Translated and edited from the outdoor-growing material in True Living Organics by The Rev (Green Candy Press). The edition that first included this material has not been confirmed, so check the edition you own.
Outdoor living-soil beds need a reliable water supply and good drainage more than anything else. This part covers watering beds with gravity-fed drip, the changes a monsoon climate demands, keeping animals out, growing in pots outdoors and a full season-by-season checklist.
The methods come from The Rev, the author of True Living Organics, a book on growing cannabis in living soil. Living soil is soil with an active population of organisms that break down organic matter and feed the plant. The book was written for the temperate Pacific Northwest of the United States. Figures marked “(source figure)” come from the book and have not been checked independently.
This is Part 2. Part 1: Outdoor Living Soil: Composting In Place, Leaving Roots to Rot, and Gravity-Fed Drip
1. Irrigation: gravity-fed drip
In a gravity-fed system, a water tank stands higher than the beds. The weight of the water pushes it through pipes and thin tubing to small drippers (emitters) at each plant. The source recommends this for outdoor and large-scale growing:
- No pump, and little or no wasted water. Water drips only where the plants are.
- PVC pipe and drip tubing are the basic hardware. For design and maintenance in hot climates, see drip irrigation in the tropics.
- The pipe can be buried. The source buried it to hide it. On a legal farm, the real benefit is that burial protects the tubing from sunlight (UV) and physical damage.
- Set up the water source and pipes before you start growing. Outdoors, water is what limits the crop.
Translator’s note: Power cuts are common in rural Thailand. A gravity system keeps watering through a power cut as long as the tank still holds water. Size the tank, or plan how you refill it, to cover the longest power cut you have had on that site.
Translator’s note on pressure: The practical limit is pressure. A tank gives only about 0.1 bar of pressure for each metre of height above the emitters. Many pressure-compensating (PC) emitters, which give the same flow at different pressures, only start working properly at around 0.7–1 bar (10–14.5 psi). That would need a tank 7–10 m high, which is rarely practical.
For a tank on a low stand, use low-pressure or non-PC drippers, or drip tape, a thin flat hose with outlets built in. Keep the runs short and level. Fit a fine filter after the tank, as fine as the emitter maker specifies. For example, Rain Bird requires 100 mesh (about 150 microns) for its pressure-compensating emitters. Open and flush the ends of the lines regularly to clear out sediment and slime before they block the drippers.
Before you buy emitters, measure the height from the lowest water level in the tank down to the beds. Multiply the metres by 0.1 to get bar. Compare that number with the minimum pressure printed on the emitter’s data sheet.
One hard rule: never run tea through the drip system. Compost tea is a liquid made by soaking compost in water, often with air bubbled through it. Apply it by hand, or with a low-pressure backpack sprayer for larger plantings. Tea clogs emitters. Worse, the inside of a drip line is warm, dark and coated with nutrients, which is exactly where a biofilm forms. A biofilm is a slimy layer of microbes stuck to the inside of the tubing.
The source does the same in large indoor gardens: water goes through the drip line, and tea is applied by hand.
2. Adapting the method to a monsoon climate
Translator’s note: The source was written for a temperate climate. Three changes matter most in Thailand and Southeast Asia, plus two smaller points.
Drainage comes first, then irrigation. In much of Thailand and Vietnam, the outdoor problem in the wet season is too much water, not too little. Raised beds are essential, because they keep the root zone aerobic (supplied with air, so roots can breathe) during heavy rain. For comparison, a 1999 review of raised-bed cropping in semi-arid eastern Indonesia (Van Cooten and Borrell, Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture, field work in West Timor) reports permanent raised beds 20 cm high and 1.5 m wide used to overcome waterlogging in the wet season.
On heavy or poorly draining soil, build higher than that. Always leave a path for the water, such as furrows or a channel that leads away from the beds. Dig the channel before the rains start, while the ground is still dry and easy to work.
Build the pile in the dry season, and cover it in the rain. Build the top-down pile, the compost heap on the future planting spot described in Part 1, in the dry season. In much of Thailand that is roughly November to April. In the wet season, cover the pile during heavy rain with a tarp, a mulch sheet or a simple rain cover. This limits leaching, where rain washes dissolved nutrients out of the pile. It also stops the pile from becoming waterlogged and airless (anaerobic). For any pile that will be rained on, choose slower-release amendments.
Composting speed: check the pile instead of counting days. The source says composting goes faster in heat and gives about two weeks for a batch in full sun (source figure). That is much shorter than normal composting times. Judge the pile by temperature, smell and texture. Push a long-stem compost thermometer into the centre to read the temperature.
