Outdoor Outdoor Organic Mephisto Grow in Northern Climate

[Iriee Vibez]

Everything looks perfectly setup for a fantastic environment to grow some great autoflowering cannabis! With the soil prep, sun exposure, and that Vermont air, I bet you push the limits of what those seeds can do! I am in and looking forward to the action! Good luck, brother!

 

[heelo]

Subbed. Love KIS Organics podcast, curious about your experience using them for reammendment. I'm also reusing soil in my raised bed and wound up using a few different things to reammend this season.

Best of luck!

 

[Organic Sinse]

Greetings AFN neighbors and friends,

I'm a hobby gardener living at 45° N in Vermont, and high elevation. I've been growing photoperiod plants for a number of seasons, outdoors in organic soil, with good success. I've typically grown between 2 and 5 plants that have turned out nicely overall, but the freezing temps always start to hit at the end of September and the plants barely have enough warmth and time to really do their thing in the final stretch. Here are a couple of pics from the past few years:
View attachment 1188564
View attachment 1188568
View attachment 1188570
View attachment 1188571

While I'm happy with what I've accomplished, I do believe that to grow the truly best herb, the plant needs to have decent growing conditions all the way to the final chop, without it being rushed, and without a long cold spell at the very end.

This year I've decided to go a totally different route and grow nothing but Mephisto autos and be done by early-mid September. (I have done a few autos here and there over the years for fun but never prioritized them like I'm doing now.) So I'm starting this grow journal to document my methods and hope to garner a little discussion on the topic of outdoor organic growing with autos.

A bit about my setup: I have a spot next to my house that is all sandy backfill, so I'm blessed with perfect drainage conditions to start. The location also has immaculate southern exposure and my house is directly on the north side of the garden, so the sun warms that whole area quite nicely. When I first started growing 4 years ago I dug a few big ol' holes in this spot and dumped in a bunch of yards of Vermont Compost potting soil which is extremely high quality. (I'm blessed to have such a high quality source of compost and potting soil so close by: https://www.vermontcompost.com/). I added some high quality local vermicompost and 20% chunky #8 perlite. Over the past number of years I've recycled and re-amended that soil, adding mostly KIS nutrient packs (www.kisorganics.com), Organic Gem fish hydrolysate, phos bat guano, kelp, fresh worm castings, malted barley, and aerated compost tea. I also use humic acid & fulvic acid from Bioag (www.bioag.com), potassium sulfate, and maybe a few other things. I mulch with old hay from a farm down the road. I have had tremendous success with this soil and setup, growing several 8' spherical photoperiod bushes each season, which is run-of-the mill in Northern California but is pretty good for way up here in Vermont I'm told!

Anyway, this year I'm going a different route. I dug out the soil in those holes and rearranged all of it into a single 6'x12'x2'deep bed, which is about 5 yards of soil - and added a yard of nice compost to it. I also added my leftover malted barley from last year, 32 gallons of inoculated biochar from Vermont Biochar (www.vermontbiochar.com), 45 gallons of very fresh and high-quality worm castings, 2.5 KIS organics nutrient packs, some more chunky perlite, and a pinch of ful-humix from Bioag. Here is most of my go-to collection of grow supplements and additives (not pictured are coconut water, aloe vera, and a few others):View attachment 1188550
Here is the heaping pile of inoculated biochar spread out over my bed:View attachment 1188551
layers on layers on layers!View attachment 1188552
Getting all tilled in now...View attachment 1188553View attachment 1188557
And now it's all raked out flat and covered with black poly to help the soil get as warm as possible over the next 4 weeks before planting.View attachment 1188558

I have 5 Mephisto strains: AVT, Hubbabubbasmelloscope, Ripley's OG, Walter White, and SODK.
View attachment 1188567
I am planning to squeeze 15 or so plants into my bed (so ~ a 2' grid) and do a sea-of-green style grow to max out my available bed space. I have a little experiment planned - I'm going to cut holes in the black poly and direct seed some of my seeds in there in early-mid June, in small little patches of Biobizz light mix for each seed. I'm hoping the soil under the black poly will be warm enough to support good growth early on. But the nighttime temps are often still in the 40's F (~5-10 C) half way into June, so...yeah. With the other half of my seeds I'll start them indoors in 2L tiered transplant pots for a stressless transplant and see how that method compares with direct seeding.

