If you build the soil for the final pots with the proper ingredients from the start you won’t much need to deal with all the feeding schedules and crap…as long as your soil is natural and a living soil the critters will do all the hard work eating the natural nutrients and pooping out the food the plants roots use to eat. Example Feather Meal is chicken feathers and is high in nitrogen (N) and is a slow release and the bacteria in a living soil will over time break it down and poop out (exudates) the digested feather meal into a form that is bio available to the roots of the plant. Also by adding Mychorrizal fungi with the proper strains into the soil mix and when transplanting the fungi establish connections with the roots and they work symbiotically and exchange needed nutrients with each other.
Here is an example of a recipe to make your own super soil mix…just scale it to your needs. The base soil you’ve selected may say feeds for 3 months but I strongly doubt that it will do that with cannabis especially when they get big even in veg.
Up to you as far as nutrients if you go the chemical feed path you’ll need to deal with a lot more things like water to run off and checking that PH and ppm and flushing and those extra things needed to control the IV in the arm feeding of the plants rather than just adjusting the PH of your water to 6.2-6.8 or so and just watering them using a living soil system with natural nutrients and it’s better for the environment and your wallet in the long run. You feed the soil critters not the plants and the critters feed the plants and the plants dictate what they want to order from the menu available.
good luck @Griff. I am in a northern clime and had an outdoor grow. Since you are a bit further north of me I would suggest you let the plants tell you when they are ready but be prepared to move quickly because your weather does change for the worse sometimes.
I just read that last night as I was going through old journals lol! Are you talking about the post in @LoCoRock’s journal from Dec '18? I definitely wrote it down in my research notes. Great tip.
To your other reply -
The base soil you’ve selected may say feeds for 3 months but I strongly doubt that it will do that with cannabis especially when they get big even in veg.
I’ve sort of been wondering if I might need more nitrogen at some point, but I think I’d rather buy some regular garden fertilizer instead of weed fertilizer for twice the price. I think I’m going to stay away from super soil for right now, that’s a whole other can of worm castings. Super interesting, but more than I want to get into right now. I did buy a compost bin yesterday though so hopefully that will bring some tasty nutrients to plants in coming years. I’ll be sticking with pots as well, don’t have the room in my backyard to plant them in the ground. One day though, when I buy a country home… I’ll remember all that info for when I do attempt a super soil, thanks skydiver.
Thanks @Oldsoldier1976. I might not be as far north as you think (Southwestern Ontario) but weather gets pretty wacky pretty quick around here sometimes so I plan on paying very close attention and giving them what they want when they want it!
How did your grow turn out? Were you in pots or ground?
Up to you as far as nutrients if you go the chemical feed path you’ll need to deal with a lot more things like water to run off and checking that PH and ppm and flushing and those extra things needed to control the IV in the arm feeding of the plants
I’ve seen a lot of talk about ppm and reading run off, and I understand what they mean, but I really don’t get what numbers people are looking/aiming for. Is it mostly a delta between ppm in/out? Is it mostly reading ppm out and making sure it’s not too low? Is there an easy explanation for any of this? ( that there is)
@Skydiver that’s the recipe from roll it up I was.gonna try and build this year.! I need to ask Budbro what he adds but that recipe right deer is what you use?? That be awesome if that’s what you go by!!! PLUS some biochar added to it… MAN…why the EF didn’t I just start w ’s & Bro stated from the get go… 1 1/2 years behind now… fudging pot … My mind man. Need to free it… HAPPY 420 gd stoners…
If your growing feeding your plants with a chemical nutrient line like Fox farms trio and most other bottled nutrients you’ll need to add the appropriate amount of those nutrients to the water and then adjust the Ph of the mix to the proper range (soil 6.5 / coco 5.8) give or take a few with soil and then check the PPM and that number changes depending on the plants stage of growth. Seedling 200-300, veg 300-600 flower 600-1000 as examples. There are feeding charts that companies put together for their products that direct you as to how much of part A to add per gallon etc etc etc that is supposed to get you to that PPM range based on that stage of growth. You add the recommended amounts to the water (most growers on here using chemical ferts in bottles recommend only using 1/2 of recommendations of manufacturers) then you check the PPM reading of the mix to make sure it’s within range and you also check the PH of the mix and adjust it up or down to get it where it needs to be based on the medium your using…soil or coco etc.
