coming up on garden talk if it keeps raining and you're like damn i gotta water in my liquid nutrients i got to get nutrition in there that could be a conundrum because your plant's wet already and that's why it's good to cover yourself with well it's been raining but i did have some top dress thinning outside thinning your plants out when you're out there scouting for pests you're not going crazy through like you got to thin it out a little for air movement and not creating microclimates uh for pests microbes man game changer for the grow you can do a lot better and don't think it's a misconception i used to think this as well like oh i'm using synthetic nutrients or salt-based nutrients or this it's just it's not going to work well the microbes they can work together for sure in your grow media grow your plants as happy and healthy as possible and that helps a ton with pests a plant that's ailing or showing signs like the pests know they'll come to that they'll have an easier chance of taking it out what's up everybody if you that don't know me my name is chris aka mr growit and you're tuned into the garden dog podcast this episode number 29. in this episode i interview dude from the do grow show he has been gardening for 18 years and he grows a variety of plants such as peppers tomatoes arugula strawberries and medicinal varieties he also has a show which i'm sure many of you are familiar with called the dude grow show the show has been around since 2013 and so far there have been over 1200 episodes in this podcast episode we talk about outdoor gardening dude talks about his style of outdoor gardening and some of the challenges that can be faced when gardening outdoors thanks to all of you who support this podcast through patreon if you'd like to support you could do so by going to patreon.com mr growit before we get into it i want to acknowledge that one of my goals for this podcast is to bring zero cost for information about gardening all plants to the general public that being said i'd like to thank the sponsors of this podcast who helped make that goal possible a big supporter of this podcast is ac infiniti they sponsor this podcast and i use their products ac infinity now has gardening tools and accessories such as heavy duty fabric grill pots trimmers grow room glasses drying racks plant ties and trellis nuts they also have all of the equipment needed for a ventilation system i will leave a link to ac infiniti down in the description section below and you can use discount code mr growit during checkout for a discount on their products big shout out to dutch pro for sponsoring this podcast dutch pro is a plant fertilizer company that has been around for over 30 years they have base nutrients and they also have additives such as pk boosters root stimulators calmag silica a nutrient optimizer and a foiler feed they also have ph regulators to help ensure that the nutrients can be uptaken properly i will leave a link to dutch pros amazon store down in the description section below and you can use coupon code mr grow 10dp for a discount on their products thanks to spider farmer for sponsoring this podcast they have board style led grow lights bar style led grow lights grow tents in-line fans and carbon filters they also have complete grow tank kits which include lighting a ventilation system grow pots a trellis net a timer and a monitor for both temperature and humidity coupon code mr growit5 will get you a discount on their products and i'll leave a link to their amazon store down in the description section below okay now let's get into the episode all right we are back welcome to the garden talk podcast today i am joined with dude from the dude grow show how you doing today excellent man thank you for having me on here always love a little grow talk you know it's just uh yeah it makes me feel irie inside happy to have you i was just on your show a great time a lot of positive feedback in the comments section there people really like to see these collabs happen it seems like we get more and more c positive feedback in the comments section about collaborations going on the community so i appreciate you coming on and collab in here we're gonna get to know about you and uh kind of your grow style with outdoor growing we'll talk about some challenges with outdoor growing yeah it should be an action-packed talk so to begin can you tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of how you got into gardening hmm gardening i don't know first came to me is i want to say challenges but sometimes i thought i could do things better with plants i mean the very way back in the day would be my dad had tropical plants in the house and when you have tropical plants in the house so my my first plant was a tropical plant in my bedroom i'm like we got to get some ambiance in here you know just a little bit of uh make this nice and then the lead from there to really i've always liked hot stuff hot sauce me and my brother would challenge each other with who could eat the hot jalapenos out of the jar and then i was like dude i can probably just grow some habaneros and that turned into just messing with people right drying them making hot powders habanero pepper eating challenges and then i guess finally just getting into yeah the value of medicinal plants um was what really when i started to grow indoors um and then recently not recently but later in my growing career had the opportunity in colorado to get some grows under my belt outdoors i'm just on the backyard level you know for you know medicinal garden for myself but that's it in a nutshell nice i have yet to grow peppers i actually planted a couple pepper seeds actually i have the seeds right here they're uh bullnose pepper from baker creek so um i planted like four of them and they didn't sprout so i gotta give another shot one thing that was really cool about peppers that i found out is like you can grow them in small containers and get like a decent personal yield out of it like one gallon containers so i thought that was cool you definitely can i'll give you a quick tip i had some seeds have been harder for me to start for peppers and do it did you do like a soak i did the paper towel soak with them for probably at least i was thinking it was two to maybe four days keeping it soaked watching them just just to start to get them to pop a little and get their first little tail a little root coming out and then i planted them had much better success i have to give that a try yeah across the board for a bunch of different seeds that actually can can help out help get them excited to go yeah i'm definitely gonna have to give it another shot because peppers is definitely something i want to grow um you know not just those bull nose wands or or bell style peppers or habaneros it's endless carolina reapers right that'd be cool to grow one of those eventually nice cool so do you typically grow indoors outdoors or both both um so it would be indoors typically all the time except for when it's summertime i have a it's whether it's been a grow room currently have a five by five grow tent that i have out in my garage so summertime i find it convenient wherever your indoor grow i like to enjoy i call it summer summer summertime and like i'm usually so busy with the outdoor growing going on in summer time that to have to deal with both responsibilities as well as the cleanliness you should be doing when going between the two because it's really easy to run around and just go into your tent and go out so right now outside for me i only have two very small medicinal plants because they're only in one gallons right