Jeffrey Hickey Writes Blogs

Here’s a Love in a Mist to greet you.

Light is an appropriate topic for me today, since I’ve been having an issue with the sun around here since putting my feminized starts in the ground. We usually start getting some warmer days in April, but not this year, until the final week of the month.

The five plants I took outside were larger than anything growing in the cottage at that time. But when they hit my nitrogen rich beds, they halted growth. One of the plants, the Royal Kush, remained completely healthy looking, but not growing, for almost 13 days. Same was true for the others, though they did not look as healthy as the Royal Kush. 

I’m forced to admit that it was probably too soon to put them in beds. It took until yesterday for the sun to fully break out and warm up around here. I was having to keep the plants covered night and day. It was hardly ideal, and quite far from my expectations.

But then, I started thinking about my expectations. Not sure why I thought any young plant would do well in our beds in early April. Nothing else ever has, so it’s against logic that a cannabis plant would hit the ground running, especially since the conditions were far from ideal. They came from a 70 degree plus room with lots of light, warmth and wind. Life was good. Then, they were put outside at under two weeks old (there is the mistake) and it was chilly. That early warm day, or period of days didn’t happen.

So, my plants waited, and in a few cases, obviously suffered with some curl leaf, because the soil is nitrogen rich and if the roots are not moving . . . you get leaf curl.

She wasn’t dying, but she wasn’t growing, either.

So, I have been pacing out there, trying to generate some growth when there was no heat. I used an ice pick to aerate the soil around the root zones. I followed my own advice by not excessively watering anything. And in this regard, I was given a massive break when we got about two tenths of an inch of rain. Rain is a gift to young cannabis. It is pure 8.0 pH magic. I could see how much each of the young plants enjoyed that drink. But they still needed sun and warmth.

Finally, yesterday, the overcast broke up by 10:00 and we hit 70 degrees (21.1 Celsius). This afternoon, I noticed new growth on all the sprouts, leaves are uncurling, and at long last, I see the start of inner nodal growth. PHEWWWW . . .

Even with these difficult two weeks, that the plants are now growing and it’s only early May, means that they are now free to grow vegetatively for almost three months. That’s a month longer than usual for me. 

However, if these plants continue to be slow growers (indicative of root damage), I reserve the right to replace them when it’s time to plant the other youngsters. There are many very nice looking possibilities in the cottage. And in a wonderful little twist for me, this year, it looks like the regular seeds are going to bail out the feminized seeds.

One other note on planting: The six week point of the grow is May 19, so I expect plants to go in the ground that day. However, should any of my desired plants show themselves to be female before May 19, they’ll go into a bed immediately. So the final plantings will probably be drawn out over a period of a couple days.

The sunset today is at 8:04. This means my outdoor growing window is just about to open. With the supplemental outdoor lighting, my plants awaken at 5:00 am. At the moment, they are remaining in the sun until 4:30-4:45. So they’re not quite getting twelve hours. But that will change soon, as the sun will shortly grow just beyond the tree line on the southern hill. By the time the young plants come of age and are ready to either grow or flower, they’ll be getting over 14 hours of light for almost three straight months. The sun is moving into place.

Without the supplemental lighting, I was entirely dependent on my plants finding enough sun between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm. Many of them did, but some always tried to flower early, because the margin between getting enough light and not getting enough light is razor thin here. The fact is that not all my beds get a consistent 12 hours of sun for the entire growing period. They never have. During a portion of summer, some of my beds don’t get sunlight before 10:00 am. So I should not be surprised when plants attempt to flower early. Of course, feminized seeds are prone to do that anyway, when stressed,, but if regular seeds don’t get over 12 hours of sun, they will try to flower as soon as they are given the chance. All cannabis plants want to flower asap.

The hope this year is that I’ll have no plants attempt to flower early, and that every plant will have the full season to grow vegetatively, as they were meant to do. If this is achieved, it would be the first year ever that I don’t have an early flowering plant.

I have written in blogs and taught students that the first thing you need to know when you grow outdoors is if you get enough sunlight. You cannot assume that you do, unless there are no trees around your grow site that impact light.

