First Organic Grow Attempt To Be Made, Questions Thread

[NightSpider]

Me and a few of my friends live in a country where cannabis is prohibited and we got sick and tired of paying hefty sums to dealers for mediocre weed, and on top of that the Covid-19 situation doubled the prices so we decided to grow.
For our first batch we bought a 4x4 tent and 2 Mars Hydro TSL2000s. Because of the pandemic, we had a hard time with procuring quality seeds and all we could find immediately were granddaddy purple autos and ak47 autos (the source is questionable, no idea if it is what he says it is or even if it is, whether it is good genetics.)
I planted 3 of each in 6 plastic holed pots. they were 20 litres each but dont ask why, we could only fill them 15 litres. I fed them with terra aquatica (general hydro) organic grow and bloom liquid nutes with the root and bloom boosters from the same product line. I also bought some canna rhizotonic, cal mag and fulvic acid and applied it as far as I have so far understood how to, but I doubt in the proper way hehe. It took time to procure the Bluelab ph and ec meter, so we had serious ph problems in the first half of the grow and we fed chlorinated water for the first 2 weeks. We have problems with ac and the temps have been high so the tent reached 31c temperature easily every day hehe. Also I overdid the lst for autos, stretched them out too much, resulting in 10 cola growths in each plant and stressed them out way too much. Oh and of course we transplanted them in a shabby way, which we never should have done in the first place. We botched this grow in many ways but we treated this first grow as a learning period without high hopes anyway. I have no idea what yield or quality we will get from these 6 pots, my realistic expectations are 15-35 gr per pot but it could be 10 or 60 too so who the hell knows lol, no harm in dreaming.
We will soon harvest this batch and we want to do things the right way for the second time. We are getting our second tent, I first aimed at Gorilla GGT5x5 and a Mars Hydro FC6500 for it but we have had problems so I have no idea what the second tent and light will be.
We do not want to go chemical nutes but because of the prohibition, the scope of our grow is very limited and we do not have the luxury of going full on lord of the organcics with no till, letting the plant be one with the bacteria and fungi, accepting drastic drops in yield. We would like to find a balance of yield and quality. What we're looking for is keeping as much of the flavor and quality of organics with good yields.



As you can understand, I am trying to understand everything comprehensively but it is hard to do that with so many different opinions and long hours of research it requires. For this batch, I would like your opinions and help to decide what to do right now regarding

1) The soil I use ( will quality bagged soil with amending be good enough or will using self made soil create that much of a difference),

2) How and what to feed the plants with (water only soil/ liquid organic nutes / teas / surface adding / combination?),

3) Training method ( I am for sure gonna use scrog since the bottleneck of our production is the amount of electricity we can use in an apartment without it being suspicious and I have to make the most of the lights I have. As far as I understand manifolding is good for easy transportations of nutes throughout the plant and getting few big colas instead of more smaller ones. I have ordered some seeds and as far as I understand some genetics are more suitable for manifolding because they are single cola dominant. I am wondering if any of these are good for manifolding so that I can decide whether to grow the manifolding suitable ones with just scrog or manifolding them as well as using scrog. Also, if I do choose to manifold, one of the two tents will be manifold+scrog for the suitable genetics and the other will be just scrog for the ones which are not. Thinking in yield/m2/day wise, plants with how many manifolded colas are ideal, 8/16/32? Lets say I choose to use the 4x4 tent for manifolding instead of the 5x5. The light hitting that 4x4 canopy can grow only so many decent sized manifolded colas. Lets call that sweet amount of colas x, since too many colas or too few might reduce total yield. Depending on x, what would be the ideal way? Covering the canopy with fewer 16 or 32 cola manifolded plants or more 8 cola plants? These are the questions in my mind.)



I have many more questions but I need some understanding of what I will prefer regarding these questions before it makes sense for me to ask the next ones.

Any answer would be much appreciated, thank you.

 

[myke]

Self made soil if you can find the ingredients.if you have the 40-60 days to cook it. Local farm feed stores should have most of what you need.

 

[youraveragehorticulturist]

Organic soil for growing is usually some kind of inert "substrate"(?) like peat moss, some aeration like perlite and organic material or "humus" like compost of Earth Work Castings to provide the bacteria/fungus.

Then it's amended with kelp, guano, neem, bone meal, or whatever else to provide some nutrients.