Then once you’ve fed them the mix with enough for extra water to come out the bottom…(run off) then you test that for both PH and PPM and know the difference from what you put in up top to what you get flushed out the bottom and compare things…so you know next time if you need to raise or lower the PH and or PPM of your next feed.
Take notes in a paper journal so you can reference things because if you don’t and don’t have a photographic type memory it gets real hard to do things right.
I’ve used that recipe with some additional things recently as that is what’s in my 45 gallon pot with those 2 massive gold leafs currently in flower.
I need to quit being a somewhat mad scientist as I like to tinker and modify things as I go rather than just filling the dam proven recipe…like when I cook my food…I look up a recipe on line and then follow the base recipe but modify things as I go…
I gotta take better notes like I used to with as many freakin plants I have going and the mix isn’t the same throughout and I’m using the same soil…no till adding dry amendments etc etc…
Thanks Skydiver, that makes sense. Maybe I was over thinking it because I knew those feeding charts had ppm targets on them…
What are you looking for with runoff ppm though? Too low and you need to add more nutes, too high and you need to add less? If you’re aiming for 600 ppm going in, what are you looking for coming out? Depends on soil, stage of plant, and a million other things right?
I’m growing using natural nutrients in a living soil so I don’t do all those extra things needed when using chemical fertilizers.
But yea if your current stage of growth is calling for 600 ppm and you feed that in and then get that out your on target. If in at 600 and out is 300 than next feed you bump up ppm to say 800 or 900 as the plants are consuming more than you fed and same with PH if feeding with 6.5 ph and it comes out at say 6.0 and your target is 6.5 the next feed you adjust the Ph to say 7.0 again depends on your medium your growing in…soil vs coco coir etc
It went very well. I had never grown before and made a shit load of mistakes in the very beginning. Once I got on track the grow went smooth. I put a drip irrigation system on the two plants to water every other day while I was traveling in Asia (South Korea and Vietnam) for 6 weeks. I had people check on them but for the most part they just were given a crap load of nutes and organic soil in 30 gallon fabric pots. They looked great when I got back and I finished them off with about 40 ounces of weed between two plants.
I am in Massachusetts and my weather gets freaky as well in the late fall. I was able to harvest both in the first two weeks in October. We had some early frost warnings and I didn’t want to damage my plants. I did cover them a few times when I had to.
Damn, that one girl is big! How tall was she? That’s a real good harvest for two plants considering being away that much, I’ll be happy with a fraction of that!
Hoping for late frost here but who knows these days
To tell you the truth don’t go for height. Go for width. All around my plant having branches shoot out side ways before flower gave additional spots for flower branches in the center. Keep the branches moving outward the more you do the more you get. Forget height.
Noted! Training on outdoor plants was one of my questions in my original post too, I’ve read both to do it and not to do it so I’m curious about other people experiences. I want to top at least twice, but if I can get away with more then that should add width so I’m assuming that’s a preferable way to go. Just haven’t seen any first hand experiences with training on outdoor plants. I’m prepared to put the work into LST if it will be beneficial. May be something to decide along the way? I’m not sure yet.
In that I am a firm believer after seeing what I harvested. I tried one FIMing and I missed so I just kept pushing the branches to the side. I had so many interior branches that I even had to trim some of those to give the branches room to send out fan leaves.
that there is)
’s & Bro stated from the get go… 1 1/2 years behind now… fudging pot … My mind man. Need to free it… HAPPY 420 gd stoners…
