Nathan Lou, Lou Family Farm and Mongol Tribe

Nathan Lou joins me from his spot in California, rocking it at Lou Family Farm and Nursery. With 15+ years of experience under his belt, he feels confident in his abilities and wanted to share his knowledge with growers new and experienced to help them elevate their grow to the next level. Nathan covers his background and why he feels he’s uniquely qualified to be your Homegrown Helper. Nathan’s current grow setup gets discussed around 11 minutes, where he talks about setting up grow tents versus setting up and sealing off a whole room to grow in. He prefers a 4.5’x4.5’ grow tent so he can fit a 4’x4’ tray in there to catch water and still have some space on the outside. He also suggests using Radicle Bags for their functionality and ease of use. He typically uses Roots Organic soil, along with some Malibu Compost or Royal Gold. Typically he likes to use slow draining soils in veg and fast-draining soils in flower. This helps him feed more frequently in flower, giving the plants more food and more timely feedings, listen in at 16 minutes to learn exactly what he’s talking about here. Nathan and I discuss his practices of up-potting so frequently, and specifically in flower. We talk about the benefits and potential downsides to such frequent and late up-potting, and I think you’ll enjoy the conversation right around 17 minutes. Just before 25 minutes, we shift to the next question and the overall health of the plant. Nathan’s answer was to ensure the biodiversity of your soil was on point, as that is the home of the roots and the feed to your plants. Without happy roots, you won’t get amazing fruits so your soil needs to be healthy and clean. Nathan is really passionate about his soil, and he’s spot on with a lot of what he has to say. At 30 minutes we start to dig into how to increase yields off your limited plant counts. Nathan’s solution here is pruning, based on his background as an orchardist. He wants to pay attention to a solid plant structure, and he accomplishes that with early and frequent pruning of the lower and inner nodes and only keeping the strongest branches. He also goes on to discuss the need to bump up your potassium and phosphorus feedings during week 5 through 7 of flower to help deliver bigger yields. Just before 37 minutes, we dig into Integrated Pest Management and Nathan’s practices in his gardens. He starts off plugging Dr. Bronner’s Castile Soap and the all-natural benefits of a nice soap spray for your plants and then discusses predator mites and biocontrol products.  He gives a tip of dropping your flower room temp down to 55-60 degrees which should eliminate any pest population. What type of character traits should growers cultivate within themselves in order to succeed? Inner diligence is one that Nathan suggests. Take your time to learn, read everything, and participate in the process of your plants growing. Be willing to take risks and try new things. Mistakes will happen, and we can learn the most from failures rather than successes. Just before the 50-minute mark, Nathan suggests that everyone try growing their own cannabis. His last tips are that growing cannabis is a lifestyle change and one that will make you a better person and in better health. Connect with Nathan at mongoltribe.org, @mongoltribe or @loufamilyfarm. IF you liked the way that Nathan talked about growing cannabis, you can reach out directly to him or us here at The Homegrown Helpers by emailing [email protected] and asking for your very own Homegrown Helper. If you want to hear more from Nathan grab the bonus content from him and all of our other Homegrown Helpers. It’s 5 more questions where we get a little more personal, a little hypothetical and then finish with what their biggest mistake has been and how they recovered it. Really great content, make sure you download today! Our MyGrowPass.com partners for this show are Humble Garden, Green Craft Distribution, and Dealzer.com! Check out the listener discounts and the benefits that they offer to our members. Humble Garden is the world's first clip-on smartphone filter to eliminate the yellow lighting created from High-Pressure Sodium bulbs in your grow space. Anyone who has ever grown with HPS bulbs knows the pain of taking pictures of beautiful buds but never really seeing the true beauty. Well, the wait is over. The Humble Garden lens removes that yellow light and gives you a soft white light in all your pictures, and it’s so easy to use. Use code Growcast at checkout to save 15% and free shipping at humblegarden.co or get 25% and free shipping after becoming a member at mygrowpass.com! 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