Relaxed's 2014 Outdoor Medical Grow

[Lester Freeman]

ADULTS Trichoplusia ni (Hubner)

"Adult moths are dark, smoky, gray variegated with light grayish brown. Characteristic small silvery oval spots and U-shaped silvery white marks are on the middle of the forewings. Hindwings are pale brown with the veins conspicuously visible. Males have tufts of gold hair at the tip of the abdomen. Adults live for about 24 days and feed on nectars" Trichoplusia ni

Note in my photos you can really see the "golden tuft" at the base of the abdomen, as well as the "silvery oval" shapes on the forewing. Combined with the fact I have been finding loopers lately, not only on the cannabis, but a few in the strawberries and one on the tomatos - this leads me to believe I did indeed catch a Trichoplusia ni adult.

Hey trich your post was welcomed, I was mostly joking, however I have seen you post that same moth picture all around the forum for many months, so it was really old to me

Also glad to have the gardenfaeri wiz on through and sprinkle some magical love dust around

Getting to SABO's post in a few mins.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Hey Lester

I have a question for you, help a "New Grower" out if you have some time or lead me to a previous post. I can tell you have a very keen eye & see everything in your garden, you probably just don't see things, you probably have a good sense of feel when something just isn't right or looks suspicious.

Can you describe a little about how you inspect your plants? Do you have a system? Do you check from top to bottom or do you start from the bottom up working your way through the plants?

You have a nice size garden & have it "Pest Free", so any tips as to how you go about your daily routine of how you inspect your lovely ladies would help me out.

Also, glad you got a kick out of the "Light Shock". A buddy of mine told me that. I am starting to figure out that the only real good advice comes from the Growers at .

SABO - my method is this, the main issue in terms of inspections are that we want to check the buds to make sure they are free of mold and pests. First I look for the obvious critters who hang out on the leaves, or the undersides of leaves. Sometimes, if the buds are really dense than aphids can congregate on the underside of those very small fan leaves accompanying a bud. Next, I try to examine each cola by doing the tug test, meaning I slightly tug on the fan leaves accompanying the stem of the bud in a vertical fashion till we get to the tip, if ANY leaf slides right out with no resistance ( perfectly healthy looking leaves), than it is quite possible there is internal mold, most likely botrytis, once I see that, I have to crack floral clusters open and poke around with an ice-pick to see if that is indeed true. Often times, with the corn-borers *European High Flyers* they're saliva that they travel in actually induces botrytis growth, so that species is the real hell on Earth, anyhow, in that case one small problem leads to a MUCH bigger one. If I find mold growing on the inner buds I have to cut and remove all infection sites using a santizied scissors and ice-pick being careful not to knock any spores off onto any other buds! If I am going after the loopers than I have to have a better eye, there's no mold to tell you they're there, they're typically green and blend in so you have to really look hard, and as I was mentioning to Rooster they can often go unseen! Anyway, my main inspection tool for the actual colas is the ice-pick for carefully removing dead fungus gnats stuck in the trichomes, or trying to stake a worm out, since they run and hide into the internal crannies, you cannot just stick your finger in there and grab it, you have to catch it on the ice-pick. This manual form of inspection is required to ensure a clean crop, I cannot simply rely on any form of pesticide to do the job. As I have said before, the art of applying the product becomes important, and every outdoor gardener realize what works and doesn't work for their unique circumstances, so the ultimate defense against these problems are manual inspections, although tedious, it must be done. The colas are the main bulk of work, but some sly and slick types of bugs can get survive by living in the lower area of the plant, some types attach themself to the stem and can create a kind of "host" system, so you do want to check every square inch of the plant for signs of unwanted pests, disease, or un-normal problem. All the way down to the root zone, growing 100% organically, fungus gnats become my almost constant threat. They adapt quite well and find ways to burrow down to where there is water, and sometimes they can even go down the sides of the pot, or come up from the drainage holes. Making sure not to overwater becomes very important here, the last thing you want is to be literally feeding a thriving fungus gnat nest of over hundreds of larvae without you even knowing it! SNS-203 has proven to me to be a knockem dead tactic, I would recommend that product to a friend. Anyhow, it takes a lot of work, but there are so many details to look into, and since the bugs and pests are always adapting, we have to adapt to become better gardeners so we can get a decent crop in. Some people have it better than others with their grows, be it environment or circumstance that makes them more successful, I just have to work with what I got. It's the great outdoors so we work with what we got to make sure things are as successful as possible. Not sure if that answers any of your questions or helps, but I'll be around later to rant some more.

 

[Buddy Ebsen]

Thanks Lester, I appreciate you taking the time in answering my questions. Pretty good stuff for me to learn, because I'm definitely going to need it.

 

[CronicHempHog]

Hey Brotha Hope you had a Great weekend

 

[Ascended Master Kief]

Just managed to catch up a bit, good reads, good buds, good mornings, good day!

 

[Buddy Ebsen]

Good morning Lester, Have a great one! Give your tortoise a big ole pat on the back from Sabo!

 

[Lester Freeman]

Thanks Lester, I appreciate you taking the time in answering my questions. Pretty good stuff for me to learn, because I'm definitely going to need it.

You are welcome

Hey Brotha Hope you had a Great weekend

Thanks my brotha it was actually very relaxed, it went by very quick! Happy Munchday to you!

