Marapa's modest menagerie

I've been reading journals, scouting, and waffling big time for the last few months. To bust my outdoor grow cherry, or not to bust? Get my ass kicked by bugs, heat, briars, watering and maybe even rippers and leo, or lay around in the a/c vaping herb? If going outdoors, go big, or go tiny? Now that it's ave last frost date in my parts, around 36N in dixie, like a lemming, I'm going for it, only modestly: five holes in three very different locations, some experiments, lots of positive energy mixed with dread for the knocks I know I'll take. Bring it on, let the work began....

...um, by leaving my seedlings and clones for a week or more with a little last minute scouting and general floating, fishing and fucking off. Hopefully the watering devices and timers and whatnot will keep my babies going long enough for me to get back and start hardening them off.

So I've started:

• five reg Deadhead OG seeds
• three reg Pure Power Plant seeds
• two femd Big Buddha Cheese seeds
• one femd Smile (Yumboldt) seed
• an assortment of clones: Power Skunk, The FLav, and what I really want to try outdoors, Strawberry Diesel.

What I don't pop in my few outdoor holes, I'll flower indoors. Let the cherry busting, ass kicking begin, but I pray to Shiva, Jah, any gods and gurus that might be listening, to please help me out...

 

Thanks, folks. Cochese, I'm planning on planting between May 4 and May 13. Some of the sites are pretty far apart and it takes some planning to get there. My hope is to be able to spend a lot of time in May and June making sure they are established, then LTFA as much as possible. I checked two of the sites yesterday, where I have game cameras set up. Just turkeys and deer--lots of deer. So I gotta refine my deer defenses even further, and I suspect some coons--something was digging in the super soil. I will go with coon mats and maybe make them big enough to deter deer as well, if I can keep it stealthy. But for now, signing off for a week while I put the computer and mobile phone away and enjoy 4/20 in all its earthday glory.... be safe everyone.

 

Thanks Guru, I'm sure I'll need all the good karma I can get. Right now I'm pinned down by near gale force winds and huge rain, but damn are we gonna have good water for the next week, and I think them fishies are gonna be going crazy. meanwhile, here's one of the critters that seems to want to be my grow buddy. Sorry babe, keep your snout outta my plants...

 

Thanks Landman and Cochese....I'm just back in from a great week away floating a river and doing some scouting, fishing and fucking off. Glad to return to this City, not so much to city life generally.

Here are my three starting grow spots for 2011:

1. Beaver -a clearing in woods beside a perennial stream. It was cut maybe 15 years ago, and beavers have continued nibbling away the edges. Loamy rich forest soil. Pretty restricted access, but not totally controlled. Lots of wildlife, possibly hunters in the area. I have a game camera posted on the only easy access. Full sun right now is from around 9 am to 3 pm, and I expect/hope that window will open further as the sunlight shifts this summer. One hole. I will use my version of Harry's coon mat and mix up some of Clodhopper's deer dope and probably plant Smile (a recreation of Yumboldt).
2. Islands - some islands in the middle of a large-flow river, reachable only by the right kind of craft, but close enough to an urban area to get pretty much recreational traffic in the vicinity. Great sandy loam and very close to water table. I think full sun almost all day. Two holes, coon mats, deer dope. Probably plant a clone of Strawberry Diesel, assuming I get it rooted (strain smokes great but is a bitch to clone) and a seedling of Pure Power Plant. This site is my warmest by far and both by elevation and latitude will give me the longest season, if all goes well.
3. Upland - former ag land had white pines planted on it maybe 10 years ago and some were harvested for christmas trees, leaving occasional openings in the pines. I'll try two holes in there. Lots of deer - see my game pic earlier, which is near one of these holes. Clay soil . Watering will be a bit of a bitch, and I hope that clay soil will work to hold moisture in the holes...but not too much. Probably will plant Big Buddha Cheese and a Cali Connection Deadhead OG seedlings. Cheese DOG!

 

So I left the grow completely alone for 8 days, and it looks like everything worked. Here is the upstairs tier of the veg area, with mothers in the foreground and eager beaver seedlings in the back:


Here is the lower area, with some rooted clones and some in the cloner


These girls (and probably some DOG and PPP guys) have been under 18/6 since the start. I have to make a plan to start more dark and get them hardened off...hope to hit those holes in a couple of weeks!

 

Thanks Landman and 70sshow...

