High desert growing question:

Google... DYI Maina Pots. I constucted mine for less than he stated and got better materials. You can adjust them to whatever size you want...You can kind of see two of them I made on a post I just made called "Waiting for May in Oregon". I'm on the north side of Oregon from you but on the east side of the Cascades.

For your deck..The cheapest easiest thing I can think of would be a portable hoop house..

Get yourself 4-6 pier block that has the hole in the center.Place the pier block about 2-3 feet apart and as wide across as you need on your deck.

Place a 3' piece of rebar in each pier block.

Slide a 1/2-3/4 inch PVC pipe over the rebar and arch it up and over to the other side. The length of the PVC will depend on how high you want the hoop house. You "may" also need to span the top of the arc with pieces of PVC and can either tape them or cut and connect a + connection. The buy some plastic 6ml painters tarp. One end can be fixed at the bottom of one side the other can be pulled over and temporarily attached when needed.

Hmmmm, my concern is if I go to 45G smart pot or the like (which amusingly should fit under the small greenhouse until height becomes an issue), is that each container would weigh close to 500# (or am I drastically over estimating the weight of wet grow material?)

Oh. and yes, I fully plan to add a proper fan to the inside of the greenhouse not turn it into a torture chamber as well as open up the vents (once it gets warm anyways... though by then they might be nude anyways.)

I don't believe a 45 gallon smart pot would weigh 500 lbs dampened. 45 gallons of water weighs 360..I'm guessing a 45 gallon smart pot kept damp would be well less than that. You can easily get a 6 foot plant in a 15-20 gallon smart pot. 45 IMO for your stated grow is overkill. 15-20 gallon and good growing medium will easily suite your needs.

Unless you are paying less than $100 for your grennhouse..The hoophouse I mentioned above would be easily less than 1/2 the cost and give you the ability to get them direct sunlight, or cover for protection.

Heh, the greenhouse was 99.xx so I guess yes, it was less than $100 (and it has already been purchased, hence the picture ) However, when things outgrow the greenhouse I'll go naked, then if protection is needed I'll jury-rig the greenhouse to provide it, look into a cut up carport, or do a hoop house / talk with a welder who owes me a favor. From last year's experience and how this year seems to be shaping up they shouldn't need protection until sept. (it really doesn't rain or storm here much. at all.)


But I swear freshly watered soil weighs more than the equivalence of water (even given the whole 1 gallon pot does not actually hold 1 US gallon). I think I'll get all geeky and weigh 1.9 (1.8?) gallons of my freshly watered soil of choice (or whatever soil is sitting around if I do it before I buy some fresh stuff) and go from there depending on the weight (I have a *lot* of 1.9G containers sitting around so that will be my freshly moved outdoors pot before I transplant into the 20 / 45 gallon smart pot style pot). Price wise (not counting compost / soil) the difference between a 20 gallon and 45 is just ~$5 a pot (at least the home depot versions), and at the whole two or maybe three pots thing I don't mind giving the roots a bit of extra room given it does get to be in the triple digits here for quite a few weeks straight. I'm already planning on lining the top of the pots with black and white (white side up natch) and possibly even loosely wrapping the sides with a half inch or so of space between the B&W and the pot as otherwise even with a fan to supplement mother nature these outdoor plants are going to be exposed to heat and low humidity conditions I've never caused indoors. This is farming country (when there's water) so apparently it's not all bad for the plants. However me being me, I'm toying with the idea of adding a mister come june / july.... Though that would possibly magnify the suns rays... We'll see how the plants look (I'm sure I'll make a grow journal for both of my grows as I don't see colors well and appreciate people saying hey, you need to push a bit more K! (N deficiency I can see thankfully )

Since I'm limited to 18 ounces of either hash or bud, I plan to turn the majority of the outdoor crop directly into hash to last me the next year or so, so I don't mind if the end yield happens to be gigantic Heck, if I go the "Isomerized Frozen Hash Oil Crystals" route I might even not have to do much of a trim which is worth its weight in gold

weighed the pot and *WOW* I was way off. You're right, water is much heavier than soil. My sample dirt as wet as I could make it weighed MAYBE 2lbs a gallon, even saying 3 lbs that means the 45 gallon pot would only weigh 135# so not remotely a problem for the deck (aside from drainage, but that I'll take careof with bricks or something along those lines for the pot to sit on.