So if you can track down your own peat, perlite and compost + amendments you can make your own soil. Then give it a month or two and use it.

Or you can get some commercial "Bagged Soil." It will be some combination of "substrate," aeration and compost. Then it will have something in their for nutrients. Cheap, shitty bagged soil will be mostly peat moss with a little perlite and some sticks for "compost" and God knows what for nutrients.

Quality bagged soil will have peat, and maybe coco. And perlite, maybe some small and some big for better soil structure. It might also have pumice or some cool, more exciting aeration. And the compost will be better and usually include earth worm castings. And better more expensive soil will have more diverse, quality inputs for nutrients.

If you grow with the store bought bagged soil for the first grow the plants will use up the nutrients. But after that you'll still have the soil (like the peat moss and aeration). From there you can re-mix with your own amendments for your next grow.

So depending on what you have available, you could jump right in and make your own soil from scratch, mix and amend it yourself. You might end up with some good soil.

Or you could let the experts handle making the soil the first time and buy some good bagged soil. If it's available. If you're inexperienced it may be better than what you could come up with yourself. Then after your grow you'll add your own stuff to it to replace the nutrients that your first grown used up. Over time it will become "Your" soil as you add to it and fill it out with your own compost and wormcastings.

 

[NightSpider]

Organik Topraklar

Organik yarı ve tam gübreli toprak çeşitleri.

toprakvesu.com

Topraklar

Biobizz light mix, All mix farklı torf ve toprak çeşitleri Growkent.com da.

www.growkent.com

Anything that looks good enough here? These are the bagged options that are available to me. I will most likely start the batches in 40 days, lets say I manage to decide the exact recipe of soil I will use and gather the materials in 10 days. Let's add 50 days cooking time if I am accurate. That means the soil I make will be ready approximately on the 20th day from the day the seeds germinate. I am guessing I can start in the best option among these bagged soils and then once the plants are in proper veg, I can transplant them to the soil I have prepared. I am putting together all my next questions right now, but meanwhile I would really appreciate anyone checking these 2 links and tell me if they can recognize a soil they know to be good enough. If there is a very good product here maybe for this batch I will skip the making my own soil, lessening risks and just amending the good soil. If nothing seems good enough among these, I will make my own.

Organic soil for growing is usually some kind of inert "substrate"(?) like peat moss, some aeration like perlite and organic material or "humus" like compost of Earth Work Castings to provide the bacteria/fungus.

Then it's amended with kelp, guano, neem, bone meal, or whatever else to provide some nutrients.

So if you can track down your own peat, perlite and compost + amendments you can make your own soil. Then give it a month or two and use it.

Or you can get some commercial "Bagged Soil." It will be some combination of "substrate," aeration and compost. Then it will have something in their for nutrients. Cheap, shitty bagged soil will be mostly peat moss with a little perlite and some sticks for "compost" and God knows what for nutrients.

Quality bagged soil will have peat, and maybe coco. And perlite, maybe some small and some big for better soil structure. It might also have pumice or some cool, more exciting aeration. And the compost will be better and usually include earth worm castings. And better more expensive soil will have more diverse, quality inputs for nutrients.

If you grow with the store bought bagged soil for the first grow the plants will use up the nutrients. But after that you'll still have the soil (like the peat moss and aeration). From there you can re-mix with your own amendments for your next grow.

So depending on what you have available, you could jump right in and make your own soil from scratch, mix and amend it yourself. You might end up with some good soil.

Or you could let the experts handle making the soil the first time and buy some good bagged soil. If it's available. If you're inexperienced it may be better than what you could come up with yourself. Then after your grow you'll add your own stuff to it to replace the nutrients that your first grown used up. Over time it will become "Your" soil as you add to it and fill it out with your own compost and wormcastings.

