Hempy Headquarters

[TorturedSoul]

You're not seriously considering paying $13.59 for that, are you?

Canadian Tire Food Grade Approved Bucket, 2-Gallon | Canadian Tire

Use the Canadian Tire Food Grade Approved Bucket for DIY projects, painting or gardening | Canadian Tire

www.canadiantire.ca

Canadian Tire Food Grade Approved Bucket, 5-Gallon | Canadian Tire

Canadian Tire Food Grade Approved Bucket features a sturdy plastic construction | Canadian Tire

www.canadiantire.ca

That's the only major store in Canada I know of, and that only because someone I used to interact with online ran one. You might be able to find a better deal elsewhere.

I don't want to hunt down and post fertilizer links, because I might step on a sponsor's toes. (Figured buckets were generic enough that they'd pass, lol.) If you are set on a simple dry product, you can search Canadian (indoor, but some traditional nurseries/greenhouses carry them, too) gardening store websites and Amazon's Canadian website for General Hydroponics' Maxi Series products (MaxiGro and MaxiBloom). I've read that some people use just the flowering component. IDK. There's also Osmocote Plus, which will work (and some have used it to good effect). Might take a look at the Jack's Classic (et cetera) brand of dry nutrients, too.

Seems like I found a link to those two GH Maxi products a couple years ago for someone, and got the impression that Canada must have a 100% tariff on fertilizer products or something. If it's still 2X what it should cost, it might be close to $30 for a one-kilogram bag (which should last a long time if you're only growing a plant or three at a time).

There's a brand called Hydrogardens that produces dry nutrients. Never tried them, but those who have seem to like the brand, and there are several different formulations.

 

[HashGirl]

Jack's three two one is another fairly simple dry-mix option. The General Hydroponics Flora series is also a cheaper option just slightly more complicated in mixing and would most likely need a cal-mag supplement to go with.

Buck.

When you say dry-mix option, do you mean I don't have to mix with water and just put it on the perlite raw?

 

[FelipeBlu]

Buck.

When you say dry-mix option, do you mean I don't have to mix with water and just put it on the perlite raw?

I think he means a dry product like MegaCrop, as opposed to a liquid product like Dyna Gro.

 

[HashGirl]

You're not seriously considering paying $13.59 for that, are you?

Canadian Tire Food Grade Approved Bucket, 2-Gallon | Canadian Tire

Use the Canadian Tire Food Grade Approved Bucket for DIY projects, painting or gardening | Canadian Tire

www.canadiantire.ca

Canadian Tire Food Grade Approved Bucket, 5-Gallon | Canadian Tire

Canadian Tire Food Grade Approved Bucket features a sturdy plastic construction | Canadian Tire

www.canadiantire.ca

That's the only major store in Canada I know of, and that only because someone I used to interact with online ran one. You might be able to find a better deal elsewhere.

I never even thought of Canadian Tire. Duh. And, there's literally Canadian Tires on 3 sides of where I live.

TS!

 

[TorturedSoul]

And, there's literally Canadian Tires on 3 sides of where I live.

And probably on four corners of your automobile. (Lame attempt at humor.)

Mixing liquid plant nutrient solution is pretty easy. I mean... I wouldn't suggest purchasing the full ($1,200?) set of Advanced Nutrients jugs, but a one-, two-, or even three-part nutrient set only takes a few minutes. Assuming you're not using "organics," you ought to be able to mix more than one dose at a time and not have to worry about it turning into some kind of foul-smelling nature preserve.

I'd definitely rather do that than, for example, bathe a cat without wearing armor.

 

[HashGirl]

I don't want to hunt down and post fertilizer links, because I might step on a sponsor's toes. (Figured buckets were generic enough that they'd pass, lol.) If you are set on a simple dry product, you can search Canadian (indoor, but some traditional nurseries/greenhouses carry them, too) gardening store websites and Amazon's Canadian website for General Hydroponics' Maxi Series products (MaxiGro and MaxiBloom). I've read that some people use just the flowering component. IDK. There's also Osmocote Plus, which will work (and some have used it to good effect). Might take a look at the Jack's Classic (et cetera) brand of dry nutrients, too.

Seems like I found a link to those two GH Maxi products a couple years ago for someone, and got the impression that Canada must have a 100% tariff on fertilizer products or something. If it's still 2X what it should cost, it might be close to $30 for a one-kilogram bag (which should last a long time if you're only growing a plant or three at a time).

There's a brand called Hydrogardens that produces dry nutrients. Never tried them, but those who have seem to like the brand, and there are several different formulations.

Thanks, again, TS. I've missed you.

I will investigate these nutrients but not tonight. I'm tired and high and I'm going to go play some rounds of online gin rummy before bed.

