Weekly Update 
Even tho I dropped an early update because of ‘events’, I’ll aim to keep a close-to-weekly update as this grow goes forward.
So in summary of the week since sprout: Weather! We’ve had it all!
Well no hail or snow, so maybe not
all, but we’ve had super hot temps and ripping winds during the day, cold nights, and amazingly low daytime humidity followed by days that barely got above 20ºC with cloud cover and smoke haze blocking out the sun and then yesterday, super hot again, although thankfully without the ripping winds. Not exactly ideal conditions for new seedlings, but they are mostly all surviving and, better yet, beginning to grow.
Also this week, we saw the decapitation of Northern Lights by some tiny critter that’s been getting into the outdoor seed raising zone, Lilly tuned out to be a mutant, and I discovered some fuzzy funk on my remaining Northern Lights seeds
(I think I know what happened - lesson learned).
So, Northern Lights is off the roster, Pakistan Chitral Kush entered to take its place
and I dropped another Lilly seed.
Yesterday the raised bed got a soaking followed by a neem oil drench with Bti added to the water and, shock horror, I let it be mulched!
Drought conditions are so bad I succumbed to the pressure
I read around the 420 site a bit for what Doc has to say about mulch and it’s fine to use with the kit when necessary outdoors. He recommends either rice straw or a mix of pine bark and pumice. I don’t have access to those easily (and don’t want to support the Australian rice industry - water thieves) so I went with what we use all over the garden, pea straw. Hope that’s ok!
I think it got put down too thick so I may get the helper to pull some out - it’s about 3-4” thick which seems too much to me but I know nothing about mulching, maybe it’s fine. I worry about getting the drenches through it when the time comes - we had 2ml of rain overnight and it only wet the top 1” of the mulch
Any thoughts about that are welcome. Do you think pulling it back to an inch or so is a better idea?
Lilly and PCK haven’t shown themselves yet, today is day 2 in the peat puck so, any minute now
Meanwhile, the seedlings are all at different stages of work on their 2nd node, despite the challenging conditions.
Go kids!
The Purple Satellites
The Star Pupil x Weapon Xs
They’ve been left to hang there on the raised bed the last 4-5days so I’m stoked they’ve all survived so far
They all got a full drench yesterday because the pots were almost completely dry (35% RH days and wind and heat will do that!). It was almost plain water, but it also had in it a little Tea, a tiny amount of TP and some Bti.
The round up of the week would’nt be complete if i didnt recap the abandoned auto project. I’ll type these words again so as to send the message loud and clear to my body and brain:
I don’t commit to anything that needs to happen on a daily basis - Get it? Got it? Good! Hopefully I’ll learn one day. Growing autos in pots outside are more hassle than it’s worth - a few crazy environmental event and all bets are off! I’ve culled them both. I may throw a seed or 2 to into our veggie wicking beds like i did last year as they were kinda fun - we’ll see.
It’s nice to be settling in to another outdoor grow and I’m happy just having the phototperiod plants to care for.
The fires close to us have also meant that our forest is a bit of a shit-fight of birds at the moment. 70000 hectares of forest up in smoke is gonna displace a lot of birds! We have many that aren’t usually here and there’s a lot of shouting going on! All the bush is very stressed.
Meanwhile, 2ml of rain overnight ain’t gonna break any drought!
We’ve been refilling the bird baths more often than usual and putting out extra containers of water about the place as well, for the animals and birds that live near here. Some of you will remember the Old Man Wallaby that lived here since before us and was critter of the week on many occasions, and that he died sometime during last season (
tribute to him in this post). Well, one of the younger swamp wallabies has been hanging around the edges the last few months. We think it’s a female and that it’s his offspring, perhaps. It’s super shy and flighty, mostly we see it disappearing super fast into the bush when we come out the door! But the drought conditions will make even the skittiest critter hold its ground, especially for water!
So pretty! Welcome to the grow journal little one!
That dying fern all around there is a very telling indicator of the rough drought conditions... it
never dies! It’s absolutely our gauge of how dry things are, and it’s telling us things are pretty dire. Rain is forecast for later this week - fingers crossed folks!
It’s super nice to be settling in to another outdoor grow - no fans, no noise, no tent zippers, just the sun and the wild machinations of Mother Nature.
I hope everyone had an enjoyable and recharging weekend filled with your favourite cannabis.
I just can’t get Bubba Hash out of the bowl at the moment, it’s just so very nice
Thanks all, for visiting!
to my forest garden. Very pleased to have you along 
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I was sad to see the NL beheaded as I was looking forward to seeing that grow outdoors. It would have been monumental I'm thinking. Good luck with your grow and the drought.
Fantastic! Seeds with instructions 
I am already comfortable with not dropping anything else for a week or so, so we’ll see how Lilly fares. The taproot did get some pretty hot sun for quite a few hours, so hopefully it can recover from that.