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Me and a few of my friends live in a country where cannabis is prohibited and we got sick and tired of paying hefty sums to dealers for mediocre weed, and on top of that the Covid-19 situation doubled the prices so we decided to grow.
For our first batch we bought a 4x4 tent and 2 Mars Hydro TSL2000s. Because of the pandemic, we had a hard time with procuring quality seeds and all we could find immediately were granddaddy purple autos and ak47 autos (the source is questionable, no idea if it is what he says it is or even if it is, whether it is good genetics.)
I planted 3 of each in 6 plastic holed pots. they were 20 litres each but dont ask why, we could only fill them 15 litres. I fed them with terra aquatica (general hydro) organic grow and bloom liquid nutes with the root and bloom boosters from the same product line. I also bought some canna rhizotonic, cal mag and fulvic acid and applied it as far as I have so far understood how to, but I doubt in the proper way hehe. It took time to procure the Bluelab ph and ec meter, so we had serious ph problems in the first half of the grow and we fed chlorinated water for the first 2 weeks. We have problems with ac and the temps have been high so the tent reached 31c temperature easily every day hehe. Also I overdid the lst for autos, stretched them out too much, resulting in 10 cola growths in each plant and stressed them out way too much. Oh and of course we transplanted them in a shabby way, which we never should have done in the first place. We botched this grow in many ways but we treated this first grow as a learning period without high hopes anyway. I have no idea what yield or quality we will get from these 6 pots, my realistic expectations are 15-35 gr per pot but it could be 10 or 60 too so who the hell knows lol, no harm in dreaming.
We will soon harvest this batch and we want to do things the right way for the second time. We are getting our second tent, I first aimed at Gorilla GGT5x5 and a Mars Hydro FC6500 for it but we have had problems so I have no idea what the second tent and light will be.
We do not want to go chemical nutes but because of the prohibition, the scope of our grow is very limited and we do not have the luxury of going full on lord of the organcics with no till, letting the plant be one with the bacteria and fungi, accepting drastic drops in yield. We would like to find a balance of yield and quality. What we're looking for is keeping as much of the flavor and quality of organics with good yields.



As you can understand, I am trying to understand everything comprehensively but it is hard to do that with so many different opinions and long hours of research it requires. For this batch, I would like your opinions and help to decide what to do right now regarding

1) The soil I use ( will quality bagged soil with amending be good enough or will using self made soil create that much of a difference),

2) How and what to feed the plants with (water only soil/ liquid organic nutes / teas / surface adding / combination?),

3) Training method ( I am for sure gonna use scrog since the bottleneck of our production is the amount of electricity we can use in an apartment without it being suspicious and I have to make the most of the lights I have. As far as I understand manifolding is good for easy transportations of nutes throughout the plant and getting few big colas instead of more smaller ones. I have ordered some seeds and as far as I understand some genetics are more suitable for manifolding because they are single cola dominant. I am wondering if any of these are good for manifolding so that I can decide whether to grow the manifolding suitable ones with just scrog or manifolding them as well as using scrog. Also, if I do choose to manifold, one of the two tents will be manifold+scrog for the suitable genetics and the other will be just scrog for the ones which are not. Thinking in yield/m2/day wise, plants with how many manifolded colas are ideal, 8/16/32? Lets say I choose to use the 4x4 tent for manifolding instead of the 5x5. The light hitting that 4x4 canopy can grow only so many decent sized manifolded colas. Lets call that sweet amount of colas x, since too many colas or too few might reduce total yield. Depending on x, what would be the ideal way? Covering the canopy with fewer 16 or 32 cola manifolded plants or more 8 cola plants? These are the questions in my mind.)



I have many more questions but I need some understanding of what I will prefer regarding these questions before it makes sense for me to ask the next ones.

Any answer would be much appreciated, thank you.

So if you're going from seed the technique you're going to want is mainline not manifold (manifold tends to be for clones).

I just recommend keeping it simple. Fox Farm Ocean Forest is a great base....
I use 70-80% that, 10-15% biochar and 10-15% vermicompost/worm castings (I raise my own).

Should take you straight to harvest with good yields and nothing but water added. It tends to be a little on the rich side with organic matter so mulch/sand/BTI to prevent root aphids &/or fungal gnats is a good idea.

Everything can be purchased from your local grow shop or Amazon.

 

[SpawnOfVader]

For added nutrients I never go over 1/4-1/2 recommended dose for Terp Tea Bloom during flower (roots organics)... during veg I just give them compost tea as a foliar feed.

 

[NightSpider]

For added nutrients I never go over 1/4-1/2 recommended dose for Terp Tea Bloom during flower (roots organics)... during veg I just give them compost tea as a foliar feed.

That's my point, I cannot acquire most brands. If you check my last post in this thread, the 2 links there are all the bagged soils I can get.