now i basically said i'm going to quit growing my medicinal plants outside where i'm at because of the problems i've ran i'm in vancouver british columbia here compared to growing outside in colorado a whole different animal but i do keep busy with like you said before i go peppers outside every year strawberries actually i've gotten into strawberry i've gone strawberry basket crazy because i love it keeps them one at head height for when you're walking around to see what's ready to pick and just and then two it can help keep a lot of different pests away from them and then lastly a bunch of tomatoes i don't eat tomatoes my neighbor's like what you don't what are you doing i'm like hey they're for you they're for the wife they're for gifting to the neighbors um but yeah that'd be what's going on what's going on as far as what i'm growing right now uh but yeah no indoors not until fall things got to cool off too sometimes summer can just be too hot for the indoor growers to have the proper equipment to maintain all that gotcha now on the kind of medicinal plant side of things are you the type of person that chases after yield or did you kind of let the plants do their thing and not really worry about yield as much you're gonna get yield typically outdoors i mean we're talking like these things love love to grow i'm not ever usually chasing the old first it's gonna know what you're starting with what either you're starting with a quality source seeds or maybe some trusted cuts so chasing plant health first and foremost but yield outside people should remember when you're thinking about grow medicinal plants outside what what is your goal how much is this just to try to see if you have a green thumb and how which i believe everybody has some sort of green it's it's genetic it's in you um but since you can get a lot of yield i mean you could grow three five gallon plants and depending on people's consumption uh be good to go until the next season around so and that being said upscaling that you could grow two 20 gallon plants you're like oh my god this is too much too big uh so no don't chase yield but yeah mainly know what i'm starting with is super important what what potential it has and that it's good genetics gotcha let's focus on growing outdoors really i want to get into your style of growing i want to start with with ipm and some of my viewers are going to laugh at this because usually ipm's at the very end and i'm like hey we probably should have started with ipm because it's just it's so important and for those that don't know ipm integrated pest management in layman's terms it's really just things that you do in order to prevent pests right so um tell me what do you typically do in order to prevent pests well i like the last word in that it's management right so you're trying to prevent you're gonna have pests outside if you know your area if you have the opportunity to talk to different growers or even maybe some of the pests you'll see on other garden plants you might get an idea of what you're going to have to deal with so for me here i didn't talk to many growers the area in vancouver especially i'm in a little micro climate where i live tons of humidity and pests that kick my butt are always new ones to me it's for here it was called the corn ear worm on my outdoor buds never dealt with that before i had no clue most important thing i'd say for ipm on outdoors since we are in an environment that we're not controlling as much as the indoors is being there and scouting also being able to thin out your plants they can get so big and bushy so you have air movement depending on the size of them but scouting and looking around because it can be nice you could go by you can go outdoors for two weeks maybe a month and be walking around looking at your grow and have no problems because nature's in balance things are taking care of things but then eventually what what happened to me because i had a nice hops plant i was growing some hops just to look cool i'm not going to do anything with them unfortunately i didn't have time to brew as well but that brought in some aphids which in turn they actually is this hops plant was right next to medicinal plant the aphids just preferred it for like a few weeks they just stayed on it i'm like okay if that was an indicator point i'll call that then i'll leave them alone to be there and eventually of course they work their way over um because i wanted to see what's happened and then i i got a ton of ladybugs ladybugs can be really good outside for aphids especially since they're big enough to watch them just go on in and eat those suckers i'll just stand out there with like hanging out maybe with a pine or whatnot and just watch them go to war and that was refreshing when you can see the bugs are big enough some of our predatory insects aren't big enough to enjoy that but when you can see them eating the bugs that are going to bug your plant that's really good i mean we can go as deep as you want with ipm outdoors as far as what to do when we we see pests and whatnot but that's first off scouting makes sense now are you also i mean important pieces to check the undersides of the leaves right i mean yeah how do we do that for sure underside of the leaves you're going to want to be looking there a lot of bugs i won't even say that i was going to say a lot of bugs you can see by the naked eye but you do need a loop i ran into hemp rust that's outside one time and you do need a magnification to see those spider mites like to start from my notice on the lower parts of the plant on the underside of the leaves before you start to see a bunch of damage going up the plant you can usually catch them when you do run if we want to do a preventative maintenance let's let's say you notice maybe a few aphids or a few spider mites so if we're in veg we can the preventative spray i know you like me i like neem as well i actually don't mind the smell of neem at all it's supernatural it's inexpensive easy to apply um but doing a type of spray program once every week isn't bad but i don't want to spray anything that's going to hurt also if things again i said are working like in balance like nature the bugs are taking care of each other i have a few i don't want to hurt anything that's doing a good job either but predators outside people that know okay this is my second year and last year i got these predators aren't cheap you got to get them quick you got to get them viable if you know you have a problem putting predators out definitely are a good idea in the outdoor environment um there's a lot of good places uh to source those you can go to local insectaries to search beneficial insect insectaries on google you'll pull up some options i don't know if you've had anybody on or anything to recommend but um yeah then there's arbico organics i'll just throw that one off the top i know they have a lot of information on their site as far as identifying predators which ones will work good for you and uh yeah so that would be that would be it so once a week spray is it just neem using or using any other type of products um i do like to use for me i use neem or for whatever i'm spraying typically i'll use a type of wetting agent uh mine's optic foiler has a product called trans transport which i use and that once a week spray i'm talking about you know if i if i'm battling something we got to break its cycle so if we got spider mites and eggs are hatching every three days and there's variations there how hot is it out how cold is it out is really going to affect the cycle of some of these things but you do have to spray if we're