My 2012 outdoor grow experience - (Against All Odds!)

I knew right off, it was going to be a little different this year. Like when a pack of baby racoons attacked my vehicle with verocity... As the year before (2011) was the warmest winter on record in my area. This in turn produced a high concentration of wild pissed off fauna...

After being in suspended animation for several years do to illness. I awoke like Rip VanWinkle, to find the world had indeed changed in my absence.

Not only the climate, but other things as well.

I had decided to start growing again. But this time things would be different, bigger, better, faster and stronger.
Or so I thought...

It pretty much happened that even before I began to plant. Everything had gone wrong. From not getting the help I needed from other people. To the animals and the hot sun that awaited me...

I had decided to start flowering indoors, as well as putting plants outdoors.
Things had gotten out of hand and time was running short so I had to put out seed, instead of clones, outdoors.

I managed to get some interesting specimens going and pruned.

I began working on a giant indoor bloom box.

I like to try and redesign things and improve them when I can. So, I created a new way of capturing odor, without venting, using the bloom box I made.

At the same time, I was transplanting small clones out into my cornfield. I kept a few cuttings from some of the outdoor plants. And rooted them indoors

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Ah yes the cornfield, beautiful cornfiled, object of my desire...



I made some plastic constructs to transport the plants and to proved some protection for them. When I arrived and left the plants for a few hours. When I came back I found animals had fucked with them to no end. Smashing one plant out of it's container entirely. And throwing the rest around. I was fairly sure this wasn't the year for me. And had thought of giving up on the outdoor. And why not? After all indoor was a pretty sure thing, and I already had the plants going.

But I decided against quitting, (just not in my nature I guess). So I pressed on transplanting into the rich lome soil of the corn field.



The transplanting proved as nearly hazardous for the plants, as my leaving for a bit. The animals began ripping up the transplants, right after they were set in. Some of the plants were extremly small. Cages weren't an option, what was I to do ?

You know, this is a strange trick, but to ward off those pesky wildlife creatures, human hair spread around your crops in the ground will provide a permanent barrier. Kangaroos, possums, foxes etc wont go near the stuff.
Head on over to your hairdresser and ask for a big old bag of hair.

I've never been one for writing down dates for the most part. But in this instance I did, I put the first plants out June 21st. Which seems a bit late...But the weather is definetly warm in my area at this time.

I was wishing I hadn't gone outdoors, and had just kept to my indoor bloom box.

But I decided to try predator urine, spraying it not on the plants themselves, but in a circle 20 feet around them. And reapplying every day, miraculously it seemed to keep the wildlife at bay.

Amazingly, the animals had left, my plants alone. I had started from seed rather then use clones. But I did end up taking cuttings from some of the outdoor plants, and brought them indoors. In the meantime, the outdoor crop was starting to grow!

Although The problem now, wasn't going to be the varmints, it was going to be the sun. The unrelenting, unforgiving sun...

There was little or no rain where I planted my cannabis crop for 2012.
Fortunately I had the sense this year to plant in my corn field. This allows for a number of virtues.
First off, it is very well tilled, and in times of limited rainfall it shades and protects your smaller plants until they mature.
This year however there was no cloud cover, along with no rain. Which produced nearly unimaginable conditions.
Plants of all types were simply dying even if you were giving them water. So it took, the combined effort of my watering everyday.
And the cover of the corn, to allow me to harvest an outdoor crop this year. I'd be willing to bet a lot of people got shorted or shut out in the drought zone.

The effort of simply being outdoors on these super hot days was difficult. To say nothing of all the work now involved with growing this year...

But to my amazement, they kept growing and growing.

There seemed to be no end in site.




And if the title to this story was Rip Vanwinkle before. It had now become more like Jack and the bean stalk...

Great, glad you stuck with it.

Yes hard work perseverance and an iron will, was winning the day. But my problems were just starting.

The sun continued it's endless unobstructed journey through the sky. But it appears I was beating the sun, and lack of rain. And since there were no clouds there had more or less, been no "wind".

They kept growing,

There was however a descrepency in size, between the patches I had planted. As I stated earlier, I started planting on June 21st but planting continued, with smaller less developed plants for the next 2 weeks or so.

The bigger plants started to get taller then the corn. I knew instinctively that wasn't a good idea.

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The base of the stems were starting to get huge. I had taken the measure of piling soil around the plants as a measure to conserve moisture. But my strategy was about to radically change.

Meanwhile indoors, I had actually just harvested the lowest little leaf buds from my indoor, fluro/LED bloom box weed. Even these little buds, will light you up, like you wouldn't believe. These were clones from the same plants I had put out door. So I would be able to observe the difference between the outdoor conditions and the indoor, on the same females.

My main goal with the indoor, was to produce seed. So the plants were grown quite small, and pollinated. Still they budded up nicely.



My technique was poor with the indoor, a number of problems including pests. But I've got that all under control now as well.

You'll find that seeding, will drasticly impact the quality and potency of your bud. But my system allows superior strains to still be very flavorfull and potent, even after seeding.



My beans turned out nice and ripe. The first crosses, I made were with an unknown male. Other then the fact it had the Thunderstruck clone in it's line. I'm not sure exactly what it was. As I was fireing up a lot of my seed collection that was getting old. I bred this first male to a number of 4th Back crossers from the TS clone.

ya very dry yr for many growers...apple trees didnt produce and even hardwood trees died then went to powdery mildew with the fall rain. plants in shaded areas did best.

I mentioned previousy that there was no wind, since there was no rain and no storms. But as I said, the plants were starting to get really tall outdoors.

So, I thought I would be creative, and push them over before they fell over. Sort of like taking an indoor plant and turning it on it's side. This has sort of an overall super cropping effect. Where each node since now is laying flat. they all want to shoot straight up and become main cones.