The growing large plants, outdoors, thread...

[Veg N Out]

Im still using black gold natural and organic if I need to use bagged soil.

Some stuff in the ground with heat, lights and cover May 1st thru 7th, everything else ill put in june 1st to 7th with lights

 

[OrganicBuds]

seeds April/May, clones June 1st.

Edit: Does anybody have seeds out that don't have sup lighting? I was about to throw my first batch of seeds out this week, with the great weather and all. I still haven't set up an area for lighting in my outdoor grow. I also can't grow 10' tall plants in my yard, so no reason to start things too early.

 

[mapinguari]

OB, I have a light dep from seeds started March 10th, they're now plugged in their bed under a hoophouse with males to be rogued as they appear. No sup lighting on them.

 

[theJointedOne]

Seeds dont need supp lighting if planted in the spring.

 

[DreamsofTesla]

I decided to go nuts and get some Dr. Grinspoon, with the six-month timeframe and all, so I'll be putting those in cups tomorrow.

 

[nomaad]

Im still using black gold natural and organic if I need to use bagged soil.

Some stuff in the ground with heat, lights and cover May 1st thru 7th, everything else ill put in june 1st to 7th with lights

what are you using for heat? I am thinking about putting a loop of Pex between each pot and a layer of foil/bubble/foil... connected to an on-demand propane water heater.

 

[Yes4Prop215]

does anybody use drip lines or irrigation? I hand watered both greenhouses last year and it was a lot of work, as I was carrying 5 gal buckets of RO water from the house...I dont want to carry water again, so I was thinkging about buying a 500 gallons rez and just throwing a sump pump or something in it...I would hard pipe the lines with PVC I suppose....??? I was thinking I could just put a t valve in the line so I could hit one greenhouse at a time. Any body have something similar or care to share your method of automating the watering.

Were getting spring fever here in the mitten and Im getting excited....been brewing teas and pouring them into the 65 gals from last year, figure I'll use the soil again this year to start the 150's and add new amendments....

Also I have some mothers I cut in january, do you think theyre too old to put outside and veg all summer? I know some people prefer young plants, So im going to set them in the greenhouse for two weeks and see which ones are going the hardest, then make my decision from there..... Good vibes to everybody and happy spring!!!

everytime i put a mother outside i regret it....they always stunt growth and since they are older are more prone to root rot and other stuff. i had 2 foot tall plants in beer cups end up yielding more than 5 foot tall mother plants in 10 gal pots after putting them into 200s.

and yea hand watering with 5 gal buckets! thats a bunch of un-needed work, even for a small indoor operation you want to use a res/pump at minimum.

its good to have both irrigation AND hand watering....i learned that from ganjaD....use the irrigation to keep the plants wet during regular waterings, and then once a week use the water pump connected to a hose or wand and spot feed them with a tea or custom feed..

im planning everything for june 1-10th this year....last year stalled until june 21st on some plants and definately wont be doing that again.

 

[OrganicBuds]

im planning everything for june 1-10th this year....last year stalled until june 21st on some plants and definately wont be doing that again.

That mean your running all clones this year Prop? What about those bog beans you talked about doing again this year?

 

[Madjag]

Seeds Don't Need Supp Lighting

Seeds Don't Need Supp Lighting

seeds April/May, clones June 1st.

Edit: Does anybody have seeds out that don't have sup lighting? I was about to throw my first batch of seeds out this week, with the great weather and all. I still haven't set up an area for lighting in my outdoor grow. I also can't grow 10' tall plants in my yard, so no reason to start things too early.

As Map and The Jointed One said, seeds planted directly into the ground are starting naturally in response to the actual photoperiod of the date they germ and rise up. Since they have not been held in suspended, longer-than-natural lighting conditions prior, like when you start them under fluoros and have them at 16 hours on and 8 off, they will grow vegetatively the way nature planned it until the length of daylight hours peaks and starts to shorten, thus signalling the flowering stage.

It's the starting under artifical lighting conditions indoors that messes with a seed's natural time clock. A neighbor friend of mine has plants that popped up early this spring as volunteers from an accidental seeding last season. These plants were 3 feet tall already in mid-April, growing perfectly fine and now ready to blast off. They were under a rolled-plastic greenhouse from Jan-April and are now out in the open.

