Etta's Farm 2015

That's Etta, and while I may pay the bills and have the only set of opposable thumbs between us make no mistake that she's the boss of this whole operation and I only work to serve her.

This spot just kind of fell into place and will serve as the jumping off point for making sure that the needs of the patients that allow me to grow for them will be met in this upcoming 2015 season without having to risk life, limb and legal issues in the now overly oppressive Butte County.

Here's a few random shots of what I'm "inheriting" at the new spot... as you can see I'm already "in the weeds", so to speak and it will be an ass-busting few months of prep coupled with simultaneously trying to pull tarp, but Etta is entering into her third outdoor season as a grow-pro, plus with me consulting and a cast of characters that'll probably never be revealed I'm sure we'll make the most of it.





The fenced in area is only 70x55 and will likely either be expanded or as soon as the plans for subdividing the parcel are approved I'll likely just build a fenced in area twice as large.

All day sun on terraced southern slopes with 3+ yard mounds and all starts for the full-sun garden will be from seeds out of these recent grabs.





I guess it's a good thing I'll be doing seed starts.... it gives me the next month to do some good old fashioned hard work while Etta sips lemonade and chases birds.

Ready, set, grow!

Oh, I just noticed this photo that got lumped into the new album I created... this was probably Etta's smallest full-term from last year... about 4+ of some early flowering Hindu Skunk.

nice spot Bo, you doing 6 plants? what size are those smarties?

Nice seed line up! Looking forward to what you find in those South Fork packages.



dank.Frank

dank.frank said:

Nice seed line up! Looking forward to what you find in those South Fork packages.

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As do I. As do I.

I got to spend a fair amount of time talking Backyard Farmer's head off on Saturday and him and springfed definitely pointed me in the right direction as far as what to select for on a few of the strains.

Realistically, I'm not going to be able to run even half of that stock in this garden this year. At least if I don't want to make myself crazy.

I'm confident enough with putting out all the DOG bx and having a fairly homogeneous crop.

After that, anything is possible, but more than likely I'll only be running 6 strains total. The Royal Kush from Aficionado has been taken to F9, so I feel like that one is another sure bet. As are the 2 Wave and Maximus... after that it gets real hard to narrow the rest down to just 2 strains. I'll surely want to leave the 91 Chem for indoors next time I run lights. The 3 South, Red Hindu And the Cherry Bomb are all calling me, but then so are the In the Pines and 5'g Red F3's. And then there's always the chance for me to do a complete 180 come late March... Tough stuff, y'all. But like I said... Etta is really calling the shots though I know she's all go on the Maximus when I told her what a handsome fella he is real life. Maximus is a dog before anyone makes this any weirder.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with man!

Thanks for all your support !

tagged

tagged

Great piece of land you have there!
I love watching you outdoor guys work. Here for the rest of the show. Good Luck!

StanKDanK said:

nice spot Bo, you doing 6 plants? what size are those smarties?

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Yeah, 6 sounds about right.

Those dumb pots are 12 300's which the previous owners filled with FFOF and supposedly fed with only GH's Veganics line. It'll be dumped out and tilled into the native clay along with some gypsum and compost. Then, I'll come back in with about 60 yards of some used soil from my other spots. Then till that under again and finally another 50-60 yards of fresh Tom Hill mix on top and by then I should be close to where I want to be.

At least that's the plan.

Been getting a lot of "fake work" done this week as I like to call it.

I thought I had another 2 weeks before the 2 10-yard dump trailer we'll be using to move dirt would be available, but turns out guy wants to go on Monday.

So, I adapted... it may seem a little crazy that I went ahead and amended them today, knowing that by Tuesday they'll all be scooped up and combined in the back of a dump truck. BUT, I can be a little OCD and because when this soil gets dropped off at Etta's Farm it'll be getting split between the current fenced area and then new fenced area, so my rationale in OCD-land is that at least it'll all be pretty homogenous and for me it's easier to use an auger or a hand twister inside those pots as opposed to just trying to till it under.



I normally amend these pots every year with 5 pounds of Dr. Earth 5-5-5, but at the end of last year I was slightly lower on calcium than I wanted and higher in K than I wanted.... so, I'm going to try the 5-7-3 just to experiment, and where I normally amend with 7.5 lbs of oyster shell I'm tilling in 10 lbs. of Oyster plus mixing in the remainder of a few bags of gypsum. I also would normally just dump in a few bags of Bu's Blend Malibu Compost or some EWC, but this year I kept with Tom's chicken shit theme, but the place was out of the regular 3-2-2, so I decided to try out the pelletized Nutri-Rich at 4-3-2... I combined 4 bags of the Nutri-Rich with 2 bags of the 3-2-2 for 250 lbs. of product... I basically gave every 300 gallon pot 10 lbs. of pellets/manure. 2 lbs of azomite/rock dust combo, kelp and alfalfa. I also planted a legume cover crop over winter thast I turned into the soil 2 weeks ago.