 

[SpawnOfVader]

That's my point, I cannot acquire most brands. If you check my last post in this thread, the 2 links there are all the bagged soils I can get.

I saw that however I'm confused as to WHY those two are the limitation? Even in a place where it's not legal soil is soil and not something that shows what you're growing....

Never used any of them personally but the Plagron Royal or Plagron All mix seems like about what I would go for. I can't find a ton of info out there but the Royal seems like the far richer option. I'd still be prepared to augment the feeding some especially during flower.

 

[Northwood]

we do not have the luxury of going full on lord of the organcics with no till, letting the plant be one with the bacteria and fungi, accepting drastic drops in yield.

I only do no-till, and I normally net anywhere from 1.2kg and 1.4kg (2.5 - 3 pounds) of dried/cured bud in my 5X5 tent, with better than 1.3 grams per Watt in flower in efficiency. That's just with regular household screw-in light bulbs though: https://www.rollitup.org/t/my-budget-5x5-setup.982183/

I'm sure I'd have better yields and way greater efficiency with real lights.

 

[NightSpider]

I only do no-till, and I normally net anywhere from 1.2kg and 1.4kg (2.5 - 3 pounds) of dried/cured bud in my 5X5 tent, with better than 1.3 grams per Watt in flower in efficiency. That's just with regular household screw-in light bulbs though: https://www.rollitup.org/t/my-budget-5x5-setup.982183/

I'm sure I'd have better yields and way greater efficiency with real lights.

Hello Northwood and thank you very much for your input. I am inclined to go as organic as I can as long as there is no reason for me to expect significantly smaller yields than otherwise. My current plan is to get some natural ingredients and mix my own soil, 30 to 40 days later I will germinate my seeds and later transplant them into my own soil once it is cooked, as far as I understand the cooking will be necessary for the microbial life to start and process the soil up to the needed minimum point of processing before it is usable. I am very interested in learning the details of lighting (ppfd, spectrum, warmth, led technology, if to use ir and when, how I can make my own led fixtures or setups in the future etc.), feeding, soil, climate control etc. I am on my first grow right now, close to my first harvest so I am in the learning curve. I like to learn things thoroughly so it will take me some time but meanwhile the rational thing for me to do is until I am experienced enough to evaluate questions myself, I can ask for advice from people I see as knowledgable and filter those suggestions through my logic to decide how to grow.

I read your thread and was impressed but I will have to ask you some questions:

Can you give me a recipe for making my living organic soil for the first time?

You said you dont feed with teas etc (as far as I understand the true organic grow is no till and feeding with teas). You also said you were lazy, so is it that you see feeding with teas on top of the soil you make completely useless or is it that you're lazy and just dont feel the need? I am not lazy about this endeavor of mine and perhaps will feed with tea if it helps the grow.

I will grow in 2 4x4 tents. Where I live growing is prohibited so I have to do it covertly, and that means the bottleneck of how much I can produce is the max amount of monthly electricity that can be used in a house without cathing attention. That means I chose the most efficient lighting I could get my hands on in my country. The electricity limits the number of lights I can run and that limits the space I can grow in. What I am aiming for is the grow method (mainlining or not, scrog or not) is getting the most yield of every cm2 I have got. That brings up the following questions:
-Do you not do scrog because you're lazy? What is the pros and cons of scrog in a grow like yours?
-With or without scrog, will manifolding or mainlining decrease my gr/day/m2? I would rather have big few colas to many smaller ones, but if the yield/day/m2 I will get by manifolding (either 8 or 16 colas) is much less than not doing it, I won't. Do you have any suggestions?
-The way you spoke in the thread and the photos seem like you do not need to worry about yield per day and you let them veg for a long time and then switch and get high yields. But getting 750 grams in 3 months is the same for me as getting 1000 in 4. Because we must grow enough to smoke ourselves, we do care about yield per day.
-Considering these, just out of the top of your head, what would be your suggested combo for max yield/day/m2 (considering these decisions are mostly about yield, I assumed quality would not change):
*scrog/ no scrog
*mainline/ don't mainline
* for the 4x4 tent, put in more plants and less vegging time or less plants and more vegging time to cover the canopy? Ideal recommendation?

Thank you very much and sorry for the long post.

 

[NightSpider]

I am also considering a single 4*4 bed like you talked about and make the whole tent one soil because I would really like to go no till full organic if I can pull it off.