trying to we've identified pests that want to take care of them spraying every three days for out i'm going to go for probably at least 10 days to two weeks should break their cycle that being said you can choose both methods though if you have a garden that you're like you don't necessarily want to spray and you have access to see what the beneficials can do for you i recommend going that route too i usually will do a combination of both when i add hemp brusset mites i'm doing a spray i'm going to beat down the population i'm going to assume which is the number one downfall for people spraying for pests it's really hard to reach everywhere in your garden you have to make contact and that can be problematic so first i'll do the spray cycle and then after that i'll maybe do two releases of beneficials just to hang out man maybe i missed some eggs and things are gonna hatch and that has always worked for me just to take care of most pests and pests for me outside have been aphids those are pretty easy they're sizable i haven't gotten thrips outside i've seen some spider mites hemp russet mites in colorado they are just i don't know they're popular for a little bit but we can go into the other things too where i talked about here in british columbia bud rot molds mildew oh my god nightmares literally nightmares for me we'll save that for the end we'll talk about some of the other challenges that are going on beyond pests uh yeah because that'll be a real good conversation bud run in particular because i've experienced that as well so i can also speak about that one forgot to mention um this kind of ties into maybe you can tell me if something else you're asking me but healthy plants grow your plants as happy and healthy as possible and that helps a ton with pests um you know a plant that's alien or showing signs like the pets know they'll come to that they'll have an easier chance of taking it out so yeah i had chad westport on my podcast a couple weeks ago and he talked about bricks and kind of how you can measure the sugar content in the plant and if your brix level is 12 or above then um pests don't attack the plants which i thought was pretty interesting so it's another way to kind of kind of see the health of your plant is bricks for those that don't know might want to research a little bit more on that one cool let's switch it up let's talk about your media what are you using for uh what's in your mix that can vary definitely we're talking okay we're outdoors it's a lot of times can be what's available to you and you look where you live are you you live in colorado and there's like 25 hydro store options around you that can be a variable for sure a base for me would probably be uh the hp pro mix bale of peat right that's because it's just you can get a lot out of that veil it's compact and it's usually available even at nurseries if you don't have local grow stores and stuff and then into pete i don't make a super soil but i do like to put things in a little bit warm cast just some basics let's put some organics in our soil warm castings are good to mix in you could do a 20 mix of worm castings you could do a 10 mix it's your call there's a lot of recipes out there which is going to give you some nutrition it's going to give a diversity in your bacteria and your living soil other things i know you're a fan of when we had you on insect frass it's just a cool product i'm learning more about it mixing that in your soil also works really well i have been cutting on and off playing with cutting some cocoa into the peat it seems to help with its like water inability peat gets hydrophobic if you don't catch it quick enough for your water on the top or it sucks in a little from the side of your containers um and then you gotta the water kind of beads off for a minute until absorbs in uh different ratios of cocoa i've messed with i've done like 25 cocoa to peat ratio and it does help with that water and inability which i've liked so and that's it i don't usually mix in a lot more organics i usually don't go to i'm not a living soil grower although i do like to put some things in my soil and leave room in my containers to do top dresses um and then after that um yeah that would be the base of my mix i'm trying to think of anything i'm forgetting that i like to put in there because like again sometimes it it does vary oh some compost if there is some nice compost i don't mind mixing in another 10 compost as well and all this just helps the overall mix i know some people do some additional aeration due to anything like uh perlite there's enough in uh at that specific pete perlite uh for sure and most if you don't if you're getting a straight pete then yeah i would be adding in perlite for sure i would say 20 again there's a lot of good recipes out there search around uh shout out to build a soil they got some good recipes they actually have if you want to get that bale of heat you can just get a nutrient to men kit it's like in the instructions it makes it really easy so you don't have to go out source all these different nutrients if you're trying to do somewhat of a living soil and when i say living soil everybody typically i shouldn't say everyone typically knows it's a nose but a an enriched soil that's going to be you're relying on your soil more to feed your plants than you putting liquid or other nutrient inputs in great point now how about container size what do you typically start in what do you typically end up in i mean that's like what kind of car do you like because there's so many variables with container size um we just talked about this again when you're on our show shout out to coming on the dude grow show but what how are you going to feed your plant i've noticed and i'm learning my peppers that i have now which is i think almost too small are in one gallon containers right you got to feed those a lot one gallon isn't as we call it a big enough battery like it's just not it can't hold enough organic matter nutrition whatever that gets fed liquid nutrients uh quite often the bigger your container the bigger battery but if you could have an enriched mix let's say but i'm going to tell people man it's still relevant i was going to tell people to do at least a 10 gallon outside but you can see somebody that just has maybe a small apartment with a balcony and they do three autoflowers in a uh in three gals you know what i mean so but i guess we're here i'm talking about my style i like to go at least i'm gonna say 20 to 25 gallon if i can outside you don't want to be chasing after water on hot days depending on your irrigation setup so the smaller the container on hotter days the more you have to water you do have to keep on them more with feeding so bigger is going to be better smaller usually has a little bit more work on your end a little bit more maintenance uh and yeah and container type i like i don't like the black nursery containers man they just it's like i wish they made them white which is probably more expensive on hot days they sit there you can touch the side of a black nursery container and i just feel like my roots and my rhizosphere and my plants just going to be upset about that and require more maintenance more water so fabric pots are great there's all kinds of brands out there uh there's different i use product called radical bags it's kind of like a mesh pvc fabric type thing but yeah container size as well as is import container type i've seen people kill it in the five gallon home depot buckets though you know or you see people planting the 30 gallon rubber made trash can i love it just the monstrous tree are you just