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The 19th of May marks the six week point of the grow. On the calendar, it says the 19th is my planting day. The week leading up to that date is the fish or cut bait week for the plants. I’ve got a table full of contenders and another partially full of pretenders and bed fillers.

The final week before planting is fraught. I’ve spent five weeks inside with these babies. I’ve watched one cultivar, a preferred cultivar this year, the West Marin Mystery, grow and show five beautiful males. All five were plants I was rooting for to be female. All would have been incredible males were we making seeds. They were huge. Only two remain. One is a late starter and is on the pretender table, still too young. The other is the tallest West Marin Mystery that I’ve grown in the cottage so far. At first glance the plant looks male. Super tall, with significant spacing for inner nodal growth. I’m not used to this kind of spacing when a large plant has been crammed in a 3-gallon pot for several weeks. So I look wistfully at this plant, hoping that it shows me the pistil every time I check it with the magnifying glass.

My eyes and experience tell me that it’s a female plant, but my eyes and experience have been wrong in this matter many times before. Almost every year, there has been that one plant, the one that you pull for most, the one you fall in love with, and it almost always turns out to be a guy. Last year, I had a Royal Kush in a bed for two hours, and then he showed sacs. I hate having to pull a large start after planting, and it’s always entirely my fault. But as I’ve mentioned to Karen more than once, every so often, you get a special plant. One that grows fast and hard and makes you certain it’s a boy, but it’s not. This looks like one of those plants. The spacing is crying out for weeks of veg growth to fill in. We have seen this kind of plant before. In fact, I’m attempting to recreate another large West Marin Mystery. We had one of these before.

West Marin Mystery in bed 18, 2022. I would love a sequel.

That’s some advantageous spacing on the West Marin Mystery in the cottage.

Of the remaining cultivars, this is one of those years where we have choices. There are six remaining S Thai, three Fruitcake, five Rose, and three Honey Tsu. In each case, there are two very strong looking candidates and either one or two weaker (but still viable) candidates per cultivar. 

Going into this year, I anticipated being able to grow multiple S. Thai and possibly multiple other cultivars. But with recent developments around here (CBG & Me, Part 2), I’m looking harder at the multiple Honey Tsu, which is a legitimate CBD plant. It looks like I have two very strong possibilities and if both remain female, I’ll grow them both. Legitimate CBD medicine is hard to find in the cannabis seed world, so I will not waste a productive and legitimate CBD plant. In fact, I generally prioritize CBD plants over THC plants. And I need to grow this particular cultivar (Honey Tsu) this year, because it’s the nighttime medicine for my stroke patient. We’re running low, so there’s a much greater chance, by growing two, to recreate the pheno that has been most effective for him.

Last Saturday, every plant got their first taste of compost tea. Every plant over four weeks old in the cottage got half a cup. The big WMM got a full cup.

The purpose for this taste is two fold. First, they are old enough to start getting the good stuff that will really make them grow. Second, this first sip of tea is also a trick I use every year to try and force the issue on sexing. I have no scientific basis for this, just observational. Over the years, this sip of tea has usually tweaked some of the holdouts into showing their sex. Usually takes 24-48 hours.

Well, this morning was 24 hours and there are still no more males in the cottage. Every year, with every grow, something new happens. This year, it’s only having one strain show its sex. After two weeks of sexing, none of the other cultivars have shown a single male. That’s pretty certain to change over the next seven days. But at this point, it is looking like I’m going to get to plant all the cultivars I wanted to plant. Further, there’s a good chance that I’ll be able to grow the preferred choices amongst all the cultivars. The remaining, very tall WMM is the one I’ve been eying since the day they cracked open. She has been a vigorous grower, taller than any other plant. In fact, I had to move her on the table, because she was almost touching the drying lines above the table, awaiting the fall harvest.

I won’t know until the end of the week, but this year might be that very rare year when I could have filled all the beds with only regular seed starts. I might have filled the beds without any feminized backup. Which is cool, but I will never again start a grow without including feminized starts. The memory of empty beds during a grow has burned into me.

I would be remiss if I did not mention and explain about the table with pretenders. These are the backup plants, the less than largest versions of their counterparts on the contenders table. They are the “if all else fails” plants. Well, included in this ignominious batch are actually some potentially interesting plants. For example, we have the very tall S. Thai plant. I have basically had this on the male watch list since sprouting. All the other S. Thai are within an inch of each other in height. This one is a good five inches taller than any other. Bee was visiting yesterday and they said, “If it’s six weeks, planting day, and this plant still has not shown pollen sacs, plant her.”

I firmly believe that this plant will turn male. But I agree with Bee, that if it does not turn male, it goes into a bed.

There is one more Fruitcake, three more Rose, one more Honey Tsu, one developing AK47, and one late sprouting West Marin Mystery. There’s also a feminized Apple Crumble, just in case everything turned male, as it has occasionally in the past. Bee saw the stash the other day and called it our plant armory.

As for the feminized plants in the beds, well, they’ve had quite a journey so far, thanks to the excited ignorance of the grower (me). 

First, I put them into beds too soon for where I live. The plants were too young, and not developed enough to withstand the cold temperatures. But there was one more factor that was causing them their main problems.