This "normal" amending has normally kept my soil where I like it, and soil tests pending I won't be doing anything other than watering in one more big "enzyme" treatment comprised of some bulk pond clarifier/cleaner/enzymes and some "proprietary" (haha) blends of different powdered enzymes I've picked up from the brew shop and found to be beneficial in eating up those last remnants of root matter.



This compost tumbler is a joke when it comes to making compost, but I like to use it to blend up amendments, so I can just weigh out from one homogenized mix. IMO, that's the only thing they're good for on my farm.



Ran out of Oyster shell on the last 10 holes due to my dumb math.... gotta head back up and finish those off tomorrow, water in and then monday start taking some stuff that's already been amended, watered and dried some.... probably won't take these 24 pots until Wednesday, but then they're off to their deluxe apartment in the sky!



Had to cover up some pretty telling info on my hat and look what sticker I found floating around the car!!! REP YO HOOD IN 2015, y'all!!

Those are some of the dumb pots I was giving a good working today.

Etta does a dog gone great job

Garden looks great for having nothing in it yet. I know you mentioned it earlier but just to be clear, What's the soil recipe you are using?

looks great cant wait to see that terrace filled with 8ft trees
how much dose your beautiful lab weight? i have a cute mouthy little black lab mutt that makes life worth living

Cayenne said:

Garden looks great for having nothing in it yet. I know you mentioned it earlier but just to be clear, What's the soil recipe you are using?

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Well, the two new gardens at this new spot (the current fenced area and a soon to be built slightly bigger fenced and terraced area) will as of now basically be a little bit of a soil lasagna, but it's go something like this...

*Native soil (which is surprisingly fertile and not your standard red North California clay) will be amended with a thin layer of gypsum and composted manure of some kind... probably Bu's Malibu Compost because I can get super sacks of it. I'll then run the tiller the full 70+ feet on each terrace and break up that native soil and blend in the gypsum and poop.

*Next, I'll come back in with an even (as even as you can get in this world) mixture of the 20+ yards left by the short-lived tenants of last season of what I've now found out to be Sanctuary Soil's "Victory Brand Potting Soil" which they used nothing but EWC teas and GH's VEGANIC schtick on. These guys are excellent indoor growers but from their meager 25 lb. harvest last year, which was also due to an early July start, I can almost guarantee the soil is still pretty charged, but I am waiting on the results just to be sure before I use it at all. Anyway, I probably won't amend that soil, but will give it a nice injection of beneficial nematodes and Action-Iron or Actinovate before I dump it out onto the terraces and till it in.

*Then, the 36 300 gallon pots I amended this weekend, plus about 5 leftover yards of comost/castings from the Earthworm Soil Factory in Chico will then be moved to the new spot and split equally between each garden, where once again it'll be evenly dispersed across the terraces and tilled into the layer underneath it. This dirt is mostly a "Tom Hill mix" that used EWSF dirt mostly, along with some Coco Loco and Dr. Earth Garden mix pallets as the base instead of Black Gold. I also used 50/50 fish and bone meal instead of all regular bone. I also did 50/50 gypsum and oyster shell because my well water was reasonably low on carbonates and hovered around neutral pH. Tom's mix is a pretty guaranteed way to get pretty darn lose to the ratios we always talk about on these boards... Albrecht that is... CEC at around 65% Calcium, 15% Magnesium, 4% Potassium, and 1% to 5% Sodium.

I think a lot of folks on the boards and cannabis farmers in general would agree that more like 70% Calcium and 10-12% Magnesium is more better, but you get the picture. Anyway, can't find any old soil tests except for something called Vina Gold I used back in 2012 and laughably it doesn't even hint at Albrecht... it just says, "Nitrogen: GOOD, Phosphorus:FAIR" and that sort of shit... funny. But I remember that the last soil test I had done about 2/3 of the way through flower said I was a little bit more like %60 Calcium and 8% Potassium.... which is in the ballpark and all, but still, we can do mo' betta, me and Etta!

So, all the re-amending materials are what I would normally use on soil I new to be basically dialed and the rates at which I use them always tends to work out. This time, though, like I said... I wen't with an extra 2.5#'s of OSP and went with Dr. Earth's 5-7-3 just to cut down a little on the K. Which I should've made clear I also cut the normal amounts of kelp and alfalfa from 2#'s each to 2#'s altogether. As soon as the tractors scoop it all up and it gets a little more homogeneous from the move an re-dump I'll send it off to the lab just to double check I didn't create a fertilizer Bomb.

*And now, enough about the OLD dirt! I'll have roughly 75 yards of older and re-ammended soil as a "base layer" of sorts, but then to make sure all these babies get those 3+ yards I keep harping on I still need at least another 75 yards plus some leftover for my deps.

