Weckels outdoor

In the previous article in this series we saw how we could safely and securely transport our plants to their indoor space. In this article we will be looking at how the lives of these plants are progressing and how we can best tailor conditions to their needs. Growing indoors often demands a bit more experience from the grower, or in any case a bit more technical skill and with it a reasonable level of insight. As a indoor grower you will often be called upon to take account of a number of (new) factors. How many lamps can I safely place in my grow room? What is the maximum height I should allow my plants to reach in order that they still have some leeway under the lamps? How do I best look after the air circulation? These are all important aspects that help determine a successful crop of indoor marihuana, aspects that during the growing cycle we have to have a firm grip of in order to maximise the living conditions under artificial light. In coming articles I will be paying attention to these and all the other important issues.

But first I would like to return briefly to the outdoor plants that we have now moved into their indoor space. Since we will need to provide the plants with large volumes of water once they come indoors, it is a good idea to place the large flower pots with the plants in them onto large dishes. These dishes are available from pretty much all garden centres and grow shops, and are very practical for our plants. Preferably you should buy as large dishes as you can, so that they can hold more than enough feed water. This is pretty useful, because otherwise the dishes would run the risk of overflowing every time you watered the plants, which in turn means having to mop up after each watering too, with all the hassle that entails. What’s more, a larger sized dish offers the possibility of keeping a close eye on the water that overflows with the aid of an ec meter. But this is something I will be going in to in greater detail in a later article.

So each pot with a marihuana plant in it is stood in a single large dish. In this way we can easily provide the plants with large volumes of water, without most of it streaming away immediately (because a large amount remains behind and available to the plant in the dish). The high quantities of light and the high temperature ensure that the White Shark plants use an amazingly large amount of feed water. This is something as growers we need to keep firmly in mind, because an indoor plant under artificial light that suffers a shortage of water (and thereby also of liquid nutrients and stimulators), will have much more trouble achieving a big harvest than a plant that has been richly provided with plenty of nutrientrich moisture.

Given this reality it is perhaps handy to look into having automatic irrigation, so that we can also take the odd day or two off without having to worry that the plants are going to suffer any deficiency of feed water. If you choose to go down this route, take care over the amount of (feed) water that you program the plants to be given. To prevent your dishes overflowing it might be a good idea to give the plants smaller amounts of water, more times a day, rather than giving them one huge dose all in one go.

Because we will be visiting our growing space every day, we can choose in this grow to give the plants water by hand. It is perhaps a little more work, but we do keep everything under our own close control and we can therefore offer our plants maximum care. Rather than schlepping everything around in a bucket, we can place a feed water vat in the grow space with a submersible pump and a smaller circulation pump inside it. The circulation pump makes sure that the nutrients, the stimulators and the water are well and truly mixed and stay mixed with each other. If we did not do this then the liquid nutrients could run the risk of settling at the bottom of the vat and concentrating themselves around the submerged pump (which is at the bottom of the vat). What would then happen, I think every grower can well imagine. When the submerged pump was switched on the plants would be inundated with much too high a concentration of nutrients and stimulators. In short, the nutrients and stimulators are not well dispersed throughout the water. If you still decide that you don’t want to use a small circulation pump, of course you always decide to just give the vat a thorough stirring with a bamboo pole or something like that, so that the nutrients, stimulators and the water are still well mixed, whereupon we can safely use the submerged pump.

In our grow space the submerged pump pumps the feed water (water with liquid nutrient and stimulators mixed with it) through a garden hose when it is switched on. The hose then runs from pot to pot and is secured to each plant’s main stem, so that it can not flap around. In the hose there are holes punched where it passes over each flower pot, so that the feed water can easily flow out. So we only have to switch on the submerged pump and each plant is provided with everything it needs.

We do still need to pay attention to ensuring that the plants have used more or less all the fertilisers from the soil they were growing in, since the plants have had a good length of time in pre-growth. It is therefore very important that in any case we provide the plants with liquid nutrients (eventually supplemented with extra stimulators), so that the plants do not become deficient in anything. Our earth mixture did contain some substances that only become available to the plant after a certain period of time has passed (such as the bone meal for example), so we need to avoid washing away the earth as much as we can. Also make sure that the dishes are not allowed to stand filled

with water continuously, as this will limit the amount of oxygen that can get to the roots, and that would be a great shame since as you know, plenty of oxygen is a vital ingredient in keeping a root system healthy.

