Uncle Ben's Gardening Tweeks and Pointers

These words of wisdom bear repeating (emphasis mine). Homebrewer did an excellent comparison of two Dyna-Gro foods and summed it up as I have for years:

Homebrewer said:

How much more 'dialed in' should those plants be? IMO, if you've kept all your leaves and they're green, healthy and soft at harvest, that is about as good as you're going to get given your inputs. What you've done by keeping that plant healthy is removed the newb mistakes many growers make and allowed the genetics to finally shine.

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Bingo! We're here to support, not push. "Pushing" is the problem with 90% of noob growers and as it were, 90% of those plants never reach their full potential. You've given your plants the support they need, then stepped out of the way, and let them do their own thing. There's innate psychological nuances working here too. Patience is hard to master for some.

Nice job! Course you did go against The Herd ya know. Could have at least given a few a healthy dose of Bud Candy, flushed 3 weeks prior to harvest so you too could be kewl, beat your chest and show some ugly yellowed plants!

Uncle Ben

100% agree good sanitation practice. in my area if you have a outside garden you need to keep guinea hens , I keep 4 and they really do a great job on insects population.they also make great watch dogs they kackle at the first site anyone approches the property.

Yes indeed. it was a hard lesson but you learn & move on.

Thanks for all the advice UB. One thing I'd question though is the lighting regime. I've run with 18/6 and 24/0. 18 produced the healthier plants by far so I've used that up until my last run where I swaped to Gas Latern Routine followed by the Diminishing Light Schedule.
The results where outstanding and produced the fastest growth and healthiest plants I've ever grown, it knocked a whole week off my veg time.
Any experience with this lighting regime yourself?
Respect+

I do (or did) 20/4 for veg and have not seen any advantages to winding down the day length. It's a phytochrome issue and the plant doesn't care if it's an immediate change or gradual.

Plants need a rest.

THANK YOU! I've been concerned about this for a while. I didn't know which would be more likely initiate flower, as an outdoor grower I want to postpone the flowering stage. I didn't know if the graduate lengthening of the nights would signal to the plant to flower or if an immediate change would shock the plant into flowering.

budman111 said:

UB, what is you view on sea teas? Worth it as a supplement or is it unnecessary with a good balanced base feed A&B and thus unneeded?

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I ran this question by Homebrewer and he said they were a rip off/gimmick; assuming we are talking about the same thing. They make a lot of promises and will probably give very little benefit. Assuming you are talking about these: http://www.seamineralsfa.com/ The solutions that claim to contain all of the elements and will make your grass the healthiest and greenest it has ever been, etc.

amazing thread, took me a month to read by peeking when awake, before sleep etc. for those who read first 6 pages and then go to the end of the thread to ask questions that have been asked: C'MON.. even with duplicate q and repeated answers, so many covered topics, thank you!
UB i wanted also to ask your opinion about K. I read Mel Franks insider's guide and there he said that under lower lighting, e.g. with cfl plants need K in ratio 1:2 N to K, but under stronger lighting like HID, they use only 1:1. what's ur opinion on this? cause if that be true, then npk ratio nutes of 3-1-4 would do better than 3-1-2 under cfl grow while on hid the opposite?

simisimis said:

amazing thread, took me a month to read by peeking when awake, before sleep etc. for those who read first 6 pages and then go to the end of the thread to ask questions that have been asked: C'MON.. even with duplicate q and repeated answers, so many covered topics, thank you!
UB i wanted also to ask your opinion about K. I read Mel Franks insider's guide and there he said that under lower lighting, e.g. with cfl plants need K in ratio 1:2 N to K, but under stronger lighting like HID, they use only 1:1. what's ur opinion on this? cause if that be true, then npk ratio nutes of 3-1-4 would do better than 3-1-2 under cfl grow while on hid the opposite?

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I think you're splitting hairs but there's only one way to find out, try different ratios on different plants and see for yourself. This is exactly what HB did and journaled using clones - 9-3-6 on one and 7-9-5 on another. Just before harvesting they look identical to me regarding bulk for both foliage and bud. Group consensus was that the high N looked better and I agree, I might have to give it the edge. Don't know if he's done any weighing yet. I'll summon him at the other site and request he post the photos here.

UB

I took the liberty of C/P Homebrewer's photos.

9-3-6 on left, 7-9-5 on the right as grown and journaled by Homebrewer. Excellent experiment!



9-3-6 on top, 7-9-5 on bottom.



Uncle Ben

Uncle Ben said:

I think you're splitting hairs but there's only one way to find out, try different ratios on different plants and see for yourself. This is exactly what HB did and journaled using clones - 9-3-6 on one and 7-9-5 on another. Just before harvesting they look identical to me regarding bulk for both foliage and bud. Group consensus was that the high N looked better and I agree, I might have to give it the edge. Don't know if he's done any weighing yet. I'll summon him at the other site and request he post the photos here.

