in your own words, what makes a true perpetual grow?
You guys heard him ask me to get wordy, didn't you?
OK Dchann, here we go:
In my own words. It begins with the planning. Graytail taught me the wisdom of getting the schedule worked out for the first plants through, and then work backwards from there to fill in the gaps and make sure you have a flow planned. He teaches mostly by example, so this training I speak of is available to anyone with the tenacity to dissect his journals. Well, I hound him with questions and he graciously indulges me, so I have something of a deeper understanding than the journals alone offer, but much of what I hounded him about I eventually found in reading the journals. It's quite a resource we have in the archived journals.
Tenacity. There's a key. Coincidentally, my initial response to the question of what makes a happy long-term marriage.
It can be intimidating and frustrating in the early stages and there'll be many times when you just want to throw in the towel and answer the siren call of the big girls and a limited number of charges. Again, I'm tickled at the number of points there that will also apply to the art of building a lasting marriage.
But the beauty of a smoothly operating perpetual has its own pull, doesn't it? It offers the additional benefit of a steady supply of more variety, because you can always slip something new into a well-planned system. Once you've figured out how often you want to harvest you just plant a new one on that same schedule. If I want to harvest every week I better be planting every week, hadn't I? The hum of pulling one out to harvest and slipping another right in behind and another seed gets dropped........ Like breathing after a while, I imagine. Of course, I speak of seeds, but cloning is a valuable source of planting stock.
I hear the advice to plant more than you need, but that's not really practical for most of us, is it? It behoves us then to assure germination, and that's where someone like
B A R comes in, with a system that gives him almost 100% success rate with germination. Failure to germinate slams the perpetual to a halt, so make this step work and work consistently. This way you can grow a dependable excess, because you do want more in veg than you can fit into the bloom space, in case something goes wrong with another plant. Working out that excess limit is an individual comfort zone thing. But you want no holes in the belt moving produce into the flowering room.
Once you figure out the planting schedule and lock down your germination technique it's just tenacity and good record-keeping, because if you don't keep some type of records you're doomed in a perpetual. A sense of humor helps. It's a bit hairy until you pull down the first harvest, turn around and find that someone else slipped right into her space and the conveyor belt you set up is actually working. And another seed gets dropped.
BAR
Love it Sue! Let the good times roll!!