Ultra Dawg (Day 86, flip + 18)
I potted up a clone of Thin Mint GSC today, the latest of my hempy plants, and dropped a new seed in another hempy cup, a Blue Dream, the genetic product of MagicJim's talented hands.
I'm hoping I can make the Blue Dream as healthy and strong in hempy as MagicJim's lovely specimen growing in soil.
I'm really hoping she ends up like this specimen from Doc Bud's hempy grow.
I started my cultivation adventure at
using LOS, graduating to Doc Bud's HBB kit. Then I discovered hempy, having been continuiously bombarded by pictures of Tead's garden of delights and reading how easy it was for him to raise them into bountiful beauties. So I got brave enough to venture into the world of hempy and bottled nutrients. The rest is history in the making. At this point I have a total of 16 plants growing in my assorted spaces, 6 of them in kit soil and the other 10 in hempy pots of one size or another.
Obviously hempy is an addiction all its own.
Over the past month or so there's been a serious uptick of interest in the lazy gardener's alternative, growing the plant in perlite. The method is incredibly cost efficient, lightweight - particularly after hauling around trees in 5-10 gallon pots of soil - and a surprisingly effective way to increase output. Hempies can take up much less real estate than pots of soil. You may get smaller yields, but I have one in my garden right now that may demonstrate the powerful potential of fabulous lighting and great nutrients.
Meet Carnival 4.1 (Day 65, flip + 4) my largest hempy to date. She stands 34" from the top of the perlite, easily my largest Carnival in any medium. I've been using RX Green Solutions Grow Better nutrients, and this one impressed me so much I switched all the hempy pots to it, excepting the four already planted with Osmocote Plus.
She caught me off guard.
My previous experience with hempy was shorter and less tree-like. Lol! It necessitated replanting into more perlite last week before her flip. As you can see, the potential exists with hempy to create massive plants. And with such ease it'll astound you. It's time to create a central place for all these hempy growers to congregate and share ideas, work through challenges, and jump up and down with joy when things go right and we pull down inspiring harvests.
So, want to join in the fun? Share your grow with us. Be curious about the process and pepper us with questions. Get inspired by our passion and the fun we're having to give one a go yourself. Just be forewarned, one hempy becomes two, becomes four, becomes...... You get the idea.
Incidentally, Doc Bud's grow is a great read, a well-documented intro into hempy growing. Well worth looking up.
DocBud's Hempy Grow
Tead has a recent post where he describes his method of layering in the Osmo Plus, if that's the method you choose. Page 218
Hempy is so adaptable that you'll notice plenty of variety in the gardens. A couple relevant points I think we need to include in this opening post:
* Rinsing the perlite before you use the pot gets any dust out. Excess dust will turn into sludge in the bottom of your reservoir and compromise the ability of roots to drink freely. I usually fill the pot and then flush it with tap water until the stream of water has no more dust in it. Then I drain all of that water out and flush again with pH-corrected water.
* The size and placement of the drain hole is variable, but I typically shoot for somewhere in the range of 2" from the bottom and I use a 1/4" bit to drill the hole.
* When you water you want at least 10% runoff. I typically water until it shoots out of the hole and then let it drain until it stops.
* You want a strong stream exiting the reservoir, because you want it to wash some of what's left in the bottom out, to avoid salt buildup in the basin. Sometimes this means you need to poke the hole open if a piece of perlite gets stuck and is blocking the flow of water.
I'll let some of the others jump in before I post the rest of my garden. We have lots of excitement ahead. It'd be more so with you as part of the crew.
Grab a bucket, some perlite and a seedling and jump right in. 
. But I have been collecting green two-liter bottles for a possible set of hempy style low-vegetation clones, so this should be useful to me.
, so it is something that I have on hand.
