Grow Chores..

Much of what gets written about here concerning the grow process may let the casual reader to think this is all I do or work on. In a way they would be correct but in another light they would be wrong as hell. Let me explain.

When I first started growing and learning, you bet I was more than a little OCD on the subject..but that was a couple years ago...before this system truly started doing something I had tried to design into it from Day One: it has to help the disabled grower produce respectable medicine on the cheap and do so reliably. Most important of all, it needs to sort of baby-proof the process as much as is practical, not because I assumed the reader an idiot; rather I assumed I would not be able to handle tricky things in time. Recall, this is all based on my own disability so where there is overlap with your own, there should be benefit.

If you have read the overview describing the grow model I suggest, you will see that all activity is centered around 3-week intervals and represent maybe 90% of the work you will put into the whole thing. The time in between? That's when its just time for grow chores.

Yes, I do grow chores daily, although there is enough safety built into the system to support unexpected down-time, another boon to the disabled grower. You know what I mean. Call it our "Executive Time". That said however, the grow chores I do on a daily basis rarely take longer than a single trip to the bathroom, depending on your infirmity. The physical work needed on a daily basis is usually limited to walking and looking, neither in great quantities.

You can either neglect your plants or you can obsess on them, each extreme costs us something. I tried to find the minimum you could do while keeping the quality up and problems down. I tried to make this as low-stress as possible and I may have succeeded because my grow chores have also kinda became my executive or mellow time. Do problems/crisis arise? Of course they do; the trick is to limit the possible problems to as limited range as possible and have solutions for each.

Before I go on, I just gotta say something. There is a terribly stupid and equally misleading bit of "wisdom" we hear that goes something like "Cannabis is a weed and weeds are the easiest to grow". Which is both true and utter bullshit. Can a cannabis plant grow by complete accident, with no help from you? Yes...under conditions that are not realistic in most parts of the country...but even if that weed-like cannabis plant survives life, what are the odds it will produce a good class of medicine, which is why you do it in the first place? Any experienced grower will chuckle at the vision of such a plant; think: Charlie Browns Christmas tree:

To make decent medicine, you do have to put forth some effort, but that effort should not be beyond the abilities of most of us. I hope someone with other disabilities takes this method and adds to it or modifies it to help more folks out there. However that "effort" part is outlined in sections concerning things like cloning, transplants, etc. This is about grow chores and I would like to share my typical day with you, pointing out what to watch for and what to do in case things go wrong.

My current grows include three distinct areas:
1. Veg: inside tent with 6 now-rooted Black Diesel clones vegging in a nutrient bath.
2. Bloom: inside tent with the Operation: Black Diesel or trellis project going, along-side a well-vegged and now-blooming Black Diesel clone I took from the initial seed generation.
3. Outside grow or my Desert Challenge. That one features 4 2-seat grow rigs, 2 are Autopots (and the damned things keep clogging) and 2 are my grow rigs for a total of 8 plants. All rigs are gravity-fed by a 12.5 gallon reservoir some 10 feet from the grow area. Each plant is in a nutritionally-inert soilmix of 75% coco coir and 25% of either Perlite or Hydroton. Finally, to combat the hostile desert grow environment, I have erected a 40% shade-cloth "roof" to protect the plants from the intensity of the light and also rigged a timed mister like you see in supermarkets that mists the plants 1 minute every 2 hours to combat the heat. I also use a tablespoon of Hydrogard in the reservoir to combat algae that grows at higher temps.

My default, normal grow chore day starts about 07:00am (early riser and moreso now):
1. Unzip the veg tent and check:
1a. Are all the lights on?
1b. Are all tubs "full" of nutrients? Full means about 3-4 inches from the bottom or about five gallons, my "safety buffer"? If not, are there other tubs that are full? If so, check for a clog in the line between the problem tub and the first joint in the feed line. If not, check the main rez, refilling if necessary.
1c. Do the plants look healthy? If not, check the Marijuana Garden Saver book for problems and solutions.
1e. Are the fans running and the exhaust fan running?
1f. Are all tubs with airstones still aerating? If not, clean or replace airstone.
1g. Zip up veg tent. Avg time spent: 30 seconds. Avg time with problems: 10-60 minutes.

2. Unzip bloom tent.
2a. Are all lights on?
2b. Are any branches with developing buds drooping? If so, tie up.
2c. Are all tubs full? Apply logic from 1b above.
2d. Are all fans running? This is more crucial during late bloom when you really want good venting and filtering.
2e. Are all tubs with airstones still aerating? If not, replace or clean airstone.
2g. Zip up bloom tent. Avg time spent: 60 seconds. Avg time with problems, 10-60 minutes.

3. Outside grow. There are some special considerations for anything growing outside..
3a. Check main reservoir for consumption. These are supposedly blooming plants (which drink alot) that are being grown in a very hot environment (the desert) so you get used to how fast any particular group drinks and eats. the big thing you really don't want to see here is they are not eating or drinking enough. When you get good enough with this you can even estimate where the clog might be if they are not eating enough, based on how little was consumed from the reservoir. The point is, if there is barely any eaten when you are used to seeing a gallon a day or better get consumed, you can assume the line is clogged and its somewhere near the reservoir, before the feedline branches anywhere. If its only partially short, that means some plants are eating and that means whichever ones that are not are near the clog. This will make more sense in a moment.
3b. Check the local reservoir of each plant rig. If its an Autopot check the area around the auto-valve thing in between the plants; is there water in it or is it low-to-dry? If dry, check the blue autofeeder; these things clog all the time. Once you make it to your hands and knees, disconnecting things and blowing thru them or poking them with a thin wire poker fixes most problems. On my tubs, the answer is simpler, can you see water in the bottom 3-4 inches of the tub? If so, all is good, move on. If not (and there are no clogs "upstream" if it nearer the rez), disconnect and blow thru the lines going into the float valve; don't forget to lift the flloat up first or you could give yourself a coronary trying to blow thru a closed valve.
3. Check the plants: do they appear to be healthy and growing, producing new leaves and flowers? If so, leave them alone. If not and there is noticeable problems, consult the Garden Saver and fix as-necessary.
3d. Walk back inside. Avg time: 2 minutes due to extra walking. Avg time with problems: 5-15 minutes.

That's it. The fact that the system is pretty reliable means most days you are going to have the first average time spent (5 minutes total for 3 grows) and even if every grow sprang some problem overnight, you are still usually done with the whole thing in an hour or so. And to really boil it down, many days "work" amounts to looking at each plant and going "Cool." See what I mean about labor? Every three weeks you get to harvest something, move something to bloom, add something to veg. The rest of the time looks just like this.

I will also say I find these grow "chores" kind of therapeutic for the simple reason that I seem to be able to do this when everything else is too hard for me, I seem to still succeed more than I fail so that feels good and it presents a routine that my mind just hugs with both mental arms. I have something important I can do every day and its still within my skill set. Sure I need help sometimes now but there is still a lot of me in this.

To sum this up, I do these on a daily basis, takes very little work and expends very few calories. That's where this really embraces what we with dementia can do best: put all of our focus and effort into a very short span of time and then spend the rest of the time recovering with our brains on a shelf for safe-keeping.

In no time you will start to look forward to this time and you will realize that you are starting to learn your plants, how they grow, what makes them thrive and what does not. You will develop an connection to them as you guide them through life, caring for them and giving them love as only you can...right up to the point that you chop them up with (trimming) scissors, like a home version of Norman Bates..


Yeah  I am weird...but I am relaxed and chill with this level of responsibility....make this a joy and not a burden...

Peace
Jeff

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