Thanks OS. The 15 gal pot has an 18 inch diameter. I have to go to a 24 by 24 tent after this season, so that means either a couple of small pots (5 gals max) or a single larger pot (20 max). I have some 7 gals that I already know won't fit 2 in there, sadly 10s are out too. Everything I'm reading says the 5 gals would be way too small for notill, which I really want to do, so one 15gal seemed the way to go. But then just 1 auto per cycle seems wasteful of the tent space and all the energy going into the tent; I'm sure there's enough room in there for 2 strong plants. I could fit a 20 gal in there at 20inch diameter, if its a question of canopy space do you think that a 20gal with some strategic LST could give 2 plants enough space?
On 2nd measure, a 20gal wouldn't fit through the 24 inch tent door. Potentially I could use a 32 x 32 inch tent instead if it fits, and put 4 7 gallon no tills in there. My research has turned up that most people seem to say 15gal min for no tills, but a few have said they have success into multiple cycles with 10s, 7s or even 5s. Since I only grow for half the year, they'd have 6 months off to be recharged and to break down the old roots and then be ready to go again. Plus I don't think an auto would fill 7 gallons worth of soil with roots in one cycle anyway. I think that rest period would be key, along with proper reamendments through top dress. Could also do 2 10gals instead, but I feel like 2 plants would be a misuse of the bigger tent size and the increased energy costs of keeping it warm and well lit. I've grown 4 plants in a 32 inch tent before in 4 7gals (non organic grow) with good results so I'm confident that 4 well trained autos would work in there, question is whether 7 gals can function as no till for 1 or 2 cycles per year. You mentioned 10gal was your smallest no till - any thoughts on this plan of using 7s?
I think 7's would be fine for 2 cycles in a row. Especially if you started with the best ingredients. Due to space, at one point I ran square 5 gals. They performed really well, are about 12" x12" square and slightly taller than square. You could easily run 2 sets of 5 gals, and swap them every other grow, allowing them to rest between crops, with a good top dress cycling during the break. Smart pot has some real interesting designs, that may be the ticket. Perhaps a really big smarty, like 50 or 100 gal, but with the sides rolled down some and only partially filled. Look for something that matches your tent foot print. I will think some more on this. cheers os
Yay, the bigger tent does fit in my grow space after all. I've got my soil mix a brewin in a massive smart pot outside, I'd love to use one big smart pot indoors for growing in but then I have the issue of it being difficult to move around, etc. A 20gal would be pushing it and might even be too much, anything bigger would be impossible get in and out for waterings and off season resting, even if it wouldn't annhilate my back it'd probably jostle the soil around too much. I do really like your idea of using a massive one but only partially filled, but even then it'll too hard for me to move around. I guess I could water inside the tent but then there's run off issues, plus I'd want to move the pot to the garage to rest off season anyway. It's like a puzzle this whole thing... I've got to make all the pieces fit together! I reckon I'll have to make do with 7s, I've got some square ones as well that would fit 4 snugly in that 34 inch tent. I might also consider running a pair of 5gals in the smaller tent instead, per your other suggestion, and have 2 sets so I can cycle 1 set out after each grow so they get to rest and recharge after each grow. Thanks for your advice, I'd love to hear any more thoughts you come up with on the subject.
Fitting the puzzle pieces together is the tricky part. I am definitely one for always trying to find what works a little better. This is how a person developes their own grow style. I like to be able to easily move stuff as well, so I am with ya on that one. With one big container you sure can't rotate pots 90 degrees every day to try and get even growth etc. If you could shoe horn 4- 7's in your tent, you could stagger your start dates. Start 2 plants, and then 2 more a month or so later. You would make the most of the space and have full canopies on half the plants, when the other half were seedling. For me, light height works out just right doing that. It would be pretty perpetual. That's kind of what I try to do indoor most of the time. cheers os
That's a cool idea, thanks. I'll have to ponder on that one as it would extend my growing period by however long I staggered the first plants, but it sounds pretty slick if I could make it work. Got 4 autos growing at once right now, so I'll get a good idea of what a full combined canopy of 4 will be like and whether I'd need the extra space from staggering. As a side note those autos are growing like crazy, one in particular. Not even 4 weeks old but some nice budlets already formed, I guess they'll be small plants but the yield looks promising so far. Not got much experience to draw that conclusion from but hey
Here ya go. 3 and half weeks old and tied down to be short and wide. This is my 2nd ever grow so I'm still finding my way, you can see I was a bit too strong on the tying and the stem ruptured a little but the plant seems to have recovered just fine. Do you do much training on your plants?