One other important point is that the feed water that is left standing in the dishes sometimes can have a very different concentration of nutrients in it. This is because the plant has already extracted the nutrients she most needs as the water made its way through the substrate in the pot. The remaining unused nutrients are those that our green lady has allowed to flow away. For this reason I usually remove the excess feed water when the plant has not soaked it up after two or three hours.

The composition of the feed water is completely dependent on how we plan to let the plants keep growing indoors. For having female plants do their blooming indoors there are two possibilities. We can provide the plants directly with a 12hour light cycle from the moment they are put under lamps, thanks to which they immediately start to bloom. Or we can prolong the growth period of the plants indoors, by putting them into an 18-hour cycle (with the aid of a timer). By using this latter method we can prolong the growing period of the plant in such a way that the plant, after she has already spent some time outdoors, is given a extra helping of energy, as it were.

The plant saves some of the energy during both grow phases and so will have an enormous amount of energy for use during the bloom period for making flower heads with. So much that it is fair to say that there is no other growing technique that can compete with this one. Of course, to use it you do need to be in possession of a growing space of gigantic proportions, one that can take plants raised outside and put under lamps to achieve (even) more growth. The plants will have already reached a pretty decent size outside and once indoors under artificial light, provided with conditions as near to paradise as they could want, they will go on to achieve unimaginable dimensions.

So as growers we first need to make the decision as to whether we let the plants bloom immediately or whether to prolong the growth period. Once we have made that decision, then we know what the right nutrients and stimulators we will need to add to the water for the job are, so that the plants are provided with all the necessary nutrients. nutrient to the water. Sometimes I also add a little root stimulator, so that the roots can continue to develop a bit more. A root stimulator also frequently provides for an optimal soil life, and that is something all growers are striving for. After all, you want the plants to be able to absorb the nutrients as well as possible. The basic nutrient consists in most commercial varieties of an A and B nutritional component. With feeds such as these you can only mix the A component to the B feed, after the feed water vat is more or less filled with water. But just to be on the safe side, you can always check the label carefully. Other (liquid) nutrient brands employ an all-in-one nutrient, and these are also known as complete or total nutrients. As a grower it is just a question of trying for yourself and seeing what you get the best results with.

Once we have put the plants in to bloom, or if we plan to immediately put them in to bloom, we bring the number of hours’ daylight they are given back down to 12. It is a good idea to take a number of cuttings from each plant before we put the mother plants in to bloom. Number the pots that you put the cuttings in to, so that we can always tell from which mother plant each cutting came from. The cuttings are put in a separate room, for example in a small cupboard, under fluorescent lamps. Should in the meantime one of the mother plants develop in to a real cracking plant, with loads of good characteristics like lovely white buds, sturdy side branching, a gorgeous green leaf cover and a good yield, then we can use her clone to grow further indoor crops from. If you forget, you would not be the first grower to have allowed a fantastic mother plant to bloom and then realise he had no way of getting clones from her. The consequence is a great end result, but one that cannot be followed through because the mother plant has left no descendants in the form of clones with which to carry on her line. A few growers I know have managed to keep a plant alive after harvesting it by then perking it up with some extra light and thereby getting her back into the growth phase. Such a method requires a lot of time and patience from the grower and is still far from an ideal solution. We are far better off thinking ahead a little and taking clones from each mother plant before we set them in to bloom. It will save us a load of hassle, and who knows, even drop your very own ‘super race’ in to your hands!

To come back to the issue of light hours. In considering the number of hours that you plan to give your plants each day, you must take good account of the conditions outdoors. Besides the fact that during the night electricity is cheaper to use (for the growers among you who pay for their electricity), there is also the fact that in summer especially, it is easier to keep the temperature in our grow room constant (ideally between 24 and 27 °C), than if we let the lamps shine during the day. Particularly if we are growing in the attic or in a shed, when the sun shines pretty much directly on the grow space, then the sun can be a really annoying factor due to its ability to raise the temperature in the grow space considerably.

time temperature outdoors in the summer months can easily be 15 °C. This can contribute considerably to the level of the temperature indoors, and so the plants will thank us for choosing to let the lamps do their work at night (so that we can with a bit of luck keep the temperature indoors below 30 °C), rather than during the day. Sometimes the heat just cannot be beaten in any way, which leaves us no other option than to remove one of the lamps from our grow room and/or grow at half power. A few people do try to slow the rising temperature by getting themselves an air conditioner. Besides their huge energy use (something that is not always an option because the grow space is maxed-out already in its energy use), their cooling capacity is often not sufficient to suppress the heat. During the months of summer it therefore only remains for the majority of growers to just make the best of it, although there are always a few handy growers who manage to cobble something creative together to help them keep the temperature under control.

