Relaxed's Outdoor Medical Grow - 2013

[Lester Freeman]

Thanks Sinsei, you guys would shit a brick, I think we should start this discussion now. I water straight up from the hose. Now in my opinion, a happy plant is a good plant, and it's obvious when the plants aren't happy. This is directly linked to pH, and metabolism of certain mobile or immobile trace elements. If there is not enough protons in the soil, the plant cannot efficiently metabolize important nutrients for daily life. Now the contrapositive is also true to some degree, there needs to be enough OH- ions for certain things too, but protons are more important in cannabis. For the record, I am the laziest grower, I do minimal amount of work to achieve best product, I do not "pH" my water, or add any pH adjusting solution. The only thing that lowers my pH is nutrients, or organic feeds (they're typically packed with humic acids,etc). Let me state - the pH of my water comes out of the hose at 8.2 (reportedly), Soil pH extremes are much more forgiving than hydroponic growing mediums.

The situation here is that if there is not enough protons in the environment (acid) , the plant will show you (the grower) by obviously signs of multiple deficiencies. I obviously haven't had this problem, as my plants look lush and green. Now those of you who think that if I do not "pH" my water, that I will magically turn out "crappier bud" and not done as good as I could have, Please Raise Your Hand. I believe the issue with pH is a healthy and happy life for the plants, if something ain't broke, dont fix it right? I am growing in a slightly more alkaline medium, and things seem to be working out great. The less money I have to put into nutrients,solutions,containers,seeds,etc. the better, my goal is for minimal input, and maximum output. The Sun does all my work, I cannot imagine paying for light, that cost alone would outweigh a lot of bud value. The bud I am growing is nearly free when it all said and done, certainly pays for it self quickly. So that is basically the situation... I want to add that the dolomite clay that is in the native soil here that I dug up serves as a pH buffer system, and after build up of nutrient feeding (the way pH is slightly lowered for some more protons), the pH may remain stable and effective for this plant life. So, we will see how this continues to effect things - knowing my pH of medium is a bit less acidic than others - do you really think it's making my product turn out less good than it can be? Or is it about the health and happiness of the plant in total? My opinion is the latter...

Today I've done some work, removed a chosen lady from the tent for Force Flower, did some slight LST on a couple of tall tops, as well as gave the Hippie OG clones some room to grow and thrive as well as LST to them. They're all happy to have the oceanic breeze today, over 100 inland, and roughly 75 here but hot in the sun.

TL 1

TL2

TL3

Cloneville

Side shot

Time to Flower

Any and all rebuttals or opinions are certainly welcome!!
Have a great Day

 

[BeemerBill]

Lester looking at your grow just makes a person feel good. Really healthy looking girls and that one that is purple and budding is amazing.

I'm with you on the watering. I only water out of the hose. I'm on a well and the ph is around 8. I have used PH down and then up and then down and then just gave up. I'm not a fancy grower and i use Osmocote plus and I add a little Sea Blast every other watering.

Have a good day and get Skunked

 

[Lester Freeman]

Lester looking at your grow just makes a person feel good. Really healthy looking girls and that one that is purple and budding is amazing.

I'm with you on the watering. I only water out of the hose. I'm on a well and the ph is around 8. I have used PH down and then up and then down and then just gave up. I'm not a fancy grower and i use Osmocote plus and I add a little Sea Blast every other watering.

Have a good day and get Skunked

Thanks for the kind words and reps mate!
I'm really glad to hear about your situation as it relates to mine, just goes to show how forgiving soil can be.

Cheers and Keep Em Green!

 

[hodder356]

+ reps for the kick ass outdoor garden man!

 

[BeemerBill]

Morning Relaxed hope everything is good this morning. Thanks for the reps. Get Skunked and have a good day

 

[Sinsemillas]

The most important thing in this world, is love... not the kind of hollywood stupid love, I mean love as give our time and care to something/someone. I agree with you! Ive seen AMAZING plants, which have grown without any nutes, PH'ed water, or anything that mother nature cant provide.
But, for the lights side, here where I live I cant affoard to rely on just the sun, since for starters I dont get much, and second its quite hard to predict the outcome of outdoor gardens around here... :/ I used to live near the amazon forest in my country, where all I used to feed my plants was perfect sun, and manure from my own animals!, always had enough plants to roll for me, and anyone who needed. But those days are gone, and I need to move on, and adapt! I think we PH water, give them nutes and do all that, to satisfy OUR need of feel like we are doing something extra for our plants, but they def. dont need anything else than true love.
Irie bro, your garden is an Eden. +reps Irie, Jah bless.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Howdy partners. We're experiencing some real heat down here, even the beach is in the high 80s. Inland is like driving into the pit of Hell, its insane how cannabis can thrive and grow inland, wouldn't be suprised to see one of these things in the desert. Inland growers, good luck to ya!! It's humid as a bitch, I can't wait for this heat wave to be over. Today was really hot, the plants need water almost everyday in this type of heat.