planting that seed directly into that 20 gallon or are you starting in a small pot for sure what's your transplanting method or techniques like when do you transplant uh so you could go outside pretty early or not it depends um where i want to end up but i'll just say i go into first typical for a lot of people a one gallon nursery pot size container i will start a plant in there you can keep a plant in there for as long as you want and watch it get angry and hold it back or keep topping it but when i go i go from that one gal which is gonna be not fully root bound but like ready to go whatever i put it in and i'm gonna put that one gal probably into my finishing container i know some people so if i go from a one gal boom i'm gonna go outside into my 25 gal you don't want to over water that it could be easy to do but i skip the one maybe people would go to a five and then to the bigger size container because i just don't want to up pot and do it's not that labor intensive for me because i'm not doing that many plants but i like to go from the one gal to my finishing size whether that might be a five mine is going to be at least a 20 to 25 gal and i know that's not as as uh best nursery practices i think it's caller scotty what is he called something best management nursery practices they're they're typically they're going like one three five or one they're like they're keeping it all and that can keep your plant chugging along a little bit better uh but yeah this is my transplant schedule i i think it comes down to personal preference i mean some people have space control constraints they're going to start indoors and they're going to stay in that small container they're going to try to stay as a small container as possible and then you know transplant some folks don't want to like you mentioned over watering would be a thing that could happen if you have this small plant in a large container so it comes down to personal preference in my opinion on transplanting what container size to use so on and so forth i don't like to deter anybody on i mean this is talking about my girl style like i said before oh you're saying at least a 20 or 25 man you can do a one gal if you want you could try all kinds of stuff um that's one thing about as far as these medicinal plants they love to grow outside when you have you know you're not worried about having the the expensive nice grow light you got the best girl out on earth the sun kicking butt for you um it's it's hard to kill these things they love to grow and there's a lot of ways to do it so do it my way is not always there's a lot of different styles i want to throw in there well said now how about nutrients what do you typically use for base nutrients and additives all right so base nutrients and additives so my base nutrients so my mix initially it's not that enriched right it's the the base peat some cocoa we're going to get a little nutrition from the worm castings not much a little nutrition from the insect frass and that could last me maybe a few waterings or whatever but i have to get water in this thing with some nutrients right away i usually use a set of bottles lacing recently um actually for like the past three or four years i've been using uh ramos nutrients nutrient line and just it's a basic i can follow the feed chart it's eight or five mils of all the product that's light though like i'm not going to a high ppm the highest parts per million so ppm and ec is how you guys measure your what how much nutrient is in your your solution if you don't have that pen you're looking at a feed chart you're like well i put in x you know you're probably going to be within the range um that they want you to be in but that's that's not my only nutrition and some people will be like that's pretty low 700 parts per million well then i'm also going to take a break with some of my as we say the fish brings the dank maybe i'm going to add in so there's a bunch of different fish fertilizers out there a little bit of fish because i like to diversify what inputs i'm putting in and i believe you know i like some of the thicker funkier products at times or top dressing i know you like the top dress um i used to before i start stopped using bat guano i do need to do more research into i think i saw an uh like a scary documentary on netflix where i'm like this is how they get the sea bird like i don't know man and how the people in their camps it just didn't seem cool to me i'll look into it a little more but when i had back guano it's a good um bone actually i think i have fish bone meal now which is a byproduct of the fishing industry which is a high phosphorus i'll take these products and i'll do a top dress at different points in the grow maybe it's blooms really coming on just to feed the plant in all different ways i feel like i'm giving it's that the word synganic uh or you're feeding synthetically or salt-based nutrients and organically or just you know nutrients and i do stay away from meals i get a little freaked out of uh big ag bone meal blood meal just i don't know i i need to learn more about what possibly might be in those byproducts i don't know if any of the antibiotics or funkiness from that industry comes over but i don't i have other things i can use in my garden where i don't need to use those so i'm trying to think what else i do have some favorite like i don't know if you do like do you water in with any bottles at all yeah sometimes yeah yeah do you have any favorite bloom additives or something like that's the typical additive or that you would use i used to use back in the days to use a pk booster used to use beastie blooms by fox farm when i was using the fox farm lineup and that that helped and it was always when i worked hydroponic retail it would be one of the most hottest like people be like all right i'm a month into flower what kind of boost does he got like let's what kind of boost oh this is a zero 60 you know like they just get pumped but it's not all about that i do really like it's kind of a unique one massive from green planet is a like a trichantinol type and there's more in it than that i don't even know if they can market it as that but it's one i really dig on i'm trying to think what other bloom boost is typically if you have your base nutrition really rocked though it's not about doing a big on booster you can mess up things in your isosphere you can kind of i think affect what's going on with the microbes if you go too high in with phosphorus so watch that but yeah that would be one of my my many main additives and of course i haven't said it in any of this i use re i know you like recharge i use recharge across throughout the grow that's one of the things that in a roundabout way for me ties into ipm recharge guys is just a microbial inoculant if you aren't using microbes you want to be adding microbes we only have so much time with this plant right to get it right uh and kick out a good a good crop are there any other microbial nockins you use beyond recharge and do you use any sugars like some people use molasses honey brown sugar did you do any of that or um recharge has enough molasses in it where i don't need to add another sugar sugar guys it's going to feed the microbes i like to diversify my sugars because i think if i'm a microbe maybe i want to eat something different than molasses today that's where i get into god i don't know the name fox farm has uh they have a lion something like a bembe or bimbe line maybe it's actually called bimbe it's like a sugar uh from i believe from beets i was like interesting okay i can picture maybe some maybe some of the microbes