Earlier in this thread I go through my complete lst process. I use wire stakes, tomato cages and lots of Velcro. I do this to keep them short and squat. I make the side branches grow way out, then up. Cheers os
Here is a shot of one of the 6 girls in my greenhouse. They are a week old today. This one is Cropical Fruit auto, by Cream of the Crop seeds. Cropical fruit auto 1 week by Organic sinse posted May 1, 2018 at 6:46 PM In this next pic I am trying to capture how the bark nuggets and rice hulls migrate to the top, as the other material is slowly watered down. This slow mist type watering with the chapin was done right before planting. New mix self mulching bark by Organic sinse posted May 1, 2018 at 6:46 PM Pay attention this is important for the newbies. These girls have only been misted with aloe water. They have been up for a week, and don't need anything but a mist. I actually mist young small plants like this everytime I walk by. The trick to starting in these big pots is to not overwater them, I will probably not water these for another week yet. I want to make them spread their roots out to hunt for moisture, and force the mycorrihaze to branch out in search of food. cheers os
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Looks to me like a greater concentration of hulls in the middle, that's from your seed starter mix right?
You are correct, the center is seed starter. I also just added a little 'mound' of starter around the seedling stems, right before I snapped the pic. Due to lack of sun I was afraid they might get leggy on me. I didn't want to mist them, and have them start leaning. cheers os
I have some updates on the 3 experimental soils I was running. Ex 1 was my traditional vmc mix growing a Blue Amnesia XXL Auto. She came in at a dried weight of 9.8 ounces. This plant ended up a 4 footer, about a foot taller than I have grown for quite some time. I can definitely tell my room isn't quite set up right to deal with tall plants anymore. I would have to say that the bottom qp was a hair larfier than I really like it to be, but for an experiment it was ok. I just couldn't get my side lighting cobs in a happy place. This plant also had some weird foxtailing issues. In fact EX 1 and Ex 2 both had weird foxtailing or crowning. I was really having a tough time adapting back to taller plants, and was a little slow to get it right. Between airflow up high, and running closer to lights than I care to, I feel are a big part of this. I also chopped Ex 2. The strain was Blue Critical auto, she went 90 days from seedling emergence. This mix was pure leafmold with zero amendments and bark nuggets as aeration. No ammendments. I was after a zero point so to speak, for the sake of science. She started a tad pale, and got super pale over night after the application of a Blue corn SST. What I think happened is this. After the SST, the bark used up all the free N in the soil. I managed to finish this grow out by adding fish hydrolysate, AK fish 5-1-1, and neem tea. I was pretty light on the liquids. I also top dressed a lot of vmc. She also grew into a 4 footer, and displayed the most intense crowning I have ever seen on the upper parts of the plant. Same issues as EX 1 with regards to not really adapting quickly enough for taller plants. The lower parts of this didn't crown and look great. I have a new idea on using bark nuggets, I feel that in a new mix, the bark nuggets should be allowed to soak up a tea with decent N, like neem or fish or alfalfa. Nothing crazy, just pre-wet the bark with tea, instead of water. I will talk more on this down the road. Here is Ex 2, Blue Critical Blue Critical auto 90 days by Organic sinse posted May 5, 2018 at 7:20 PM There is a lot of mass there. She actually has a lovely blue hue to the buds. Here is a pic of the crowning. Blue Critical auto 90 days crowning cola by Organic sinse posted May 5, 2018 at 7:20 PM Ex 3, my Amnessia XXL auto is on track for harvest any day now. Cheers os
OS - I think you're idea for the bark nuggets will work out great. You could also try mixing in something high-N that will decompose a little slower, i.e. alfalfa (meal, not tea), comfrey, even some aged manure. Just be careful, giving the microbes a ton of easily available N will cause them to multiply quickly, giving off a lot of heat, and also converting a lot of the N into ammonia, which will evaporate. You might want to let that mix cook for a few weeks, monitoring the temps and the odor before you plant into it. It will also be favoring bacteria over fungi, which won't really help break down the bark. Either way I'm interested to see what happens. my 2cents toaster Edit: One of the no-till farmers I follow on YouTube just posted this video: Start of an experiment with fresh wood chips mixed into plain garden soil. Winter rye planted on top.
