Soft Secrets
weckels world of
Outdoors
33
wonders By Weckels, the grow specialist from Atami
Building Hoods
plastic at any stage. If this is allowed to happen then, then there is a good chance the buds will be damaged as the plastic rubs against them.
Mental preparation
Get together as much of the wood you will in advance, so that the construction of the hoods runs as smoothly as possible.
In this article we are going to be looking at how to build special hoods around the (female) plants, which will better protect them against stormy and wet Autumn weather. As growers, we obviously would prefer to harvest the many lovely flower clusters that the plants produce during the Autumn in as good condition as possible. For this reason, the hoods we are going to build offer a real tangible result. What’s more, these hoods make it possible even to grow the long-blooming varieties in our climate. Naturally we also need a little bit of luck with the temperature (it mustn’t freeze too hard), with that bit of luck and a strong hood as protection (around and above the plant) we can be harvesting our plants right up to the end of November!
As well as the electrical staple gun, in this photo we can see all the tools that we need for building the hoods.
We fix the planks with screws to the piles, and in doing so make sure that the construction will be able to withstand even the heaviest of storms.
We should aim to build the hoods between the middle and end of July, since by then the plants will have put their main growth spurt behind them.
So it should be clear already that the very first thing we need to do is measure everything well before we start actually building the hoods. We also need to think about the time of day when we plan to begin building them. For example, should we decide to start putting them together early in the morning (in order to avoid the hot summer afternoon temperatures), then there is a good chance that we will cause some irritation to our neighbours. What’s more, many people will become suspicious if we start taking up DIY at the most ridiculous times of the day. So the evenings or even the hours of darkness can be a bit dicey, because there’s a good chance you will be mistaken for a burglar, what with all your tools and sneaking around. During the Summer months especially, people leave en masse their accommodation for the warm South, and then the extra police surveillance laid on makes it a precarious adventure for the outdoor grower who’s planning to build himself more than five hoods during the hours of darkness. In addition to the police you’ll also have to worry about attracting the attention of weed thieves with your special hoods. It is too often the little snot-nosed teens with
Protecting late bloomers But for the early-blooming (outdoor) varieties too, these hoods can offer firm advantages, given that the higher temperatures under the hoods is most welcome by the plants. Also, the plants will now take up more feed water, on account of the higher temperature giving more energy and so a more vigorous sap stream through the plant. The hoods also mean that the plant will get very little rainwater falling on them, meaning they will be more able to take up the nutrient- and stimulator-enriched water we give to them. Previously this would have been a problem because the plants in Autumn would expect to spend a lot of time over-supplied with rainwater. Were we to give also them enriched water (water with all kinds of nutrient and stimulator added), we would most likely do more harm than good. Before we start to actually make the hoods, it is a good idea to begin by getting together all the stuff you will need to build them with in advance. This is a good way of keeping an eye
on your costs, since we will need quite a bit of wood and some strong poles, and these are not cheap. With a bit of luck you can pick up the wood and/or poles from building sites (always ask first of course) or thrown away in roadside dumpsters. The choice is up to you, but certainly for the outdoor grower on a limited budget the latter does offer a good way of making some hoods for themselves. For those of you who reckon it’s all going to be too much work, then the best option is to nip down the local DIY centre, where there’s a chance they can get everything they need, and cut-to-length! As well as wood and wooden poles we will also need some agricultural plastic sheeting, screws, nails, bits of material and/or old cloth, and staples. As for tools, we’ll need a drill, a hammer, a heavy axe or large sledgehammer, a saw, a shovel, some scissors and a staple gun (preferably electric).
The sharp corners are neatly trimmed off with cloth (as here, an old sock), so that the agricultural plastic is not later torn on them.
Getting to work When you have managed to get your hands on all the above, then we can get to work. We should aim to build the hoods between the middle and end of July, since by then the plants will have put their main growth spurt behind them. The plants now have more or less reached their eventual dimensions and so the chances of the hoods we make ending up too small is zero. But the plants will still increase in height (especially when the flower heads begin to form) and this is something we will have to take into account. So we build the hoods preferably as large as possible in girth (as well as above) around the plants, so that they do not allow the flower heads to come into contact with the (agricultural)
These plants are standing behind each other in a nice row. Because they are all of the same height, it is pretty easy to make a single hood constructed over all of them.
no inkling of how to build up the requisite skills with which to grow their own dope who will be most thankful for all the effort, you oh enthusiastic outdoor grower, have put in. They will often case out the place – your garden - thoroughly before coming back several months later to strip the patch clean. Particularly when we’re growing the late-blooming varieties under hoods we also have to beware that a location that in full Summer seemed like an ideal one visà-vis privacy, in the Autumn can change its suitability dramatically, as the majority of trees and bushes begin to lose their leaves. Bear in mind too that it may sometimes be better to not build any hoods at all, given that these mysterious-looking constructions risk attracting the attention of the curious, maybe including potential weed thieves, or ‘rippers’.