and this is kind of bro science or just me making myself a microbe will be more turned on by eating some of this beet sugar today and do some type of different attribute in my my terpene profile you know um so other than that what other sugars have i used just those two mainly as far as a sugar to feed them microbes yeah another micro product sorry you asked um i did i haven't since just availability up here microbes in canada are really good it's just goofy regulation thing hard to get their hands on some um oh mammoth p damn i don't know i'm stumbling on that mammoth p i've used on and off uh as well and i have it in a while but i would still recommend at transplant there are some cool i don't know if you know any but um mycorrhizae products that are specifically one strain i think the intradices that it's nice at transplant to get that on i think mycos when you can get that on the root zone when you're actually transplanting you can put some mycorrhizae in the hole make sure you get that connection that's one good time to use another type of that's actually a fungi mycorrhizae i pretty much use the same products i think the the mammoth p and recharge combination is incredible i mean they both just work so well together you know i remember using recharging mammoth p several grows ago and taking it out of the one gallon container uh the roots were just so amazingly pearly white like beautiful and just i i never got that before you know using recharge you know so uh in mammoth p together so i highly recommend that combination for anybody who is interested in you know using trying out some new micro products learn about microbes too if you guys you don't have to learn a ton but um that wasn't like i don't know my top three i don't know if it was led lighting co2 and microbes off the top my head but microbes man game changer for the grow you're gonna do a lot better and don't think it's a misconception um i used to think this as well like oh well i'm using synthetic nutrients or salt-based nutrients or this it's just it's not going to work well with the microbes they can work together for sure in your grow media so yeah look into that if you're not it'll it'll help you grow great point now you mentioned one other thing on feeding i know you mentioned ramo nutrients and you measure mention these other things you're doing some top feeding fish so on and so forth are you following the feeding schedule for remo nutrients at all or are you doing a reduced dose or are you not looking at that feeding schedule i try to just have a plan i mean i feel the feeding schedule as a basis their line specifically um it's super easy because it's always the same amount across the board doesn't matter what bottle you're using until you know if you you can start off at five mils and that gives you this ppm and then you can go up to eight mils or you can go up to ten mils so it depends on what you're doing so i don't follow a feeding schedule particularly um as far as a new grower sometimes it's nice to say okay here's a nutrient line let me hand you their feeding schedule you follow this and you should be good and that's right you should be good know your quality your quality your water starting points if you can if you're on a well or whatever you're on it is nice to know to get either a water test know your starting pp or a ph my starting ph is seven i'm on a well here in british columbia my ppms off the tap are i think one it's like the water's so good here there's nothing in it but to know that starting point is good for sure and then after that you should succeed the only thing that'll mess up a feeding chart is if you have hiccups in the grow and you you need to slow down on something or you need to not feed um and then outside speaking of all this i don't know if this ties into something you got coming up if your plants aren't protected from weather and rain rain alone is going to adjust like if it keeps raining and you're like damn i gotta water in my liquid nutrients i gotta get nutrition in there that can be a conundrum because your plants wet already and that's why it's good to cover yourself with well it's been raining but i did have some top dress so that's kind of like a tip there if you know you got some weather coming because it could rain for like a week straight happen to be in colorado plants are always wet i can't add any nutrition nor are they probably going crazy at that point it's cloudy out it's been raining on them but if you can't add nutrition and no weather's coming you can always top dress some nutrition as well and that doesn't even have to be organic amendments they have vegetable granular fertilizer out there or it's just like osmocote type stuff we just sprinkle a little on there and you know if you you water through with plain water you're going to get nutrition if that answered your question with the feeding chart yeah i'm not rambling i got my cold brew kicking in here a little caffeine going so just if you cut me off at all i don't know no that's all good you're actually ahead of the game a little bit my next question was going to be about water and you touched on well water uh you know your water source is clean going in which is good my next question was going to be talking about ph now as your ph good like what does it come in at to begin and are you doing any sort of adjustments are you monitoring it all or okay i got that just quick with the well water if you guys got hard well like if you got high ppm in your well water let's say you get a little pen and it's like holy it's like at 400 500 600 it's good to know what's in there i think i haven't had to deal with it i'm no expert a lot of times i think it could be calcium there are different liquid nutrients that um you can adjust your nutrients to that ppm so you're not giving too much of one thing or the other but if you do have that high of ppm i would like to know what's in there i would consider a water test if that's going to be your main source or after that if you don't you got to look at a water filtration system such as ro which gives you a zero starting point that's why uh when commercial facilities when they got to replicate their feeding plan across multiple facilities or anything everybody has the same ro system so when the lead grower over here is looking over here he knows everybody's starting at the same point at least with nutrients so if you do have or even city water not just well water check that man i've heard of some people say they're i don't know what's your do you know what your ppm is where you're at is it high my tap is like 485 yeah do you know what now what what's in there or what does that uh i mean i have the water report that i get from the from the city but i don't i don't know i know what i can't always trust that either so many it seems like variables with what's in the pipes between here and there and the other thing but anyway check that guys know your water report then you asked about ph my starting ph is seven um i don't know most nutrients i don't know about most rainbow nutrients buffer down typically i think they anticipate a seven-ish starting point because i always brings me down within range which is going to be upper fives five point nine to six point i'll order in 5.9 to 6.45 or even high excuse me even higher if you have a lot of microbes active they're going to help buffer out and take care of this if you're a little out of range okay and then you touched on ppm and ec earlier a little bit you threw out a couple values i knew throughout 700 ppm can you tell me like what values you aim for like some people will start with a