Wanted to share this with you all.
Desert Garden Side-by-Side:
Regular Top-Soil
No Fertilizer
Same Water Schedule
Garden Setup:
1. We dug about 6 inches below the hard clay inside of 4x4, 7" deep raised beds.
2. At the bottom, we put in regular volcanic rocks (nothing special, just the ones used for paths) for water drainage.
3. In the middle of this bottom layer of rocks, we laid out a row of mulch mixed with vermiculite to replicate a "core" gardening technique.
4. We then added 3 rows of soaker hose on top of this bottom layer, as desert gardening requires deep watering.
5. On top of this went regular topsoil.
6. As the point of this grow was not to appeal to the professional cannabis grower, we were not exact at all with the Vulx mixture. We just poured it in until it looked about evenly mixed. I think if we had measured it, we added slightly less than the recommended amount.
7. Both sides got about an inch of mulch on top.
8. Plants were planted in a high-density layout, so that in effect they protected each other from the desert sun while not being held back by shade cloths. Probably a controversial decision, but on the non-treated side it paid off. On the side with Vulx the plants kinda took over each other.
9. Once everything was done, we added drip-irrigation.
I got a neat time lapse video of the whole thing, but I'm editing that to get frames from the same time and lighting every day so A. it's not 3 minutes long and B. the lighting isn't distracting.
Last time I recorded the stats, there were as such:
Plant | Blooms (Vulx) | Blooms | Fruits On Plant (Vulx) | Fruits on Plant | Harvested Fruits (Vulx) | Harvested Fruits |
Tomatoes | 50-60 | 30-40 | 13 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
Eggplant | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Cucumber | N/A | N/A | 6 | 3 | 12 | 3 |
Pepper | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 2 |
As for the basil, you can see in the photos that it is probably 2-3 times as big on the treated side.
Here are the photos:
Non-Treated
Treated