Outdoors in SE Virginia

You don't see strange lights overhead while gardening every now and then do you? Asking for a small green friend. What's the companion plant with the brown leaves sort of middle left as you look at them? Is that a dracaena? I can't tell from the pic.

Set the controls for the heart of the sun, and it is blazing today! 600 ml of ph 6.2 Fish Shit to start the day, they might get a bit more mid afternoon. Checked the tricromes, 95% cloudy, some amber. I just got some ladybugs to release tonite for a feast on whatever critters might be lurking in there...I’ll let that yo for a week and then prolly chop late next week. I wanted to wait until my latitude hits the magic 12/12, but that is 26 Sep, and another 3 weeks will fry them. Maybe I can wait until the next full moon on 20 Sep, we’ll see...

I’m pretty sure I solved my aphid/mite problem with Green Cleaner, but I’m a week or so from harvest and don’t wanna hit them with any more insecticide. So, I bought some ladybugs, and ladybug lures (chock full of ladybug pheromones) to keep them in/on the plants. Seems to be working...

Going with nature's solution is always a good idea. I'm watching my bats feast on moths and mosquitoes right now as I'm typing this on the deck. I'm definitely doing another bat roost box for them this fall if I can get my son to help me hang it.

I released some green lacewings the other day, but they are so damn small ya can’t really see them. I did accidentally snag one on a sticky trap - I removed those before releasing the ladybugs.

I also grow moon flowers. They bloom in the evening and last all night then are gone in the morning. They are prodigious flowering plants so there are buds ready to open the next evening. They also attract hummingbird moths. I’ll search thru my photo archives for a good picture of one and share a cool story...

That's so cool that they bloom at night. I saw some plants in a garden and bulb catalog that were like those that were supposed to release a nice fragrance and have wanted to grow them but they need full sun and I need to clear some trees this winter to get that done. Now that we have legal growing and I see what trees limited me this year I will mark some trees for removal before next years season. Hopefully I can have some of that nice full sun you enjoyed this year. It's not even harvest time yet and I am already trying to think about next year, probably since this year was such a rush and started so late. I know one thing, it's going to be bigger pots. Checking my 15 gallon pots today and the bottom has huge tap roots trying to drill a hole thru it. It's so root bound but too late to transplant at week 4/5 of flower.

wow

Decided to break out some old school 90s tech for moth control. I've been seeing more and more of these tiny white moths all over the front yard so instead of spraying I'm going to run this at night out by where I store the trash with a mosquito pad too because those bastards are bad this year. I have a couple small creeks that provide constant water for gnats and mosquitoes when it floods like it has been doing with these storms. Hopefully in a couple days it's full of dead moths.

is that a a bug zapper? More bats too...ha ha ha.

DC Seed Exchange just dropped some Mephisto autos and I scored Skywalker, Double Grape and Creme de la Creme...collecting up a stock for myself and some friends for next year.

Oh yeah, in the barn under canvas for 10 years. I blew off the dust with the leaf blower and she lit right up. I was shocked it worked. I'm doing some regular photo seeds that I got from a really cool breeder and fellow veteran Guamanian Gardens who sells at DC Seed Exchange as well. The strain was named after the comedian Steve Lemme from Super Troopers. I had grown some out years ago as testers he donated to vet's with DC Seed Exchange and I loved them. Really nasty smelling og Kush x triangle Kush if I'm remembering right. It had a rotten meat pheno that smelled so bad it would gag a maggot but the high was unreal. I got ahold of him after I saw Steve Lemme had done some signed seed packs for a charity auction which was pretty cool. I got some Steve Lemme and some cherry vanilla truffle seeds to run also which sound really nice, especially for extraction. I've never gone wrong with Mephisto Auto, I just got fed up trying to chase down their seeds. Magic breeds such good autos based on the strains I've done and Ronin too and I've been able to find them in stock with minimal effort. I'm looking forward to running the bubba trouble autos soon.

Ya gotta have a plan...

supposed to be a downpour most of the day here, and while the plants have weathered every storm so far with no ill effects, they are getting pretty saturated and have dense buds and need to dry out so I brought them inside; another benefit of keeping them low profile and transportable. Fri - Tues are supposed to be sunny and warm - they’ll make the final sprint in the sun, then come back indoors Wed for 48 hrs of darkness and then the marathon trimming session starts Fri next week.

they’ve been in the house for about half an hour, and it already reeks in here...and I love it.

