Hello GC, I have recently placed my plants into their final location. I really wanted to get them out there earlier, but due to rain and other conflicts I was unable to get them our there when I wanted to. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure I have everything in order. I dug the holes a while ago. They are about 2.5' deep and about 2' in diameter, which equates to about 5 cubic feet or about 37 gallons. I filled the holes with peat moss, perlite, vermiculite, composted cow manure, some earthworm castings, and dolomite lime. I tested the soil pH and it was approximately 6.7 for each hole. Some were more like 6.4-6.5 or so. I gave each hole a light dusting of lime before we got some rain a few days ago. I think the soil is almost perfect. It is fluffy and soft and it holds its moisture pretty well. It was a bitch to get all that soil mixed properly and moved. It was a shit ton of soil and compost. The location is a small hill that is covered with small cover and it faces west. It gets approximately about 10 hours of direct sunlight a day. The plants get hammered by sun all day. My plants are pretty small though. They had a tough first couple weeks. The weather was shitty. The weather is much better and they are getting bigger. Currently, most of them are only about six inches tall, but the new growth is very visible. I had them in 1/2 gallon grow bags to get them started, but I think that their growth was resctricted this past week due to the small container size. I had some nute burn about a week ago. I though I would add a little chicken shit to their water, but it may have been too much. There was some slight burning on the last set of leaves. The nute burn is almost all gone now. I have a few quick questions. Some of them have about 4-5 sets of leaves right now. The stems are still pretty flexible, but strong. Some of the leaf sets are only about 1/2 cm away. Why is this? The nodes are so close together. Should I low stress train even though the plants are about 6" tall? Am I missing anything? Anything at all?
well I can't seem to find anything ur missing but ur plant is probably a lowryder or autoflowering plant
Should I low stress train even though the plants are only about 6" tall? The stems are still flexible enough, but should I wait a little longer. They do have 4 sets of leaves.
The soil conditions sound great to me....I would let them get a little bigger before worrying about LST. Depending on conditions, you may not even have to. Give them plain water for about a week to make sure the nute burn clears out. I like to grow my plants up to about 10-12" tall indoors before putting them into their outdoor locations. I have found that they are more resilient to changing conditions, freak weather, etc. Within a week or so they are growing like hell and established in their new home. Just food for thought......
One thing I can't believe is how many leaf sets it has grown in the recent sunlight it has been getting. There are leaf sets about every 1/2 cm or so... it is really surprising... I also noticed that the roots were bound, which is good for transplanting, but not good for growth. Hopefully, they take off.
Since my plants are in the ground, is it virtually impossible to overwater them? We have had some rain lately (probably an inch or two). Do you think my plants will be ok in the soil and position they are in?