V
Veg N Out
Why even spend the money on mesh? I just make a bigmpile and it works great
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(2013) Gold Country Gardening with Shcrews
- Thread starter Shcrews
- Start date
Resistant
Active member
Good luck with the poison oak! Props to you for doing all that work by hand. Your land looks beautiful.
I was really trying to find a job out there in the foothills in early 2012, but I found one in Sonoma County, so I got close! I would go to the Windermere website and drool over all the cheap properties with acreage. It's sorta my long-term goal to live out in the sticks.
Good luck this year. I love the anticipation of garden planning. So much potential!
I was really trying to find a job out there in the foothills in early 2012, but I found one in Sonoma County, so I got close! I would go to the Windermere website and drool over all the cheap properties with acreage. It's sorta my long-term goal to live out in the sticks.
Good luck this year. I love the anticipation of garden planning. So much potential!
I think Veg is right that mounds work fine.
If you want to make pots, though, I'd recommend lining the inside of your mesh with flakes of straw to help with structure and heat control.
Thanks guys, glad yall are here to share.. Lots of work to do this week, have to finish prepping the hillside, then transport the soil and plants.
Veg n out.- Thanks for your input, i respect your experience., puts me more at ease in regards to the lack of smart pots. I would just use mounds but we are on a steep hillside and i think the wire mesh will help the soil maintain its shape and position.
Resistant - thanks for stopping by. My poison oak is going away slowly , i dont recommend it. very painful. I love sonoma county, my ex was from sebastopol.
Mapinguari, thanks, i will definitely line the wire mesh pots with something.
cheers!
Veg n out.- Thanks for your input, i respect your experience., puts me more at ease in regards to the lack of smart pots. I would just use mounds but we are on a steep hillside and i think the wire mesh will help the soil maintain its shape and position.
Resistant - thanks for stopping by. My poison oak is going away slowly , i dont recommend it. very painful. I love sonoma county, my ex was from sebastopol.
Mapinguari, thanks, i will definitely line the wire mesh pots with something.
cheers!
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That looks like your going to have a lot of fun this year GL and enjoy.. Nice set up
M
mr.shiva
I've got some beds like that. Putting some light colored shade cloth between the wire & soil is worth it, doesn't absorb as much heat. I like the wire cause rodents can seriously damage your plants (or $margin) in a night do not underestimate them!
happy memorial day yall ! 
I just spent a week in gold country working from sunrise to sunset..... We had to clear the hillside of brush and trees, level out spots for the 200 gallon pots, and then actually build the pots...
Instead of buying smart pots we made our own out of 1/4" wire mesh.. they are much sturdier and half the price! i tried to make a tutorial but my pictures are not very good so:
two hundred gallon wire-mesh smart pot tutorial:
1. cut a 4x4' square of wire mesh for the bottom of the pot
2. cut a 2' x 12.5' strip of wire mesh for the sides of the pot.
3. form the sides into a circle, fasten with wire, then fasten to the bottom square , it will look like an upside down high-school-graduation hat.
I just spent a week in gold country working from sunrise to sunset..... We had to clear the hillside of brush and trees, level out spots for the 200 gallon pots, and then actually build the pots...
Instead of buying smart pots we made our own out of 1/4" wire mesh.. they are much sturdier and half the price! i tried to make a tutorial but my pictures are not very good so:
two hundred gallon wire-mesh smart pot tutorial:
1. cut a 4x4' square of wire mesh for the bottom of the pot
2. cut a 2' x 12.5' strip of wire mesh for the sides of the pot.
3. form the sides into a circle, fasten with wire, then fasten to the bottom square , it will look like an upside down high-school-graduation hat.
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moving on from the low quality tutorial....
we got 40 spots cleared out for pots, and that's only for one of our plots (oh shit that rhymes )!!!
plan is to have 40 big plants on the hillside, with a small plant garden off to the side in 50 gallon pots or less.
strains have changed a bit, our big plant roster now is looking kinda like this:
5 Cheesequakes
5 Animal Cookies
10 Cherry Pies
10 Platinum Bubba Kush
10 Headlights (Headband x Northern Lights)
-30 plants will be clones. Only the 10 Headlights are from seed. They are f1 seeds from my partner. Our neighbors in gold country grew out the same seeds last year and said they were the biggest plants in their garden! I'm usually a clone guy but we will see....
the Headlights seedlings are about 1 foot tall, ready to go in the ground. to avoid planting males we are taking samples of leaf from each plant and having them genetically tested by SC Labs which is closeby to me in santa cruz.. i believe cost is $10 per sample. twenty samples should leave us with at least 10 definite females. I love science!!!
