That is the main reason I like to stagger things. I can always find time to trim one plant a week, any day of the week. It is nice to only have to do things once, and not 6x, all at once. With no till, I only have to put effort into mixing soil/ making up pots, once a year. Combine that with basically only having to water, and my style isn't very time consuming for me. I am a super busy fella, and that is mostly why my style has evolved to what it is.
Thanks for the kind words. I just grow canna like everything else I grow. Heck, I pay more attention to my tomatoes than I do to canna (don't throw me out of the club). Its all about feeding the soil, and mulch, mulch, mulch!@Organic Sinse I am envious of your style. I was growing organic 50 years ago before it was a thing. It was just how Grandma did it. Leaves from the yard got raked into two piles, one was left alone the other had green garden waste and culled fruit turned in. It was turned and watered twice a month. You get the two different soil amendments you mentioned. My outdoor garden is still run that way but my wife does most of the heavy lifting now. I have a bad back and cannot move even a 2 gallon pot of soil so I am a hydro guy now. Pumps do all of the lifting in my indoor grow space.
I think a couple of different training techniques would benefit your style just based on the pictures you posted. The first I learned for photoperiod plants on another forum called "Main Lining" and specifically a variation called "Nebula's Manifold". I almost tripled my yield from one grow to the next. The second "Topping Autos" was leaned from @autobeast when he was on another forum. He is here now and has a thread dedicated to the topic. https://www.autoflower.org/threads/auto-topping-thread-pushing-the-auto-limits.57281/
I am going to sub in because I can almost smell that beautiful soil you have.
I haven't posted progress for a bit so here we go, catch up time.
I couple posts back I was showing the Deez Nuggz I was a training. I whacked her at 65 days. Seemed like a very fast strain to me. I didn't defoliate this thing, but tucked and staked and ponytailed like mad. These plants are quite challenging to get to grow out and stake down. They are just so vigorous and the stems are real stout. I am glad I started early with this girl. She ended up 22" tall, and about as wide.
Here she is.
its really tough to see whats going on in here with all this foiliage.
I did a little trim for the camera. This pic is dedicated to @MrOldBoy. He made me smile the day I took this picture.
Here is good luck at her.
the other sideA shot from above
and a 180 spin
Its really hard to get a good pic of how much nice bud is just packed into a little 'package'. Nice and frosty too. This thing ended up yielding 97 grams dried and jarred nuggz. Deez Nuggz!
Fun little plant to watch grow. I still feel these little, dense, squat plants are the most enjoyable to train, but also the trickiest.
Can't wait to smoke some this after cure.
cheers
os
I thought I would write a bit about what I do with my no till containers.
With no till containers, at harvest time I chop the plant as low to the ground as I can. In fact I try to pull back the mulch and top dress around the stem, and cut down into the hole. Then I fill this little hole around the stem with fully saturated seed starter and plant a seed. Once the seed pops up, I am left with a surface pretty devoid of mulch. Most of the previous mulch will have been broken down with just some larger bark bits showing. This pic is the perfect example.
A week to ten days after a seed cracks the surface I like to mulch all around the seedling with a thick blanket of leaves. I put some thought into this step, as this is where I feed the soil. For mulch I like to use dried fan leaves, crumbled up into tiny pieces as a first layer. Broken down into small bits, allows them to decompose much faster. I then mist them. Next I like to throw down a layer of shredded comfrey. This breaks down super fast and is a great supplier of nutrients. I grow comfrey in the summer, and freeze a couple bags of leaves for my winter needs. I mist the mulch again. From there on out, I layer some clover, holy basil, and citronella leaves. I just happen to have these extra leaves from my houseplants. I mist water in between every layer. I also lay down 2 tablespoons of a mixture of corn, soy, wheat chaf, alfalfa, and calcium (its actually special chicken feed I run thru the coffee grinder). I then mist this with water.
I built the mulch layer on this container about a week ago.
This mulch layer has been breaking down for about 2 weeks, you can see how much more has disappeared compared to the plant above.
The next move is usually to cover the mulch with a layer of worm castings or vermicompost. The plant below has a fresh topdress of wormcastings. These castings are pretty pure, there isn't much compost left in them.
There is no real wrong time to do these steps. It usually comes down to when its easier for me to do. Staking branches affects my mulching decisions as much as anything else. With this style of gardening, you just want to start things early enough, to allow nature to do its thing, or in a perfect world, to 'continue' to do its thing.
The next thing that happens is I apply a top dress of vermicompost down the road. The vermicompost or VMC, is my special blend. It contains bark mulch and rice hulls for slow release over a long time, and is based with either leaf mold or compost. It has been worked by worms for a minimum of 6 months before I use it.
Because it contains the bark, the castings portion kind of washes down through the layers to the soil, and leaves the bark and rice hulls as a perfect mulch on top.
I have had great results doing this. All the plants I am growing now are on their 2nd cycle in these no till containers. Aside from a few teas here and there, I just water with tap. My 'Fantasmo Express' should be my first 2nd cycle plant to finish, and she is a week or two out.
cheers
os
One of the fun things about changing breeders, is getting used to the various new plant structures, and evolving my style to suit. The one type of plant that I have very little experience with are the real short, squat, heavy indica style plants with super close nodes. I just finished a strawberry nuggets a bit ago, and I swore I would do a better job training the plant, the next time I grow something with that structure. I have a 'Deez Nugz' going, and she is showing the same exact structure as the the 'Strawberry Nuggets' plant I just grew. This is my chance to learn something new. I decided that I needed to add a new tech to my usual routine, which is normally just branch staking and leaf tucking. I try not to defoliate unless its real crucial. Otherwise, I like to try and do a 'work around'. The tech I am adding, I have heard referred to as 'pony tailing'. What you do is just gather up a couple nodes, pull the leaves up, and secure them. I decided to use common green gardening Velcro to secure the leaves (I use a lot of Velcro). It was my intent to get more light to the lower bud sites, and get them a head start to grow out, and escape the shade from the canopy above the sites. I need longer branches!
After being pony tailed a couple hours, the Velcro is removed, and the plant goes back about its normal business.
I took a couple photos along the way. (Its real easy for me to tell what I am doing over time with a pic or 2 showing the growth that I am focused on).
Below is a pre 'pony tail shot', the Deez Nugz is about 16 days.
Below, same day, wearing a pony tail. You can how much light she lets into the lower bud sites/ branches. At this point, I begin to stake the lowest nodes, to further encourage outward growth. I keep the 'pony tailing' sessions short, 2 hours at a crack.
For 3-4 days I did 4 or so sessions a day, 2 hours per session, with at least 2 hours between sessions. I also staked another lower node, and moved the pony tail 'hood' up another node.
Today, she looked like this sporting a pony tail.
It worked really well to get bud sites/branches to grow out to where they get light all the time. That was my goal. I will continue this up the plant and see how it ends up.
This is my first go around with the pony tail training, but I really like it. I am also using it just a little, on a plant with more normal structure, it a 'Port and Stiliton'. On that plant it also helped to get the lower branches a great jump start, so I can get them out of the canopy early and get staked.
cheers
os
