[Crazy Composer]

I get asked all the time EXACTLY how we grow our plants. So, to make sure the answer is available in it's entirety to any who should ask again, here it is...

The soiless mix we use is called Pro-Mix. It's a great, easy to use and maintain mix. It's basically peat moss, vermiculite, perlite and some lime to control the pH. The stuff is great.

Mixing:
50% Pro-Mix/50% perlite.
This mix provides for excellent drainage and a great place for the roots to live out their days.

Atmosphere: The root zone temperature can make or break a crop. The air temp can get all the way up into the 90's with very little negative effect on the plant, BUT the roots can't handle this heat! One of the most common problems with newer growers is their root zones getting too warm. Don't let the roots get over 75F. These growers show pics of their plants looking like every malformity and deficiency in the book, and their friends try to guess what deficiency it is... IT DOESN'T MATTER BECAUSE THE PROBLEMS STEM FROM A HOT ROOT ZONE. I'm not suggesting that all cases are heat stress, but many are.

Feeding: Organic ferts only for us! We usually feed lightly to moderately with every watering except for final flush. I used to give my girls a break from feeding, but with soiless mix you really don't need to give em a break. Like I said earlier, soiless mix flushes quite efficiently, so the way you water/feed is specifically important to healthy pot.

Irrigation specifics: We use a bucket and a grate to water our plants. The grate is a platform that sits on the opening of the bucket, and the bucket catches the runoff as you water. We want lots of runoff because this runoff is flushing the soil. Try to imagine the rains washing over the roots in nature; imagine the water running deep into the ground, taking lots of nutrients with it... This is what we're trying to duplicate, nature... always.

It takes me about 5 minutes to correctly irrigate one 3 gallon plant. The water is slowly added to simulate rain, not flash floods. Don't just dump water onto the surface of the soil and call it a day... How do you know the water is getting through the soil surface evenly? You want the water to travel as evenly as possible throught eh soil on it's way to the bottom. This even watering helps to chase unused nutrients out of the soil. A 3 gallon pot usually gets enough solution for about 1/2-1 gallon of extra solution to slowly run out of the bottom. It takes about 2 minutes to complete the act of watering, and the rest of the time is waiting for the pot to drain correctly, which means tipping the pot up to let the water drain out. If water is left in the bottom of the pot (especially if irrigated just before lights out) can cause root problems :( So be sure to consider the act of watering to be one of the things that needs lots of work and attention.

Each pot has a plastic saucer to cathc and extra runoff after the pot has been placed back in the grow area. This saucer can be emptied if you notice more runoff has flowed from the soil.

Try to encourage your solution to visit every inch of the soil as it runs through. Tip the pot as you water to get the water to flow throught the soil diagonally, do anything it takes to get the solution flowing slowly but surely through every bit of the root zone.

Transplanting: I personally like to go from the 4" pot to the 1 gallon pot, to the 3 gallon pot.

We put the plant into flowering in a 1 gallon pot, then upgrade to a 3 gallon pot a couple weeks into flowering, once budset is kicking in furiously. One more upgrade to a 5 gallon pot is recommended for even better buds.

When you transplant with soiless mix you need to be sure to fertilize the new soil with a light to moderate feeding of veg formula. This helps the plant stay a little shorter as it goes into the early flower stretch, and puts on some last minute vegetation for food production later in flower. The feedling at transplant ensures that young roots searching throught the new soil have something to eat when they get there. I made the mistake of not fertilizing during our first soiless transplant, and a beautiful plant went hungry for almost a week as we waited for the soil to dry enough to water/feed again. After the feeding she made no further move toward being sicker, but was too badly affected to yield properly :( A first-hand lesson about feeding at transplant with soiless mixes.

What we use and how we use it:
Main nutes...
Veg: Foxfarm Grow Big 1 tsp/gallon
Week 1 of 12/12: Foxfarm Grow Big 1 tsp/gallon
Week 2 of 12/12: Foxfarm Grow Big .5 tsp/gallon and FoxFarm Tiger Bloom .5 tsp/gallon
Remainder of 12/12: FoxFarm Tiger Bloom 1 tsp/gallon

Suplements:
Thrive Alive B-1 - used in every watering except for final flushes.
Epsom Salts - .5 tsp/5gallons for veg, 1 tsp/5gallons for flowering. Used all the time, not just during deficiencies.
PyroClay silicone additive- used whenever my intuition tells me the plant needs a burst of micro and macro nutrients. Once or twice during flowering at dose suggested on container.

Voodoo: Try to have happy thoughts when you visit/work with your plants. Good vibes are better than bad ones.

Drying: The way the harvest is dried is as imporatant to the overall quality of the bud as the way it was grown. The slower the dry, the better. A great dry will take about 2 weeks to complete. Leaving the buds on the stem and hanging the whole plant helps the buds dry out slowly and evenly. Drying too fast is where the troubles come in. There are important chemical changes taking place inside the buds as they dry. Not least of which is the using up of extra sugars (food for the plant that's stored in the leaves, roots and buds). A quickly dried bud will still have a lot of that unused sugar stored and dried inside the buds. Giving the buds ample time to dry allows this bad tasting stuff to change to less distasteful stuff. A slow dry is the first step in a good cure. There are millions of curing methods, so I won't explain our curing method. Buds that are dried too quickly burn harshly and don't burn to a fine white ash. Drying too quickly also can kill your chances of a fragrant and tasty stash :(

I left out lots of little details, most of which are on purpose to keep things short, but if there's anything else you want to know, I'll amend this post to have it all here in one long ass post.

cc

[illdank]

great info,jus what i needed to know thanks crazy composer

[illdank]

how many bags of 50%pro mix and 50%perlite and what size would fill 20 5 gallon pots?i couldnt figure,maybe you can help,if not its cool,thanks.

[illdank]

maybe here?www.gardeningcatalog.com whats the best grow shop in america anyone?inside sun jipped me 6 buckets.

[Crazy Composer]

illdank, I don't know about filling all those pots, it takes math, I don't like math unless I absolutely have to do it

I just mix small amounts at a time by adding, say, 5 gallons of perlite and 5 gallons of promix. If that's not enough, we just mix more 50/50...

[chuckyoufarley]

infomative and that just the stuff i use the promix that is
i been using neptunes harvest fish fert 2-4-1 and budswells bat and seabird guano with worm casting in the liquid form npk
0.50-0.50-0.50
peace burn a fatty

Very good info CC, thanks and someday soon I'll have to try the mix. Seem to work for you

1cu ft=6.4gal=25.7 qts

[illdank]

thanks jungle jim!!

[Crazy Composer]

Hey Illdank! The answer to your question is... 1cu ft=6.4gal=25.7 qts. JungleJim told me so