On May 12, 2012 The Dirt Floor Band will be performing on the House and Garden Pickin’ Porch at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds in Ukiah for the Mendocino County Garden Expo. Come to see some great music and and talk shop with the House and Garden and Humboldt Wholesale Reps.

Poor Man’s Whiskey will be playing at the Mendocino County Garden Expo after party on May 12, 2012. The !st annual After Party will be held at the
Ukiah Brewing Company and Restaurant located at 102 S State Street in Ukiah, 707-468-5898. Come and join the fun!!

How did Headlands Garden Supply come to be?
Store owner and manager, Dave Mutkala, worked at Northcoast
Horticulture Supply in Eureka and McKinleyville and that really opened up his interest in starting his own store.  His love for growing and helping others grow better is what drove him to open a store in an area that needed him.

What sets Headlands Garden Supply apart from other stores?
Headlands has an extremely friendly and helpful staff.  With our
expert advice and experience we help gardeners grow their best quality gardens.   Headlands has the largest store on the coast.  We offer a large selection of quality products and variety of products to choose from.

What’s next for Headlands Garden Supply? Any long term goals?
We will keep our skills sharp.  It’s important to have the answers
that are plaguing your customers.  We like to keep up with current
journals, magazines, products and new technologies of the industry sowe can pass along useful information to our customers.  We aren’t going anywhere, and if you have a question we will have or get the answers for you.

Has the landscape of the industry changed in your area over the past few years?
Yes the landscape of this industry and area has changed.  HGS opened only 4 years ago and as other stores may have been peaking, we were just starting.  So as the landscaped changed, we grew and changed with it.  Things are always going to be changing in this industry, it’s a growing industry, and if you can’t change with it you may get left behind.

How does H&G fit into your businesses future plans?
I don’t want to see a future without House and Garden.  For the
quality, consistency and price of H&G can’t be beat.  H&G is a top
performing product at Headlands. We love it, our customers love it,
and their customers love it.  H&G is here to stay. Go Roots
Excelurator!!! Yeah!!!

Tell us some of your favorite H&G tips or advice you give out?
H&G has been a respectable product line for many years. If you don’t use it, give it a try and see the results for yourself.  If you are
using another brand of nutrients, try adding any of these 3 products
for a taste of the quality in H&G (take out other brand products
respectfully) H&G Roots Excelurator, Bud XL, and/or Shooting Powder.

Website:
Headlands Garden Supply

Location:
630 N. Franklin St
Fort Bragg CA 95437

Contact Info:
1-707-964-4447

We asked H&G expert Eliab Lozado “What is your pH when using H&G?”

I am trying to keep it in a narrower target zone: 6.0-6.2.
Rationale: 6.0-6.2 pH is the range where Calcium & Magnesium seem to be more available to a plant in relation to the rest of the essential elements for plant life.

Without this balance, Calcium and Magnesium has been seen in my grow room to just sit around, giving me the impression of a Ca-Mg deficiency. Then comes the addition of Cal-Mag. But since the pH is still a bit off, it accumulates, doing very little. Once the pH rises to ~6.0, all that extra Ca becomes available and calcium toxicity is likely to occur. It’s not a pretty sight seeing those plants screaming for phosphorus, potassium, and manganese. It’s all there, but unavailable because of the calcium imbalance.

When I keep it light on the feeding, adding a tad of fulvic acid as a pH buffer (for pH that tends to drift up), and at a 6.0-6.2 pH range, my plant’s uptake, their health, their yield, and their quality always perform at their best.

Some growers, however, report that certain phenotypes perform better at as low as 5.5 pH. I’d like to conduct a side-by-side on that one, but I’m in no hurry: 6.0-6.2 has worked just fine.

For Soil A&B it’s the same: let us remember that once you put nutrients in the water, your grow is pretty much, by definition, hydroponic. So 6.0-6.2 would be an adequate pH range even for plants grown in soil. A higher pH should be used if growing strictly with organic input as to not compromise the health of your soil with acidic water.

But, please keep in mind that this is me in my grow room and every grow situation is completely different from each other.

H&G base nutrients are Ca-Mg corrected for the medium of choice. I have not needed to supplement with CaMg as long as I’ve kept that pH within the aforementioned range. If a Cal-Mag deficiency is still observed while at this range, then rule out overwatering. Then if overwatering is ruled out, start Cal-Mag but typically @ 1.25 mL/gal. I’d never go beyond 2.5 mL/gal (1/2 tsp).  Please and share your experiences with us…I’d love to read them.

House & Garden’s Multi Zen is renowned by growers in Holland for its ability to push plants to their true potential.

House & Garden has formulated Multi Zen specifically to help you achieve maximum potential harvest after harvest.  Multi Zen’s unique formulation helps to aid in the break down of nutrients making them more readily available within the root zone.

Multi Zen is a highly concentrated growth additive and its unique formulation helps to increase flower sites and thicken stalks. House & Garden maintains their own nutrient manufacturing facility as well as their own laboratories where they continually test each batch of fertilizer they produce. This ensures that gardeners employing House & Garden receive high quality, consistent products.

As with all products from House & Garden, Multi Zen is highly concentrated. This exclusive formulation helps to promote healthy and beneficial microorganisms, providing support for bigger, heavier harvests.  To ensure a consistent quality and experience, Multi Zen is produced using only pharmaceutical and/or food grade ingredients in small batches.

Many growers find Multi Zen particularly useful for their mother plants, as it helps to break down nutrients and root material that can build up in the growing media. We recommend using Multi Zen on mother plants once every 2 weeks to a month, depending on how many excess nutrients and plant materials may be present in the medium.