 

[Northwood]

Can you give me a recipe for making my living organic soil for the first time?

I kept it pretty simple compared to most people here. Before I decided to go no-till, I already had worm bins to deal with kitchen veg waste and such that I use in our garden outside, so I added all the worm castings I had at the time to my initial soil mix. It might have been up to 20% worm castings (fresh and unscreened with worms still in it.) My base medium was mostly Pro-mix Organic Herb & Vegetable, with some extra perlite. I also added about 3-5% alfalfa pellets (the kind they feed for animals). That's about it. It got me through the first cycle fine on a water only regimen. During the first cycle, I added a lot of organic material as a mulch for the next cycle.

You said you dont feed with teas etc (as far as I understand the true organic grow is no till and feeding with teas). You also said you were lazy, so is it that you see feeding with teas on top of the soil you make completely useless or is it that you're lazy and just dont feel the need? I am not lazy about this endeavor of mine and perhaps will feed with tea if it helps the grow.

I don't want to get too much into the controversial nature of "teas". I guess teas can be a good bacterial innoculant, but my worm castings were the original innoculant of not just bacteria, but fungi, protozoa, springtails, mites, and about a million other creatures yet to be identified. It's important in organic growing to supply your bacteria with carbon once you add them via teas or any other means.

I will grow in 2 4x4 tents. Where I live growing is prohibited so I have to do it covertly, and that means the bottleneck of how much I can produce is the max amount of monthly electricity that can be used in a house without cathing attention. That means I chose the most efficient lighting I could get my hands on in my country. The electricity limits the number of lights I can run and that limits the space I can grow in. What I am aiming for is the grow method (mainlining or not, scrog or not) is getting the most yield of every cm2 I have got.

Use quantum boards with Samsung LM301B or LM301H diodes and you will get excellent efficiency compared to my light bulbs. If Alibaba is available in your country, you're good.

-Do you not do scrog because you're lazy? What is the pros and cons of scrog in a grow like yours?

A SCROG is great for a lazy person. I do it. It's the easy way to train your plants so that you get an even canopy.

-With or without scrog, will manifolding or mainlining decrease my gr/day/m2? I would rather have big few colas to many smaller ones, but if the yield/day/m2 I will get by manifolding (either 8 or 16 colas) is much less than not doing it, I won't. Do you have any suggestions?

I'd suggest just doing LST, and let those plants grow. Do you want a bonsai looking plant you can show off on Reddit, or do you want yield for smoking?

-The way you spoke in the thread and the photos seem like you do not need to worry about yield per day and you let them veg for a long time and then switch and get high yields. But getting 750 grams in 3 months is the same for me as getting 1000 in 4. Because we must grow enough to smoke ourselves, we do ca

In Canada here where I am, we have a legal limit of 4 plants in our residence. I'd rather not risk my career, family, and future by growing more plants. 4 plants is plenty for a 4X4 in any case, unless you want to go SOG.

-Considering these, just out of the top of your head, what would be your suggested combo for max yield/day/m2 (considering these decisions are mostly about yield, I assumed quality would not change):
*scrog/ no scrog
*mainline/ don't mainline
* for the 4x4 tent, put in more plants and less vegging time or less plants and more vegging time to cover the canopy? Ideal recommendation?

Okay, for one it worries me that your only concern seems to be about yield instead of quality. I get that your country is experiencing a pandemic like the rest of us, and that you think you can make a buck by growing weed in response to rising prices in your area. Perhaps you're experiencing some financial difficulty like so many others in the world right now. But take it easy, and take deep breaths. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing (I used to be a gorilla grower starting back in the 1970s in Canada), however you need to get your setup right and get a successful grow without too many expectations first. Once you have a few successful harvests, then try and up your yield by picking good genetics and getting your environment dialed in nicely.

 

[Northwood]

I am also considering a single 4*4 bed like you talked about and make the whole tent one soil because I would really like to go no till full organic if I can pull it off.

Don't make the bed of soil fill your tent completely, because then you wont see any water runoff or be able to vacuum extra water up easily if you do. Usually in no-till we don't water to the point where water pools below the pot, but it happens. So be equipped to handle it when it occurs.

