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Letters to Rev – Indoor Growing Skills

Letters to Rev – Indoor Growing Skills

Indoor Growing Skills

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Hey-hey-hey my esteemed homeskillets… Today’s Letters to Rev is all about indoor growing skills, and good tools. All three questions today each have very valuable Information that can up your skills baybee, it’s up to you to use them.

I wanted to also update all of you that have enquired about my experiments using a chicken egg in a container’s soil growing cannabis. My observations have made me come to the following decisions:

  • I would always use a hardboiled egg for this purpose. This makes all the nutrients available more slowly than a liquid raw egg would. Raw eggs can cause problems with pH in soil that is not buffered very well. No need to crack the eggshell here either.
  • A 3-gallon container would be the minimum size I would use for the egg method.
  • You do not want to be regularly dosing your plants with fertilizers and use the egg method. The egg brings forth a ton of nutrition all by itself.

Okay, speaking of indoor growing skills, I have finished the latest book, The Druid’s Guide to True Living Organics growing. I actually finished around Christmas last year. YaY! I have been “off-world” for a time but I’m back, and I have a lot of cool stuffs to turn you on to.

“Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends we’re so glad you could attend, step inside, step inside.”Emerson Lake, and Palmer

Indoor Growing Skills, Question #1: PPM Growing in Soil?

FROM: Tony B.

“Hello, Rev., Longtime fan first-time writer. I was wondering how you arrive at a PPM level to run your plant water at? I hear so many different recommendations on PPM I’m a bit confused. Thank you and keep up the great work.”

Rev’s Answer to Q1
Indoor Growing Skills
A TDS Meter Will Serve You Well

Howdy Tony. Let me start out by saying that I know what a happy and healthy cannabis plant looks like. There are many subtle differences the plant shows when it is mostly happy but not totally happy. As a longtime fan, you certainly must know I have been growing for just shy of half a century, so there’s that.

I tried a lot of PPM ranges for various mixes in the recent past. I knew when they liked what they were getting the most and I kept adjusting it until I found the sweet spot—for me, using TLO recycled soil. My soil is uber rich with a very high value of organic matter, and I have found the low to mid 60’s PPM-wise is the sweet spot there. What those PPM are composed of matters as well. If I were growing in weaker soil, one that had less rich organic matter present, I would up the PPM values a bit. Like using bagged soil. Or, if I were growing outdoors in soil that was low-ish in organic matter compared to container-type soil, and it was also good draining soil, I would use even higher PPM values.

To Summarize

In summary Tony, your choice of PPM value to run your plant water at must be based on the soil type and structure of that soil. Generally speaking, the more organic matter as a percentage of the soil, the lower the PPM value, and vice versa. Outdoors 100 PPM might be all good, however, in pots with regular potting soil mid 70’s PPM might be around the sweet spot. But using very rich—True Living Organics—soil as I do, it’s low to mid 60’s PPM-wise.

Higher PPM plant water will for sure (initially) will make your plants ecstatically happy looking, but that will turn around on you within 30 days or less. Speaking plainly, it’s too much food/nutrients, and that extra food stays in the container’s soil having a cumulative effect that alters pH and moisture levels negatively. Like in a fish aquarium, too much food (at first) makes all the fish very happy indeed, but very soon it will start killing your fish. The reasons, process, and results are very much the same.

Indoor Growing Skills, Question #2: Easy Out-Venting Options?

FROM: Mick M.

“I was wondering if you could help me set up an extra room as a growing room, not with the whole thing, just the air extraction part. I rent, so I don’t want to make holes in the walls, and all the window customizations I have tried failed. Is there an easy way to out-vent a room without putting holes in the wall and keep it light-tight? Thanks, Rev.”

Rev’s Answer to Q2

Sure Mick, and howdy. Pretty much any hardware-type store should have what you need for the window vent placement. They sell these window pieces to use for out-venting portable A/C units. It basically blocks off the window and leaves just an opening for a 4” to 10” piece of ducting to fit in. Easy peasy man, and not expensive or anything either.

See Also
cannabis world news organic growing harvesting drying storing bagged cannabis for freezing

Lightweight and Dense Felt Type Fabric
Lightweight and Dense Felt Type Fabric

I don’t know how you black out your windows, but if you just use some of that kind of thick and lightweight felt type fabric you can do this with push pins. This fabric can be very lightproof, you might need two layers with some types, but if you are running tents in the room, you’ll only need one layer for sure. Just pin it up all around the edges of the window, like a foot or so beyond the window borders. You can just cut a hole a little smaller than your ducting diameter and it fits through perfectly and light-tight as well. Remember to always run your actual extraction fan as close as possible to the actual out-vent—you want to be mostly pulling air out rather than pushing it out. This limits backpressure, making your fan much more efficient.

Indoor Growing Skills, Question #3: Flowering Tops Hurting?

FROM: Donny B.

“Greetings Rev. My growing skills are okay, I have been growing for about 3 years now. I have about 3 weeks left until harvest and my plants have taken a bad turn. The tops of all the buds where all the good light is are all frying or something. They are turning yellow then brown and crispy from the outside inwards and at this rate, my buds are going to be worthless in a week or two. Help Rev, do you have any idea of what has happened? I use living soil and organic nutrients. Thank you.”

Rev’s Answer to Q3
A Laser Thermometer is a Solid Growing Investment and Not Too Spendy
A Laser Thermometer is a Solid Growing Investment and Not Too Spendy

Hey-hey Donny. Well, I’ll tell you what this “sounds like” to me, and that is hyper-metabolism. It could also be an overdose of nutrients, but if your lights are closer than 18” from your flower tops then this is likely your culprit. Lemme ‘splain…

When temperatures are high and lights are too close, the parts of the plant closest—too close—to the light will start growing at unsustainable rates compared to the rest of the plant. Effectively the tops starve—hyper starve. Get a laser thermometer and you don’t want your tops exceeding 86 deg F. for very long if possible. Even if they do exceed that and you can’t change it, raise the lights to about 2.0 to 2.5 feet above plant tops for the duration of the high heat. This information will likely add to your growing skills in a big way. Hope so, cheers.

Afterword

That’s it for today man. Stop over at Kingdom Organic Seeds and grab yourselves some very exotic stuffs. Check out this article: Dark Forrest F1 Hybrid, and maybe think about grabbing some of these gems. I have heard great things about the Dark Forrest and you don’t need high-level indoor growing skills to pull this one off either, pretty bulletproof from what I am hearing. Cheers, and L8r G8rs.

  • REv 😊

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