For the record, I'm amazed by the Hippie OG's, the mothers and clones are growing incredibly. That bud is the true skunk-meistro 3000, that one I am worried about, we have a lot of wild skunks around here, TONS, so it will blend right in, but hell, you don't see skunks during the day. Cloneville looking great now, their tops are adjusted to the Sun's schedule, I also LSTed 3 tops of one large Tent Lady. My main concerns now lie with 1) Odor 2) Stretching of the tops at un-controllable rates. If things get crazy, either I'll prune the old fashion way, or super crop and bend it and see what happens. Me, much like CA215 and probably quite a few others, we would like big plants, more medicine, however, I don't want them to go over the fence line. The gorilla growers are hoping for 23 foot tall plants, besides JTG, he's not a gorilla grower and can still grow a 23 footer, christ.

Well, I hope the Force Flower does something within this next week, and I will be honest about the purps, I was examing them up close without a scope, my eyes upclose are real good and I swear I was seeing orange trichomes.. plus I cupped buds with nitrile glove and they are pretty darn dense, I'm thinking they can be done within 5 days or less, that is why I began flushing today. ( I said 4 weeks earlier but I changed my mind)

I slightly want to get the purps out of the way and put my attention on these bigger plants, from the smells, I know there is some more purps in my garden, and if not it will be something from the first batch of buds put out.

Thanks beemerbill,Sensei, and hodder, and everyone else that would be too long of a list to name, you know who you are. Thank you for forming a nested, comfortable community for me to share my adventures.

Grow on!

 

[CA215]

Glad these got started early in the season, man it shows!! Just went back through and got caught up with everything, probably noticed from all the likes Great journal Lester, your girls are growing considerably quick!! Really enjoy your easy goin' flowin' growin', guess that's what came to mind Would like to second that heat wave deal, no bueno! Left my girls alone for 1, count it, 1 day and they got quite dehydrated in this 105f heat, seems like you got yourself some nice ocean breeze brewin! Sure the girls love the weather you're getting right now. Got a q for a great outdoor grower, not sure if it would help as you got some primo temps I was giving this a thought earlier when I was baking in the sun, with plenty of growers fighting these up and coming heat waves(im sure there will be more), could one invest in some kind of cheap mister you attach on to a hose, set that thing on high and let it mist your grow throughout the main high heat of the day, hopefully keeping temps down? Of course keeping water from directly accumulating on top of leaves and causing burn. And for these gigantic plants and their height, what is this old fashioned pruning method you speak of if one may ask? Great growing!! CA

 

[Lester Freeman]

Glad these got started early in the season, man it shows!! Just went back through and got caught up with everything, probably noticed from all the likes Great journal Lester, your girls are growing considerably quick!! Really enjoy your easy goin' flowin' growin', guess that's what came to mind Would like to second that heat wave deal, no bueno! Left my girls alone for 1, count it, 1 day and they got quite dehydrated in this 105f heat, seems like you got yourself some nice ocean breeze brewin! Sure the girls love the weather you're getting right now. Got a q for a great outdoor grower, not sure if it would help as you got some primo temps I was giving this a thought earlier when I was baking in the sun, with plenty of growers fighting these up and coming heat waves(im sure there will be more), could one invest in some kind of cheap mister you attach on to a hose, set that thing on high and let it mist your grow throughout the main high heat of the day, hopefully keeping temps down? Of course keeping water from directly accumulating on top of leaves and causing burn. And for these gigantic plants and their height, what is this old fashioned pruning method you speak of if one may ask? Great growing!! CA

Hey Mate thanks for the reps! The message that went along with it made me laugh Thanks for catching up on the journal to see the transformations, it's a ton of material in the end, so many photo updates . Yeah, I was thinking I planted them too early, but what the hell, I wanted to see some plants grow. After its said and done, these plants will have grown for 6-7 months. Doesn't that seem incredible? Imagine having those precious buds tapped into by worms, I suppose on the other hand Mother Earth is not so forgiving in this sense. In my humble opinion, growing cannabis, fruits, and vegetables. Food and medicine, the way to honor the land, and the planet, and truly links and connects the cultivator to the Universe.

Well in response to the greenhouse aqua mister, yeah they exist and seem to work great. As you may know Cola Monster has deployed a nice one. In my conditions, its really not necessary, within walking distance of the beach, we have low flying cool Fogs that creep in through the land, while the Sun may shine clearly from above. Growing under the Sun, working in the Sun, honoring the Sun, as civilizations have done for thousands of years... there is some spiritual connectivity with molecules and atoms that binds us to nature, through our plants we can be come even more interconnected through this channeling region.

