GROWING WITH GUANO
Keep your buds tasting their best with this organic amendment.
By Soma
People I meet and smoke with always ask me how I get my pot to taste so good. The answer is that I am an intense caretaker and lover of plants. To get medicinal cannabis, I grow organically in a soil rich in worm castings and all the other nutrients and trace minerals needed for a healthy herb plant.
I don’t use pots to grow my buds, I use flowering beds. These beds are made of wood put together with metal braces and screws. They are on wheels that rotate 360 degrees. They are 1.25 meters wide by 1.25 meters long and 35 centimeters high, (about 50" x 50" x 9"; sorry, but after being in Europe so long, I think in centimeters). They are lined with waterproof plastic.
For the bottom 5 cm I put a layer of clay pebbles called Hydrocorals. I then take plastic-coated chickenwire and place it on top of the hydrocorals. On top of that I put a layer of felt root cloth, the kind most nurseries use under their potted plants. The roots of the marijuana plant love air, so I mix a lot of perlite in with my organic soil mix before filling the beds up.
In each corner of the bed, I have a PVC tube 70 millimeters wide and 35 cm long. It goes down into the hydrocorals, through the root cloth, and up through the 25 cm of soil, leaving 5 cm above the soil's surface. These four tubes in each bed help the roots to have a constant airflow, and the hydrocorals underneath make it almost impossible to overwater your garden.
The plants are spaced out as evenly as possible, affording each one as much light and space as they can get. They are given liberal amounts of black and brown seaweed, both in a foliar spray and in the soil, until the end of the third week in flowering. Each plant has at least one stake supporting it as the buds get heavier and heavier. By the third week in flowering, I have twisted and bent my tops in the tried and true method of supercropping, giving them that added stress that makes the yield and taste better. In the fourth week, I give the plants some organic flowering food with an NPK ratio of 1.5-13-14. I give it to the plants twice in that week. From the end of the fourth week in the 12 hours on/12 hours off flowering light-cycle, I start to give the ganja my secret ingredient, guano tea.
I use a mix of bat and seabird guanos with an NPK of 2-15-2; this particular one comes from Indonesia. I like it because it has no smell. I take 100 grams of the dried guano and mix it with 2 quarts of hot water, stirring it with a plant stake until it is almost all dissolved. I then take an 8-ounce cup of the tea and add it to 10 liters of water with a pH of 6.6. I water the beds twice a week with this tea, waiting until they are dry before applying it. I keep doing this until the middle of the seventh week in 12/12. With 10-week plants like the ones I’m growing now, I like to give them a good flush with water for two weeks or more before harvest.
In the 32 years I have been growing this most sacred of plants, I have tried all kinds of plant foods, from Miracle Gro to 10-52-10 with all its heavy metals. I have never found anything that beats guano for taste, yield, or potency. The taste that the cannabis acquires when using this guano is so fruity and clean that it lingers on your tongue for at least five minutes after finishing the joint.
The bud quality and yield that comes from using the beds instead of pots is incomparable. I use nothing but neem oil and ladybugs for insect control, and I only take the large fan leaves off when I first harvest the plants, waiting until the buds are dry before the final manicuring.
...
The author Somas world class genetics are available @ the
www.seedboutique.com/store/ and also @ the auction site www.SeedBay.com ,I would be a reckinin...
Keep your buds tasting their best with this organic amendment.
By Soma
People I meet and smoke with always ask me how I get my pot to taste so good. The answer is that I am an intense caretaker and lover of plants. To get medicinal cannabis, I grow organically in a soil rich in worm castings and all the other nutrients and trace minerals needed for a healthy herb plant.
I don’t use pots to grow my buds, I use flowering beds. These beds are made of wood put together with metal braces and screws. They are on wheels that rotate 360 degrees. They are 1.25 meters wide by 1.25 meters long and 35 centimeters high, (about 50" x 50" x 9"; sorry, but after being in Europe so long, I think in centimeters). They are lined with waterproof plastic.
For the bottom 5 cm I put a layer of clay pebbles called Hydrocorals. I then take plastic-coated chickenwire and place it on top of the hydrocorals. On top of that I put a layer of felt root cloth, the kind most nurseries use under their potted plants. The roots of the marijuana plant love air, so I mix a lot of perlite in with my organic soil mix before filling the beds up.
In each corner of the bed, I have a PVC tube 70 millimeters wide and 35 cm long. It goes down into the hydrocorals, through the root cloth, and up through the 25 cm of soil, leaving 5 cm above the soil's surface. These four tubes in each bed help the roots to have a constant airflow, and the hydrocorals underneath make it almost impossible to overwater your garden.
The plants are spaced out as evenly as possible, affording each one as much light and space as they can get. They are given liberal amounts of black and brown seaweed, both in a foliar spray and in the soil, until the end of the third week in flowering. Each plant has at least one stake supporting it as the buds get heavier and heavier. By the third week in flowering, I have twisted and bent my tops in the tried and true method of supercropping, giving them that added stress that makes the yield and taste better. In the fourth week, I give the plants some organic flowering food with an NPK ratio of 1.5-13-14. I give it to the plants twice in that week. From the end of the fourth week in the 12 hours on/12 hours off flowering light-cycle, I start to give the ganja my secret ingredient, guano tea.
I use a mix of bat and seabird guanos with an NPK of 2-15-2; this particular one comes from Indonesia. I like it because it has no smell. I take 100 grams of the dried guano and mix it with 2 quarts of hot water, stirring it with a plant stake until it is almost all dissolved. I then take an 8-ounce cup of the tea and add it to 10 liters of water with a pH of 6.6. I water the beds twice a week with this tea, waiting until they are dry before applying it. I keep doing this until the middle of the seventh week in 12/12. With 10-week plants like the ones I’m growing now, I like to give them a good flush with water for two weeks or more before harvest.
In the 32 years I have been growing this most sacred of plants, I have tried all kinds of plant foods, from Miracle Gro to 10-52-10 with all its heavy metals. I have never found anything that beats guano for taste, yield, or potency. The taste that the cannabis acquires when using this guano is so fruity and clean that it lingers on your tongue for at least five minutes after finishing the joint.
The bud quality and yield that comes from using the beds instead of pots is incomparable. I use nothing but neem oil and ladybugs for insect control, and I only take the large fan leaves off when I first harvest the plants, waiting until the buds are dry before the final manicuring.
...
The author Somas world class genetics are available @ the
www.seedboutique.com/store/ and also @ the auction site www.SeedBay.com ,I would be a reckinin...
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