When you need pathogens killed, use the hot-composting standard: at least 55 °C for at least 3 days in a row, and longer for open windrows that are turned repeatedly.
Photoperiod. Photoperiod is the number of hours of light and darkness per day that tells a photoperiod cannabis plant when to flower. Near the equator it differs a lot from the source’s region. See outdoor cannabis in Southeast Asia before you choose planting dates.
Shade and misting. The source says that in very hot weather, under a canopy or shade cover, a fine mist on the plants helps cool them. Keep the mist off the stem. The source reports visibly better growth. In this region, many crops are grown under shade cloth in the hottest months, and it is worth considering for an outdoor planting.
Translator’s note: Misting cools best in dry air. In the wet season the air is already humid, so misting cools less, and wet leaves and buds raise the risk of mould such as Botrytis (bud rot). Mist only in the hot, dry hours of the day, so the plants are dry before evening. Do not mist flowering buds.
3. What was deliberately left out
The source spends a lot of space on secrecy: hiding the garden, telling nobody and burying irrigation lines so nobody finds them. That advice was written for a time and place where outdoor growing was illegal and growers did not want to be found.
That material is not covered here. This article is for readers growing legally. That means growing under Thailand’s notification and licensing system for controlled herbs, in production that meets Good Agricultural and Collection Practice (GACP), the cultivation quality standard, or in research. In those settings you do not hide the crop. You document it and keep it open to inspection.
One part of that material still applies: keeping animals out. The source deals with caterpillars and deer. In this region, expect caterpillars, stem borers, rodents and, in rural areas, livestock. Use fencing and other physical barriers. Most licensing systems also require controlled access to the growing area, so one fence does both jobs.
Translator’s note: If you need to spray against caterpillars, use only products registered with the Department of Agriculture (กรมวิชาการเกษตร), and follow the label. For a flowering-stage programme, see budworm control with Bacillus thuringiensis.
4. Growing in pots outdoors
The source sees little point in pots for large outdoor plantings. If you do use pots, water them by drip and apply teas with a backpack sprayer.
In hot, dry weather, fabric pots outdoors need to be much larger than indoor ones, because they dry out faster. For fabric pot basics, see grow bags for cannabis. Before you plant the whole run, fill one pot, water it and weigh or feel it through a hot day, so you know how often it needs water.
5. Checklist by season
Season one:
- Pile compost material directly on the future planting spots, or build raised beds and fill them with living soil. Build higher on wet ground. Do this in the dry season if you can.
- Water the pile and leave it alone for 15 days (source figure). Check that it stays damp and does not smell sour.
- After that, turn a heaped pile every 3–4 days, and at least weekly (source figures). Cover it during heavy rain.
- Set up the water source, the filter and the gravity-fed drip line before planting. Check that the tank height gives enough pressure for your emitters.
- Rake unfinished material to the bed edges as mulch, then plant.
- Optionally, use core feeding at planting: holes filled with dry amendments at the future drip line, the ring under the edge of the fully grown canopy.
At harvest:
7. Dig up one or two sample plants per bed and check the roots. Cut the rest at ground level. Leave the roots only if the crop had no root disease, nematodes, root aphids or mites. Otherwise pull them and destroy them away from the bed.
8. If your licence or GACP conditions allow composting on site, chop stems and healthy trim onto the surface as next season’s pile. Record the date, material, quantity and location.
9. Add composted or treated manure, greensand and other amendments to the pile.
Season two onward:
10. Smaller piles are enough.
11. The new roots follow last year’s root channels.
12. Put water supply and drainage first when you plan infrastructure. Between cannabis crops, consider a fallow period, soil solarisation or a cover crop.
Share your experience in the replies below. Information is still missing on outdoor living soil through a full wet season. The biggest gap is how much rain leaches out of a top-down pile. If you have run beds through a monsoon, please post how the surface pile held up, whether you covered it, how high you built the beds and what you did for drainage. Questions about your own site are also welcome below.
Related reading: recycling living soil, the mix used to fill the beds. Part 1 of this article covers bed preparation, the drip line, the top-down pile and leaving roots in the ground.
This article is technical horticultural information for readers growing legally where they are. Outdoor cultivation is regulated separately from indoor cultivation, often more strictly, and most licensing systems require site security and access control. In Thailand, cannabis flower is a controlled herb under the Notification of the Ministry of Public Health Re: Controlled Herbs (Cannabis) B.E. 2568. Research, export, sale and processing of flower require a licence, and flower that is sold or exported must come from a source certified for good cultivation and harvesting practice (GACP) by the Department of Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine. The Cannabis Control Act is still a draft: the Cabinet approved it on 22 September 2026 and sent it to the House. Check your local law before growing. Nothing here is legal advice.