Hello everyone my name is Robert Hill, owner of Hill family Farm located in Price, Utah. We hope you all are doing well during this unique time in history. Is this addition of Hemp Hacks from Hill Family Farm, we will be focusing on things we don’t always have time for in the grow-room. Due to the covid-19 pandemic we have suddenly found ourselves with much more time on our hands which is never a bad thing in the grow.
With that being said we will jump into this month’s tips. Happy 420 growmies!
1 – Straighten Up Grow Rooms.
With the extra time on our hands we decided it would be a good time to rearrange our veg and flower rooms as well as cleaning and sanitizing the rooms. We prefer to do this at least once every two weeks. We clean all surfaces with a product called bee safe. It is a 100% organic mix that is a 3 in 1 insecticide, fungicide and miticide . We spray the bees safe on all the exteriors in our rooms then scrub and wipe down. We then follow the bee safe with a 70% ISO spray and wipe down.
2 – Refresh Mother Plants
We also searched our clone room for new mother stock during this time. It is important to rotate your mother plants out every 2 -3 months to ensure stability in the clones. Weak and stressed mother stock means weak and stressed clones. Stressed female plants are much more likely to herm and ruin your flower and cannabinoid level.
3 – Mix and prepare new soil for transplants
Normally we buy bagged soil for our transplants but during this time we were not able to make it down to our favorite grow store Moonlight Garden Supply. We hit the local farm store and grabbed no name compost, peat moss and a few other amendments and made a quick mix of our own in some kiddie pools we had on hand. Be sure to have a way to test your runoff ph. in the new soil to make sure you’re not too hot. Hot soil will burn plants and severely inhibit growth.
4 – Check plants for pest
We took this downtime to check every single plant in our room for pest. We prefer to use a loupe here on the farm when looking for pest. Happy Hydro makes a fantastic led equipped loupe. We use the loupe and check the underside of every individual leaf. Thrips and mites love to hide on the underside of leaves. These pest can absolutely destroy a cannabis crop. If pests are found identify and treat accordingly.
5 – Train Plants
This is something we normally don’t do until we transplant the plants for the final transplant which is the end of May on our farm. We prefer the low stress method of training otherwise known as LST. This method is super straightforward and simple. We use pipe cleaners to tie down the plant’s arms to the sides of the pot. This ensures much more light penetrates the plant and branches resulting in many more flower sites. More flower equals more money for your operation. Training can increase a plants yield by 50%!