Thanks for the input. What I have been doing that I really like is running the bark through the worm bin in my Sinse mix. I have a bunch of tomatoes going use bark as a portion of a fresh mix as well as my new greenhouse project. At this point, I get to just watch what things do. Then I will figure out the fine tuning. I have been intentionally leaving my cooked soil, and vmc, and bark separate without cooking together so that I can play around with amounts etc. Veggies make great testers for mixes and don't take up room. Not quite the same as canna, but when you kill something, you know not to try it with canna. We will see how my 6 little greenhouse girls do. cheers os
I have a couple other plants using the same mix as EX 1. I didn't mention them early on. I actually kind of mis planned / mis read my calendar when I planted them. I really didn't want to be doing stuff indoors and out at the same time, at least no for more than a week or 2. As soon as I realized what I had done I decided that I would take these 2 plants and grow the kind of plants that I actually want to teach people to grow. Small, potent, fast, sativa doms. The first one of these to finish is a Blue Amnesia XXL auto. She finished in 70 days. I also have a Haze XXL auto on the same time frame. They both are little 3 foot plants. Here is what I did. I started out with my old tried and true VMC as a soil mix. That's all. At about the end of the 4th week I gave them 1 bluecorn SST. I didn't top dress at all. I ended up with about 4" extra space at the top of the pot, so I estimate I only used about 6 gallons of soil mix. That's really it. Aloe water when the plants were small, plain water the rest of the time. No fulpower, no coco water, no agsil, none of that stuff. Here is how the Blue Amnesia XXL turned out. Blue Amnesia XXL auto 70 days by Organic sinse posted May 6, 2018 at 7:12 PM Not very much leaf material to trim, she finished up totally green, didn't run short on anything. After trimming the fan leaves she looked like this. Blue Amnesia XXL auto 70 days after a fan leaf trim by Organic sinse posted May 6, 2018 at 7:12 PM Here is a shot of the upper part and cola. What a frosty little girl. All the buds are way fat, dense, and look perfect. Blue Amnesia XXL auto 70 days oh so white by Organic sinse posted May 6, 2018 at 7:12 PM Its always hard to tell, but I am going to guess this one will be about 160 grams when dried. This thing smells just incredible and I can tell by how frosty she is, she is going to be an ass kicker! I really like growing these smaller really fast plants like this one, and her sister the haze. I think the haze has a couple more weeks, but is essentially the same size and general shape. (The buds on the haze are crazy fat though, crazy fat!) In case you didn't catch it earlier in the thread, one trick I have for 'flipping' autos early is my Blue corn SST. They flip right now. Its just 3 -4 Tablespoons sprouted blue corn mixed with a gallon of water. This can be a super handy tool to have at your disposal for situations like this. Also handy if you think you are going to out grow your space, or if you start late outside, and are afraid old man winter is gonna catch ya with your pants down. cheers os
Dang dude, those autos are amazing. I hope I can manage yields anywhere near there... I'll be glad to get an ounce off the ones I'm growing at the moment. Hopefully when I switch to my organic soil I'll see some better results. What size containers are those in? By flipping, you mean moving the plant into flowering? An SST is enough to do that... wow, that's so cool. I was gonna ask why you use tomato cages on some and not others, then I realised the bushiness was just hiding it! Quick question about how you water your no till containers, apologies if you've mentioned it earlier in the thread. How are you deciding when the plant needs water, at the moment I jam my fingers into the soil to determine but with your no till containers I guess that's not an option, so are you going by weight of the container?
Those are 10 gallon containers. My last pic of Blue Amnesia XXL auto was only filled with about 6 gallons of soil mix. I left room for a couple VMC to dresses but never did it. Yes by flipping that is what I mean. Maybe transition is a better term. For my mixes and environment, the blue corn SST does this every time. MBP works sometimes, but Blue corn works every time. If that doesn't seem to be working, dropping the humidity seems to help as well. The blue corn SST causing early transition was something that I came across by accident via doing, and repeated it several times over the years to verify. I actually can't explain any science behind it, just that it happens. My normal application for a Blue corn SST doesn't happen until I see signs of pre flower. I like to turn my plants daily, sometimes multiple times if I can. I can tell when they get light. I also stick my finger in the soil. Even though my containers are self irrigating from the bottom, I actually mostly top water and watch for run off, then allow the containers to suck it back in. I like to just have a thin layer of water in the bottom to help judge how the containers are reacting to watering. The only time I fill the saucers to "bottom water" is if I am gone for a bit. cheers os
You're so helpful OS, this thread is a lifesaver for me. So interesting about the SST, I'm still doing experiments with the popcorn to get a good number of em sprouting. 3 of em sprouted last time Trying the 6/12hours soak to 1 hour breath technique next.
If you have some aloe, mix a little in the soak water. I haven't tried this, but I bet it may help, and certainly not hurt anything. Letting them sprout in a warm place makes a huge difference. Like a sunny window sill, or top of the fridge. Cheers os