Suggestions for growing in holes in the ground an what medium to use?

[Mr Jane]

Hello everyone,

 

This season I'm moving outdoors and planting a few different strains and trying different things to gain some knowledge on what works best. I've looked around the forums but can't quite decide on what medium to mix up to grow in, I have however made up my mind to grow in sizeable holes in the ground to hopefully produce a bigger plant and yield come harvest time. If others who are experienced in this growing style could share their methods/do's and don'ts it would really be appreciated.

 

The strains I'm growing for my first real outdoor attempt are as follows:

 

Acapulco Gold

Tangerine Dream 

White Widow

Dr. Krippling Incredible Bulk

Great White Shark

Super Silver Haze

THC Bomb 

 

I'm looking for a mix that I don't have to tamper too much with throughout the grow, wether it be organic or not, something affective and as simple as possible would be great. 

 

Thanks for reading and I'm looking forward to hearing other peoples advice/ideas.

 

Mr Jane

 

 

[Frank Reynolds]

My recommendation would be to not pre mix a medium then dump it inot a hole, you'd be better off burying a pot then as you will get less competition from natural veg and you are essentially doing the same thing.

 

I'd personally recommend amending the existing soil, which will require you get a feel for what the natural soil is like. Remember most plants don't have 'taproots' and the roots will prefer to spread out more horizontally than vertically so i'd reccomend ammending a larger area to a lesser depth.

[Sir PsychoHashy]

Good luck with your grow, love an outdoor grow and the natural sunlight adds good flavour in my opinion.

 

There's a few guys here that make up very good organic soil mixes who will no doubt be happy to help you out if you want to go down that path.  But if you're like me and have no knowledge or inclination to do that you can try what I've been using.  I mix up roughly 50% coco, 30% Searles Premium potting mix (don't use the cheap dodgy shit), and 20% perlite.  Then depending on what's handy I'll chuck in some worm castings and/or manure.  Ratios and additions are open to trial and error to figure out what's best, but it's been working fine for me so far.  You would need to feed semi regularly with coco specific nutrients, but I've been finding the small amount of organic medium seems to be enough to keep the plants happy through rainy periods etc when it's not sensible to feed as well.  Also find it fairly lightweight to carry in for guerilla grows, and that the coco seems to work well for moisture retention and release.

 

And, as Frank said, a buried pot can be good.  I used builders plastic to line my holes last season, it works, but I also learnt the lesson that a pot would have been much better when it came time to do emergency transplants instead of wreaking havic on the root mass.

 

Works for me, hope you can find something that works for you as well.  Good if you can post a grow diary so we can see how you go with it

Edited August 26, 2014 by Sir PsychoHashy

[juzjenny]

Make sure you have a step ladder to tend to the ladies. Some outdoors plants get MASSIVE.

[crow]

Some nice strains there Mr Jane, look forward to some smoke reports!

 

I used a blend of Searles premium potting mix, Searles 5 in 1, mushroom compost and coco for my outdoor grow last year and it worked nicely, I also fertilised with Uncle Chron's super sauce through the grow although found that to be too much for most of the strains once the weather got hot.

 

Being in a region with very dry summer I tried a wicking type set up with reservoirs under the plants and plastic lining the side of the holes.  This was a closed system and the plants had confined root space [maybe 60L of soil].  I put one plant in the ground with unlimited root space and it performed far better than all the others so this year I will be giving all my plants unlimited root space although will still put black plastic around the side of the holes.

 

Good luck with your grow.

[Husky]

I'm using a pre mix from nursery. The premium veggie mix and it looks very good. One other garden centre soil mix was rubbish, put through a sieve. I use to improve existing soil, but where I am now the soil is thin into decomposed granite or granite.

 

I purchased 14 cubic meters, not cheap, but I have built a 8000 x 4000x 350 veggie garden as well. Spuds are coming up now.

 

Started a worm farm 2-3 months ago and will use worm wee/flush juice, castings and maybe try the real worm tee brew. Had great success before using worm products, dynamic lifter and seasol

 

I have huge holes from 600mm auger about 600-800 deep and 60L pots as well.

 

Best of luck for your season.

Edited August 26, 2014 by Husky

[Frank Reynolds]

Remember generally no more than 30% organic matter into the ground as the rest will just rot away and be of no use to plant!!

[Mr Jane]

Thanks for all the quick replies and great advice everyone, as always I've learned a great deal from just a few posts.

 

I'll be documenting this grow and making a sort of grow diary/tutorial for first time outdoor growers if it all works out well.

Since I have a few seeds of each strain mentioned in my first post, I plan to try different mediums/fertilizers/techniques on every strain and see what works best.

For the most part I will be taking Franks advice and amending the existing soil, this seems like a very good/stress free/low cost option, all the things you want in life, along with crowsanges' soil mix (again for the most part). I've got a question about this mix, would it be okay to start my seedlings off in? Also crowsange when Chrons super sauce started becoming too much for your plants did you replace what you were fertilizing them with?

 

Keep posting all your advice guys, I appreciate it and I will most likely use it or a blend of it to help everyone in the long run.

 

Jane.

[crow]

Yes, I've used the same mix for starting seeds in.

 

When uncle chrons super sauce became too much for the plants I pretty much stopped fertilising. We had a ridiculous run of really hot days last summer - from January to February we had average temps of 38 degrees and half the days were over 40. It seems that most strains are simply too stressed under such conditions.

 

By the time the weather cooled enough to fertilise again the plants were all well into flowering and since maximising yield wasn't terribly important to me I didn't bother. I got some really nice buds and reasonable yields in spite of that which I attribute to the quality of the planting soil and additives.

 

Looking forward to your diary - I'm giving Super Silver Haze a run this year too - hoping for a nice dry autumn to finish though!

[magpie1]

if your got 50% coco wouldn't coco specific nutes be the go instead of chrons mix