Also last night we found a few hits of oldschool Grateful Dead family LSD that the last tenant left in the house. Was a nice way to celebrate and enjoy our view from the top of the hill after working all weekend
anyway heres pics of the garden. Some were taken at sunset, hence the shade. (The hillside gets 10 to 12 hours of direct sun per day at a UV index 9+)
we got 40 spots cleared out for pots, and that's only for one of our plots (oh shit that rhymes )!!!
plan is to have 40 big plants on the hillside, with a small plant garden off to the side in 50 gallon pots or less.
strains have changed a bit, our big plant roster now is looking kinda like this:
5 Cheesequakes
5 Animal Cookies
10 Cherry Pies
10 Platinum Bubba Kush
10 Headlights (Headband x Northern Lights)
-30 plants will be clones. Only the 10 Headlights are from seed. They are f1 seeds from my partner. Our neighbors in gold country grew out the same seeds last year and said they were the biggest plants in their garden! I'm usually a clone guy but we will see....
the Headlights seedlings are about 1 foot tall, ready to go in the ground. to avoid planting males we are taking samples of leaf from each plant and having them genetically tested by SC Labs which is closeby to me in santa cruz.. i believe cost is $10 per sample. twenty samples should leave us with at least 10 definite females. I love science!!!
Also last night we found a few hits of oldschool Grateful Dead family LSD that the last tenant left in the house. Was a nice way to celebrate and enjoy our view from the top of the hill after working all weekend
anyway heres pics of the garden. Some were taken at sunset, hence the shade. (The hillside gets 10 to 12 hours of direct sun per day at a UV index 9+)
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Just happened to find some GD Family doses, eh? Good luck that was...
Have you decided how to line your pots?
Have you decided how to line your pots?
update, 5/31/2013
update, 5/31/2013
Expecting my dirt to arrive on june 4th. Thats a few days later than i would have liked but I am getting a discount on soil and delivery so i can't complain. We are getting 11 pallets of Vermifire, 1000lbs of chicken manure, some perlite, azomite, rainbow mix (myco + humic), all delivered for about $7000 , will fill 40 200gal pots.
I hope to have all my plants in their permanent homes by June 7th. I was shooting for the 1st but oh well. should be fine anyway, the starts are looking great
anybody else using Vermifire for outdoor plants want to share how you amend your soil? i think we got it covered but i want to compare notes. maybe i should go ask on the Tom Hill thread, seems like more activity there than in here...
Still havent gotten the genetic tests done on the seedlings, we are waiting a couple more days to see which ones look the best right before being moved outside.
update, 5/31/2013
Expecting my dirt to arrive on june 4th. Thats a few days later than i would have liked but I am getting a discount on soil and delivery so i can't complain. We are getting 11 pallets of Vermifire, 1000lbs of chicken manure, some perlite, azomite, rainbow mix (myco + humic), all delivered for about $7000 , will fill 40 200gal pots.
I hope to have all my plants in their permanent homes by June 7th. I was shooting for the 1st but oh well. should be fine anyway, the starts are looking great
anybody else using Vermifire for outdoor plants want to share how you amend your soil? i think we got it covered but i want to compare notes. maybe i should go ask on the Tom Hill thread, seems like more activity there than in here...
Still havent gotten the genetic tests done on the seedlings, we are waiting a couple more days to see which ones look the best right before being moved outside.
im going to line the pots with some kind of fabric, not sure what yet. in spite of all the DIY smart pot tutorials on here it sure is hard to find smart pot material in the stores.
V
Veg N Out
You could go to home depot and get burlap, that would work great, or you could use straw around the edges as well.
Call up the people from vermifire and get a soil analysis from them and see what you are working with and go from there. The best position to start from when it comes to amending this kind of yardage is an informed one.
Call up the people from vermifire and get a soil analysis from them and see what you are working with and go from there. The best position to start from when it comes to amending this kind of yardage is an informed one.
My life goal is to find some property that is far enough away from the general populous to do something like this. I'm still young though, so there is plenty of time, but mad props to you for living the/my dream!
I'll be following this throughout as big outdoor grows never disappoint!
Peace
I'll be following this throughout as big outdoor grows never disappoint!
Peace
So there was a holdup with our soil, it came finally, two weeks late. 11 pallets of Vermifire, plus amendments (rainbow mix, glacial rock dust, kelp meal, mycos, perlite)
to save time we just pushed the pallets off the back of the truck. The driver was stoked, i dont think he'd unloaded like that before.
to save time we just pushed the pallets off the back of the truck. The driver was stoked, i dont think he'd unloaded like that before.
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once the dirt was in the pots we finally got our plants in the dirt. no pictures yet, but i did manage to get a shot of the sunset that we enjoyed from out porch afterwards. I sure love california ! from LA to the Bay, Emerald Triangle to Gold Country, its all perfect and crazy.
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furrywall11
Member
freaken sweet setup. Those long days are deadly but well worth it. I put some Blue Suger (blue dreamxsuger kush) five foot tall plants in some 200 gl smarties with just vermifire about five days ago and noticed a slight nute burn developed on the very tips...nothing extremely serious but, enough to let me that there are definitely some nutes in that vermifire. Blue Suger seems to be kind of nute sensitive, but I thought I'd mention it anyways. Good luck, your girls are going to do great in that full sun!
Why be impressed with paranoia and self importance?
11 pallets and you decided to amend it? Thats alot of mixing! I try to leave the soil science to the professionals that provide the base mix, my back prefers it that way!
I love the permanence of the pots and flats you dug, swing by our thread and see how we went about working on a hillside... less work and way less impact on slope itself
Can't wait to see how your new digs shapes up! Hillside is looking great
