Hello gardeners!
The 2011 season is well underway here at Butte Farms! I’m going to take you all along as we expand, refine and explode this year. My preference is to keep this thread pretty tidy, so please keep discussion to this garden and questions about gardening. The large plants thread has turned into a nice social forum where you can do that kind of posting.
So, let’s jump right in! We started last August by covering 2000+ miles collecting genetics from all the best growers I know and bringing them back to the Farm for safe keeping. (You know who you are – thanks!) We kept these in the indoor room all winter growing them into healthy moms and culling strains based on final review the original growers at harvest. Emphasis was placed on early flowering strains and strains that were really something special. From 50+ strains originally we whittled it down to:
Kush Cleaner (Sha)
Blueberry Frost (Butte County)
Big Kahuna Kush (Mendo)
Cherry Assassin x OG Kush (Barefoot Steve)
Alien GooPak (fisher)
Blue Dream (same cut I’ve been running for years)
OG Kind (Trinity County)
Triangle Kush (Not sure I should say
)
Cheese (same cut I’ve been running for years)
I really like the four bulb T5’s for vegging moms. The depth they provide is perfect for short plants and the evenness of the light distribution can’t be beat. I use three fixtures per 4x4 tray.
__________________________
Concurrently, before harvest was even completed (plants still in the ground!), we started outdoor preparation. Clearing out a space to roughly double the garden, we put a lot of energy into removing manzanita and one large tree. The SunEye came in really handy in letting us know what tree to take out and which to leave. I opted to take out one and leave a nice large tree and sacrifice some sun on one of the new beds – tradeoffs, I guess. Check out my post (https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=3190931#post3190931) on the large plant thread to learn more about the SunEye.
Back in January I strolled on down to our local worm factory and started a dialogue with them about blending my own soil. As it was the “down season” for suppliers, I got amazing service from all involved and plenty of gratitude for the business. Committing to 165+ yards of your own mix is a bit daunting, but I feel my mix is solid. The way I go about it is to have all my dried amendments drop shipped to the factory and have them mix it up for me. Once mixed, it’s trucked to the farm.
This is a compost turner used to mix in the ingredients, inoculating the mix with worm tea at the same time. This method ensures perfect moisture content as well as setting up the biology in the best possible way. The big and chunky perlite was folded in with the bobcat to prevent the turner from pulverizing it too much.
Once mixed, the soil was stored indoors until I could get delivery. Having all the soil mixed by mid February allowed all the ingredients to mellow ensuring my super stocked mix didn’t burn the plants. As some may recall, the first year I made my old beds, the mix was hot well into the summer causing huge problems.
As I’m sure some will ask, my mix has the following in it. Ratios won’t be given in this thread.
Cottonseed meal
Bone meal
Blood meal
Soybean meal
Alfalfa fines
Feather meal
CalPhos
Nitrogen Bat Guano
Kelp meal
Oyster shell flour
KMag
Azomite
Glacial rock dust
Gypsum
Vermiculite
Perlite
Peat
Worm Castings
Worm tea
The logic here is to provide short, medium and long term release of available nutrients. By having the majority of the nutrients “locked in rocks”, we have provided a battery bank the plants can draw on through the application of appropriate biology. Some of the other ingredients are present for structure (for example perlite), higher CEC (vermiculite), or things like buffering (gypsum, oyster shell, etc). The necessary biology comes from the castings as well as the teas they apply. We’ll of course be utilizing AACT all season.
Once everything had been mixed and mellowed, I took a soil sample to the lab to ensure that things looked right on the quantitative end. I also potted up a couple plants to have a real world test. Both the hard numbers and the plants looked great and I felt good about the final mix. Had something come up as unbalanced or lacking, we could have amended the mix before it left the facility. The flexibility to do this was a result of working closely with the worm factory owners and planning ahead. Proper planning and acting according to that plan will be a hallmark of this year’s garden.
Meanwhile, I hired a very good operator to level the area and dig my beds. Our native soil is very high in iron and has little to no structure as it has a high ratio of clay particles. When faced with unsuitable native soil you can go about it several ways. My approach was to simply bring in the material I needed and go from there. This is the fastest, and perhaps easiest, way to get something going. One could also use cover crops, compost and castings, and tea to rehabilitate soil into something usable, but this approach can take years. The fact our ‘old’ beds are still producing well after three years is testament to the first approach being sound. In addition, beds that began at ~2’ now have structure well below that. Organic material and repeated tea leaching down from the beds has given structure to what was once compacted clay soil.