UB

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i totally agree with you about P, i learned it the hard way but i was more concerned about K. but if you say it's splitting hair than ofc, not worth further discussion about it. 3-1-2 plus camgsu supplement ftw )

I found that when using a 6-2-4 that I was still losing the fan leaves. I amended with blood meal, 12-0-0 and solved the problem....plus received a larger yield.
I'm using slow release ferts and only feed when they are up-canned.


cof

Hey UB,
if you were young, had to do it again... and liked agriculture... and wanted to go to university.... which path in agriculture would you pursue in N. America? and why

elkukupanda said:

Hey UB,
if you were young, had to do it again... and liked agriculture... and wanted to go to university.... which path in agriculture would you pursue in N. America? and why

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Man, that's a tough question. I'm a niche farmer and I'm hear to advise that farmers really don't make money, not unless they're doing huge acreage. Mother nature is brutal and will kick your ass every which way but Sunday. Even nursery ops are tough. An old RIU member's family lost their large nursery biz because of the poor state of the economy. Guess what I'm saying is "don't do it". Get you a well paying job, make some money, buy some land and hobby grow. That's what I do in addition to my niche farming. I grow outdoors and using a greenhouse. Regarding my ag farming, I'm ready to throw in the towel and will do so in a couple of years - I've taken enough of mother nature's beatings and when it comes to the cost of my inputs (fuel, chemicals, capital outlays, equipment, labor, etc.) there's no profit left.

Some of the farm advisors make good money but the jobs are few and far between. Grape growing in Texas can be profitable as there is not near enough grapes to begin to fill the Texas winery demand, but again, mother nature is brutal. For example, the Lubbock area and high plains area of west Texas has thousands of acres of grapevines but no grapes this year due to 3 hard freezes this spring. About a week ago our area got a nasty hailstorm. A friend just lost 5,000 newly planted grapevines....beat down to a pulp.

UB

Seriously? Fuck... i really want to pursue agriculture... I know it must be tough... i was always advice that is not the thing to do.. and still people around me would tell me the same... but i like to work with my hands.. and love nature.. and dream maybe one day i will have my own little land.. i'm not pursuing money or anything "empty" in this world... I want to live the way i feel i should be living... this scares me a little bit because you are someone who already walked down the path... i'm still do it.. at the end of the day... you can't take anything to the grave... thanks for putting real facts in paper...

elkukupanda said:

Hey UB,
if you were young, had to do it again... and liked agriculture... and wanted to go to university.... which path in agriculture would you pursue in N. America? and why

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The biologists seem to have it pretty easy. You can work for the gov or a big corp. You would also be very qualified to farm too if you get tired of the easy life.

elkukupanda said:

Hey UB,
if you were young, had to do it again... and liked agriculture... and wanted to go to university.... which path in agriculture would you pursue in N. America? and why

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Botany and cannabis... then consult to dispensaries. Its the new cash cow crop

hey ub nice work.. ive done a run using the lucas formula and i wasnt to impressed with my results.. im using gh flora micro/bloom also have cal/mag and pk13/14 running 250w of cfls. could you suggest me a schedule roughly for veg/flower please...

shadyslater said:

hey ub nice work.. ive done a run using the lucas formula and i wasnt to impressed with my results.. im using gh flora micro/bloom also have cal/mag and pk13/14 running 250w of cfls. could you suggest me a schedule roughly for veg/flower please...

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Read your plants.

elkukupanda said:

Seriously? Fuck... i really want to pursue agriculture... I know it must be tough... i was always advice that is not the thing to do.. and still people around me would tell me the same... but i like to work with my hands.. and love nature.. and dream maybe one day i will have my own little land.. i'm not pursuing money or anything "empty" in this world... I want to live the way i feel i should be living... this scares me a little bit because you are someone who already walked down the path... i'm still do it.. at the end of the day... you can't take anything to the grave... thanks for putting real facts in paper...

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Then pursue it but understand mother nature and budgets rule. If you get a degree in horticulture and are good enough to be offered to work for the government, state or federal level, keep in mind that it's often dependent on funds available. Give you a good example of some stupidity - Texas wines has become a billion dollar biz, but there is a devastating bacterial disease across the nation wiping out vineyards called Pierce's disease. We had a very active highly refined program regarding coming up with a cure that included vines innoculations, genetic breeding, etc. but due to politics that ended up in cuts resulted in layoffs to biological doctorates doing the research using state of the art facilities....the program was shit canned. Makes sense eh? That's a government solution for you.

Don't mix up your passion for growing by focusing on it also being your profession. Go with where the money is.