Not to mention, I have a powder mold problem in the backyard, it's accumulating on the Ivy up near the Hippie OG's, and with the sprinkler leak in the tent, I need to be very careful about spraying anything in these humid conditions. The old fashion pruning method, I added an unnoticable sarcastic hint, basically I'd just take the hedge trimmer out and get to work ::

 

[Lester Freeman]

Hi All, Hope these curing bud pictures find you in good spirit, and cool temperatures. Mass came out to 30.2 grams for the one little plant, not even counting all those sample buds I had, and the 2.5 gram jar of nice popcorn nugs that is seeing me through the days.

 

[bozzo420]

these are your forced plants right? how do you deprive yours of light? very nice summer buds

 

[KingJohnC]

nice harvest! can you please summarize what you have learned from growing outdoors for us during your grow?

 

[Lester Freeman]

these are your forced plants right? how do you deprive yours of light? very nice summer buds

Yeah, this one had been kept in flower via light deprivation technique. Essentially if you have a black out area, or sometimes people use special blackout tarps, you can monitor the amount of light the plant gets whether that be pulling the tarp over, or moving the potted plant into the black out chamber. My blackout area is simply a small place in the garage that I have cleared out, had to cover up a couple decent light leaks, but that's about it. Seemed to work great to pump out some early season buds.

nice harvest! can you please summarize what you have learned from growing outdoors for us during your grow?

Thanks, and Congrats on your MOTM win!

In terms of what I have learned from growing outdoors - The situation here is that as an outdoor grower you have to be ready for anything that mother natures throws at you, whether that be insane heat and humidity, cold rains, high winds, or European-Corn Borers. The outdoor grower must be vigilant of pests, whether that be from seemingly harmless things like fungus gnats that can colonize on the root hairs and slow down general plant growth, to the worst of the worst of the worst - corn borers or other ferocious boring/tunneling worms.

The general summation is to be prepared for anything. As the cultivator of mother Earth, we feel how the plants feel, and we feed and water according to their day. There is no set schedule for outdoor gardening, since the conditions are subject to change frequently...

 

[KingJohnC]

Thanks, and Congrats on your MOTM win!

thank you kindly

 

[OG1969]

Very nice harvest and plants, I too use just well water and do not ph anything and all seems to be going just fine. Killer plants and grow wish it was in the 70's here. OG

 

[Lester Freeman]

Very nice harvest and plants, I too use just well water and do not ph anything and all seems to be going just fine. Killer plants and grow wish it was in the 70's here. OG

Thanks that is great news to me, and thank you for the kind words. Don't worry, you'll get some onshore flow soon

 

[KingJohnC]

I would like to invite everyone to my new journal KingJohnC 400 watt LA Confidential Seed Cabinet Soil Indoor

KingJohnC's 400 Watt LA Confidential Seed Cabinet Soil Indoor Grow Journal

 

[OG1969]

Thanks that is great news to me, and thank you for the kind words. Don't worry, you'll get some onshore flow soon

Ready anytime mother nature wants so supply some wind my way the cooler kind, please. have been going through almost 8-12 gallons of water a day, the area around my grow dries so quickly it is sucking from my plants so I almost have to overwater to keep them from wilting within a day and a half, OG.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Ready anytime mother nature wants so supply some wind my way the cooler kind, please. have been going through almost 8-12 gallons of water a day, the area around my grow dries so quickly it is sucking from my plants so I almost have to overwater to keep them from wilting within a day and a half, OG.

Have you ever heard about/looked into crystals that have a particular function, polyacrilamide, aka "Soil Moist Granules" in the stores. I used them last year for my 7-8 foot OG I had inland, temps were 100 everyday for 2 months, I had to go out of town, it was this or plant death.
If you haven't heard of them, they store water moisture, and when the surrounding environment dries out, they release their water and very nicely extend the time needed to water, and provdes extra insurance against a complete dry out. Solid as a rock when dried, but turns to a gel once becomes hydrated. Do you use this? If not, it may be worth checkin out

 

[Smoke2Js]

Ready anytime mother nature wants so supply some wind my way the cooler kind, please. have been going through almost 8-12 gallons of water a day, the area around my grow dries so quickly it is sucking from my plants so I almost have to overwater to keep them from wilting within a day and a half, OG.

Use mulch at the base of your plants, and the general growing area,the thicker the covering the better. This will help retain moisture and keep the soil cool, allowing your ladies to grow instead of just surviving.