The Temple: Tropical Greenhouse

[PazVerdeRadical]

The Place: a backyard somewhere in tropical South American Andes mountains, facing south, receives 6 to 8 hours of direct sun-light year-round (depending on where within the area are specimens placed). Days are of 12 hours of sunlight year-round. Altitude is about 1400 meters above sea level (approx. 4500 feet).

Materials used: wood, cement, stones, special greenhouse plastic for the roof, nails, special green nettings as walls.

Dimensions: 4.5 meters wide x 4 meters long x 3.15 meters tall at its tallest and 1.70 meters at its lowest.

100% hand made by just one man in hopes of cultivating various entheogenetic species.

It still is in need of minor details to be considered a finished job, but all such things are already being taken care of. All that is left now is getting to work with the plants of the gods.

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

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[glock23]

muy cool amigo!

 

[GDK]

Wow that looks great Paz. I love the wood you used. It looks very pro with a vintage feel even. Id love to build one just like it some day. Commercial greenhouses doesnt look all that pretty, but yours would look beautiful in any garden. I hope that you will be able to show us some beautiful plants soon.
Great work

Stay Safe

 

[Guest]

thats looking real good bro. sendin good vibes your way....hoping you have a very green season.

I plan on building a greenhouse for next year..

 

[Guest]

Paz,

So the Argentinian defeat in the World Cup has made you finally leave that high paid IT job in the City, move to the mountains, break into someone's garden, mercilessly hack through a lovely bush and builld yourself a herbal haven?? I see what you've done there amigo. Hat comes off..

What strains are you gonna grow?

Don't think I've ever seen bud being grown at altitude in the Andes before..?-I'll be sure to bookmark this. Things are looking sweet so far.

Hey - if you get any runts you could call them things like Schweinsteigger...and Ballack? Just a thought.

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

thank you for your comments my friends, truly appreciate them :friends:

Vision, you got me figured out man lol... but i wouldn't be so harsh to the little runts by naming them after those people

i'm gonna get a friend of mine who is a good painter to paint a Shiva in the backwall of the Temple, that would be kick-ass

so far i have been growing colombian strains, all from commercial pressed buds, still haven't found a keeper... grew out some strain sent to me from the u.s which was called 'cali purple' and already have a few more of those seedlings going... tried to grow cali-o-bud but the sun is too intense here for those types of strains so they go straight into flowering, pretty funny.
will post some pics of the few clones and seedlings i have going in there, plus some specie of bamboo i planted in there too to help with the camo.

GDK, i don't know the name of the wood i used in english, but the main supporting beams in spanish are called Teca, and the other wood is Saki-Saki and in some parts i used Pine (this one i know ) but pine is not a good wood for building i've found out. gotta spread k+/rep before sending some your way again.

paz!

 

[Guest]

i'm gonna get a friend of mine who is a good painter to paint a Shiva in the backwall of the Temple, that would be kick-ass

Good idea that crop would be blessed!

 

[zamalito]

Paz, I think we mustve been brothers in a past life.

 

[Bacchus]

Very nice. How cold are your winters?

 

[T.doT.Toker]

Nice start paz. Just to update you on that germination thing, only 9 of his beans sprouted. I suspect it was because his temps were to cold. When i touched his soil it was so cold all the time.

 

[zamalito]

Are you going to be running electrical current the the greenhouse or will it be off the grid? If its off the grid you should consider getting some solar powered lamps. They're not powerful enough to help your yield, however they'll give you the ability to control when and how the plants will flower.

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

mr. zamalito, we're hermanos in this one as well.
that's a good idea about having some kind of lamp help to control flowering times, but this would work only for what we consider indicas; which are the ones who have the very short veg-time and go right into flower; some do go vegging for about 2 months and flower for 1 or 2 more months, but the 'indoor' variety of seeds grow like 5 inches and go into flower lol... the sativas do very good though.

bacchus, the temperature here is very consistent all year round, perfect weather for all year i would say.although there are temperature/humidity variations throughout the day, heat can go up to the 90s and cold to 50s + o - on the same day! but such drastic changes are not the norm. the idea of this tropical greenhouse is to protect plants from rains, strong winds and unwanted eyes. a full greenhouse at this altitude would keep too much heat and wouldn't work, this one allows enough air in to keep temps. real nice. it also serves as a minor protections against some bugs.

t.dot.toker, so do you think that if your friend had not only kept the soil moist enough but also warm enough the zip-lock idea would have giving him higher germ. rates? i was hoping more to pop out the soil even though i was not confident in the method. i guess the seeds need some looking after with those types of details, specially since this bullshit prohibition forces us to work with such small ammounts of seeds.

Vision, i sure hope it gets to be blessed!

thank you.
peace.

 

[muddy waters]

muy interesante, paz...

i second zamalito's suggestion to run electrical, though i would route it to a specific light-proof cab, for keeping mothers and prolonging veg in those skunk varieties you mentioned (i don't think it's the power of the equatorial sun so much as the photoperiod that's making them flower immediately).

also, are you going to be planting directly in the ground? i think raised beds would be wise (just for your back's sake), but if i were you, i'd run an electrical outlet, use ferrocement to build a small fish-keeping tank, and have some aquaponic beds for the smaller skunkish varieties and some raised beds for the 3 meter sativas.

best of luck

 

[zamalito]

I read that the soil of the andes blossoms with life when irrigated, though the topsoil layer is thin. Is this true?

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

muddy, thank you, i admit it is interesting what you and zamalito have mentioned, but i'm still too much of a newbie to even begin to consider such technological intricacies for growing but thanks again for letting me know, in the future i may tire of the too traditional style i am working now and may wish to expand my horizons.

zamalito, digging a hole in my backyard is usual to find earth worms, the soil here is simply amazing. the topsoil layer being thin depends a lot on what thin is, some places have black rich topsoil that goes several meters into the earth. but the higher you go, the thinner the topsoil becomes for sure. also, every several meters in altitude change and depending on where is the valley you are locate at, determines many climate variations, this is the land of micro-climates.

edit: muddy, i forgot to mention, at the moment i'm growing in pots, at least the cannabis. still gotta sort a lot of things out in there

peace!

 

[watermelon]

i cant think of anythign better than having perfect weather all year and growing outside in my garden.

i like the wooden rustic look of your greenhouse. i dont really like those normal plastic and metal abominations.


with your growing conditons how long does it take to grow from seed?
are you going to try supplimentary lighting to keep plants in veg in order to grow them bigger? id really like to see that done as ive only seen it breifly mentioned before.

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

watermelon, i don't think you would want to keep some of the colombians in veg to grow them any bigger... some take 6months from seed to finish, others can take 9, 11 or 14 months! sativa monsters with true hallucinatory power
the indicas are the ones that grow very fast from seed to finish, the decent ones take about 3-4 months. the indoor varieties are not even worth cultivating, very low potency and right after they brake through the soil go right into flower.

here's an example of a cali-o-bud grown here:

 

[Guest]

wow thats a small plant...how come its so tiny? Just not good enviroment for that strain? its always 12/12 there too isnt it?

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

yes jay, 12/12 all year round. i think the problem is not only the photoperiod as muddy already suggested, but also the intensity the sun rays hit this latitude. the intensity is simply higher, too high for strains that are genetically coded to be grown indoors.
the outdoor indicas do better though, grow a single cola, no branches, one main bud, kind of mother nature's version of lowryder?

this the best pic (it is crap i know) of a 'cali purple', to illustrate:



peace.