Jeffrey Hickey Writes Blogs

This has happened a few times, literally overnight. 

It’s that time of year when we need to be mindful while walking up and down the aisles. Flowers are being trained so that inner boughs benefit equally from the sun. From now until harvest, I have to be careful when I’m doing my foliar sprays, lest the long cord attached to the nozzle catches and breaks a branch. It’s happened before. I once ripped off an entire bough (with about six branches attached) of Sour Tsunami by the cord of my foliar spray. The plant survived, but I estimate we lost approximately 20% of that plant due to my careless movement.

It’s important to note when a plant starts to flower. Based on what I know about each cultivar, I begin to set target harvest dates for each plant. These are working dates, as plants are seldom harvested on the exact date. As I indicated in my previous blog entry, I often harvest plants in advance of their predicted harvest date.

But it’s helpful for me to have something written down, a working order of sorts for when each plant should be harvested, based on when each plant was started. 

Here is my projected harvest order:

1. White CBG, in bed 19–staged.
2. White CBG, inside the aviary–staged.
3. Royal Kush, in bed 21.
4. Purple Hindu Kush, in bed 20.
5. Night Nurse, in bed 14.
6. ACDC, in bed 16.
7. Rainbow Kush, in Bed 15.
8. Royal Kush in bed 18.
9. S. Thai, in bed 13.
10.  Fruitcake, outside the aviary.
11.  Royal Kush, outside aviary.
12.  Hindu Kush, in bed 22.
13.  ACDC, inside the aviary.

I expect to harvest numbers 3 through 13 between October 5 and October 25. There will be a cluster on or around October 10. I do not expect to reach the later dates in October. I will almost certainly harvest the last few plants early because there is a reasonable chance for bad weather and changing general weather conditions by that time. For plants still flowering in late October, pathogens are a major risk.

Hawaiian Dream has already been harvested and is currently curing in a half gallon mason jar. We got exactly 60 grams from that little early flowering sample. I have tasted her and noticed a little THC, but beyond that, I’ll wait for the test results. Those will determine if we’re going to grow Hawaiian Dream again.

Today, we’ll do a staged harvest from two different White CBG plants that are a mixture of ready flowers and flowers that still have (in some cases) weeks to go. I’ve never had a single plant that had to be harvested in such wildly different times, and this year I’ve got two. Both are the White CBG, feminized, and both had fairly stressful transplants into the beds. Both of the CBG plants would have benefited from another 4 to 5 days in the cottage to become slightly more root bound before the transfer. Clearly, roots were loose and some got damaged in the transplant. I feared this when I  transplanted them, and my fears had merit. Both plants flowered almost immediately, despite getting extra light outside.

However, there’s nothing wrong with how they grew or the medicine I’m harvesting, Early or not, both plants have powerful looking flowers/colas:

White CBG in the aviary

So we’ll be cutting and washing when Bee gets here later today.

As for all the others, the beds are becoming an olfactory paradise, and Hindu Kush hasn’t yet joined the odorous abundance. I’m certain her scent will be present within the next week.

It is now time for the annual discussion of when to BT spray, or how often to apply Regalia. The two foliar sprays do not interact well together. One is liable to impact the effectiveness of the other if done too closely together. I like to give each of them a week to work.

But because I am a weather nerd (and for the sake of your crops, I encourage you to do the same) I am studying the long range forecasts, looking specifically for humidity levels.

For me, this is the simplest way to know the best time to spray. When the humidity is high and remains high, I should be spraying Regalia as often as necessary to control powdery mildew. When the humidity is low, or even variable (high at night and lower during the day), that is the time to let BT protect you from worms. My intention is to spray BT this weekend. It looks like variable humidity, which will give me an opportunity.

By ‘variable,’ I mean where the humidity spikes at night but settles during the day. A typical such day shows humidity around 50% during the day and 98% at night, which is what is happening today. If this continues through the week, I’ll spray BT this weekend.

Right now, I’m doing multiple inspections a day, looking for worm signs.

And here it is–the curled leaf sewn shut by mom to protect her baby white moth worm. Look for the curled leaf, with obvious damage to the surrounding leaf. This one wasn’t close to a flower; otherwise, there would be damage to young trichomes. 

Every year, I have to resign myself to the fact that some worms are going to be successful and damage some of my flowers. As the season progresses and the flowers get larger and more similar in appearance, it is a challenge for my eyes to spot all of the nefarious activity. 

This is one of the ways Bee is so valuable. In addition to their exquisite training, they arrive at the garden with fresh eyes. They can immediately see things that my eyes have grown too accustomed to detect. It also helps that they have a special gift for this sort of thing and have since they were very small.

Another curled leaf with a baby worm inside.

Look at how difficult it is to spot this worm. It almost blends into the leaf.

For the uninitiated, worms like this can do damage to your flowers by ingesting trichomes, but the worst damage is caused by their leftover scat. Unless you wash that stuff away it will mold, and if the scat was left in close proximity to the flower, botrytis can penetrate the flower. If mold is all over a flower, it must be removed and it cannot be saved. Washing can remove spot mold but not systemic rot.

Of course, in previous blogs, I’ve referred to Stargus, the foliar spray that helps prevent botrytis, so we’re not seeing nearly as much of this as we used to.

But if you’re not spraying Stargus, you’d better be ready to spray BT, because when your plants start to flower local moths will be attracted to them. Mold damage from worms is the single greatest threat that my plants face every year. 

Meanwhile, the pruning is ongoing. As tempted as I always am to let them grow as many flowers as possible, my training guides me toward common sense. Smaller growth in-between larger potential flowers has to go.

We’ve had a couple of mornings below 50 degrees (10 celsius), and that could lead to some interesting changes to the flowering plants. Usually, if there’s going to be some unusual or unexpected color, it happens as a result of colder temperatures. The first hint that autumn is coming are the tops on our buckeye tree:

With the first plants (early flowering hemp) coming down and leaves beginning to turn, the clock seems to be hurrying up after the long, slow days of early summer.

The annual parade of baby quail was delayed for several weeks, while waiting for fledgeling red shouldered hawks to finally decide to move on from our property. I respect the ways of nature, but I was glad to see those predators move on. One of them killed our last duck, our beloved Wilma. At least the hawk ate our duck and she became part of the food chain, which is the natural order of things when you live in the country. We’ve had too many others who were simply mauled to death and brutalized by raccoons, who do not eat them.

It is another unique summer here. Every year is different. Most years, there is an ongoing war between us and rats. We grow food and they like our food. The same is true with adorable chipmunks, who literally ate every one of our blueberries right off the bush in a night. 

Most of them have been captured and relocated. 

Ordinally, we also capture and dispose of many rats. There were over 30 last year. This year, there have been three, which Karen and I are grateful for. There have only been two years without abundant rats. One year, we had kits and they ate all the rats. This year, there’s been a large variety of owls in our valley. We hear them talking at night and we’re not seeing many rats, so the owls have been working. Coyote packs are also part of this.

It’s a busy time here right now. Life and death, food to eat and flowering plants to protect. We had our first summer garden pasta, which is one of my favorite things in this world to eat. Everything came from our garden:

An unknown heirloom awaits the next sandwich. Thought we were growing a Green Zebra. This is not a Green Zebra. More like a Black Krim, but too green in the center. De-lish, whatever it is.

The rainbow chard is poppin’ fresh and the coriander drops seeds behind the leafy greens:

And this beauty is the first cola of the season, the White CBG from the aviary, grown directly in native soil, harvested today.

Happiness in the garden. I am definitely feeling the joy vibe.

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