Outdoor/Greenhouse backyard Northern/Central Cali

Just wanted to start showing my ladies and expand my knowledge through the help of the users on Rollitup. This is my 2nd season growing outdoors. I feel like I did an alright job last year growing out of a dog house, and wanted to step it up a bit.

The Grow:
I have a 13 of 18 girls I started all from seed outdoor in late March. They are 3 different strains I bought from the club, all of them 50s/50i hybrids. 12 of them were predetermined female seeds and 6 of them were regular. I germinated them in the medium that they would grow in outdoor with no additional lights. Also we made a greenhouse and attached it to a preexisting outdoor shed which I also built a few years back. The idea was to have an airlock that would help prevent any little critters or pest in. Then I dug some holes about 1' deep and mixed some Steer Manure and Gold Rush together and filled the holes. Then I placed Smart Pots on top of the amended soil and filled them with various mediums mainly to compare for future reference. Some are in a 50/50 Bumper crop and Gold rush mix, some are in an organic potting soil and some are in the expensive, but highly effective Fox Farm potting soil. I started transplanting them 4/08/12. On the outside, 4 of them are in peat pots that I started toying around with Low Stress Training with. I expect to use this year to learn more about growing, but I would also LOVE a huge yield as we all would!

Problems:
I found that March was too early to grow outdoor when a few weeks ago when they started showing pistils. I asked a few friends and colleagues what they thought I should do and all of them recommended I throw a tarp on it, some lights in it and start flowering. I didn't want to do that so I pinched the flowers off, and flooded them with triple 16 Maxsea Seaweed fertilizer. All of the plants have since reverted back to vegetation with no signs of stress. It has been about 10 days since they reverted back to veg.

I thought that the 6 vents I put in the greenhouse would be enough ventilation. Some of you experienced growers would probably have started laughing at me then! Once the first 85 degree day hit I quickly realized I was SOO wrong. I came home from work to find my ladies all melting! I even lost one of the little ones, , but a price to be paid for under ventilation. Many growers told me this was one of the key factors to a successful greenhouse since I did not use a permeable material. I fixed the problem by using a blade to cut back every other lower sector and stapled up some screen material. I left the flaps with some velcro so that I can close them if it gets too cold (at the end of the season). I also threw some fans in to increase oxygen flow. within 3 days the 13 survivors were back to normal, with a few burn marks on the lower leaves to remind me. It kind of worked in my favor by expanding my grow period on both ends. I recently cut the burned leaves off.

Also a very specific problem came about when I peeked in between the smart pots and the ground to see if the roots had penetrated the pots yet. They had and there were very tiny mites crawling in the soil. Looking around online horrified me before I actually caught one with my fingers and dropped it perfectly belly-side down on a yellow pest strip. Still alive, I looked at it through a 60x scope and started by ruling out all the harmful pest. I eventually found it to be a perfect match of a beneficial, predatory soil mite native to Northern California.

Another thing is, it's impossible to keep little bugs out of the greenhouse because its bottom is the Earth! But I have controlled any bug problems for now with some organic pesticide concentrate, sticky traps and letting the spiders I see in there live. But it's not the veg. grow period that I'm worried about, I know when these start flowering in August I'm going to be busy!

I plan to get some 6' tomato cages next and put them in the greenhouse pots.That's it for now, I'll keep up with the post.

Thinking about transplanting the LSTs to some trash can size things, whatever I find at the hardware store. Really want these girls to push now that there so damn bushy Super excited, It'll probably cost about $50 for each one I'm figuring. Anyways, everything is def back in veg, I can tell every morning. The greenhouse girls are starting to stand up to me lol. It's getting to be a task spraying spinosad 1-2 a week, so I'm going to get MORE lady bugs and this time try the lady bugs hormones to see if they'll stay this time. Mantis' just kinda creep me out despite how cool they are. Anyone have any experience with them?