Grandpa's growin' again

The solstice has past and it is time to come out of hibernation for the season. We have been growing our mothers and taking cuttings for this season's grow. Three MMJ card holders are again sharing a growing space for the summer.

The last two weeks have been busy mixing new soil for this year's grow. We are recycling last year's soil and adding new worm castings and compost and a small amount of perlite. We take 30 gal of recycled soil and add 15 gal of EWC and 15 gal of thermal compost. To this, we add another 10 gal of perlite or scoria, whatever we have. Two cups/cuft of fertilizer mix are added to the new mix. We have mixed several large batches and now have over 400 gals mixed and cooking for use the first of May.

The thumbnails are a pile of compost I harvested and screened for more soil mix and additives to compost tea. The top 3 buckets were screened through a 1/4 in screen and the 2 buckets in front and the rest in the wheelbarrow were screened through a window screen. This harvest will yield about 40 gals of compost when screened. When mixing soil I use 1 part thermal compost to 1 part EWC as the compost additive to my soil recipe. The leftover larger parts from screening are added back to the working compost pile.

Last year I felt the plants ran out of nitrogen too soon, so we have increased the diversity and amount of additives in the meal mix used for fertilizing. We have also increased the pot sizes, (6) 15 gal, (6) 20 gal and (6) 30 gal smart pots.

Last year we also started too early and caused the plants to start flowering and then reverse later in the season. This year we are waiting until the day length is 14+ hours at planting time. This should solve the reversal problems. We have also decreased the day length on the mothers under the t5's inside, gradually to 16 hours to closer match the outside photoperiod.

A few of the varieties we are growing this year are:

Vietnam Black X Meao Thai...... Ace seeds
Tora Bora...... Reserva Privada seeds
Alaskan Ice...... Greenhouse seeds
Big Sur Holy Weed (Trip) X Blueberry...... Chimera seeds
Columbian Gold...... World of Seeds
Big Band...... Kannibia seeds
S.A.G.E...... TH seeds
All seeds are regular seeds except the Big Band which are only available feminized. All plants have been grown under t5's this winter and sexed and cuttings taken. The transplants will be grown in 3 or 5 gal pots until transplant time to the final containers. The indicas will be planted into the 15 gal pots, the indica/sativa hybrids in 20 gal pots and the true sativas in the 30 gal pots.

Good luck to all growers this season.

PW

 

P38, Glad to have you along for the ride. We have risen in the East and are following the sun to Pointswest. I hope we have an interesting grow to present. Always glad to have your advice and support.

PW

Good to see you 69er, Our plants branched, like yours, but the reversal happened in late July and when the plants reflowered there were a lot of single leaflets in the flowers so we ran those plants through the bubble bags. They make great kief, but the buds were a little too leafy to be good smoke.

I think to maximize the potential for branching with this method, it would be better to take the cuttings in early flower to achieve this branching effect. I think they have a name for this (monster cropping). The plants would still branch more vigorously, but reverse and veg much sooner in the season creating even larger plants.

At this time we just top a few times to get multiple colas. While we are waiting for the daylength to reach 14 hours to move outside, we are topping to control the shape and size while inside, so when they get moved out they have several tips at transplant time.

Hope the spring preparation is going well for you. Not too much going on here now, just waiting for the soil to cook for a couple of more weeks then the work starts for the season, 14 hour days start for us the first week in May.

PW

 

Here is a few of the inside "ladies in waiting". It is a good thing transplant time is near, it's getting pretty crowded in the veg room now. All plants were cloned and grown under T5 HO lamps. The buds are from a harvest of the VietNam Black X Meao Thai and the Big Band mothers that were flowered under the T5's after successfully cloning new starts for this spring.





PW

 

Welcome STC, no need to hate on us, mountain grown in the Rockies here. Plenty of west coast friends, but we're looking for that high country heaven. The transplanting to the final containers should start in a couple of weeks. Then we will keep our fingers crossed and try to keep observant and diligent in our culture care and hope for a good harvest.

PW

 

RIP Levon Helm


The Band - The Weight - YouTube

PW

 

69 Bandit, thanks for stopping by. Good luck growing some sativa, growing your own is the only way to find true sativas anymore.

69Erikm, So are we, hoping the Big Sur Holy Weed X Blueberry is the ticket we are looking for. I grew one of the parents of the BSHW in the early 70's and if this hybrid comes close, this will be what we are looking for.

al k mist, welcome to our grow. You are right about the Spring Equinox, not solstice, thanks for the correction, too late to edit now. I guess I will have to live with this mistake for now.

This week we are going to move the 400 gal of soil mix to the growing site and get the pots prepared for transplant the first week in May. The day length will be 14 hrs on May 2 for our latitude so we are hoping we are ready to transplant when the time comes.

PW

 

I'm glad to hear the simple led spots provide enough light interruption to keep the plants in veg. At your location you should not need the lights much longer. Good luck with your grow, you will like having a couple in the ground, it should produce some trees for you.

PW

 

Our indoor grow room was getting too crowded, so we have taken a chance and planted 8 plants this week. The day we planted, the day length was 13 hrs 45 min. so we are hoping we will not flower the new transplants right after planting. We slowly reduced the indoor photoperiod down to 16/8 to match the outdoor day length more closely.

The first transplants are Tora Bora, Chocolate Chunk, Colombian Gold, SAGE, and Viet Nam Black X Thai. The sativa dominant plants were planted into the 30 gal Smart pots and the Indica's and hybrids were planted in 20 gal pots. Because of the crowded conditions indoors, 18 plants under 3 T5's, we lost some of the lower branches and have a few flat spots in the canopy on a few of the transplants. I think in a couple of weeks, with a few select branches topped, we will get the plants shaped up so they fill out good.

All of the soil for the grow this season has been recycled from last year's grow. We added an equal part of EWC/thermal compost plus 20% more perlite then mixed 2 cups/cu ft. of the meal mix to the soil along with 1 cup/cu ft of bio char. The meal mix consists of all of the additives left over from last year's purchases plus a few more added when we found a source for 50# bags of amendments.

meal mix: equal parts of each amendment.

Alfalfa pellets
Organic soybean meal
Organic cottonseed meal
Kelp meal
Neem cake
Oyster shell meal
Dolomite lime
Soft rock phosphate
Greensand
Bone meal
Blood meal
Feather meal

All ingredients were mixed and aged with the soil mix for 6 weeks before planting. Now that we have located the feather meal and fish powder, when we use up the blood meal we will not add it to the mix again. We are still looking for Fish bone meal in large bags to replace the bone meals, but have not found locally yet. The local feed mill has been a big bonanza, stocking alfalfa pellets, kelp meal, fish powder, soybean meal, cottonseed meal, and oyster shell meals. Most of these additives cost $10-12 for 50# except the kelp, $51/50#, and the fish powder, $78/50#. This should be enough to mix fertilizer for many cu yds of soil mix.

We have also built small palettes to raise the pots off the floor. Last year we felt moving the plants around and tearing the roots from the floor was causing extra yellowing of the leaves.

Soon we will transplant the rest of the plants for this season and will follow the sun to the fall harvest season with great expectations. Good luck to all with the new spring grows.

PW



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