So, last year I used my amended Tom Hill mix and as long as you follow Tom's foliar rec's or find something that does a pretty similar job in terms of your own foliar brew, then as many have said by the start of stretch I could tell the planets had less than a 1/4 tank left, so I applied a top dressing of more OSP, compost and Dr. Earth's 4-10-7. And that was it! I did a few teas each month, but it was more just for peace of mind. The plant's were super health.

This year, though, I won't be doing any of the mixing it's going to take for that much yardage. I'm pretty committed to having the EWSF blend up a Tom Hill mix for me, but there's a slim chance I may opt to go with the NorCal grower's blend which caught a lot of flack on here last year and I feel like it wasn't Dave at EWSF or the dirt, so it would just make me giggle to use it the way Dave recommends as opposed to nilly-willy fertilizing and top-dressing, and show this board the soil's true power, though BYF already presents a pretty good case study on that. But probably just stick with what I know...

Per 300 gallon


per 300 gallons

*1 full cubic yard plus 10.5 cubic feet of a ewsf blend of their premium blend plus

Contains Proprietary Blend of our Compost, Earthworm Castings, Worm Juice ( Liquid Castings ) that adds immediate beneficial soil microbes as the Castings release microbes over time, Chelated Minerals and Trace Elements, additional Calcium, Organic Soil Optimizer designed to maintain beneficial microbes.

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@ 37.5%, a 50/50 mix of coco coir and peat @ 37.5% and 25% 5/16" lava rock.. and maybe a pinch of biochar if I'm feeling froggy. This is the equivalent of 25 1.5 cu. ft. bags of Black Gold.... and probably better honestly.

*2 bags of nutria-rich 4-3-2 pellets (though 2 is simply a guess based on the weight of the bags compared to the #4 25 lb bags of their 3-2-2 poultry litter and compost... need to do the math on that one)

*8 cubic feet of "aeration" amendments... chunky #4 pearlite at 50% and the other 4 cubic feet of calcined diatomaceous earth, decomposed granite, lava, something... although, i'm still trying to reasearch that one more. either way i like double the amount of pearlite tom uses.

*50 lbs of bonemeal (50% 4-20-0 fish bone meal and the other 50% 3-16-0 steamed bone meal)

*10 lbs of gypsum and 10 lbs of oyster shell

annnnnnnddddd maybe, just maybe I might add small amounts of crab meal and neem meal for some of their respective benefits, though I'll almost positively just do a good top dressing of Dr. Earth's 5-5-5 pelletized and homogenous blend of Wild-caught Alaskan Fish Bone Meal, Wild-caught Alaskan Fish Meal, Valley Grown Alfalfa Meal, High Country Feather Meal, Naturally-mined Potassium Sulfate, Aged Bat Guano, Cold Water Kelp Meal, Mined and Micronutrient-dense Colloidal Soft Rock Phosphate, Nutrient-rich Cotton Seed Meal, MicroActive™ Micronutrient-rich Seaweed Extract (synergistically boosted with 11% micronized humic acids for maximum bioavailability.)
plus all his fancy, champion strains of microbes at transplant and once again call it done for the most part except my regularly scheduled 3x week foliar program... Every Sunday is IPM with a revolving door of organic and natural pest deterrents, Actinovate, Serenade, regular Bt-k and spinosad really no more than 3-4x in a season but absolutely no more than 6 unless NEEDED, Potassium Bi-Carb, etc... then one day a week the plants get my current Brix Mix "replacement" which contains EJ Catalyst, PPD 15-1-1, fulvic acid, aloe vera, a tsp. of Dr. Bronner's per gallon, epsom salts (mag and sulfur, baby! gotta keep those sugars and smells flowing), sea crop (though i'm messing around with sea-90 right now), EJ Microblast (alternating weekly), always some form of silica/silicon, normally something like PHC bio-pak and a myriad of other things from time to time... and lastly 1x a week, though sometimes once every 2 weeks I hit them with Calcium-25, after which I normally feed them a tea the following morning that can consist of EWC, steer manure, kelp, neem, alfalfa and molasses among other things

Dr. Earth's founder, Milo Shammas, may be a bit of a dill weed, but he really has been an innovator and a part of the reason why the whole shift back to more organic practices has become so popular. I haven't met a Dr. Earth product that I didn't like, yet. Even his 2-2-2 Vegan mix made for a fantastic "ghetto tea" especially when it contain's 6% dried sugars, oat flour and other good microbial food sources. I even tried their "behind the counter" POTting soil and while it was completely overpriced, out of the bag it took a plant all the way through on water alone fairly well. Much better than I expected, though way spendy.

And that in a nutshell is part of my "secret"... and really folks there is no dyed in the wool 100% guarantee that what works for me will work for you.I've had garden that were only 300 yards apart on opposite sides of the road behave completely differently even with the same strains and cultural practices. So, I'll talk about what I use, but I don't want to get bogged down in recipes. The best advice I can offer if anyone even cares is to take what you want and leave the rest.