I plan to use aerated compost tea made with fresh worm castings, aloe vera, coconut water, mycorryzal inoculant, fish hydrolysate, bat guano, maxi-crop, and malted barley as side dressings throughout various stages of the grow. In the second half of flowering I will probably cover with a greenhouse tunnel to avoid heavy rain on the buds.

I intend to do some fairly regular updates on this thread, but for now I'm letting this bed digest until I plant into it about a month from now!

I am fairly new to posting on here so I'm not sure who/what to tag so please jump in if you have any advice. I'd love to get some of the more seasoned outdoor/organic/Mephisto growers in the discussion mix if possible. Thanks for tuning in y'all and happy growing!

@stan_mephisto @KIS (Is that ok to do? Anyone else I should/could tag? Any outdoor/organic gurus out there? Thanks!!!)

Howdy folks, I’m one of Mr Old Boys organic grow bros that hang over in the Mephisto Section. Your set up and strategy is totally on point. Believe it or not, clear or semi clear plastic will warm the soil way faster. The black just shades it from the sun. The black plastic gets warm, but you don’t get the solar warmth deep into the soil. The bio biz light, pocket of soil for starting seeds is exactly the way I fly, but I use a different brand seed starter. Makes all the difference in the world. I tried all those strains except WW, in my greenhouse last summer. They all worked well, and Ripley’s was a pounder.
Plastic bottles or jugs over young plants can help keep em warm at night, just cut the bottom off and your set.
Good luck this season! I’m a pretty experienced gardener, and loaded with tricks for cold weather. I’m 16 degrees farther north. Just holler at me if ya need anything.
cheers
os

 

[othaslimkid]

Hey everyone, and happy Summer to those of us in the northern hemisphere!

So I am here with a little update on day 7 since my seeds broke ground. All of them are growing in biobizz light mix to start. My plants that I started in 2L containers have been outside during nice days and inside at night under T5's, so 24 hours of light. They are looking pretty happy, well into putting on their 3-leaves.

The seedlings that I direct seeded into the outdoor bed (in pockets of biobizz) are behind, just barely starting their 3-leaves, and are a bit of a paler green and less happy looking than the ones in the starter containers, too.

I had black plastic on this bed until a few days ago, and I think that in the end the soil got too warm. I only just bought a soil thermometer (duh!) and stuck it in on a warm day to find that the soil temp was around 86 F. Too warm, I thought...but then I decided to stick that thermometer into one of my black plastic container starts (which was sitting outside in the sun), and it read a very similar temp! Curious. Same soil, same temp, pretty sure my watering is on point. I can only imagine that the black plastic, and maybe just the general temperature swings (70's F daytime into 40's at night) are simply not as friendly to my little friends. (I do have a small hoop house set up over this bed for those cold nights.) Anyway I took off the black plastic and mulched with my usual mulch hay. It's been a couple of days and I can't quite tell yet whether things are back in better balance.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Would love to hear some more of you experienced auto growers if you have any takes. I am still pretty interested in trying to create more ideal seedling conditions in my bed so that I can avoid transplanting. But maybe the extra time under the T5 lights is really worth the trouble of doing the indoor/outdoor shuffle. And maybe I'm getting decent results for having tried to direct seed, it's just hard to beat 24 hours of light and easier climate control with containers during the seedling stage. All in all I think I'm feeling good and always asking questions and seeking to learn about what makes these plant friends happy.

Thanks everyone!

