The secret to growing like a Northern California outdoor pro is compost. Compost in the soil and feed with compost tea as often as possible. If you apply this method to cannabis or any other plants like vegetables and fruit, you will be amazed at the results. Let's start by building our soil. Following these simple steps will allow you to grow as much as 4 pounds on a single outdoor plant!
Soil & Compost -
A good base soil can be bought in a garden center at any hardware store or simply dug up from a healthy area where plants are already thriving. We love Recipe 420 and if you are lucky enough to find this brand, your plants will thank you. The next ingredient is manure. I suggest earthworm castings but you can use cow, chicken or other forms of manure. This is excellent food for the bacteria we want to flourish in our root zone. I like to add perlite instead of vermiculite as perlite stores both air and water. You can add 1/5 the amount of your soil of perlite and 1/4 of your soil total manure. The next thing I like to add I refer to as "The 3 Bs", or Bat Guano, Blood Meal and Bone Meal. These can entail 1/20th of your soil total amount, I usually add enough of these amendments to cover the top of the soil area and then rake it in. In addition to these meals, please consider adding, Cotton Seed Meal, Alfalfa Meal, Kelp Meal, Fish Bone Meal, Epson Salt, Potash, Diatomaceous Earth, and Mycorrhizae the beneficial bacteria that we are feeding in the soil to make it active and encourage our roots to uptake nutrients. In addition I love to add an ocean or kelp based slow release fertilizer into the soil as well. I use Marine Cuisine, but many other different brands exist and you can try. I also encourage people to use kitchen scraps but never meat products. Cheese and egg shells are perfect, coffee grounds, any rotting vegetables or cut scraps, onion ends, celery bases and more. We keep a 2 gallon plastic bag near the sink and fill it with these scraps and every few weeks we dig a hole into the compost pile and dump it in. Keep the compost pile covered with a tarp and moist at all time to encourage healthy bacterial growth and discourage pests from investigating. Remember the larger the grow pot, the larger your yield so go as big as you possibly can when buying a pot or digging your outdoor holes.
Lighting -
Unobstructed full sunlight is suggested but not required. The higher power light for indoors, the better. I suggest 600 watt at least. Clear trees or branches for best results or pick the most well lit spots for your garden. I recommend HPS and Metal Halide bulbs. The MH for vegetative growth and the HPS for flowering stages.
Watering -
For soil gardens which is the only growing I recommend, I suggest watering 2 to 3 times a day in small amounts and feeding as often as possible in between or every other day. I use automatic watering timers on both my indoor and outdoor grows. The inside is controlled with a home automation system via the power plug and the out door is controlled by a RainDrip timer. Both grows get watered 3 times daily. Indoor gets about 10 minutes per watering and outdoor is getting 20. Please refer to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHtMbxZTKkA for in depth info regarding my "Flow Irrigation" and moat systems. I use Advanced Nutrients pH Perfect products mixed with Remo and never have problems with my pH, but you might consider buying a pH meter just to be sure. pH is adjusted with granular or liquid products which are cheaply obtained and easily replaced by household liquids as well. Google it. I also use an R/O filter, (click for link to mine), for my indoor grow and then add Magnifical with my Remo nutes to compensate. Pearlite is instrumental in the soil mix for good drainage which is necessary in any cannabis set up.
Nutrients -
I recommend Remo Nutrients for all of your grows. You can however choose to use any nutrient line you want and you may also choose to mix and match products. This will not hurt your plants in any way. If you want to keep things in check, consider buying a zero water filter and use the PPM meter that comes with the pitcher! It works amazingly well and Zero water is incredible to boot. I suggest prefiltering with a Britta water pitcher before pouring that into your Zero water and save a ton on replacement filter costs!
Soil & Compost -
A good base soil can be bought in a garden center at any hardware store or simply dug up from a healthy area where plants are already thriving. We love Recipe 420 and if you are lucky enough to find this brand, your plants will thank you. The next ingredient is manure. I suggest earthworm castings but you can use cow, chicken or other forms of manure. This is excellent food for the bacteria we want to flourish in our root zone. I like to add perlite instead of vermiculite as perlite stores both air and water. You can add 1/5 the amount of your soil of perlite and 1/4 of your soil total manure. The next thing I like to add I refer to as "The 3 Bs", or Bat Guano, Blood Meal and Bone Meal. These can entail 1/20th of your soil total amount, I usually add enough of these amendments to cover the top of the soil area and then rake it in. In addition to these meals, please consider adding, Cotton Seed Meal, Alfalfa Meal, Kelp Meal, Fish Bone Meal, Epson Salt, Potash, Diatomaceous Earth, and Mycorrhizae the beneficial bacteria that we are feeding in the soil to make it active and encourage our roots to uptake nutrients. In addition I love to add an ocean or kelp based slow release fertilizer into the soil as well. I use Marine Cuisine, but many other different brands exist and you can try. I also encourage people to use kitchen scraps but never meat products. Cheese and egg shells are perfect, coffee grounds, any rotting vegetables or cut scraps, onion ends, celery bases and more. We keep a 2 gallon plastic bag near the sink and fill it with these scraps and every few weeks we dig a hole into the compost pile and dump it in. Keep the compost pile covered with a tarp and moist at all time to encourage healthy bacterial growth and discourage pests from investigating. Remember the larger the grow pot, the larger your yield so go as big as you possibly can when buying a pot or digging your outdoor holes.
Lighting -
Unobstructed full sunlight is suggested but not required. The higher power light for indoors, the better. I suggest 600 watt at least. Clear trees or branches for best results or pick the most well lit spots for your garden. I recommend HPS and Metal Halide bulbs. The MH for vegetative growth and the HPS for flowering stages.
Watering -
For soil gardens which is the only growing I recommend, I suggest watering 2 to 3 times a day in small amounts and feeding as often as possible in between or every other day. I use automatic watering timers on both my indoor and outdoor grows. The inside is controlled with a home automation system via the power plug and the out door is controlled by a RainDrip timer. Both grows get watered 3 times daily. Indoor gets about 10 minutes per watering and outdoor is getting 20. Please refer to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHtMbxZTKkA for in depth info regarding my "Flow Irrigation" and moat systems. I use Advanced Nutrients pH Perfect products mixed with Remo and never have problems with my pH, but you might consider buying a pH meter just to be sure. pH is adjusted with granular or liquid products which are cheaply obtained and easily replaced by household liquids as well. Google it. I also use an R/O filter, (click for link to mine), for my indoor grow and then add Magnifical with my Remo nutes to compensate. Pearlite is instrumental in the soil mix for good drainage which is necessary in any cannabis set up.
Nutrients -
I recommend Remo Nutrients for all of your grows. You can however choose to use any nutrient line you want and you may also choose to mix and match products. This will not hurt your plants in any way. If you want to keep things in check, consider buying a zero water filter and use the PPM meter that comes with the pitcher! It works amazingly well and Zero water is incredible to boot. I suggest prefiltering with a Britta water pitcher before pouring that into your Zero water and save a ton on replacement filter costs!