 

[CanniDo Cowboy]

Every year about this time, the search for the Holy Grail of soil begins. Bagged? Bulk? Custom blends? Amendments? Not so much for accomplished growers as they already have their soil process down, but it seems the less or non-experienced growers believe that if they purchase "magic" soil, somehow, the required knowledge to actually grow quality meds wont be necessary. And that growing region and relative climate are mere afterthoughts. Kind of the same thing with strain selection, as if 2 growers in 2 completely different geographical locations with different levels of growing expertise, are going to experience the same results when growing the same strain.

Here's the unspoken truth and the often times discarded reality of med growing soil. Bagged or bulk, it is only going to be as good as the first season or cycle it is used. A top quality or high-tech gro-engineered bag soil, after week in and week out of constant watering (leaching) will be basically reduced to...just soil.

The same for bulk. The best of the best custom blend, while it makes us feel good about our yield prospects when we are spending upwards of $200.00 a yard, after a full grow season, will not have the same level of quality it started with and that we paid dearly for. The value or existence of most all of the custom added amendments ie; alfalfa meal, bone meal, kelp meal, guanos, dolomite, oyster shells, green sand, glacial rock dust and on and on, including soil enrichers such as worm castings will have been depleted primarily thru the process of leaching. It's pretty much how ANY gardening operation works whether it be vegetable garden, flower garden, orchards etc.

So, we have a choice. Buy into the commercial soil game by purchasing new, fresh soil every year or learn to amend the soil we have already purchased or God forbid, we might want to consider rolling up our sleeves and creating a repetitive seasonal sustaining soil by using our own native soil as a base. IMO, I dont believe their is such a thing as "worthless soil". With proper amendments, care and patience, just about any soil can be made to be productive.

I have played the soil game. By that I mean I have spent thousands of dollars with the beginning of each new season. I started out with pallets of bagged soil. From there I moved up to hi-tech, premium bulk. What I discovered was (using common sense as a guideline) that at the beginning of the following season, my hi-tech soil,whether bagged or bulk or both, having been first literally hammered with a heavily nitrogen enriched regime and then changed dramatically 3 to 4 months later to a flower producing regime consisting of massive amounts of P and K, not to mention the application of gallons and gallons of exotic, root twisting teas, could not possibly be of the same quality as it was when I first opened the bags or dumped the first yard.

So I learned to amend. I enrich my depleted soil before and after every season. With care and attention, I rely on Mother Nature over the winter months, to restore what I so greedily extract thru the summer season. For me, purchasing soil every year is not an option. Its more of a myth we as growers have perpetuated into a requirement. A requirement that just isnt true...CC

 

[GoldFieldSeeds]

I would agree CC, although I am not an expert or experienced tree grower, common sense and a litle thought saved me some headaches........I mix many different components for my mix including a very important part, my native clay soil, which after the 1st season is ready for re-amending only, no pallets of soil or trucks up and down driveway, just a few truckloads of amendments and a lot of hard work and hours in the am, and my mounds and breathable pots are good to go.
Its all soil at the end so why keep wasting money every year, amending does wonders and is much easier on the wallet!!

 

[ickyweed]

are there special irrigation pumps? or do you use a sump pump from HD? im looking at a 500 gal rez and I can just use a garden hose and sump pump I suppose...it wouldnt be automated....but it would be much easier than carrying buckets. I might use a timer and 1/2" irrigation lines, and fully automate it...still pondering that.

Look into blumats, I have no experience with them but have seen others use them successfully gravity fed.

 

[nomaad]

are there special irrigation pumps? or do you use a sump pump from HD? im looking at a 500 gal rez and I can just use a garden hose and sump pump I suppose...it wouldnt be automated....but it would be much easier than carrying buckets. I might use a timer and 1/2" irrigation lines, and fully automate it...still pondering that.

I am not sure that Blumats are really feasible for serious outdoor gardening. I would be interested to hear what somebody with experience has to say.

Your main line between pots should probably be 3/4" and the drip lines on the pots 1/2".

You need a multi zone sprinkler timer (Hunter Pro-C or the newer one with the same features for much less cost), Pump Relay (also Hunter), Your choice of pump, Baccara or Rainbird Valves for each of your zones and poly tubing with either inline drip tubing or sprayers or a combination of the two. All of this is available at Dripworks.com. Add a couple of Dosatrons to that setup and you won;t even have to mix nutes every week.

voila: full automation. spend the time you would spend watering doing more profitable things. I use the same kind of system with some tweaks for indoor flood and drain and large scale outdoor gardens with excellent success.

