Garden Update: Week 19/ Week 9
Bloom is happening everywhere! The older girls are about halfway through flower - I think. The solstice babies are at various stages of just starting to flower. Teas have been given, foliars of Casuarina tea/Seaweed tea/LABs have been given also. I’m trying to foliar about every week or so and each time I do the plants respond really well so there’s no need to question it atm. Weather wise, it’s been mostly very lovely with plenty of sunshine and last weekend we had thunderstorms and rain that dropped 100ml of water on us over 48hours. 
There’s been a lot of words floating around lately so without further ado - lets get to the photos already! These were all taken on my phone (I’m in a camera transition phase), between 9am and 10am in the morning.
Here is the family in the raised bed:
Let’s kick off the details with the little ones...
Solstice babies - week 9
Ice (Female Seeds) started flowering about a week ago (pushing pistils out the top) so i’ve stopped tying her down. There’s not many budsites and I’m not too fussed about that, she’s a bonus experiment really. Should get some fun smoke from her.
GTxNL #1 (Friend’s cross of Golden Tiger x Northern Lights) also started flowering a couple of days ago. There’ll be a few more buds here if she manages to finish under the lowering sun come mid-late autumn...
GT x NL #2 (Friend’s cross of Golden Tiger x Northern Lights) has filled out nicely over the last week or so. I’ve done some training and tying down and because the sun is lowering in the sly mow and this one will have a late finish, I’m getting it lower at the front (the northern side - Southern Hemisphere). It showed me some pistils this last week but hasn’t seemed to go much further than that. It gets a lot more good sunshine that the other 2 solstice kids so I’m hoping that just means longer to get going. It’s mature, lots of alternating nodes. Really hoping
she is a she - I’m really happy with how she’s looking. Most of the preflowers are the ‘she’ kind of shape so fingers crossed. In the pot, I can chase the sun a bit with her into the latter part of autumn. No macros today - next time... (i plan to check for more pistils tomorrow)
She was actually the first plant I visited when I got out there and I didn’t have my phone with me at first as I wasn’t planning a photo session - but I was greeted by this so I just
had to go back and get it!
OK! On to the bigger girls. Let’s depart the enclosure for a bit and head into the bush, see what Money Bush is up to...
Money Bush (Heavyweight cross of Afghani x Critical Mass) as mentioned before there’s not enough direct sun hitting this pod. Things are going pretty well considering. Here’s a few shots taken just as the sun was starting to hit the spot (I used a bit of flash too to try to help you see her a bit better). Shots taken through the mesh...
CBD Critical Cure (Barney’s Farm)
So lush she is. The laying back and leaf tucking work I did on this one throughout January really paid off don’t you think?
And finally...
Professor Chaos (Homegrown Natural Wonders/TGA Subcool)
I’m probably the most excited about this one. She’s medicinal in the recreational sense
and having enjoyed a preliminary smoke of one of the little underdeveloped and quickdried buds from underneath a couple of weeks ago, I know she shows great promise indeed. I’m also fairly in love with her because she had such a rough ‘childhood’ and look at her now! There was a point when I thought she might not make it...
That leaves me with the critter of the week. But first, some eveidence of manual pest control, one of our most effective tools. Integrated (organic) pest management outdoors is a lot more than adding things to soil or foliar spraying. We live in a thriving ecosystem so really have to be diligent with our visual checking and encouragement of benficials. This book has been loaned to me recently and I’m putting it on my wish list immediately
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While not an insect (and not the critter of the week either - that’s coming) - i found this on the CBDCC 2 days ago when some large droppings and one or 2 half eaten leaves caught my eye. They’re wicked hard to see... look how well comaflaged they are!
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I
was going to make this week’s critter the damsel fly that greeted my arrival in the garden, and that would be relevant to pest management as well because I’ve watched them eating other bugs, including a white fly (one day that will happen when I have camera in hand), ... but then later in the day, just when my partner was talking about how the little birds have finally found their access into our enclosure (we left a section of just fence without net so that they could), many little finches and thornbills arrived and started flitting around in there. I went to look and saw my plants jiggling with the activity of little birds! I very carefully snuck around behind - they startle easily and if i’m sitting still somewhere they’ll come very close, but when I’m moving i’ve got to be very gentle. I managed to get this shot through the fence from the backside of the plants - the focus isn’t great on the little critter itself, but if you look hard you can see evidence of the very good reason why I wanted to make sure they could still get in to the enclosure. Certainly not the best critter shot I’ve ever taken but absolutely the critter of the week!
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So that’s everyone! Truth be known it’s actually too many plants for me to deal with but I’m managing ok and I have help (both paid and unpaid) sometimes which is great. Next year I’ll run things a little differently. Might use more pots - and I can really see a huge Sativa all alone in that raised bed - can’t you?
Thanks for walking with me today - at whatever moment in time you happen to be here. May your gardens be glorious!
)
Much appreciated yourselves, both, for saying. It’s definitely a team effort. I do what I can and I’m especially pleased that I’ve been (am being) able to put the time in. Part of my OCD is a compulsion to help solve problems, especially technical, ‘informational’ ones. In the past I’ve had to learn about when it might be none of my business 