 

[smokeyfromau]

@othaslimkid Beautiful looking garden in the previous grow, i am subbed in for the auto journey. I would expect autos in direct soil in the ground would get to their full height, should be some really nice plants there once grown. I can see you are on a hill, i got a tiny view whilst looking at your garden bed prep photo. The wire is a good idea to keep critters out

 

[Green Hornet]

Nice @45 degrees north myself in Michigan I am hooked.

 

[Darn2Oh7]

Great work so far! I'm following this, I too am doing some auto's outside, 44 degrees north, and i'm wondering if the 70+ degree days and 40 nights will have a negative affect on them. I'm doing 15 gal bags and they have been in since june 2nd, after 5 days in instapot.

 

[othaslimkid]

Hey all,

Just a lil update here on day 14. The plants that I started in containers (and kept indoors under T5's at night) are now in the ground and jumped up quite a bit! I can tell my soil in my bed is a touch strong for the timing of where these babies are at, as I can see small signs of nutrient burn, but nothing that seems to be holding me back too far. I'm very grateful for where things are at!

The seeds that I direct seeded did NOT do well with the black plastic row cover. They put on their first single leaves and then got a little faded in color and just stayed put for over a week. So I decided to re-seed those now that the black plastic is gone, and now I have two cycles running side-by-side that are 2 weeks apart. It wasn't my original intention but I am in a learning process after all, and I figure I still have time to put some seeds in and learn something about how to sow directly without using black plastic. It'll be a couple weeks before I can really tell how it went but my hunch is that I'll be starting all my plants in tiered containers next year as this batch of indoor/outdoor starts appears to be going pretty healthy and strong so far.

One question I have for any of the more experienced folks out there is - if you can tell that your soil is a little hot, do you think that topping a plant might help because it is now distributing its nutrients to more areas of the plant instead of mostly focusing on just a single growth tip? Here is one plant that shot up like 6" over the day or two after transplant, but it also seems like its top leaves are pretty crinkly at the edges, indicating a little burn:

Perhaps I should top it asap to get it to send those nutrients to more growth tips? Or let it balance out first rather than introduce more stress to it? That's what I'm pondering for the moment. Probably will top most of these regardless in the next week or so as they all are putting on their 5th nodes about now. Thanks y'all for tuning in.

 

[smokeyfromau]

I love in ground grows, wish i could help, not that experienced but the plants look very healthy You think the nutrients are burning the leave tip not the soil, possible the sun burnt the leaves if they were wet with the nutrients

 

[othaslimkid]

Hey all,

Here we go! Day 21, ladies seem to be spreading their wings and taking off quite nicely. This was a big week for them - they got topped maybe 4 or 5 days ago, didn't miss a beat it seems, and now I'm doing a little leaf tucking to help those side shoots take off.

Here are some shots organized by strain, I have 2 plants of each variety:
SODK:

Hubbabubbasmelloscope, who appears to have more of a branching tendency in her genes:

Alien v Triangle:
These want to grow very tall and lanky it seems - and huge internodal spacing so most leaves are untucked.

Now I know y'all might drag me for saying this because the plant doesn't look too bad, but...I'm concerned about one or two of my AVT's because they are a slightly pale yellow (mostly in new growth - maybe a slight immobile nutrient deficiency?) and the new growth leaves are very skinny. I also am getting all 5-fingered-leaves and even some 3-fingered ones on side shoots, whereas I would have expected her to be putting on bigger ones at this stage. Here is a pic, which does not truly show the paleness I'm talking about: Any ideas?

Walter White - I can see why Mephisto called Ms Walter "funny" - her growth was kind of strange the first few weeks indeed, and I have a runt here (2nd pic) that still has barely come out of it. The first one pictured is going very strong:

And this is about where my direct seeded ones are at after 7 days.

I have to say, next year I'll be starting all my auto seedlings in containers, and doing the indoor&outdoor 24/0 combo until transplant. They undoubtedly get a stronger start that way. Plus I had a few seedlings lose one of their first true leaves to insects. Not worth it. My little experiment has yielded a clear answer!


Thanks all for tuning in.