Hello Everyone, happy gardening this 2018 season to you all.
This thread will hopefully document growing in containers
of various types and sizes, and under varied conditions.
CONTAINERS
About 50 containers (nursery blacks in various sizes,
converted 5 gal water bottles, and 10-25 gal grow bags)
will house Cherries, Dwarfs, micros, determinates, and
other assorted plants.
Indeterminates will live in 75 hybrid RGGS slots (
in short,
a 4 inch sewer pipe is filled with fertigated water permanently,
containers wick up via a coco coir-peat moss filled net cup
sitting under the 4-5 gallons of potting mix).
Doubling up in each slot, so that’s 150 indeterminates.
SUPPORT SYSTEM
RGGS slots will be supported with green trellis netting (6 in holes)
suspended from overhead stainless steel wires. Height
from ground to wire is right around 7 ft—secured below
via stapling to the wooden RGGS tube supports.
green trellis.jpg
I use large plastic clothespins to attach stems to the trellis,
so it’s pretty low stress.
Towards the end of last season there was significant weight
pulling the wires-trellis and they did fine.
Free-standing containers will have CRW cages, dollar
store trellises, and bamboo.
POTTING MIX
Potting mix will be 50:50 (new:recycled), with Royal Gold’s
Tupur being the major contributor. Price is decent and I like
that it’s a blank slate to play with. The recycled component is
a diverse mix that's been resting for months.
FERTILIZERS
Have a lot of osmocote I scooped up at 2 USD
per bottle. I’ll use it sparingly in combination with Tomato
Tone as part of a fertilizer strip for free-standing containers,
supplementing Magnesium-Cal Nitrate accordingly too.
For the RGGS slots, I’ll likely use Haifa Polyfeed with Micros
for the initial part of the grow and then switch to a formula
closer to ChemGro. I’d love to go with ChemGro, however,
the 25kg bags of Haifa products are priced lower
here in MX, so we’ll see if I can make it work.
All will enjoy periodic veg-compost tea via drench, and foliar supplements.
Inoculation with beneficial microbes will occur throughout the grow.
NEW ADDITIONS
This year’s addition will be shade cloth over these 75 slots.
I have to check what percentages are available/recommended
for our area when I head to the Ag section next week.
TEMPLE OF JANUS DOORS: OPEN.
On the insect front my citrus trees are starting to bloom, so
I’m already going hard at them trying to evict my favorite
interlopers.
Spinosad, garlic-superhot pepper infused oil, detergents,
DE, Met52EC, and copper round out the current integrated
pest management strategy.
And if I continue to see the little thrip b@$T@rd$ in the
blooms I’m gonna bite the bullet and buy Exalt (spinetoram)
just so I can watch them die writhing.
Die thrips, die!