YesProp: i asked u a q in my second to last post... did you amend your VermiFire? is it more perlite that makes it more porous than HF/OF?

 

[TheSilverMullet]

Last year for my bagged soil I went with Black Gold Hy-Porosity in some beds and the Natural and Organic in others. Hy Porosity needed no additional perlite in fact it almost had too much for my liking so this year it's all Natural and Organic for my bagged soil needs which are pretty minimal as most spots will consist of a mostly re-amended soil. Did FFOF/HF for years with no complaints but it's become more of a pain in the butt to get it in my area lately.

I told my self I wasn't going to dep again but here I am with a bunch of two footers in 5 gallon air pots getting ready for an early may planting. I'm formulating some ideas about tall posts with pulleys on the unattached side of the structure to give the rope a better angle for pulling the blackout plastic over the 50Lx14Wx8H greenhouse. We'll see how that goes.

Veg room is getting crowded and it's time to start picking the final candidates for the long season grow. BD will get a few holes as always and the Strawberry OG proved worthy of a couple as well . Blackberry Kush and Sour Royal have been doing well inside so they will get a chance in the Dep and long season this year. I'm still hunting for an early finisher that won't get too tall for the front row of the GH. The nugs of GDP that I've seen coming out of hoops just up north had me really interested but I've yet to secure a cut and now it's likely too late for this season.

I did get some cuts of Pineapple Wreck but I'm afraid the thing will want to get too massive just judging by how it's structure and growth is so far. Might have to boot a Blue out of the middle row to give the Pineapple a fair shot.

Anyone else got a sore back?

 

[GanjaRebelSeeds]

I am not sure that Blumats are really feasible for serious outdoor gardening. I would be interested to hear what somebody with experience has to say.

Your main line between pots should probably be 3/4" and the drip lines on the pots 1/2".

You need a multi zone sprinkler timer (Hunter Pro-C or the newer one with the same features for much less cost), Pump Relay (also Hunter), Your choice of pump, Baccara or Rainbird Valves for each of your zones and poly tubing with either inline drip tubing or sprayers or a combination of the two. All of this is available at Dripworks.com. Add a couple of Dosatrons to that setup and you won;t even have to mix nutes every week.

voila: full automation. spend the time you would spend watering doing more profitable things. I use the same kind of system with some tweaks for indoor flood and drain and large scale outdoor gardens with excellent success.

YesProp: i asked u a q in my second to last post... did you amend your VermiFire? is it more perlite that makes it more porous than HF/OF?

Vermifire is heavy on the red lava rock instead of perlite. Also lots of ligna peat (treated redwood bark).

 

[fisher15]

Nomaad- I didn't add anything to the Vemifire. The lava rock/perlite amounts are on point.

Lovin this weather !!

 

[Yes4Prop215]

nomad i didnt amend the vermi with anything....it has alot of perlite and lava rock but its much lighter and fluffier as a whole, feels like a mix of coco and soil or like GRS said could be the wood bark...

the roots go crazy in it...side by side with happy frog and the vermi pots have the biggest white fluffy roots.

this is for indoor veg though, for outdoors and open sun, full season, not sure if it would work as good. definately will need to be amended or stronger nutrient feed used..

 

[DungeonMaster]

i have been lurking this page a long time, but had to sign up in order for some help.

There was a few postings on here a year or so back about the compost tea people were going to be using. i have looked over a lot of the pages, but cant seem to find it out of the 400+ pages this thread is becoming. someone had pictures of the bubbler they made out of PVC pipe they had drilled, and later on people talked about the mix they were going to be using. if this ring a bell to anyone and it was either you, or know the general page number i would be in your debt.

this is going to be my 3rd year of growing outdoors, and want to be improving with each year that passes.

 

[DungeonMaster]

as a quick response, i have looked over the tea postings on the other threads of the forum, but was hoping to check out the one that was somewhere on this particular thread.

 

[mapinguari]

DM, you probably found this thread: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=110620

If you are getting started with compost tea, that is definitely where you ought to begin. I recommend making / buying a simple brewer and using a simple recipe, like the one with just compost and molasses.