The early starts were being impacted by aphids. I couldn’t even see them. It was Bee who walked into the beds yesterday, saw the curled leaves and immediately suspected aphids. We uncurled a leaf and there they were, hiding. This would account for the curled leaves and the stunted growth. It was cold, but the plants were being attacked. Further, it’s too early in the year for all the predatory insects that will arrive soon. There’s only one active borage plant out there to attract them. All of this will change over the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I will also begin my Tuesday IPM spray. IPM stands for Integrated Pest Management and it will involve bi-weekly foliar sprays of Grandevo and Venerate. It’s time to start protecting the little plants. I was going to start this next week, when all the plants are in the beds, but there’s no sense waiting, if the aphids are here. 

Grower’s Note: If you see aphids, you want to aggressively treat them. While I’m waiting for predatory insects to arrive, I can begin my IPM program, but I can also spray the aphids off the plants with a foliar sprayer filled with water, which we did yesterday. You don’t need more than spraying water to get the aphids off. The bi-weekly sprays will help keep them off.

I transplanted a feminized Royal Kush to a bed a couple of days ago. She was approaching the five week mark, and as I’ve previously written, I plant feminized no later than five weeks, lest they get overcrowded in the 3-gallon pot and start to flower early, as several have done when I left them in for six weeks. The good news is that Royal Kush in bed 13 is already growing and connected to the sun. I’m certain the supplemental lighting has made the transition from inside to outside seamless. This was the first test this year and Royal Kush in bed 13 is not trying to flower early.

The plants outside are finally growing as they should, with one exception. Queen Special 1 has truly struggled, and it is entirely my fault. Aphids and cold reduced her to a curled mess. Sorry, plant. You didn’t deserve this. 

Inside that mess was a horde of aphids. We sprayed them off with water, and everything in the garden is now on my foliar spray program. This should control the aphids until the predators arrive and more borage appears, which they generally prefer.

One of the reasons for this blog is to honestly show when I make a mistake. This is how we learn, especially those of us who teach. I wanted to get those feminized starts outside so much, I lost my patience and planted them too soon. LIve and learn. I also should have waited, only a couple of weeks, until the predatory insects began to arrive, in order to protect the plants.

All that said, in the last few days, especially today, I’ve been reminded that this plant is a weed and as such, pretty tough. Because just a few minutes ago, I took a picture of Queen Special One, thinking it might be her final photo.

The health of any cannabis plant is not dependent on the damage that has already been done, the health of any cannabis plant is based on how the new growth looks. If it looks healthy, the  plant has righted itself and will now proceed as normal. I think I’m going to let her grow, and re-shuffle the location of a few plants. 

That experience of pulling a plant that’s been in the ground is not pleasant to me. I associate it with my own failure, and I honestly have a visceral reaction to roots being pulled and broken from soil.

To be fair, were this happening in June, I’d feel less sentimental, because there’s no time to grow if a plant has spent most of its formative time healing. But it’s only mid-May. In two weeks with new growth, she is liable to look nice again. She is not stunted anymore and is growing vigorously. 24 hours ago, she was going to be a goner. That all changed about 30 minutes ago.

Purple Punch rebounds.

Everything else is now thriving outdoors, including Purple Punch, which we are also not going to replace. One thing about putting plants through stress: It can sometimes produce the best medicine. The other plants were all impacted by the aphids and cold, but like good weeds, they’ve chosen to grow past their problems. The improvement is mostly due to warmer weather. 70 degrees changes everything for young plants.

Another interesting factor is that stressed out feminized plants usually try to flower early. But these feminized starts went through all their stress between weeks two and four. We just passed week five and they are all growing vegetatively, with no stress. It appears that we’re going to dodge the early flowering potential of the feminized seeds, because they haven’t yet come of age.

Cherry Punch in bed 15. You can see the aphid impacted curled leaves below the vigorous new growth. She is growing at about an inch a day now. She looks great with wonderful spacing. There’s going to be a ton of room for her to fill in.

This morning, the outside plants received a 0.08 gift of rain. Any rain my veg growing plants can get is appreciated. The small plants, in particular, seem to shine after getting a sip.

Meanwhile, the inside plants did not show a single male this morning, despite having gotten their first sips of tea two days ago. Choices are coming and priorities are being set. The boys have to show up soon.

Finally, I have once again been reminded that willing my plants to be female does not work.

That said, I just saw that two pistils have emerged on the tall West Marin Mystery. The big girl will go into bed 14 tomorrow morning, May 14. 

By next Monday, May 19, all the beds will be full.

The 2025 grow lineup should be:

Bed 11–Cherry Punch

Bed 12–S. Thai

Bed 13–Royal Kush

Bed 14–West Marin Mystery

Bed 15–Cherry Punch

Bed 16–Rose

Bed 17– Honey Tsu

Bed 18–Queen Special One

Bed 19– S. Thai

Bed 20–Royal Kush

Bed 21–Fruitcake

Bed 22–Purple Punch

25 gallon cloth bag–Honey Tsu or a cultivar to be determined.

That’s 13 plants, of course. It was going to be 12 and only 12, but there still exists the strong possibility of an excess of females. What’s a grower to do? 

I’ll let you know next week, as the plants finally and mercifully move from inside to entirely outside. It will probably be Thursday blogs for the rest of the grow, unless something special happens, like CBG & Me, last week.

WMM 14 is in.

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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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