[grow nerd]

Took a break from growing for a while, sometimes for personal reasons and and on my own terms; the other times, I had no real control over, or too caught up in life to care. Either way.... I love, and depend on, this plant for a number of reasons, so I'm back at it.

This project was a bit of a last-minute, procrastinated / hesitated decision that I didn't take too seriously in the beginning, that has evolved and progressed into what it is now. It marks my first attempt at both growing in soil and outdoors. I've been putting in a little bit of effort lately to learn and adapt to the differences, but realize I have a long way to go.

So here I am again, interactively learning and sharing my experiences.

[theJointedOne]

nice,

[vostok]

No pics?

[grow nerd]

Of course there's pics. It's not as easy putting up pictures while posting through a phone.

Didn't bother taking pictures while they were smaller, but typical clones that started under a T5 fixture. About half of them got their start in 4" square pots of coco, as I planned on growing them out for moms instead of actual plants to put out; the other half, in Happy Frog. Then a little while later, I decided to cancel this mom thing and just put 'em all out, so I transplanted them all into 2 gallon grow bags of Happy Frog (some are destined for the light dep, some destined for full-term). Here they are under 1000w HPS bulbs, getting their start:



Put one outside to test how she handles the elements, just for a few hours. I remember reading something about how plants will have difficulty adjusting to the full sun if coming from an indoor HID environment, but I didn't seem to notice anything different.



Of course, they got bigger:



So naturally it was time to transplant, for the light dep (DIY PVC hoop house). They were first transplanted to 5 gallon grow bags before the transplant into 20's and 30's, but I don't know where those pictures are. Some of the 5 gallon bags were straight Happy Frog, and some were 2:1.5 mix of Happy Frog & Ocean Forest. I decided to add in Ocean Forest because I remember reading / hearing long ago that there is "more good stuff" in OF than HF, and that OF/HF is a good blend. In hindsight, I think it could have benefited a little by adding more perlite, as both HF and OF seem to be quite dense compared to "light & airy" soils I've seen.

[grow nerd]

That leaves us with these for the full-term, non-dep'd plants:



To serve as a cheat-sheet for this journey, I'm using some pre-existing, long-running threads to serve as point of reference & combined experience of many growers here. Tom Hill's growing large plants, outdoors thread as been particularly useful to me. I'm not even close to being caught up on reading the 600+ pages, but I'll get there eventually. I've also pulled a decent amount of other information from other grow-journal threads that I can't recall right now.

One of the "mistakes" I made (or regrets I have, rather?), that could have been prevented had I read through the whole thread first, was laying down straw as mulch. In the first 60-75 pages or so, everyone was all about the straw mulch. Of course, I wanted to grow like the cool kids on the block, so I bought two bales and scattered straw everywhere like there's no tomorrow:



Then as the page count increased, folks seemed to have tried it and most didn't like it. So of course, I picked up as much as I could, two days after I laid it all down:



All the time I spent laying down and picking up straw, I could have spent reading more pages of that thread to get to the point where it was realized straw isn't that favorable. Measure twice, cut once, they say. The way I did it: measure once, and cut/glue/screw as many times as necessary to make it work. Sigh.

Oh, I'm using mostly Geo Pot's (similar to Smart Pot's, but looks / feels higher quality) filled with North County Bounty's 420 Blend.

I chose to go with the 420 Blend after a little bit of research, mostly forum reports and reviews (not a whole lot, but they do exist). I felt much more comfortable going with a ready-to-use soil rather than mixing my own, as I have zero knowledge of what components do what, what ratios are ideal, what's hot and not, soil cooking time, etc. A few of my options were:

Bulk (by the cubic yard; truck delivery available):

• North County Bounty: 420 Blend ($135/yd; 1.5 cu ft bags also available)
• 4 Seasons: 419 Blend ($165/yd)
• Kinney: NorCal Gold ($90/yd)

Bagged (best I can do is get a deal on pallet quantities):

• Fox Farm: Happy Frog / Ocean Forest mix (2 & 1.5 cu ft, respectively)
• Aurora Innovations: Roots Organics Formula 707 (1.5 & 3 cu ft bags available)

The 4 Seasons and Kinney options were found while researching the 420 Blend, which is available locally. Sounds like the 4 Seasons blend has "lots of good stuff" in it, at least from the view of my inexperience, but they're quite a bit farther away so I chose to compromise and go with convenience (locally available 420 Blend).