low ppm during seedling stage then they'll kind of work their way up can you tell me kind of your strategy for ppm or ec yeah i think uh it's been overdone a lot with the people like to push medicinal plants super hard to get the most they can out of it and then maybe you should come on back and try to go lower mine would be okay early veg i'm around you know three four hundred prime time veg meaning man these things are going everything's happy i could go you can go up to i'm still staying probably around though five to six hundred and i'm not saying if you went higher it might this can be strain dependent as well depending on your plants um but 750 to 800 is what i max out out at and i don't see i see not diminish i guess diminishing returns might be the right phrase when i go higher i'm not seeing more come out of the plant you can mess with it of course if you're growing the same type of plant season after season but if you change up the strain or the plant type then you just how do you track that but less seems to be more typically i'll say not all of them nutrient companies want to put down like what they're not going to put down the least amount you could use i mean they i'm not saying they're there to rip you off um but they're going to go a little bit on the higher end sometimes the nutrient charts offer three different levels i've seen like it's funny some will be like are you at the master level are you at the pro level are you at the beginner level which i don't know why they work like that but less is more see what your plant don't overdo it under doing it's a little better i mean if you want to try and bump up at different times go for it but again using microbes i keep going there that helps with nutrition across the board and i have not needed high ppm at all since doing that i'm always lower than the feed chart and if you don't want to mess with all that you're intimidated by that you don't have to you put a plant out in a container with some enriched soil some compost water in some microbes and you know there's also just bagged soil out there that uh ocean forest is the most commonly available across the nation or i've heard different growers granted uh it's not going to work for all strains but man all they did is water in with some ocean forest which is enriched soil and i gotta harvest uh you probably can do better you're probably gonna run out of nutrition getting towards middle towards the end but this it can be real easy or easier than worrying about ppm ph but i grow synganic so both values i'm taking care of all of it gotcha let's flip up and talk about plant training so what plant training techniques do you typically do in outdoors on it outside when these things want to grow like beasts i mean you can do a lot of different training tactics i mean if it's uh first would be you're going to want to top a bit uh because these plants you're going to when you're going to go to bloom in colorado it was around mid-august i'd start to see flowers come in i'd assume i was two weeks in um i wouldn't i would want my plants to be and this is relevant to uh you know how big of plants you can grow but i would top them back like three or four times top in your plant you're taking off x amount of the top of your plant down to a node um and you can you know google that out and see exactly it's pretty easy to do the only time you you don't want to do this if you know like oh man i'm going to be going to bloom probably in about 10 days for me i set that date at august 15th so the last time i do some topping would be maybe august 1st so i have a little bit of recovery time for new shoots to come out and everything to be good but keep in mind you're going to gain at least i'm going to say across the board two feet if not three feet maybe four feet when you get into bloom and that's when training can come in too where you're doing you're bending over you can literally make sure your plants properly watered and healthy bending over your stems some people will just bend to not get a break sometimes i even bend to get a little bit of a break in the stem because i know how quick these are going to recover you can do tie down method where you're taking part of a plant and you're bending it way over here maybe because it needs to stay below a fence and also thinning outside thinning your plants out to get rid of those micro climates when you're out there scouting for pests you're not going crazy through like you gotta thin it out a little for air movement and not creating micro climates uh for pests and speaking about the fence uh the having the plant not grow over the fence i think you got i got some some good comments on whatever outdoor security your neighbors that kind of thing as well i think you have a question on here i know some people who swear by the 45 degree angle method they just do this one outdoors particular they just do a one bend of that bean chute at 45 degrees that's going to allow the lowers to come up which i thought was pretty interesting it really helps create more shoots coming up so it's not just like a christmas tree style that you typically see so that's one basic easy thing that you can do for for training um you know when growing outdoors you can do it indoors too sure but um we're you know we're focusing on outdoors on this video now what about uh more more so pruning defoliation lollipopping do you do any of that stuff growing outdoors yeah for sure defoliation i mean that was tying into kind of where i'm talking about thinning out your canopy thinning out your mid lollipopping like you said definitely that's bringing up your lower branches so again that can be an area where if you have that all thick down there where you might get a problem at the soil i like to see my soil level i was about to say i like to put sticky traps out at soil level but that's more for indoors for me sticky traps outside i feel like i'm catching some good guys too and it hurts my feelings but um yeah pruning your plant up lollipopping it up uh definitely important you'll get even more of those shoots it was hard for me as a new grower to cut off a lot of the lower ones because it's like oh there's going to be some good flour on here or here but really taking those off and i don't like to fully like pop it up two or three feet but taking a lot of those off to enable to send that energy and to send all that to the upper parts of the plant uh works great let's get into challenges growing outdoors so indoors outdoors totally different battlefield i mean we already talked about pests that's one challenge you gotta face i just i was just scrolling my notes i didn't want to mention one other thing before i forget about ipm uh we don't have this option as much on the indoors and outside if it doesn't i mean depending my plants are usually always covered outside which we can get into but spraying your plant taking the hose and just giving your plants a really good wash i mean it's a sim plus you're gonna get naturally outside you'll get some type of dust or pollen or you'd be actually for me here now in british columbia smoke particles some fires going on somewhere washing your plants is a good idea and same it'll wash off potential negative egg sacs or pests that are bothering stuff and it's super easy to do even if it was once every other day and just just clean off your outside garden it's a good a good tip sorry no all good so you just blast them with plain water now when you say wash your plants are you also talking about bud washing at the end after harvesting i haven't done bud washing and when you wash your plants it'll show your weak points