I do have one question, though. The ones you posted links to were white and I thought that the darker the pail was the better? That's why I thought this navy blue one would work? Also, I have another question, I think only one.

What is this reservoir thing I keep hearing about or reading somewhere on this thread, maybe? I understand the perlite and pail thing mostly now. But, I do need to know what else I'm going to need before it gets harder and harder to find this stuff so can you or someone else here help me out?

Thanks, guys. Sue was right. You guys are the best.

 

[HashGirl]

I think he means a dry product like MegaCrop, as opposed to a liquid product like Dyna Gro.

Yeah but I know nothing. This will literally be my first grow and growing cannabis seems a lot more complicated than growing tomatoes, in my opinion but I want to learn how to grow because I have a medical licence and right now, my husband is my designated grower and I'm worried that if something happens to him, I won't know how to grow my meds so I'm learning now when I can be helped by him although I actually used to garden and Ioved it until my rheumatoid autoimmune disease destroyed that. So, I'm confident I can do this. And, my husband wants help, too so by you helping me, I'll be helping him and I like that. His plants do great until they start flowering and then it all falls to pieces and he doesn't know why so I want to change that. He gets so discouraged by it. Good thing I have tons of meds from his outdoor grows predominantly. Except when it rains for days on end as it sometimes does and torrential, too but then just stores them all under the gazebo. Anyways, I'm rambling because I'm high because that's what I do when I'm high. Hope you're okay with it. And, if you're not? Oh well.



SOoooo.... Anyways....

So, are you saying you just add the Mega Crop directly to the perlite without adding it to water first but that's what you would do with the Dyna Pro? Or something else entirely?

in advance.

 

[TorturedSoul]

When you say dry-mix option, do you mean I don't have to mix with water and just put it on the perlite raw?

If that's in regard to the Jack's brand of nutrients, those get mixed in water. They're water-soluble.

I apologize for what might well be gibberish here at the start.

How odd. Most of my posts are gibberish at the end .

I wanted to reply to TS in a separate post but it has all turned out to be complicated

Whatever works best for you, ma'am.

because I'm actually quite high and I'm having problems thinking.

Try a sativa.

Thanks, again, TS. I've missed you.

NOTE TO SELF: Find that bullseye baseball cap.

I do have one question, though. The ones you posted links to were white and I thought that the darker the pail was the better? That's why I thought this navy blue one would work?

<SIGH> I could hunt down a link to a can of black spray paint, if required. Although a little birdie told me that Canadian Tire sells that, too.

Also, I have another question, I think only one.

Yes, I saw that, the one about the navy blue bucket.

What is this reservoir thing I keep hearing about or reading somewhere on this thread, maybe?

Oh, you meant another another question. No worries...

If you pour water into a sieve, it will all drain onto your floor/shoes/etc. If, on the other hand, you pour water into a bucket / wastebasket / soda bottle that you have drilled or melted a hole into, partway up from the bottom, some of that water will fail to drain out - because there's a reservoir in it. Does that help?

I understand the perlite and pail thing mostly now.

.

But, I do need to know what else I'm going to need before it gets harder and harder to find this stuff so can you or someone else here help me out?

Container, nutrients, water, light-energy. A timer if using an artificial light source. A pH meter would be a really good idea (IMHO). An EC meter wouldn't hurt, but you can skip it if you need to. Hmm... There was something else...

Oh, yeah: a viable cannabis plant (or seed).

That's really about it, as far as need goes. Something to confine that light-energy, such as a closet with bright white walls, grow tent, et cetera would be a really good idea. Something to move air through the space would also be a really good idea. You may or may not desire a carbon filter. Perhaps your future cannabis plant will be a herd animal, and wish to have a friend or two in there with her. <SHRUGS> Whatever you decide to add for your own convenience, like a stool to sit on, pad to kneel on, etc. A printed color copy of a decent "Elemental Deficiencies / Toxicities in Plants" chart/text, to refer to when necessary. A pound of stellar bud and 20 grams of 93.5% THC oil to tide you over until harvest. Some young person (with young fingers) to trim that harvest.

That one thing that you'll think of two seconds before realizing that you should have bought it last week. . . .

 

[TorturedSoul]

growing cannabis seems a lot more complicated than growing tomatoes

It's really not. If tomatoes cost $1,200 to $4,000 per pound, you'd be putting more effort into how you grew them, too.

Get 100 cannabis seeds, form "100 compost / dirt balls" with the seeds as cores, and drive down a country road, pitching them into the woods one after the other. Return in the Autumn and you'll probably be able to harvest some bud.