When the bloom period takes off – or we as growers allow the bloom period to begin - (since it now us who control the interior conditions), this has an immediate impact on the fertilisers we have to add to the feed water. Given that the bloom period for the majority of growers is the most important period of the whole grow cycle (since it is here that the financial gains are to be made), it is now that the plants themselves need more and more extra (supplementary) fertilisers. In particular, the plants during this period have a great(er) need for phosphorus. This is something we have to pay attention to and therefore from now on we have to add bloom feed as well as the nutrient base to the feed water. We can also decide to add at this stage some extra bloom stimulator to help the plants (as well as us growers) go totally crazy. I personally, along with many other growers, opt to use in addition a PK 13-14 for that little bit extra. PK 13-14 is actually nothing more than a high quality, pure and natural phosphorus and potassium preparation. It ensures a healthy root growth, stimulates the plants’ readiness for blooming as well as stimulating an exuberant bloom. They are all tricks for powering things up a bit or get the buds to develop that extra bit of plumpness.

Make sure that when you use PK 13-14 you use a bit of caution. Start with a really low dosage (= 2.5 ml per 10 litres of water), and then build it up really slowly, and this will usually give you good results. There are growers who already start getting their plants used to the PK 13-14 a week (sometimes even earlier) before the bloom period, by starting to add it to the feed water a week (or more) before the commencement of the bloom period. Especially for growers of short-blooming varieties (such as for example Top 44), these tricks have the effect of making sure that the optimum quantities of PK 13-14 are given to their green ladies. They are aiming in any case to be able to give the maximum dose of PK 13-14 to their plants (= usually about 15 ml per 10 litres of water) before the bloom period comes to an end. The fact is that one variety of marihuana plant can handle a considerably higher dose of PK 13-14 than the other variety. But actually, this goes for every type of nutrient and stimulator that we add to the water. It is important as a grower to keep a close eye on the plants and observe whether they have everything just right for their specific needs. When we set to work carefully and don’t do anything crazy (like suddenly whacking up the dosage of nutrients given), then the plants will develop just fine and the bloom period will proceed successfully.

In order to make the feed water for the plants that little bit more attractive, we can also make sure that the temperature of the feed water is kept around 21 °C. This is the most ideal temperature for keeping the marihuana plant happy and for them to easily and above all optimally take up their nutrients and stimulators and make use of them. As long as the substrate (the soil mix in which the roots are anchored) is warmed up a little so that the feed water has a temperature of around 21 °C, then the whole process will work out very well for the plant. Growers who pay attention to this final detail will enjoy an advantage over those colleagues who just chuck cold water over their plants. Cold water has the effect of slowing things down and can even put the plants under sever stress, if the temperature of the feed water has too great a difference from the ambient grow room temperature (which is much higher). The plants that I grew for this ‘grow outside - bloom inside’ experiment were raised in such a way that they were able to be put straight in to bloom. Letting the plants continue with pre-growth did not make any sense. To put it more strongly, the plants might even have been damaged by doing so. We already have enough trouble getting the plants to fit under the lamps with a reasonable degree of safety.

Even so, during the first weeks of the bloom period they did manage to cause a (small) drama. There were apparently a couple of males lurking among the five well-developed plants. This could have been avoided by taking clones from each individual in advance and putting them into bloom, as I have described in previous articles. I myself was almost convinced that I had all females, and five colleagues I’ve worked with for years were equally convinced. But the stubbornness of growers is often punished, and that was the case here. A small silver lining from this event was that the other three plants (and these were the loveliest of ladies) now had all the space they could possibly want for developing huge buds. In the following article we will have a look at how the bloom period of White Shark progresses and what possible problems we might expect to have to deal with.