Northern Climate - Outdoor Greenhouse

Week 10 - July 12th 2020 Welcome brothers and sisters... I think I made a huge discovery this week. One evening this past week (Thursday I believe) I was out in the greenhouse smoking a bowl with my “Farm Hand”, she was asking when they would be ready to harvest (she is as excited as I am!!) I told her that they would vary... my auto should be done in a few weeks, while the others will range from Early Sept to mid Nov. She obviously asked why, so I explained that each variety has different genetics just like other plants. This lead us to google to research the rough flowering period for each variety in the garden. When I got to the Kali mist I was reading about its growing characteristics and I had to do a double read (I took a screenshot and highlighted the section I was reading, it’s in the weekly photos) “She grows into classical sativa plants with very few leaves” “The open plant structure with few leaves allows light to pass all the way to lower branches” Now looking back to the previous pics of my Kali Mist and the height recordings my Kali Mist is bushy and had only reached 25”. However right next to her is my Grapefruit, now she is tall and slender with very few leaves!!! Ok let’s look her up then... WOW..... “Grapefruit is a short plant unlikely to grow beyond three feet tall” (again screenshot in pics) Well holly shit, I think these 2 were switched at birth... I got both of these girls as clones from a buddy of mine, I think he done messed up when it came to labeling the cups the clones were in. As it was late I had to wait till the following day to ring him up for confirmation. But sure enough he confirmed that his Kali Mist grew like my “Grapefruit” In conclusion I have swapped name tags and from this day forward Kali Mist will receive her credit as the biggest of the garden! ***NOTE*** I have gone back in my grow diary and swapped the grow data for my Kali and my Grapefruit. I have however left the pictures labeled as they were (incorrectly) I’m not trying to erase this incident, I think it’s a very interesting part of the grow. I just want to make sure I have accurate grow data for each plant. As for the rest of the garden... once again another fantastic week! The Southern Ontario heat wave continued with record breaking temps on Thursday and Friday. With that we also set an new all time high in the greenhouse of 127.6 F. We finally got some much needed rain on Saturday, my garden is obviously not effected by the rain as I am in the greenhouse, but it was however a nice refill for my watering system. I was down to less than 200 Litres, after Saturday I am back up to nearly 700 Litres. As for growth this week Kali Mist showed the biggest gains with 11” of growth shooting her over the 5 foot mark. She was followed closely by the Dr. who came in with 9” of growth putting her neck and neck with the Cherry Pie girls. The rest of the gang all recorded solid numbers between 6 - 8”. Another surprise this week was the Sundae Punch, after bouncing back from her accident/burn in week 4 she posted 5 and 6” if growth for 3 -4 steady weeks, this week she has definitely slowed showing only 3” this week. Alternatively the Duck had her best week yet posting 5” of growth, she is still the smallest at 24” but hopefully she still has time to catch up to the rest of the group. Finally we have my auto Double Grape, she is budding nicely, she has stopped stretching with 0 overall growth this week. *** NOTE*** When I went back to adjust the grow data for the Kali and the Grapefruit I decided to reorganize my growth list to rank that weeks tallest to shortest, I think it will be interesting to see how some of the smaller guys climbed the leader board. (I’m a data junky!! ) 1) Kali Mist 63” (+11”) - Clone 2) Cherry Pie #2 53” (+8”) - Seed 3) Dr. Grinspoon 52” (+9”) - Seed 4) Cherry Pie #1 51” (+7”) - Seed 5) Peyote Gorilla 43” (+8”) - Seed 6) Grand Daddy Purp 37” (+8”) - Seed 7) Skywalker 35” (+7”) - Seed 8) Sundae Punch 34” (+3”) - Clone 9) Grapefruit 31” (+6”) - Clone 10) Frisian Duck 24” (+5”) - Clone 11) Double Grape Auto 19” (0”) - seed Greenhouse: Physical progress has pretty much come to a stand still. With summer in full swing R&R has taken centre stage while the electrical improvements have been moved to the back burner. I do plan to get back to the greenhouse in the fall after my harvest. I have a growing list of improvements to be done over the winter in preparation for my next seasons crop. One of the larger projects will be the automated watering system. ( I have included a rough sketch in with my weekly photos) I plan to use the existing eaves trough for collection and my water tank for storage. I will drop a small submersible pump into the tank that will feed my main water line. Along the main line are a series of ball valves, above the main line are the water reservoirs and below the main line are another series of ball valves followed by clear tubing that leads to each plant. I will run the system Manually to add my weekly nutrients, to do this you first need to close the lower valves that connect to the clear tubes. Then with all the main line valves open you start the water pump. The water will bottom fill through the main line filling each reservoir in unison. I plan on timing how long it takes to fill to the .5 litre, 1 litre, 1.5 litre and 2 litre marks. depending on how much water I want to feed I will run the pump for the appropriate time. Once the reservoir are at the right level and the pump is shut off I will close the valves along the main line to segment each reservoir. Now I will have the ability to mix custom nutrients in each reservoir for each plant. After the special brew is mixed I open the bottom valves and the water/nutrients goes to each plant individually. In addition to using the system manually to add nutrients I want to set it up to auto water on a daily basis. To achieve this I need to have the valves and the water pump on a timer system. Timer 1 will close the lower valves, timer 2 will open the main line valves, timer 3 will run the pump, timer 2 will go again to close valves while timer 3 stops the pump, finally timer 1 will re open the bottom valves and water the plants. Once the system is set up I can set the timers for watering daily, every other day, twice a day, whatever my needs are. As you can see this is a fairly ambitious project and it will definitely require some of its own electrical. I think it’s best to wait and do the exhaust and industrial fan wiring all together for a cleaner final product. Finally while the greenhouse may be suffering for attention, the ‘Farm Hand” and I have been taking advantage of this unusually hot Canadian summer and have been working on our tan lines in preparation for our upcoming camping trip. We have found ourselves a very private section of beach on the shores of Lake Ontario. We were able to get in one last visit this week before the rain came on Saturday, it was just what we needed before this upcoming crazy week of trailer preparation and packing. We plan to pull out Saturday morning, so I will hopefully do my weekly update on Friday this week.