Late Season Stress

Forums:

I don't know what it's like for those in different climates, but my season of stress started yesterday. Massive storms rolled through with high winds and heavy rains. I knew there'd be some carnage. Although the girls were all wind-whipped and droopy, they held up well. One bust its tethers and partially toppled, snapping a few branches. I sured everything up yesterday evening.

I went out this morning to assess and found a few spots of bud rot. I wouldn't have found them if they were upright, so I guess that's good. It's now 100% vigilance until harvest. There's rot, more storms, frost and freeze. Risk/reward, right?

On the upside, the 10 day forecast is warm and relatively dry. 

i'd set up a grow tent if my 1940's electrical wasn't so scary...

its clear that i need to start earlier and have another early spring harvest.

I feel like I might jinx it by talking about it, but things have been pretty stress-free for me lately in the garden. The weather has been great with daytime temps in the mid-80s and overnight lows in the low 50s, and this weekend we're looking at 70s and 40s. My kind of weather. On the pest front, I did find a couple of miniature (1/8" long) caterpillars about a week ago, but that's been it, and there is no sign of any damage.

My stress at this point is figuring out when to harvest, and hoping things don't all come ready at once. The trichomes on all of my plants are mostly milky at this point, but I'm still finding a few clears here and there with some ambers mixed in. Because of that, I started flushing yesterday, and I'm thinking I'll take down the top colas sometime next week, and then harvest the rest of the plants about a week later. I'm just hoping the bottoms of the plants don't ripen too much in that extra week, but the walk-in closet I use for drying only holds so much.

I splurged on one of those fancy microscopes that shows on my phone. It's pretty cool.

The whole drying process is pretty stress inducing, too. It would be great if I had a root cellar, or the likes, with stable temps and humidity, but I don't. I have. 2nd floor bedroom with temps and humidity that can vary wildly.

I won one of those on Reddit last summer, BK. They're kind of two-person tools. I found it difficult to hold the scope steady, focus it, and work the camera with just two hands. Tried holding the scope in my mouth, but that was just awkward, and getting it focused didn't really work either. Getting in really close requires some serious steadiness.

But back to stresses. Here's a little one. I found a bit of bud rot on the top bud of a lower branch on the Roadkill. Didn't find the caterpillar, but not for lack of trying. I hate losing anything to those little fuckers, but this was only what would have been a gram or two, I'm thinking.

337DE35D-E941-43AD-8357-F768F7D78BFD.jpegMy microscope has a nifty little stand. 

If I remember correctly, the Roadkill was susceptible to pretty much everything, from bugs to rot. It did much better indoors than out.

Two weeks ago I found a few caterpillars. I gave the gals a good hit of BT and it seemed to work. I've been keeping up with the Grower's Ally fungicide, to prevent PM and bud rot, as well as the Humboldt's Secret flower shield, which covers everything from PM to thrips to mites and aphids. All of those are OMRI same day harvest, so I feel pretty confident.

The Gold Leaf are amazing plants. If all goes well it's looking like up to 2 lbs per plant. Although they are supposed to be disease resistant, they do have an odd genetic trait that gives its name. Leaves start to yellow and die pretty early. It's generally fan leaves, but sometimes the sugar leaves. If you don't pull those yellowed sugar leaves it leads to bud rot. It isn't easy to get the ones that are 8' tall.

BK, my scope came with a stand too, but I was hoping to be able to use it in the garden, rather than collecting samples and then looking at them with the thing on a stable surface. Yeah, I know. I'm just another picky deadhead.

Lol, then put your damn phone on a tripod!