 

[NightSpider]

I kept it pretty simple compared to most people here. Before I decided to go no-till, I already had worm bins to deal with kitchen veg waste and such that I use in our garden outside, so I added all the worm castings I had at the time to my initial soil mix. It might have been up to 20% worm castings (fresh and unscreened with worms still in it.) My base medium was mostly Pro-mix Organic Herb & Vegetable, with some extra perlite. I also added about 3-5% alfalfa pellets (the kind they feed for animals). That's about it. It got me through the first cycle fine on a water only regimen. During the first cycle, I added a lot of organic material as a mulch for the next cycle.



I don't want to get too much into the controversial nature of "teas". I guess teas can be a good bacterial innoculant, but my worm castings were the original innoculant of not just bacteria, but fungi, protozoa, springtails, mites, and about a million other creatures yet to be identified. It's important in organic growing to supply your bacteria with carbon once you add them via teas or any other means.



Use quantum boards with Samsung LM301B or LM301H diodes and you will get excellent efficiency compared to my light bulbs. If Alibaba is available in your country, you're good.



A SCROG is great for a lazy person. I do it. It's the easy way to train your plants so that you get an even canopy.



I'd suggest just doing LST, and let those plants grow. Do you want a bonsai looking plant you can show off on Reddit, or do you want yield for smoking?



In Canada here where I am, we have a legal limit of 4 plants in our residence. I'd rather not risk my career, family, and future by growing more plants. 4 plants is plenty for a 4X4 in any case, unless you want to go SOG.



Okay, for one it worries me that your only concern seems to be about yield instead of quality. I get that your country is experiencing a pandemic like the rest of us, and that you think you can make a buck by growing weed in response to rising prices in your area. Perhaps you're experiencing some financial difficulty like so many others in the world right now. But take it easy, and take deep breaths. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing (I used to be a gorilla grower starting back in the 1970s in Canada), however you need to get your setup right and get a successful grow without too many expectations first. Once you have a few successful harvests, then try and up your yield by picking good genetics and getting your environment dialed in nicely.

Since I dont have a working compost system yet, I will buy the compost and the castings. Just curious, do you have any problems with the critters, worms and bugs spreading outside the tent?

I am confused, you do a water only grow but you said adding carbon for the bacteria. Do you supply carbon with the mulch? (As far as I know, mulching is adding compost, kelp powder, minerals and whatnot to top of the soil and watering. Over time, they decompose into the soil. Correct me if I am wrong.)

I will be using 2 mars hydro sp3000 quantum boards for each 4x4. Check out test done by cocoforcannabis.com, the par map is amazing, if accurate, two of them can provide 950~ ppfd evenly in 4x4 when hanged in an ideal height.



I am sorry I expressed myself poorly, quality is just as if not more important than yield for me. As I said in my answer to you, these questions were mostly about training methods, and I just thought that as long as I manage a healthy canopy, what training method I use will change mostly only yield. I am very interested in quality and actively trying to learn more about ideal soil conditions, natural fertilizer materials, temperature differences in night that trigger color, a system to very slowly cure the cannabis just above 55% moisture and many similar topics. Just as I stated in the first post of this thread and you have kindly warned me, this is a long learning process, I am well aware of that. I am just trying to get advice about my upcoming grow and like I said, the ultimate goal is to keep learning and one day confidently knowing the answers myself.

And I would like to state that me and my friends with whom I started this thing are in college and cannot afford the ridiculous current prices. Like I said in the first post, we are tired of not being able to afford quality weed. Like you said, we have no big expectations from our first few grows and that is why I am concerned that our yield may not be enough to last us until the next yield. And also, like I stated we are students with limited income so this endeavor is a serious investment for us. Of course if there is surplus we can easily make that minute amount of surplus available to close friends and it would lighten the economical burden by giving us back some of the investment, but trust me as long as we can grow enough for ourselves, our main concern then would be maximizing quality.

I appreciate your input very much, thank you.

 

[NightSpider]

Don't make the bed of soil fill your tent completely, because then you wont see any water runoff or be able to vacuum extra water up easily if you do. Usually in no-till we don't water to the point where water pools below the pot, but it happens. So be equipped to handle it when it occurs.

For this I have had an idea in mind. A pot at the bottom to collect runoff water (also for occasional ph testing etc), a raised metal platform with holes standing on legs put on the pot at the bottom, and on that metal platform the fabric pot. If there is runoff, it pours out of the bottom of the pot, goes thrpugh the holes in the platfrom down into the removable pool. Is it a good idea, you think?