It’s also important, over years of growing, to note when and where the sun shines brightest. Because how it looks while you’re looking at it today, is not how and where it’s going to shine in a month, or three months.

Knowing exactly how light interacts with your growing medium will influence which cultivars you attempt to grow and where exactly the best spots are to grow them.

For example, from ten years of growing here, we know that bed 18 is where we grow our largest plants. It also gets the most light over a six month period. We grow big plants in other beds, but bed 18 has grown all the truly large plants, pushing three pounds. We know that bed 22 gets the most shade, and therefore is the best bed for plants that thrive in a shadier setting (I’m thinking of you, White Widow). We know that bed 16 has been historically great for CBD plants, as has bed 17. 

As growers, we had doubts about two beds, 13 and 21. They have seldom, if ever, produced a large plant. Both of them seem to produce runts. But last year, while not producing big plants (S.Thai and Royal Kush, respectively), those two beds produced the two largest terpene percentages that I’ve ever grown on cannabis. So obviously, the nutrients I’ve poured and the microbiology I’ve attempted to build have been successful. I’m now convinced that those two beds can and will produce larger plants, possibly this year. But it’s ok if they don’t. If all they do is produce powerful small plants, that’s completely legit.

For my grows, ideally, I set it up to where cultivars that need the most late season sun get it. Specifically, CBD plants and sativa hybrids get priority for late season sun. CBD plants are simple: The more sun they get, the more CBD you get. And sativa hybrids generally need more sun to finish than sleepy time plants.

But these seemingly common sense choices are also not 100% accurate. We’ve had CBD plants grow well in shady beds (Love, Lucy, two years ago). That was just luck, because we hadn’t grown her before. But after testing her, even with low THC, she’s more of a sleepy time plant, with higher than normal myrcene. As it is, Love, Lucy is good for pain and relaxing. 

The point to all of this is for the grower to understand their entire growing medium. From edge to edge, where does the light hit and where does it go?

If you do have lots of trees, like we do, it’s certainly more challenging to grow, but there is still hope. Cannabis does not need total light saturation in order to make the plant believe it’s in sunlight. It just needs to be touched and reactivated, to extend its internal clock on a daily basis, to achieve the necessary twelve hours plus.

Sunlight peeking through a tree reactivated this lovely ACDC in 2020.

For years, Bee and I talked about getting some kind of hand held light, possibly, to walk around the beds in the early mornings and shine this light on the plants, thereby awakening their internal clocks. It was a good, if unsustainable idea. I did not see myself wanting to do this for three straight months, in addition to daily pre-dawn foliar sprays. I was extremely happy to find the lights that we’re using now.

But if you don’t have supplemental lighting and you’re in a woodsy area, if they can get 10-11 legitimate hours of light, they quite possibly could steal another hour or two by getting hit by the sun, peeking through trees. If you are close to twelve hours, like I am, it is worth the try. You’ll have some early flower attempts and you’ll also have some plants that connect to the sun and commit to growing for the entire season.

And of course, we now live in the age of the auto flower, which renders all manner of shade and heat moot. They’ll grow anywhere, in any lighting. Though I am not a huge fan, I welcome the development of something that will grow anywhere. In my experience, they’re just not very potent. 

But for an inexperienced grower or user, auto flowers might be perfect. The lack of potency might be a good draw. My biggest question about auto flowers is the same one I have for CBD seeds: Are you buying what the product says you are buying? My experience is that the quality control segment of the commercial cannabis industry is somewhat lacking, when it comes to seeds.

Also, keep in mind that no matter the potency of flowers, if you concentrate them into FECO, you will have a much more potent plant. Because concentrating flowers into oil makes them much stronger. An autoflower we grew once was pretty weak compared to a full season plant. But when it was concentrated, that autoflower had a perfectly reasonable high; especially for micro dosing. Terpenes were weak, but that’s to be expected with such a short growing time.

So it’s May 2, and time to get outside. The outdoor plants spent their first night uncovered and sure enough, the beer traps had a productive night protecting the girls.

RIP, young Banana Slug.

Sexing is ongoing in the cottage. No boys yet. Just a lot of lifting and peeking.

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Or contact me directly with your idea (good seeds are always welcome–and if I grow them, I will get the flowers tested and share with you the results.
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