hanuman
Active member
Hi friends 
I have been growing outdoors for quite a few years, and living in an area where the nights are quite humid come september/october time, I usually lose a few buds, if not more, to bud rot. Also I usually grow indoor strains outside, which doesn't help. Here's a very sorry sight of a Swt3 of which I lost about 80% due to bud rot a few years ago.
Anyway, I'm growing some Serious AK47 this year (there is a thread in the outdoor forum, at http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=97922&page=1&pp=15 ) and my generous benefactor who gave me the cuts told me it was quite sensitive to bud rot if left outside without any precautions.
So during the whole season, I've been thinking of a way to build some sort of tunnel or tent around my plant to keep them dry while budding. In my area, there is a lot of strawberry farming under plastic tunnels, but when I looked into it, I found that the prices were quite prohibitive.
Then, on another ganja forum, a grower had used PVC pipes to build a structure for his homemade greenhouse. That interested me, but after working out that I would need 6 meter (20 feet) lenghts for my arches, how the hell was I going to transport these in my 1.80 m trailer ? Then the other day, as I was talking about that to a friend, he pointed out the bamboos growing just outside my front door. Of course! why hadn't I thought about these before. I don't know the exact strain, but they are the giant kind, green ones, some of them reaching 8 meters high, i.e 26 feet!
So the next day, I set myself to work. After cutting the lenghts of bamboo I needed, I hammered six short lenghts of 6 cm diameter PVC pipes (2.5 in) in the ground, to hold the base of my arches.
For each of the arches, I took two bamboos and tied their thin ends together, so as to have 6 meters rods, which I bent to fit in the PVC bases. Next, I tied five more bamboos lengthways, so as to reinforce the structure.
A piece of string on each side to keep the structure from moving sideways and voila...
Total time spent: no more than an hour and a half. Total money spent: zero euros/dollars/rubles/rupies/florins for the structure, then 25 euros for the tarp.
Anyway, enough time wasted talking, here's a few pics:
From this:
To that:
Last night, I covered it for the first time with a 6 x 8 meters sheet of clear plastic (I'll post some photos later) and this morning, when I went to check, the plants were nice and dry, untouched by morning dew or the fog we usually get in the morning too. Now today is a nice day, but we have a rather pessimistic weather forecast for the days to come, so I'm all set for a nice harvest around mid-october.
That's all for now, thanks for taking the time reading
h
I have been growing outdoors for quite a few years, and living in an area where the nights are quite humid come september/october time, I usually lose a few buds, if not more, to bud rot. Also I usually grow indoor strains outside, which doesn't help. Here's a very sorry sight of a Swt3 of which I lost about 80% due to bud rot a few years ago.
Anyway, I'm growing some Serious AK47 this year (there is a thread in the outdoor forum, at http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=97922&page=1&pp=15 ) and my generous benefactor who gave me the cuts told me it was quite sensitive to bud rot if left outside without any precautions.
So during the whole season, I've been thinking of a way to build some sort of tunnel or tent around my plant to keep them dry while budding. In my area, there is a lot of strawberry farming under plastic tunnels, but when I looked into it, I found that the prices were quite prohibitive.
Then, on another ganja forum, a grower had used PVC pipes to build a structure for his homemade greenhouse. That interested me, but after working out that I would need 6 meter (20 feet) lenghts for my arches, how the hell was I going to transport these in my 1.80 m trailer ? Then the other day, as I was talking about that to a friend, he pointed out the bamboos growing just outside my front door. Of course! why hadn't I thought about these before. I don't know the exact strain, but they are the giant kind, green ones, some of them reaching 8 meters high, i.e 26 feet!
So the next day, I set myself to work. After cutting the lenghts of bamboo I needed, I hammered six short lenghts of 6 cm diameter PVC pipes (2.5 in) in the ground, to hold the base of my arches.
For each of the arches, I took two bamboos and tied their thin ends together, so as to have 6 meters rods, which I bent to fit in the PVC bases. Next, I tied five more bamboos lengthways, so as to reinforce the structure.
A piece of string on each side to keep the structure from moving sideways and voila...
Total time spent: no more than an hour and a half. Total money spent: zero euros/dollars/rubles/rupies/florins for the structure, then 25 euros for the tarp.
Anyway, enough time wasted talking, here's a few pics:
From this:
To that:
Last night, I covered it for the first time with a 6 x 8 meters sheet of clear plastic (I'll post some photos later) and this morning, when I went to check, the plants were nice and dry, untouched by morning dew or the fog we usually get in the morning too. Now today is a nice day, but we have a rather pessimistic weather forecast for the days to come, so I'm all set for a nice harvest around mid-october.
That's all for now, thanks for taking the time reading
h
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