Jeffrey Hickey Writes Blogs

Here come the tops!

Flowering time is when it is the most helpful to be a weather nerd. Flowering coincides with the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. The weather begins to change, and conditions for the final month of flowering can be drastically different. 

In my part of the world, the thing I pay the closest attention to is humidity. I like looking at the long range forecasts, just to see what is predicted for humidity. Most of my decisions to spray BT are based on weather, and not worms. If I see a few days in a row where the humidity is variable, I will proactively spray BT. When the humidity returns to much higher, as it often does in October, I’m ready to resume spraying Regalia, to prevent a pathogenic breakout.

These are the decisions that can be key to preventing a problem at this most critical juncture. As much as possible, I like to be proactive, and not reactive, with my plants. Of course, as growers, we all know that isn’t always an option.

Right now, as flowers form all over the garden, they are still vulnerable to everything. From this point forward to the end of harvest, I wear nitrile gloves in the beds, and change them every time my fingers have direct contact with mold. I’m switching to the classic overalls outfit, because they have such deep pockets, for all manner of clips and tape and especially, long handled tweezers.

Please note that this flower is being grabbed by fan leaves only. No flower touching. Grubby meat hooks should never touch trichomes. The pinkie is purely for style. With variable weather, now is the time to inspect for sloppy work done earlier in the grow, For example:

This started with a fan leaf that stripped off some bark, and it wasn’t treated with honey at the time. It had to be subsequently treated with rubbing alcohol, cut off, and then sealed with honey:

So yes, it’s also helpful to have something very sharp for this kind of cut/scrape work.

Beware of the limp leaf! This is a dead giveaway that mold is present, and deep inside this flower. For me, thankfully because of Stargus, I rarely see this kind of internal rot anymore. But it can still happen, if a spider mite gets in, or a worm does damage. As it turned out with this particular mold, the entire flower had to be removed. Something got inside and she was dark in the core. Full of rot. The rest of the plant was fine.

It is also handy to have the tweezers ready if you have dragonflies in your garden. We have many different colors and patterns of colors on dragonflies all day long. They are awesome at all times, and I have a couple of epic stories about them. But for now, just know that I’m hoping to capture one of their activities on video when it happens again.

After the first real rain of the fall, like half an inch or more, the ground termites awaken, and proceed en masse to the surface of the earth, where they fly, in search of a mate and a nice warm, dry place to make babies. They emerge from the ground by the thousands. 

As locals, we understand that this is a day to largely remain inside, and when you do have to go out, keep your mouth closed.

But for dragonflies, this is a day of both carnage, gluttony, and I’m fairly certain, sport. When the termites flutter with determination, but not a lot of dexterity, because they only just emerged from the loam, the dragonflies pounce. They don’t grab and swallow the entire termite, they only snip and swallow the torso. They fly with their incredible speed (fastest insect in the world) and in hit and run style, they apply what I’m fond of calling tweezer precision on those hapless termites. In the morning, with the sun behind us and a dark hill rising beyond my beds, we witness a silhouette of wings being separated from torsos. It is rather tragically thrilling at first. At one moment, there is a fluttering creature, in full realization of its destiny, and in the next moment, it is severed in two and the wispy little wings flutter and settle serenely in my ever expanding field of flowering plants. 

This photo is my annual reminder of the Woodward fire that got within four miles of us. We did not have to evacuate, but this reminds me to make sure my evacuation protocol is ready at all times during the grow. At the moment, we’re without pets, so that would make it easier. When this fire happened, I had to look for places that would take us, and ducks, not an easy task.

While the plants are no longer getting sun all day long, they are still getting heat, including at night. We have had a few days this summer more similar to growing in the central valley of California. Days have been warm enough for plants to routinely go dormant, only to resume growing in the evening and overnight. Some of my largest daily growth this year has occurred with the sun down.

What we are mostly doing now is spraying and inspecting. The foliar sprays are vital at this point, and I try to put in at least two full crop inspections per day. This is especially important between BT sprays. I recently had BT on my plants for six days and there was no worm activity. LIterally the day after spraying Regalia, by that evening, I was removing moth eggs. White moths don’t waste time. As soon as the BT is gone, they’re back. They’re egg laying machines.

The other thing we’ll be specifically doing this coming week are the final prunings of the plants. During inspection last evening, Bee and I noticed some inner growth that has attempted to find the sun through the canopy and been only partially successful. I could let the flower go, but she’s never going to be as strong as those around her, so I take the smaller growth off, so that energy is not wasted on a less than stellar flower. This is the week to make those final calls, because the plants are hardening into place. There are only two plants with any flexibility still remaining in their tops, and that’s Hindu Kush in bed 22, and the aviary ACDC. This is the time when all that training allowing inner growth to get full sun begins to pay off. 

We’re removing plant clips, because their work is largely finished. Stress has been applied. Training is set, you don’t intentionally stress flowering plants, (they’ll break) and now we just have to watch the flowers grow. We inspect frequently. In my experience, the best time for plant inspection is the evening, in the shade. Pathogens are much more visible without direct sunlight. Mornings also have diffuse lighting, but plants are often wet in the morning from humidity, or pre-dawn foliar sprays, and this can mask other issues.

This next week is also the final week for all the plants to get Bloom formula in their tea. After that, half the plants will keep getting additional phosphorus and potassium for two more weeks. After the flower formula stops, they get one more basic tea, with mostly just molasses and humic acid. Once that tea is poured, about the third week of this month, there will be no more compost teas for this grow. The last 3-4 weeks, they get foliar sprays and inspections, nothing else. I like allowing the plants to finish as quietly as possible. At this point, they don’t need anything other than time, our collective eyes, and hopefully, the sun to finish up. 

As I’ve indicated in previous blogs, once each plant is past 50 days of flowering, I’m looking for one thing: Trichomes to fill. Once they fill, the right harvest date is at my discretion.

I won’t be doing any more staged harvests this year on cannabis. Unlike the hemp plants, which have both flowered in manners that allow for interval harvesting, the cannabis is flowering in uniform fashion. 

Clearly, using raw mycorrhizae did not cause the staging. Almost certainly, it was caused by root stress. One other note on the CBG plants–Last week I predicted that my early harvest plants will yield more this year than my full harvest plants from last year. I don’t have everything dried yet, so I can’t give totals, but I can already see that I’m going to end up being correct. More on that in a couple of weeks.

Training has spilled into the aisles. I have to turn sideways to walk by now.

Right now is the busiest time of the grow, while having the least amount to physically do on the plants. I spray and I inspect. I prune and I inspect. The work of this year’s tea is largely finished. The plants are pretty much on autopilot now. I’m not watering them, and they will fairly soon stop receiving tea.

So I remind myself on this Labor Day, that during this period, in addition to writing blogs, it’s time to start sharpening scissors. Harvest is coming.

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