Ok, after spending some time at the new house, I have a secondary option that speaks to me and removes any worry of fucking up the deck. The southern side of the house gives me a spot that I could carport (hoop house really) a ~15' x 6' area with by and large unobstructed East, South, and Western sky views (to the north is the side of my house)

Only downside? It's RIGHT on the neighbor fence line (about 2 feet from where they keep their boat, and about 12 feet from where they park the truck), there's an existing 6' fence which I'll use to attach the tubes to, and it gives me a bit of an area that I can secure from my wee one and her friends.

So I am pondering if it's remotely possible to run a carbon filter for air ventilation on a hoop style greenhouse without melting things. I'm thinking of using the IR treated poly film from farmtek (82% light transmission, 52% diffused), and will likely make the hoop house closer to 10' x 6', but cooling it might be a bit of a problem if I opt away from open style to a fan and carbon filter (passive intakes on the bottom, exhausting the hot air from the top into the CF placed on the first level of the covered deck, about 15 feet further away from the fence line) so no real worries about the fan / filter getting wet from rain/whatever (and makes the noise a little less for the neighbors. For ~ 10'x6'x~8' (l/w/h) I'm expecting to work with 480 cubic feet of space. Will I need to opt for a $300 12" fan (1700cuft) and a $300 12" carbon filter (1700cuft too) in order to not turn my area into a torture chamber, or could I get away with something a bit more sane? The (4) plants will be planted in the ground so the roots SHOULD stay cool...

Again I'm fully legal, but I really don't want to piss off the neighbors the first harvest I'm there. I'll build my indoor cabs after the summer, but I want to get a harvest under my belt before they'd be ready ideally, I'll just be swapping the second generation to indoor flowering about the time I harvest in Oct (or possibly early nov).

i didn't read thread n don't have experience in desert but think it would be to your advantage to plant in the ground to keep roots at more consistent temps.

Forgot to do a end of harvest summation of what I did and how it turned out.

I ended up doing a hoop style cover on the side of my house between the house and the fence, covered it with the IR treated farmtek 82/52 film. Used a standard tornado style indoor fan to provide air movement and despite summer highs above 105F everything worked flawlessly, and the cover allowed me to grow a true sativa that wasn't ready until late oct/early november. Ended up with a fairly respectable but not amazing yield.

This year I'm going to plant in the ground and use plant support mesh stretched across the area as I had several branches break due to excessive weight (I know, boo-friggin-hoo). I've composted the previous year's "dirt" along with kitchen scrapes and the critter's pen (guinea pigs and a rabbit), will add that to the existing dirt on the side of the house, rototiller it a bit, then cover it with bags of top soil and put my 6 2+ month old plants into that. Hoping none will hit the ceiling (~9 ft tall at the tallest point)... I'm also going to use proper nutes instead of the bargin basement general hydro ones. (as a bit of personal interest I'm going to have the strong sativa tested for potency this month and her clone tested this time next year to quantify thc/cbd levels between the two styles. Also I just want to know how strong she is

So far thinking for marches planting one Sannie's Jack Herer (the late oct / early nov girl), a Sugar cookie (or two), a lemon thai (c99 x lemon thai specifically) that looks promising, one of my creation [(new york diesel x true blueberry) x (chemdawg x trueblueberry)], a killingkush (Motarebel's Killing Fields #7 x K.O Kush), and if I don't do 2 sugar cookies, either a Sugar punch or a Mad Kush.... Hopefully that will give me enough variety, at the moment I'm drowning in sativa which is somewhat annoying when I'm manic...

Oh, long story short, I'm now a convert to outside (covered) gardening, inside is only for sexing non femmed seeds in my future

Garden Boss said:

Plants don't grow over 85f? weird....
We had 100f+ for weeks, mine did awesome (2000 sq ft canopy).

Click to expand...

Its constantly 40+c where I am and there are loads growing!! And home of some monster sativas. What is he on about?

Not high desert...4000ft
Greenhouses are a ton of work. You will need to heat AND cool n the winter and turn into an "Easy Bake Oven" in the summer
How long is your season? I get from mid March to Halloween, generally...and grow outdoors,in the ground in full sun. The plants do fine....Temps range from 35`AM to 75`high in the spring. 65`low-100`F highs in the summer. 30%RH is high...Annual precip ~20in
Let 'em rip!
If conditions allow, you can plant in Aug and do a "natural" 12/12 for a late fall harvest, too.....
and, no...I am not a greenhorn...been doing it this way for a while----40yrs