From here on, I'll try my best to post links to threads and other pages / sites that I found useful and informative. I know there are probably a lot of things & thought processes throughout that I forgot to mention. I'll try to backtrack and fill in that information when I can remember to. I'll also try to think and talk about all the mistakes I've made throughout this project, and how I could have done it better. Some of them include the materials and design of the PVC hoop house, transplanting and being root-bound, feeding, and more. I just don't have the attention span & focus to cover it all in one post right now.

[grow nerd]

Put some training & support cages around the plants. Using 2"x4" galvanized fencing material. I got the 5'x100' roll (Home Depot, $100) and at first, simply cut them slightly larger than the diameter of the pot, made a tube, and slipped it over the plants. If you look closely at the pictures pictures from the previous post, you'll see I even went as far as stuffing straw in the space between the pots and cage on the black Geo Pot's.

I expected them to grow and stretch a LOT more than they have, but being root-bound (we'll go over that, soon) and the transplant shock didn't help the progress. But they didn't, so I've cut the support cage in half, to 2.5' high. Necked down to the diameter of the pot, starting at the soil level, and put on a top cap as well, a bit OCD but that's how I do. Most ideas originally from Butte's posts, although I've seen training & support cages on many other grows/threads.



In hindsight I wish I would have given them a few more days to recover before slipping on the dep cover (also to be discussed in a future post). However, things had already been delayed up to this point so I didn't want more delays. The concept of "transplant shock" and "root-bound" are quite new to me, coming from a strictly indoors hydro background and zero plant experience prior to cannabis.

Make sure to wear long sleeves and gloves when snipping and working with a lot of wire. Scratches all over my arms and legs.



I plan on going with the 6"x6" concrete remesh for the full-term plants. $95 for a 5'x150' roll from Home Depot. I called around a few other places like TSC, farm supply and concrete supply businesses and can't seem to find anything cheaper.

[COconnect]

Make sure to wear long sleeves and gloves when snipping and working with a lot of wire. Scratches all over my arms and legs.


.[/quote]

I feel ya..

And by the way, quit being captain hindsight. You have a good setup and are reading.

[Greyskull]

nice to see you posting

[grow nerd]

Greyskull been a while...

Let's talk about PVC grades, or "schedules" (SCH##).

I decided to cheap out and get the thinner-walled SCH20 PVC pipes for this hoop house instead of the standard-thickness SCH40 (SCH20 is about 50% price of SCH40). Big mistake, snapped in several places with some strong winds rocking the covered frame like it's a bellow.

It might have worked out okay for the original design of 20 lineal feet arch (originally planned to be 12' wide using 2x10' pipes for the hoop), but now that it's 20' wide with 30 LF of arch, it's a lot less structurally stable even with some light bracing. I guess one loose segment of PVC at the top was flopping around beating around 4 plants during nighttime. Two of them were beat up pretty good, the other two don't look too bad.

Lesson: Don't be unnecessarily cheap. Future-proof. Over-engineer. History repeats self.

If I had to do it again from scratch knowing what I know now, I'd have framed at least the bottom half using wood posts, and possibly still keep SCH40 for the roof arch, or maybe wood as well. For a permanent installation, a commercial metal cold frame would have been given strong consideration.

COconnect, on being Cap'n Hindsight: I'm old enough to know that there's only one way to do something: the right way. But I'm still stubborn/immature enough to cheat, every fucking time. And get spanked on most occasions, this being one.

[grow nerd]

Some pictures of the damage.



Live and learn.