Well, the 6 AM rooster has crowed, so it's off to the races for this good ol' boy. No rest for the wicked... man, I wish the Big Plant thread was still going. It was so much easier to keep up with the Joneses that way!

Oh, and the 6 finalists have been narrowed down to Long Valley Royal Kush, In the Pines, West Coast DOG BX, Maximus (WCD x Chemdawg bc3), 2 Wave Hold Down and the Trinity County Cherry Bomb (even my mother picked out this packet and asked/TOLD me that I would be growing it for her since she likes a good pie!).

Though, I'll probably pop the 3 South and possibly the Red Hindu Kush as alternates (or really just extras, let's face it. I like pot.).

chefbudz said:

looks great cant wait to see that terrace filled with 8ft trees
how much dose your beautiful lab weight? i have a cute mouthy little black lab mutt that makes life worth living

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The only terrace that should be filled with just 8 ft trees would be Royal Kush terrance and even then I'm hoping I can push them up a little taller than that!

Haha.

My beautiful Nubian Princess named Etta is actually more like a lab/pit/german shepherd/ straight hill dawg mutt. I wouldn't have her any other way. I've always adopted mutts or stray, though in her case she was born a couple years ago right on the farm and while I initially had another puppy from her litter I had my eye on, she stole my heart and then when her mother quit breast feeding mostly just her for some reason I fed her with a bottle for the next 4-5 weeks and we've been thicker than thieves ever since. Most of my friends know it's a given if they see me driving up that Etta is about to come diving out a window... and she's the BOSS anywhere she is, and she doesn't let you forget it ever. But anyway, she's basically hovered at 80-85 the last year since we got her spayed. She can definitely be the only reason I have for getting out of bed some days when I'm full of self-pity and want to play the "Woe is me!" game. She normally cheers that right up in no time though, too. I love her. Wouldn't trade her for a billion in cash and I'd probably shoot the motherfucker that even asked and sleep better knowing I'd done it.

YEAH, my dog is that important to me. It's a little nuts, but whatever.

We love our dogs too that's why we have strains named max and Margo ... Margo was my partner at south forks black lab that we treated for months with BHO and lost recently but will never forget

I just realized when I signed in that it had almost been a full month since I last even signed in or really looked at icmag, much less updated this thread, save for uploading a bunch of random photos last week in the middle of the night.

It's been a long month of swashbuckling up and down 99, I-5 and every dusty and craggy goat herding trail from the Sierras to the Coast Range and back again. Yet, I feel more behind than ever... I should probably take a break from mass cloning and seed-popping and maybe see if I can clone myself or at least cruise the Home Depot parking lot and find some cheap day labor.

But things could be worse I reckon. Here are a few random pics from the last month... I just got back into town and picked up some Pro-Mix and a bunch of seed flats. Tonight is the night I drop all those lovely beans I got last month and start the search for the 25-odd plants that will be the focus of this thread, at least. I'll try and snap some shots of that thrilling process tonight when I make them up.

This was probably taken the night all of these clones got transplanted from 1's and put outside... around 3/1. All of these are bound for the hills in the next couple of days to meet their final resting spot and started being tarped.


I don't know why I'm so enthralled by these fan leaves, but I am. This is allegedly a cut of KC Mango that a friend brought me over winter.


More of the future Golden Tarp winner(s). JAY-KAY!


What you see right here is pretty much the "secret sauce" to my native soil amending, plus a shit ton more peat that isn't pictured, but I put 18 of those peat totes (about 2 cu yd) down per newly lengthened terrace to 140, thought only a 10 ft x 120 ft swatch of earth was actually tilled and amended on each 18 ft x 140 ft terrace to take into account the future shadows that will be formed once the fencing is back up all around. Basically 150 lbs of Nutri-Rich pellets, 50 lbs. of Dr. Earth 5-5-5, 2 cubic yards of peat, 200 lbs. of Gypsum, plus the contents of the original #12 300 gallon smart pots left behind by guy I bought it from and about 200 lbs. of Bu's Blend was spread and then tilled into the silty-clay soil to about 6"-8" over the length of each terrace. I then went back in with a few yards of so of my old trucked in soil and worked it in... everything is pretty much staked off now and as soon as the light del is settled in work can resume on getting the mounds ready and primed for 6/1.


I'll try to remember to upload some of the riveting sowing of the seeds shots later tonight, but first my back has an appointment with a hot shower and a couple hours of couching.

Cool update. I popped a bunch of Max and South Fork Kush for our full term and green houses

are those going to be full terms? or dep'd?

wow. looking beautiful!!

sweet set up. will you sell me your dog?

but seriously though this is impressive i will stick around