It's been a crazy busy couple of weeks for me, but today has given me a bit of a break so here's an overdue update in the land of BeezLuiz.
The little guys are doing well under the NextCore lights. In the back tray are six Amnesia X plants, and in the front left are two Red Dragon X, and the right are two Zkittlez X plants. I moved the light schedule to 18/6 a couple of days ago. The plants ended up with 10 days of 12/12 for a couple of the late sprouters, and as much as 13 days for the earliest ones to sprout.
The outdoor plants are doing pretty well, all things considered.
Sensi Cheese
Sensi is doing much better now that the yellowing leaves has nearly stopped. We've had a spell of cooler weather here of late, and I think that has helped quite a bit. An interesting observation about this SIP plant is that during veg it was growing like crazy, adding more than an inch each day. It was drinking as much as 6 gallons each day! When flowering began in earnest, and stretch was complete, the yellowing leaves began and it dropped its drinking rate to only .75 gallons per day. Now that the yellowing has stopped and it's working on bud building, the plant is now drinking more - 1.25 gallons per day.
One major drawback of having this in a SIP: It has gotten too tall for the amount of soil that's in the box. The plant currently stands at 6.5 ft tall, and the planter only holds about 15 gallons of soil - not much for the roots to grab onto. A few weeks ago the trunk began leaning backward a bit each day. To counter that, I tied it up to an umbrella pole/stand in the front. A few days later, the trunk began leaning forward so I moved the support stand to the back. Then it started leaning again and the support was moved yet again. Yesterday I was seeing that the trunk was again leaning, so I decided to tie it down on both sides. As I was standing there thinking about my strategy, a small gust of wind came up and the plant started falling!
Fortunately I was there and was able to grab it in time! If I use a SIP again next year, I will definitely need to try harder to keep the plant below 4 ft tall.
The buds are looking pretty good, but still have a long way to go before harvest-ready.
China Cat
China Cat is doing pretty well. The buds are getting fat and sticky and the branches are getting floppy. I needed to add a few more stakes to better support them. Here's a pic after the staking chore:
So, I found my first caterpillar of the season on China Cat. Somehow it managed to avoid the BT-treated parts of the bud. It was deep inside one of the dense buds, but I found it and removed it. The thing with BT is that the caterpillars need to eat the treated plant material for it to kill them. With dense flowers, it's hard to get the BT into the center where most of the caterpillar reside, but the battle must continue! No signs of caterpillar damage on the other plant as its buds are no where near as dense as China Cat's.
That's it for me today, I hope the week treats you all well.
I've been spraying the plants with BT once a week.