 

[Northwood]

And also, like I stated we are students with limited income so this endeavor is a serious investment for us.

That was the best part of your post because it reminded me what it was to be like to be an undergrad, and for me it was the early 1980s. Oh man was I poor because my parents weren't helping me. I had a girlfriend at the time, and I was so busy we would only see each other to have sex, and then back to work. What a crazy time! We almost decided to grow weed in our dorm, but then decided against it because my gorilla growing outdoors was already paying for everything.

My best advice I can ever give, is listen very carefully to the song by Rush called "Trees". You will learn that not only do species of plants play out their own drama, but see what the real danger is to these biological beings.

I apologize for not really answering your additional questions right now, but I'm really stoned and I finally have a day off tomorrow.

 

[NightSpider]

That was the best part of your post because it reminded me what it was to be like to be an undergrad, and for me it was the early 1980s. Oh man was I poor because my parents weren't helping me. I had a girlfriend at the time, and I was so busy we would only see each other to have sex, and then back to work. What a crazy time! We almost decided to grow weed in our dorm, but then decided against it because my gorilla growing outdoors was already paying for everything.

My best advice I can ever give, is listen very carefully to the song by Rush called "Trees". You will learn that not only do species of plants play out their own drama, but see what the real danger is to these biological beings.

I apologize for not really answering your additional questions right now, but I'm really stoned and I finally have a day off tomorrow.

Hey man, listened to the song, thanks.

On top of my 2 questions from yesterday, I have come up with a few more.

1) Considering I do a living organic soil, I understand I need to do cover crops in the beginning of a new grow to penetrate the soil and make it less compact, fix nitrogen etc. Will a delay between grows be required or do I just plant the cover crops before harvest or at the same time with the cannabis seeds?

2) Our grow is in a single room rented apartment in a tall building in the city. As I understand, the soil will have nematodes, arthropods and worms etc. Would there be a possibility of these critters climbing out of the pots? If so, is it managable?

 

[SpawnOfVader]

Hey man, listened to the song, thanks.

On top of my 2 questions from yesterday, I have come up with a few more.

1) Considering I do a living organic soil, I understand I need to do cover crops in the beginning of a new grow to penetrate the soil and make it less compact, fix nitrogen etc. Will a delay between grows be required or do I just plant the cover crops before harvest or at the same time with the cannabis seeds?

2) Our grow is in a single room rented apartment in a tall building in the city. As I understand, the soil will have nematodes, arthropods and worms etc. Would there be a possibility of these critters climbing out of the pots? If so, is it managable?

I know you want the no-till answer for 1 (my answer would be to use a hoe). I use cover crops for my veggie gardens and I actually let them grow for a full season before moving back to a production crop. I've seen people grow ground cover crops instead of mulching but haven't tried it personally.

2) In general all your beneficial critters will stay near their home/food source (the soil).... if you stepped out of your air conditioned house into a wasteland wouldn't you want to go right back inside?

Most of your beneficial critters are actually microbes. I do have worms in my soil because they come with my homemade verimicompost/worm castings and I've never had one leave my grow tent (with air pots I'd occasionally find them in the water drip tray underneath...nothing so far with my cloth pots).

 

[NightSpider]

I know you want the no-till answer for 1 (my answer would be to use a hoe). I use cover crops for my veggie gardens and I actually let them grow for a full season before moving back to a production crop. I've seen people grow ground cover crops instead of mulching but haven't tried it personally.

2) In general all your beneficial critters will stay near their home/food source (the soil).... if you stepped out of your air conditioned house into a wasteland wouldn't you want to go right back inside?

Most of your beneficial critters are actually microbes. I do have worms in my soil because they come with my homemade verimicompost/worm castings and I've never had one leave my grow tent (with air pots I'd occasionally find them in the water drip tray underneath...nothing so far with my cloth pots).

So if I do quality mulching, I dont need to do cover crops?

 

[SpawnOfVader]

No, I meant that the opposite way. It's a common practice for vegetable production:

Growing Vegetables with Cover Crop Mulch - Rodale Institute

For growers looking to escape from black plastic, or even just decrease their use of the stuff, cover crop mulches are a promising alternative.

rodaleinstitute.org

Living Mulches and Cover Crops | Marchie's Nursery

marchiesnursery.com