and where you might not have them staked up properly as well because sometimes they'll just bend way over whatever but get that those plants staked up with bamboo bud washing i mean it's it's not the end of the world if your buds get wet um if they get rained on but i don't intentionally try to wash buds at any point with the yeah pressurized pressurized water okay now some of the other challenges that you've faced uh growing outdoors um like i was mentioning is this there's so many different things beyond pests one of the things that you had mentioned earlier was bud rod you want to talk about bud rod a little bit sure because that was one that just came i mean there's a few different types like bud rot can be just some rot in the bud that you get from a type of like bacteria or mold i believe sometimes just buds that are really big and dense i grew big bud crossed with white widow outside and the buds were so big and beautiful looking and i didn't know i had the rod um and this was in colorado until i started trimming and i was like oh that's when it's really disappointing because i wasn't even anticipating it and for me it came from corn ear worms corn ear worms if i understand right i'm trying to recall is i believe a moth that lay like an egg or something and then this thing comes it's a caterpillar and the caterpillar looking thing just goes around throughout your bud and when it does it shits and then we have the feces from the caterpillar in there which creates the rot um well it's so that was kind of interesting it wasn't actually this caterpillar would be like a half inch long it going around causing it was actually it's taking a dump my flowers that caused the problem i did not have my flowers protected there's different ways you could try and handle it um bti bacillus terengensis subspecies israeli insist is a product interesting enough though these things have become resistant to it on and off because everybody uses it and the corn earworm usually affects corn crops but it's found in the medicinal plants some of the flower structure i don't know if it thinks maybe the moths like that looks like a corn stalk or not but it messes with it and the only way for this one that i have found maybe when i try to set up a grow next season a little bit smaller is putting out the fine bug netting that you can buy for agricultural purposes and therefore these moss and things cannot fly into your plants because it's just such a bummer i mean i and then i did get a little pm and there's not a lot you can do i mean you can grow plants actually i could take that back there are plants there are breeders for different areas that you might be able to get a strain that is less susceptible to that type of issue i always cite an instance on the indoor indoor grow tent back in the day i had four plants in it three of them completely got pm like it was horrible and one of them same tent leave share in space and never got it i was like this is interesting these are all the same type of plant but different strains and this one just won't get it so there's an example of pm really powdery mildew when i say pm these other plants so it's hard to control that a lot there's different sprays and things you can do for pm you got to be on it but man depending on the size of your garden can really up your labor a lot trying to deal with these things um outside so kind of going back to bud rod i had bud rot before indoors and i'll briefly talk about this yes i uh had plants where i decided to do no training because i usually do training and topping and low stress string and all that stuff and i was like you know what my audience wants to see something different let me do no training for the beginners who who don't want to train so i had all these plants and they had nice real big colas coming up um and unfortunately my fan died overnight the oscillating family i had died overnight and i only had one fan in there so that's a mistake that's one thing going back always have two fans in your environment in case one dies uh that's something i'm doing moving forward um but really it you know i noticed it that my fan had to have just been uh dead for like 24 hours so there's no air movement whatsoever right and the humidity skyrocketed uh overnight you know i don't i don't remember if i like just watered the plants that the previous night or not but um what i'm trying to say is that the bud rod happened like pretty much overnight now once you get bud rod it starts to form it starts to form like on the stem and then kind of works its way out i'm talking about botrytis scenario in particular it'll uh it'll continue to grow so although i fixed that fan issue i still like two more weeks left in the grow the fans were going i had air movement but that botritis that's still there it doesn't just magically stop growing it doesn't matter you just disappear so like i got all the way to harvest and then i noticed actually that i had botrytis i was like what the what the hell this is terrible it's complete now luckily it was only that top main cola right the fattest one the lower buds were fine so like that's typical too yeah so in that case i just threw away those colas as had as it was they were beautiful and it sucks to take that cola and just throw it in the trash but you gotta do what you gotta do right you don't wanna be smoking that crap but yeah the lower buds were fine in there but it was uh it's not fun it's not fun that air movement is important and one other thing to mention is you can identify if bud drops happening if the leaves coming from the cola if it starts to yellow from the bottom of the leaf that's an indicator that you could potentially have bud rocks you can um you notice you'll see some of the little leaves coming out of developed flowers because this last grow i forgot to mention we've been talking outdoor i've been thinking but indoor my last harvest i probably lost about not bad maybe 10 percent from the flowers but you would see i could you just be looking around in the canopy and this unhappy family for not family but leaf sticking out of the flower and so a test is to just grab that and then if it pulls right out super easy and then you can see it potentially a little bit of dust or whatever you know like that area is contaminated and what i did for that is i just immediately take a just a plastic garbage bag or whatever over it and then snip below it because i'm worried about you don't want and turn off all your fans and hope none of that little dust spreads around anywhere but assume you're already gonna be dealing with it and you're gonna when you get the final processing of your plants you're gonna run into more of it and just be pleasantly surprised if not yeah it's not fun at all i and now i also another tip is i make sure i set up alerts so i use a sensor push alert i know some people use like the pulse but i have alerts come to my smartphone if my humidity is too high well i get an alert on my smartphone i know i need to go take action so i can see now if the fan does die out well i should be getting alert yeah but yeah it's not not fun at all getting bud rod all right no challenges yeah i've got a few other good ones here some fun ones here timer mail function okay so in uh colorado had four four outdoor four or five outdoor grows um and the first thing i realized i'm gonna need to eventually because uh the first season i put no protection over my plants i lived in an area where every once in a while i was almost guaranteed we're gonna get some hail that comes through um so and i could see i was like addicted to i'd sit at the computer when i'd