70s, you asked about my soil mix. For seedlings I usually start in Promix BX, but now am experimenting with the base soil in the recipe below. For transplanting, clones, and in the holes themselves, I made up a revised version of the Super Soil I used in my indoor grows. I wanted to get more things locally, and I also wanted to avoid perlite--reason being, I filled one hole with my original super soil, using Promix which has perlite in it, and some critter dug in it and spread it around the area. And the white pieces of perlite were so obvious. I wanted a soil that looked more like native soil. Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they aren't watching, right? so here's what I came up with:

• Base
  • 2 parts high quality peat moss
  • 2 part permatill expanded slate
  • 2 part earth worm castings, local high quality
  • 1 part powdered dolomite lime
• Amendment mix (total 1 part)
  • 8 c Bone meal
  • 1 c Blood meal
  • 1 c Azomite
  • 4 c Kelp meal
  • cup Epsom salts
  • cup Elemental sulfur

The permatill expanded slate is made not too far from here, and it's a dark expanded rock a little like pumice. So there are no tell-tell white specks in this soil I think the permatill will give the soil good structure year after year and also a lot of places for the thundering herd to hang out. We'll see...so far, as you say, the seedlings seem to like it a lot! no spotting, chlorosis, necrosis or any problems at all with the leaves. I don't add bottled nutes, but I am starting to experiment with compost teas, EM-1 and fermented bamboo shoots to add maximum beneficial organisms--following some ideas of LumperDawgz, Possuum and others who are deep into soil.

 

and I almost forgot, you mentioned CO2. I worried for awhile that my indoor Co2 levels might be low and need supplementing. But I got a nice little data logger that I run all the time and that has shown me I don't need to worry about adding CO2. It gives me plots of temp, relative humidity and CO2, like this:

 

Thanks Harry, honored to have you watching....I had to get a humidifier this winter for the indoor grows to keep humidity up around 50%, but since the warm weather got here and since I put some dampers on my exhaust vents levels have stayed around 50-60% without misting...although I do have big trays under all my cabinet spaces to hold any drip, and they keep a little liquid water around...building your mats this weekend I was using a circular saw and metal cutting disk, so I found I could rip long little pieces of hardware cloth, like single strands with barbs, and I plan to wind those in to the mats like the top of razor wire fences...now just gotta find the best way to add some monofilament to ward off deer. I guess you guys use bamboo or other stakes for that?

This was a big happy day for me as I started last night to taper down the light, something I'll keep doing over the next 12 days to get down to around 14/10, which is more or less what my plants will see when they go out...and even more fun for me was putting them out for a few hours today to start hardening off. First time I've put plants outside, and it was a great day for it: 78 F, humid, partly cloudy. I'll keep shuttling them in and out for a few days and hope by mid next week to leave them out for the full overnighter.

Here's the team at this point...seedlings left, clones right....I'll pick five for a starting lineup early-mid next week:

 

Harry, you're lucky about those deer. I just know I have a lot of stoner deer in the area...they have that droopy eye thing going, ya know

So I put the girls (and no doubt a few pre-pubescent guys) out for their first overnight camping trip, the weather being fine after those big storms went thru. I got 'em all geared up with some clean sand and expanded slate to help kill gnat larvae and ward off other attacks. Here they are the next morning, looking all perky. The front row is my tentative starting five:

Starting at point guard in the Uplands, Strawberry Diesel (Strawberry cough x NYC Diesel). A sketchy plant in my first indoor grow and now my first attempt to grow a clone outdoors, because despite the challenge of growing and cloning, the smoke is awesome tasting fire, and I want more, much more!

Starting in the Beaver, Smile, a Yumboldt recreation. Part of my quest for that old school taste, for that strain I can sit and vape on the porch of the retirement home while reminiscing.

Starting at forward in the Uplands, Big Buddha's Cheese, a plant that everyone who's grown it seems to love. I myself love cheese of all kinds, hard to stinky, so am hoping these strain is another cheese to love.

Those are all fem'd seeds or clones. I'm putting my regular seeds out in the Islands, where I can keep a closer eye on them.

Starting at power forward in the Islands, Pure Power Plant, same taste quest as Yumboldt, and in my current indoor grow a strong starter amongst the seedlings but with all four turning male. Hoping for better luck and a female or two amongst these three.

Finally, holding down the center, my big brute Deadhead OG. [FONT=&quot]('91 Chemdawg(skunk va) X SFV OGK F4). [/FONT][FONT=&quot]No plant has excited me like this one. Swerve says there are 2 phenos, more indica and more sativa. Others have reported three phenos. So far I have at least two: one that has grown big and bushy fast, another that is more vertical and stretched, but not as vigorous, early on. DOG 4 is my current choice for starting, one of the bushy ones (but not the biggest). If I get to see some sex before opening night, I will swap out for another DOG (or PPP).

Finally, here's the team as a whole. the subs are looking pretty dank themselves, and what I don't send outdoors I will try indoors, or perhaps pop in some instant holes and see what happens.

This part of any gardening is so much fun--where the garden in your head doesn't yet have to deal with the realities of the garden in the outdoors!--so I'm enjoying it while I can, hope you are, too.

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