 

[TorturedSoul]

I'm worried that if something happens to him, I won't know how to grow my meds

If the unthinkable should come to pass any time soon and you aren't inundated with offers of assistance, send me bus fare for a ticket from my town to the nearest deserted border area, a ghillie suit so I can crawl across (no passport or means of getting one), and more bus fare to travel from the nearest terminal inside Canada to your town, and I'll see if I can turn you into a half-@ssed cannabis gardener just like me (well... without the facial hair and bad attitude, I suppose). Pay me a dollar/week and I could probably claim it's "employment" and apply for citizenship . [EDIT: I might have to stop off and pester @dr.h00k on the way, though - but there's a possibility that he'd buy the second bus ticket in order to get me off his property .]

 

[TorturedSoul]

That one thing that you'll think of two seconds before realizing that you should have bought it last week. . . .

AHA! - A catch-pan, for when you water with sufficient overflow to cause a "mini-flush."

 

[HashGirl]

And probably on four corners of your automobile. (Lame attempt at humor.)

Mixing liquid plant nutrient solution is pretty easy. I mean... I wouldn't suggest purchasing the full ($1,200?) set of Advanced Nutrients jugs, but a one-, two-, or even three-part nutrient set only takes a few minutes. Assuming you're not using "organics," you ought to be able to mix more than one dose at a time and not have to worry about it turning into some kind of foul-smelling nature preserve.

I'd definitely rather do that than, for example, bathe a cat without wearing armor.

I really do love you, TS.

Felonious has been using organics and hates them because they don't seem to help at all and they're more expensive and they stink to high heaven, IMO. Thank God, he just bought new non-organic liquid nutrients. I don't know why they are. He was just here and I didn't think to ask. Told you I was high.

 

[TorturedSoul]

rheumatoid autoimmune disease

That... Has me more than a little concerned. Even a gallon of water can be difficult to manage, for some folks. If I was high right now, I'd be busily designing some kind of ridiculously complicated drip-feed or ebb & flow (aka "flood and drain") setup, with auto-pH management, automatic nutrient dosing, a comfortable cushion to fall onto when you pass out from learning the price of everything...

Seriously, though, I'm a little worried at the thought of you having to lump water to your plant(s). Might there be a water faucet in your grow space, by chance? I set up a few (food-crop) plants along the side of Mom's house each year, and she has difficulty if/when I can't walk over there in time to water them and she ends up grabbing the water hose to do it - and it's five feet away from the first plant in the row.

His plants do great until they start flowering and then it all falls to pieces and he doesn't know why

OUCH! I did not know that, and had assumed that he was doing well. That answers my unasked question, "Won't your hubby be explaining all this to you?"

Anyways, I'm rambling because I'm high because that's what I do when I'm high. Hope you're okay with it. And, if you're not? Oh well.

If I wasn't, I would be the world's second-biggest hypocrite.

 

[FelipeBlu]

So, are you saying you just add the Mega Crop directly to the perlite without adding it to water first but that's what you would do with the Dyna Pro?

No, you mix both into water. One is dry, and the other is wet. For example, you might add 5g of a dry product to water to make a fertilizer solution at a certain concentration. Or you might mix 10ml of a concentrated fertilizer solution to water to get to the same dose. You would never add the dry mix to the perlite and then water. It isn’t like Dr Earth dry fertilizer.

 

[TorturedSoul]

This gets mixed into the media at planting time:

Osmocote Plus Plant Food: Discuss Its Use With Cannabis Here!

Hello everyone. There has been a fair amount of interest in this product lately so let's all discuss its use with growing Cannabis. Here is the nutrient analysis of the Osmocote Plus made by Scotts. So please share your experience with using this product. I've read some about it...

www.420magazine.com

I didn't care for it overmuch, for cannabis. It works well enough, I suppose. It fed two tomato plants in buckets full of the cheapest soil available, on Mom's front porch, all Summer long last year - and they, in turn, fed her. It's a time-release (or controlled release, I get the two confused) product. "Just add water, but probably add a source of magnesium (I generally use Epsom salt) and maybe calcium (depending on your water), too.

GeoFlora is another dry nutrient brand. It's "organic." The company is now a forum sponsor. The two products are GeoFlora Veg and GeoFlora Bloom. Someone at GeoPot was kind enough to send me a sample-sized bag of each last year, and I had intended to give the duo a try, in a GeoPot container full of inexpensive "organic" soil, this Spring (IOW, within the month). Sadly, I won't be able to do that - because the GeoFlora packages are completely not mouse-proof. The little *******s must have scented the stuff right through those packages, because I opened the box they were in with the intention of reading the packages in preparation... only to discover two empty packages with "mouse-sized" holes in them. Along with maybe a tablespoon of the product and some other "organic" fertilizer . Therefore, if you buy the products, and there is any possibility that you have a rodent (...or two) in your home, you would be well-advised to store them inside an impregnable bunker. I was pretty disappointed about not getting to actually try the stuff (and in the packaging!!!). It would have been the very first time I tried to grow a cannabis plant in "organic" soil and with "organic" nutrients. Plus, I remember having an initially positive feeling upon reading the product information on the GeoFlora website. If I remember correctly, it's a top-dress application, no mixing it into the water, no teas to brew, no "must be organic, it smells like death" odor, no hassle. And I think the size of the samples would have been sufficient for a plant, maybe more than one. Oh, well. Luckily, mice can neither smell through bottles nor unscrew bottle lids, so I still have the synthetic stuff to feed plants, lol.

