray with the neem i've been using.

Thanks for the suggestion.

After researching I had it planned to buy these products:

HydroDynamics Europonic Nitrozime
BioAg Ful-Power
Yucca Extract Powder

But after a little more reading I read you might want to stop foliar spraying by the 2nd week of flower so the buds don't taste like what was sprayed into it.

Regarding powdery mildew, I just read on ilovegrowingmarijuana that I could start trying to remove it by using a paper towel dampened by water and wiping the leaves. I took it one further and sprayed my neem oil mixture onto a paper towel and wiped the few leaves I saw that have white discoloration. So I'll see how that worked.

If I see the beginning signs of what might be powdery mildew and I do nothing, won't the plants be in risk of getting moldy buds?

Yeah its not recommended to spray after the first few weeks of flowering.

And yes, if you dont do something to halt its progression it can spread on the plant/potentially get on the other plants.

Wiping it off with the damp neem paper towel should help, and since you arent spraying anymore it will give the plants leaves a chance to dry out good to halt the PM from spreading any further.

Sweet. I'll just continue using the paper towel w/ neem and see how that goes.

I put it in my notes for next season to start the foliar spray combo I posted above as soon as I get my clones.

Thanks