see it look at uh the weather underground or whatever and i'd have the enhanced radar i'd be like man it's common and i'd be like i gotta stay home this afternoon no mountain biking not having umbrellas ready after that season i set up uh what i call my tiki grow where i use you can get the corrugated uh greenhouse panels from home depot they're not that expensive and then i'm not a handy carpenter but i can rig stuff up and a grow tip here is you can get two foot long pieces of rebar that are already pre-cut at home depot and easily pound that one foot into the ground and then they sell all kinds of different sizes of bamboo but there's bamboo poles that were eight foot or maybe ten foot tall that the bottom diameter of them were big enough just to slide over that rebar and i was like boom now that and some green zip ties i'm starting to grow plus i want my outdoor grow to look kind of cool and i thought having a bamboo like grow shack over it with some corrugated plastic panels works great and it did it stayed up for like seven years so if you can protect your plants from even if it's just rain and weather and figure out how to rig something up or even into the structure that temporarily goes over them you're a huge advantage there but i'd run into weather as far as the challenge here that man the sun's going away or was going to get too cold and i had spare grow lights sitting around so i put out two 600 watts and a thousand watt hps out over my outdoor grow and then had a timer mail function coming home at night it's dark out and in between my house and the neighbor's house it looks like a ufo's landing like luckily at that point i lived on a court i knew all the neighbors at that i wasn't doing uh at that point in time my garden was allowed i didn't have anything to worry about or to get in trouble for uh but that was just rather interesting to be like whoa uh talking about lighting if you if you go outside light pollution uh does your neighbor have a light that might shine toward your garden to affect its photo period i had a street light in front of my house so i was like oh what am i getting to do about this because you don't want to have light pollution coming in they can handle some don't get me wrong think about how bright it is when a full moon's out but for this particular situation it's like okay we can't do anything to the light that we can't we can't vandalize the light or do anything to the lights so i set up a ladder and actually i took a piece of foil and spray painted it primer gray it looked kind of gray like the light and just wrapped the back side of it that pointed towards my house and just used some uh some type of zip ties i believe that lasted like five years as well and my neighbors actually like thank you that light used to shine into our window so be careful of light pollution out there anticipate where you're going to put your garden are you going to get any light pollution from your neighbor's security light or outside lights and then it ties into smell man you can have some smell from medicinal plants and different you know different strains different strengths of smells uh my neighbors were cool but also sensitive to it at times like that's getting kind of strong dude but you know keep that in mind and you can do a little research into that into what which plants might give you more smell than others at prime times and flowering um so those would be i don't know it's i don't know did you want a little security talk at all or i know that's good i was going to mention you remind me of uh when you talk about the smell one time it would mean three of my buddies were trimming and uh fedex guy came rang the doorbell and so i opened up the door and he had to have smelled something really strong because i needed a smile yeah well no he saw my shirt i had a gross shirt on he's like oh that's what that smell was and so so yeah i mean kind of that wraps into security right if you don't want people to um you know know what you're doing you want to hide the smell with you know carpet filters or air filtration systems yeah i mean if you want to talk about security a little bit sure for you as the fedex guy you said for me it was the my mail lady she's at the mailbox and she was like huh and and then the next time she's at the mailbox i'm like are you garden at all and she's like talked a little like here's some free recharge you know just make sure she's happy so but it was all good yeah i mean keeping your garden um out of sight if need be uh keeping it to where there's not a lot you can do about smell if the wind's going the right direction and you have neighbors close by sometimes that's going to happen you can blame blame skunks if need be but yeah keeping it you know out of sight and uh secure as possible things are changing all the time with how secure you need to keep it grow and and it really it's nice to share your grow if you can but the less people that know the better it's easy to put things you know out to notify you know this day and age with technology and the affordability of different cameras or things that can let you know hey somebody's in your garden or maybe even you're catching that can tie into animals or pests you know if you want to know that something's there that shouldn't be deer we'll really love to eat your plants you can get other types of pests that might come in and really like to eat your plants but having a notification if somebody's been there somebody's there is good and just be around man be around your plants like it be around your grow as much as you can it's good for you it's healthy for you it's free therapy if you will i don't know about free we do we do invest in our growth but yeah be around to check things out that's definitely some really really good advice all right so wrapping things up how can listeners find you and what do you have upcoming in the future dude rose as uh scouting my co-host says yell dude grows at your phone dude grow show man i think we've been doing this almost eight years now we do shows every day of the week if you want to listen to some grow talk make sure you check out the growtalk episodes we have a show called wake and bake which is news culture and entertainment and whatever else we might come out of our mouths hang out on that show and just get down what's coming up more dude grow show we come up with ideas to change things up or do something a little different content collaboration with people such as yourself thank you always like to do that i'll be keeping the shows coming out every day of the week is really uh not the challenge but the joy it keeps us pretty busy find us dudegrows.com as our webpage we're over on youtube or podcast any podcast player we should be on stitcher apple spotify just yell dude grows at your phone and you'll see what we've got going on awesome if you enjoyed this video click that thumbs up button also if you haven't already please subscribe to the channel i release these podcast episodes every single weekend typically it's on saturdays if you're on apple podcast or spotify actually apple podcast in particular leave a rating or review that definitely helps the ranking i'm just about to pass 100 ratings and reviews so thank you everyone who has left that share this podcast if you haven't already if you know somebody who would benefit from this information please share it dude thank you so much for coming on to this podcast today this has been a great talk definitely provides some value to those that are growing outdoors so i appreciate your time and i hope you enjoy the rest of your day back at you peace out guys [Music] you