The result matched what we had envisioned perfectly. In fact, we had been ready to compromise on our vision but didn’t need to. Here we are before the clover got mowed and turned under.
Crimson clover fixes nitrogen from the air into root nodules. The clover is then “mowed” and turned under. A generous batch of compost tea was applied to the freshly turned beds and then allowed to sit for about a week before planting.
__________________________
Robust starts are critical to success. As such, we create almost three times the necessary plants in order to have the best to pick from. Once selected down to 200% of needed, they are transferred to air pots. Air pots allow us to not only get the best possible root system, but also transplanting is shock-free and very fast. Just unroll and drop in. This approach causes virtually zero root disturbance. Having done everything in our power to produce these roots, it’s nice to treat them right. Here’s a picture of one of the plants that didn’t get selected.
This unseasonable weather required us to set up a bit of hoop house while we waited to plant the ladies. This was a simple affair assembled right in the garden from available materials. We also used a CostCo carport covered in contractor plastic as a makeshift greenhouse. This worked really well and will be set up in the garden next year.
We’ve been running supplemental lighting for years and will continue to do so this year. In the aerial above you can make out the spacing and layout of the lighting. See my post on lighting (https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=3254870&postcount=225) for an expanded discussion of using CFLs to prevent early triggering.
Planting day was set for Friday, May 20th. With the moon in Libra it was a good day to plant for root growth. The plants went in wonderfully under scattered clouds and the mood was high. The current off/ on storm cycle that has brought a couple episodes of light hail, lots of rain, and cold nighttime temps moved in over the next few days and continues to be the weirdest spring I’ve seen.
I’d also like to stress the importance of mycorrhizae when planting. Here is your opportunity to really give your plants a boost in the root department. It’s worth the money to get fresh, high-quality mycorrhizae, imho. While we’re at it, how about a little fungal porn? This is a cultivated pile we started ~3 years ago. Mixed hardwoods piled a foot or so deep and covered with cardboard and carpet in the woods. Left alone, native fungi move in and set up. This material is now being used in tea bags to bump up the fungal ratio of our teas.
So, we’re pretty much on cruise control right now waiting for the weather to break so they can really get going. Thanks everyone for stopping in and watching the show. This year will be full of surprises and new adventure here at the farm, so get ready to take some notes!
Happy gardening - Butte
The 2011 season is well underway here at Butte Farms! I’m going to take you all along as we expand, refine and explode this year. My preference is to keep this thread pretty tidy, so please keep discussion to this garden and questions about gardening. The large plants thread has turned into a nice social forum where you can do that kind of posting.
So, let’s jump right in! We started last August by covering 2000+ miles collecting genetics from all the best growers I know and bringing them back to the Farm for safe keeping. (You know who you are – thanks!) We kept these in the indoor room all winter growing them into healthy moms and culling strains based on final review the original growers at harvest. Emphasis was placed on early flowering strains and strains that were really something special. From 50+ strains originally we whittled it down to:
Kush Cleaner (Sha)
Blueberry Frost (Butte County)
Big Kahuna Kush (Mendo)
Cherry Assassin x OG Kush (Barefoot Steve)
Alien GooPak (fisher)
Blue Dream (same cut I’ve been running for years)
OG Kind (Trinity County)
Triangle Kush (Not sure I should say
)Cheese (same cut I’ve been running for years)
I really like the four bulb T5’s for vegging moms. The depth they provide is perfect for short plants and the evenness of the light distribution can’t be beat. I use three fixtures per 4x4 tray.
__________________________
Concurrently, before harvest was even completed (plants still in the ground!), we started outdoor preparation. Clearing out a space to roughly double the garden, we put a lot of energy into removing manzanita and one large tree. The SunEye came in really handy in letting us know what tree to take out and which to leave. I opted to take out one and leave a nice large tree and sacrifice some sun on one of the new beds – tradeoffs, I guess. Check out my post (https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=3190931#post3190931) on the large plant thread to learn more about the SunEye.
Back in January I strolled on down to our local worm factory and started a dialogue with them about blending my own soil. As it was the “down season” for suppliers, I got amazing service from all involved and plenty of gratitude for the business. Committing to 165+ yards of your own mix is a bit daunting, but I feel my mix is solid. The way I go about it is to have all my dried amendments drop shipped to the factory and have them mix it up for me. Once mixed, it’s trucked to the farm.