Yeah, there is no way mine are getting through the door. We measured before the hurricane. One could fit but the other two just were too wide or tall. I've never done the darkness before harvest period before and I'd only ever heard about 24 hours being done. Why do you do 48 hours of darkness? Everyone has they're own methods, I'm just curious as to the logic as you seem to take a measured approach to things very much like I try to. I'm just wondering if you had done some research that shows it helps with curing or drying. It seemed like all opinions when I was looking at it.

I’m gonna be away from home Wed/Thurs (at GFs house) so they go inside for that period, maybe. I’m still researching whether a dark period really gains ya much since I’ve not tried it before.

alternative is to just give them a final 2 days outdoors - I’ll will make that call when the weather forecast gets more precise for Wed/Thurs. if it’s gonna be sunny, I’ll leave them outside and if rain is predicted indoors they will be...

or, I could reconstitute my grow space (not too difficult) and hit them with a final 48 hrs of light and feature some 10,000k T5 bulbs I have. That seemed to make my last indoor grow finish strong...I could only use them 5 min/hr without frying the plants...pics belo.

one of the problems of being a retired engineer is I tend to wind up with more variables than equations and get an indeterminate matrix. never give me too much time to figure something out..

Moving up the schedule, they are getting the chop later today. Tricromes are mostly cloudy, prolly 10% amber. I hit them with
Kaboom (1/4 tsp in a gallon of water, ph 6.0) and just that small amount torched some of the sugar leaves.

it was pretty cool last night and we had some dew, so timing is good to get them harvested before it starts getting damp at night. They are gonna be very easy to trim since each cola is growing from a horizontal branch and fully exposed. I’ll spend the morning just clipping stuff off where they sit amd after they’ve had a chance to dry out Katy bar the door, we be trimming!

I’ll split this into 4 posts, one for each plant...
some

#2

#3. This one is like a collection of green fire plugs, the buds are the densest I’ve ever grown. There is some emerging growth at dead center I’m gonna leave in place and let go a bit longer...

#4

I don't know if you do it or not but it would be interesting to see the difference in root mass between the dense bud one and the other three. Also the inner stem walls if one is hollow vs the others solid etc. I cut the root ball in half with a root saw, not fun, as a sort of autopsy to see how the roots were doing in the interior and if I had pests. It's overkill for some but it's the only way I know to judge what's going on inside the plants other than reading leaves which is part science, part experience and part black arts it seems. They look nice and I can't wait to hear the cure report. Mine are getting nice and sticky, fan leaves are getting trichomes on the stems. I did some minor defoliation on one that was really leafy. Here's a bud pic from Bag of Oranges.

I’ll wash out the root balls in a couple days and see if there was a difference. I spent 4 hrs this morning trimming them back closely while still intact and then let them soak up the day’s last rays. Started trimming at around 1600 and just finished the wash. There is a fan behind the rack blowing a gentle breeze across them before I bring inside. Not a bad haul, lots of stems still in there, I’ll do amother trim after the’ve hung for a while and start pulling individual buds of the branches...nothing more that the size of my thumb a wise man once told me...

What a mixed feeling day chop day always is for me. Half glad I'm done, half sad it's over. They really came out nice and the density is off the charts. Just keep an eye on the humidity and airflow with those thick colas especially after a bud wash. I broke down and bought a big dehumidifier a couple years ago after several years of trying to use smaller room sized units and it's the second best investment other than my Timber grow light I've made for the hobby. I can just set it at 55 the first day, 50 the second,45 the third and leave it there. With good fans pushing air I've only ever had mold problems pop up in jars because of not burping the jars enough. I'm looking forward to my own harvest now, I wish I could speed it up.
I saw we have 7 days of good weather called for and that is coming at the perfect time. Blue Dream is hitting week 6 and the other two are in week 5 of flower. Hopefully first week of October I'll be chopping but I'm not going to count any chickens yet. There's a lot of weather, bugs and time to get through yet.