I still appreciated the act of giving that the GeoPot representative did, of course. And I don't think the mice ate the GeoPot planter things (although the tags sewn onto them seem to have vanished!), so I still have those. I have to do a pair of perlite hempies, but I expect to use one of the GeoPots for a soil-grown plant. Might do one of those and one soil-grown plant in a "grow bag." I don't know; everything is kind of up in the air right now. The only part that's set in stone is two hempies with the same strain in each.

Here is the main webpage for the GeoFlora company:

GEOFLORA Organic Dry Nutrients

Geoflora Organic Nutrients is a dustless, 2-part fully organic dry nutrient formulated to deliver a balanced charge of beneficial bacteria and organic inputs to make large scale organic growing and cultivation easy and safe.

geofloranutrients.com

 

[bluter]

morning headquarters ... jungle patrol reporting ..

whole group.JPG

• bluter
• Mar 30, 2020

current hempy group ..

more to come .. carry on headquarters ..

 

[SweetSue]

To answer the question HashGirl, I was experimenting, and it didn’t work the way I wanted, so the experiment was abandoned

The pot you choose should be thick enough or dark enough to block light from getting to the roots. I finally settled on small 1 and 1.5 gallon bathroom waste baskets from Big Lots, and happily paid the $5 or$6 each for pots I’ll be using the rest of my grow life.

This will work.

I don't recommend it though. The dollar store has a wastebasket like the one pictured above that will get you through multiple grows where that tape would most likely tick you off about a month into your first grow.

Buck speaks the truth. Money wisely invested in good pots saves you a lot of frustration later on.

Guys.... I told HashGirl you’d be here for her when I couldn’t. I’m so pleased to see how wonderfully helpful you’ve been so far.

And @HashGirl, the standards for easy cannabis cultivation are fairly simple:
- good oxygen to the roots
- no light to the roots
- as much light as you can manage to get to the plant itself
- keep the roots from drying out (Droop can be good sometimes, but deathly droop is another matter. Hempy eliminates the drying out concern.)
- cannabis typically likes less nutrients than recommended by the manufacturers (many of us run at half-strength, and less for autos)
- Your plant appreciates a little neglect. We tend to hover when we’re new to the game of growing.

After you take down the first harvest you’ll feel completely different about your capabilities as a cannabis cultivator.

Incidentally, the reservoir is the 2” or so section of your pot below the overflow hole. This holds an excess of nutrient-rich water to wick up into the perlite in the days between watering.

The intent is to keep the roots from ever getting too dry and killing the plant. Hempy is almost foolproof. Water every other day with the right nutrients and you’ll be hard-pressed to fail. The guys will help you get things like lights and their schedules controlled once you start your thread.

Before you know it you’ll be growing like you’ve been doing so for years.

 

[bluter]

@HashGirl

come have a look at my journal. the colas you see in my pic above are all grown from 2 litre buckets. the main colas are taller than the buckets they are grown in ...

couldn't be easier. hempy is the cheapest / easiest system available. plus i'm on MC. one nute. self-mixed. insanely cheap. there are zero approaches that are simpler. get a 10kg bag as quick as you can. the stuff is disappearing exponentially due to the pandemic.


the only thing "special" is RO water -- which has been shown to help, but not be essential in this approach.
and the light. just can't replace good light. that is essential.

i am not a great grower at all. average at best. i don't even bring them through flower. i guide someone else through it - much the same as you are contemplating and having issues with.

come on over and ask as many questions as you want. also go have a look @Buck5050 's journal. we do a couple things different but you can't argue with bucks' results. ...

 

[bluter]

oh ... i should add

i buy nothing but the big 110 ltr bale type bags of perlite and add no vermiculite or anything else. the perlite costs about $30 cdn and will last several grows in 2 ltr buckets.

i get the perlite from a local gardening supply store and avoid hydro pricing. you can get it on the river in that size about the same price. i like local when decent.

the buckets came from the dollar store and were a dollar each lol

they are more now.

 

[SweetSue]

I ordered a bag of perlite the other day, just a small one for photo use, but when I placed the order my heart did a little flip-flop and some little voice in my head started asking that I look for a way to grow again.