This is a compost turner used to mix in the ingredients, inoculating the mix with worm tea at the same time. This method ensures perfect moisture content as well as setting up the biology in the best possible way. The big and chunky perlite was folded in with the bobcat to prevent the turner from pulverizing it too much.
Once mixed, the soil was stored indoors until I could get delivery. Having all the soil mixed by mid February allowed all the ingredients to mellow ensuring my super stocked mix didn’t burn the plants. As some may recall, the first year I made my old beds, the mix was hot well into the summer causing huge problems.
As I’m sure some will ask, my mix has the following in it. Ratios won’t be given in this thread.
Cottonseed meal
Bone meal
Blood meal
Soybean meal
Alfalfa fines
Feather meal
CalPhos
Nitrogen Bat Guano
Kelp meal
Oyster shell flour
KMag
Azomite
Glacial rock dust
Gypsum
Vermiculite
Perlite
Peat
Worm Castings
Worm tea
The logic here is to provide short, medium and long term release of available nutrients. By having the majority of the nutrients “locked in rocks”, we have provided a battery bank the plants can draw on through the application of appropriate biology. Some of the other ingredients are present for structure (for example perlite), higher CEC (vermiculite), or things like buffering (gypsum, oyster shell, etc). The necessary biology comes from the castings as well as the teas they apply. We’ll of course be utilizing AACT all season.
Once everything had been mixed and mellowed, I took a soil sample to the lab to ensure that things looked right on the quantitative end. I also potted up a couple plants to have a real world test. Both the hard numbers and the plants looked great and I felt good about the final mix. Had something come up as unbalanced or lacking, we could have amended the mix before it left the facility. The flexibility to do this was a result of working closely with the worm factory owners and planning ahead. Proper planning and acting according to that plan will be a hallmark of this year’s garden.
Meanwhile, I hired a very good operator to level the area and dig my beds. Our native soil is very high in iron and has little to no structure as it has a high ratio of clay particles. When faced with unsuitable native soil you can go about it several ways. My approach was to simply bring in the material I needed and go from there. This is the fastest, and perhaps easiest, way to get something going. One could also use cover crops, compost and castings, and tea to rehabilitate soil into something usable, but this approach can take years. The fact our ‘old’ beds are still producing well after three years is testament to the first approach being sound. In addition, beds that began at ~2’ now have structure well below that. Organic material and repeated tea leaching down from the beds has given structure to what was once compacted clay soil.
The result matched what we had envisioned perfectly. In fact, we had been ready to compromise on our vision but didn’t need to. Here we are before the clover got mowed and turned under.
Crimson clover fixes nitrogen from the air into root nodules. The clover is then “mowed” and turned under. A generous batch of compost tea was applied to the freshly turned beds and then allowed to sit for about a week before planting.
__________________________
This unseasonable weather required us to set up a bit of hoop house while we waited to plant the ladies. This was a simple affair assembled right in the garden from available materials. We also used a CostCo carport covered in contractor plastic as a makeshift greenhouse. This worked really well and will be set up in the garden next year.
We’ve been running supplemental lighting for years and will continue to do so this year. In the aerial above you can make out the spacing and layout of the lighting. See my post on lighting (https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=3254870&postcount=225) for an expanded discussion of using CFLs to prevent early triggering.
Planting day was set for Friday, May 20th. With the moon in Libra it was a good day to plant for root growth. The plants went in wonderfully under scattered clouds and the mood was high. The current off/ on storm cycle that has brought a couple episodes of light hail, lots of rain, and cold nighttime temps moved in over the next few days and continues to be the weirdest spring I’ve seen.
I’d also like to stress the importance of mycorrhizae when planting. Here is your opportunity to really give your plants a boost in the root department. It’s worth the money to get fresh, high-quality mycorrhizae, imho. While we’re at it, how about a little fungal porn? This is a cultivated pile we started ~3 years ago. Mixed hardwoods piled a foot or so deep and covered with cardboard and carpet in the woods. Left alone, native fungi move in and set up. This material is now being used in tea bags to bump up the fungal ratio of our teas.
So, we’re pretty much on cruise control right now waiting for the weather to break so they can really get going. Thanks everyone for stopping in and watching the show. This year will be full of surprises and new adventure here at the farm, so get ready to take some notes!
Happy gardening - Butte