Application: 
Multi Zen should be used from early on in the vegetative stage and throughout the first three weeks of flowering at a rate of 3.8 ml per gallon. Do not use Multi Zen in conjunction with hydrogen peroxide, chlorine based sterilizers, or water conditioners that can potentially harm the active ingredients present in Multi Zen.  Multi Zen can be used in conjunction with any existing nutrient formula.

What is an Enzyme?
An enzyme is an organic substance made up of amino acids, proteins, or RNA. Enzymes carry out specific chemical reactions by acting as catalysts, speeding up reactions tremendously and lowering the amount of activation energy required by the plant for these processes. Therefore delivering enzymes to your plants promotes increased growth and helps sustain beneficial microorganisms.

Why Do I Need Enzymes?
Knowing more about what enzymes are and do is important to keeping plants healthy. It is necessary to balance mineral applications with enzyme mixtures so plants will be capable of absorbing all the nutrients possible. In fertile soil, the plants’ roots would be surrounded by billions of beneficial microorganisms that produce enzymes. These enzymes are the main reason outdoor plants can get so big. When you add living, thriving, concentrated amounts of these enzymes into your root zone, you can create the same vigorous, enzyme-rich environment for your roots. To reach your garden’s maximum potential, provide your plants with the specific enzymes they require when they need them most.

How Can I Use Enzymes?
Favored by Dutch growers for decades, adding multiple enzymes enables your plants to unlock their true potential by providing them a concentrated blend of enzymes that support many important functions. These enzymes break down old root material and nutrients to make them more readily available, strengthen the plant’s natural immune system, and help to dispose of excess residuals in the substrate. Providing enzymes helps the plant to absorb a complete array of vitamins and minerals, enabling it to build a strong nutrient delivery system for a bountiful future harvest.

My visit to Denver was an unforgettable experience. The City, along with some friends of the Industry, welcomed me with open arms from the moment I stepped out of the plane. We were two days away from the Indoor Garden Expo and as I took the time to go to a store or two before the show, I realized how much House & Garden products are coveted by growers and store owners alike. I was also able to see the voice of Denver echo in the countenance of Her people: a proud, overt sense of determination with the flexibility and open-mindness necessary to survive, adapt, and thrive on the plains east of the Front Range of the Rockies.

We had decided to pack light this time around, so the plan was to have the booths ready in one day. A greasy-spoon diner breakfast gave us fuel to head on out to the Convention Center and start the day’s work. These guys worked hard and non-stop. We finished setting everything right on schedule.

We decided to go out and see what Denver had to offer us on a Friday night. We passed Coors Field and turned on to the 1Up, Pacific Merc, El Chapultepec, the Gin Mill, 20th St Café. We were very hungry and it was almost eleven. Fortunately, Sushi Den was open. Sushi was my induction to the Team; I could not have asked for a better hazing. I later found it is all in the slicing. And the saké.

On Saturday morning, the doors of the Convention Hall opened to Colorado’s store owners. Wave after wave of owners and Industry VIPs walked the floor, filling the halls and turning the event into a remarkable show of Colorado’s support of the indoor gardening industry. Our booth had 8 sales representatives available to the show’s audience. From beginning to end, there was not a single moment when any of us were not engaging the public.

It was great to see so many familiar faces attend the Expo and show support for our endeavor, and our way of saying thanks was the Calirado 2012 party that same evening. The live acts were phenomenal; they included the Mirror Man, Heatbox, DJ Juice box, Boombox, Afromassive, and many others. And amidst the ubiquitous socializing among peers and new faces, there was an implicit air of camaraderie which set the tone for the rest of my time in Denver. The event finished in the wee hours of the morning and by the time we went to bed it was 4:45 am.

We were ready to go at it again by 9 am. After our breakfast at Tom’s Diner, we headed out to the Convention Center once again, ready to meet our clients and supporters. We found ourselves fully immersed, engaging a public that, by the end of the day, had dissected our brains and absorbed every tidbit of useful information. I was brain-drained and I was lovin’ it!

After the show and the rigors of a well-orchestrated packing, we were treated to an early NBA basketball game, celebratory stogies, and an early dinner for those of us who were flying back the next morning.

For the next two days we visited some of Denver’s hydroponic and gardening centers. We were received with open arms and, as we showed them our appreciation for their support, I noticed the many great gardening practices the typical Colorado grower follows and I must say that I am thoroughly impressed. Anecdotally, I’ve always felt akin to growers who flower with halides, so it was quite refreshing to have met some of the old-school growers from the outskirts of Denver who follow this practice.

Denver was a great city to visit; its growers and our newly-made friends call for many more visits. I am confident that the progressiveness of the Colorado growers will ensure a market teeming with produce of the highest quality.

On May 12, 2012 House and Garden will be at the Mendocino Garden Expo at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds in Ukiah, Ca.  The event will be held at the Carl Purdy Hall.  The 2011 Garden Expo was the first of it’s kind, giving the public a chance to see first hand how all aspects of gardening and sustainable living can be incorporated into our everyday lives. The Expo, a family and fun filled environment, provides local healthy food for purchase and free jumpy houses for the kids, while plat forming its vendors to the community and a new market. The distinct difference of The Garden Expo versus a typical trade show is the goal of the Expo and its vendors as a whole.  No more GMO, overpriced, pesticide-laden food for our families.

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On these dates Humboldt Wholesale will be at the store locations listed below.

April 20, 21, 2012 — McKinleyville, Ca.

April 23, 2012 – Arcata, Ca.

April 24, 2012 – Fortuna, Ca. and Crescent City, Ca.

April 25, 2012  – Arcata, Ca.

April, 26, 2012 – Eureka, Ca.