Just managed to catch up a bit, good reads, good buds, good mornings, good day!

Thanks for taking the time to click through my journal, Good Day to you!

Good morning Lester, Have a great one! Give your tortoise a big ole pat on the back from Sabo!

Thanks! You too, the tortoise is out for his morning stroll, and then he'll have some lettuce and a rose.

More stuff

 

[CronicHempHog]

the illusion pic looks like a totem pole lol
Aloha Brotha Great Munchday to ya

 

[b.real]

first word that came to mind was majestic plant then I read magical cola lolol

if you go up to feed feed water instead of feed water feed you will have some of the fattest plants around

 

[Dr Bob]

Great update and I love the mirror image pic. If only I could get my plants so symmetrical!

Bob

 

[thegreengrocr]

That center cola looks massive. Wonder how much more she will grow.

Very nice.

Glad to have such nice places to stop by and continue my dreaming.

 

[Buddy Ebsen]

Those are some awesome pictures! Wow! Those Ladies are so hot, my got all fogged up!

 

[Crawdaddy]

Is it just me or am I seeing a few calyx's in the 'magical cola' picture that looks like they have seed in them?

Would you buy these KC45 again?

 

[thegreengrocr]

I have a bit more technical quest here regarding forced flowering and the schedule needed to accomplish this. I will be putting plants in the greenhouse about the last week of May. I germinated seeds this past weekend. If these don't go well the back up plan will be to get well vegged out clones, 3-4 feet tall bushes.

Here is my thought.

Pull a shade over the plants in the greenhouse for 3-4 hours a day the last week of June for 2-3 weeks. We have about 14:45 on the 21st. here. I would hope that after 3 weeks and the days beginning to get shorter they will hold in flower mode?

Fine tuning would be much appreciated.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Is it just me or am I seeing a few calyx's in the 'magical cola' picture that looks like they have seed in them?

Would you buy these KC45 again?

It's just you. There are no visible seeds in the "Magical Cola" picture, which is actually the airy pheno. It was the one you said should go into the hash bin, but some magic happened

I can't really pass total judgement on this strain yet, as I haven't tried it, but it is definitely hardy and goes well in my oceanic locale, it doesn't seem to be a super stable strain, variation of phenotypes, tendency to not autoflower as expected, and some small signs of nanners at one point. I bought the strain as a winter experiment since I knew it would be much cooler,cloudy, and low-light conditions, so for the 10 regular seeds I paid ~25$ it was on sale so I just tried it out. I probably won't be buying seeds for a good while as I am stocked up and I got lots of stuff I want to try out,

 

[Lester Freeman]

Here is my thought.

Pull a shade over the plants in the greenhouse for 3-4 hours a day the last week of June for 2-3 weeks. We have about 14:45 on the 21st. here. I would hope that after 3 weeks and the days beginning to get shorter they will hold in flower mode?

Fine tuning would be much appreciated.

It's quite possible depending on the strain genetics that they could build up enough flowering hormones to the point of "no return to veg", although 3 weeks may not be enough time.. Some strains are more finicky than others with this, but in principle it is achieved by a lot of people's Spring crops where the plant has reached sexual maturity by Feb/March and growers seek a harvest by mid may or June. Sometimes plants are focused on vegetating themselves, and others are trying to flower early, for some plants the synthesis of flowering hormones is much more efficient compared to others and they are determined to bloom out completely. That is how I first began force flowering for fear that the ones that were in full bloom in Spring would reveg on me, so I just help scoot them across the finish line. My point is that without a long enough sustained light deprivation cycle, you are taking a chance on suppressing flowering hormones, and re-instating vegetation hormones in mid-bloom, remembering that they have pretty detailed, intricate, and complex internal body clocks that are not only capable of sensing the amount of light, but they can also sense how fast the amount light is changing.... So given the Sun schedule of your area, and strain genetics these factors are variable as to what your limits are, and takes some experimenting around to see what works best for you!

 

[Dusty Kiefers]

Happy growing,bud

 

[Lester Freeman]

Decided to slap a few pics onto this page from today. I couldn't resist, today the plants have had the best day of their lives so far. Everyone is amazingly happy. There is also a little story that goes along with todays gardening work. I found this mature, OG grasshopper sitting outside of my tent on a garden hose. This must be the guy munching holes in my leaves, or sometimes their babies which are green reallly blend in, but I haven't seen any babies just yet. I'm not ruthless so I wouldn't kill these guys, I tried to scare him off with a stick into the other direction but he dove for my tent and squeezed his way through the netting and got in! I lost sight of him and was sure I wouldn't find him in there, he knew he had dinner there waiting for him so he tried to defend it like it was his, he kept flinging at me towards my face and insisted on defending it. Luckily I put up a fight and got a couple of those red cups and was able to trap him between them and so I relocated him across the yard hopefully he doesn't find his way back home

On that last picture he was literally peeking his head over the rocks looking at me as I was scouring the tent for him!! I am so happy I found him, no more munching on my leaves (hopefully)

 

[Buddy Ebsen]

Relaxed Lester on Patrol! I love your "Catch & Release Program", but personally I would have taken him trout fishing with me!

 

[Lester Freeman]

Cat just showed up with a mouse in her mouth, she sure is happy. All I saw was Fang coming running up from the backyard jungle with a mouse and I heard a "squeal", and then it was done.