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Cherry Punch 15 stands above all others in the beds this year.

It’s Tuesday, August 5, and as I write this, I’m still testing positive for Covid, as is my wife, and we still don’t feel well. We both had a full Covid rebound Saturday night into Sunday morning. I woke up with chills again and strong cold symptoms. Not much more to do than isolate ourselves and ride it out. It’s time to get back to work.

Still positive on August 6.

By long accepted outdoor growing standards, my tallest plant this year, Cherry Punch in bed 15, should not be doing as well as she is. She is six feet tall and still surging. She might be my healthiest plant. The last time she was watered was May 25 and it’s now August 5. She’s flowering, and will not receive any more solo watering before her harvest. She will get four more weeks of compost teas, a quart a week, and that is all. I won’t even water her on warmer than usual days. She’s on her own and will finish as nature intends for her. I feed her compost tea, protect her from pathogens, and watch while powers beyond mine finish the work.

The understanding of where I grow, and what lies beneath the very active topsoil has come to me gradually. Truly, I knew nothing about any of this when I started. 

Our property is above a vast mycelium network, and is directly adjacent to a fairly pristine national forest. There is nothing to disturb the network. It is established, still growing and old. It’s been here long before any of us, including the native people.

The evidence of the network is all over our hills. Trees and plants grow with uniformity that cannot be emulated without the control of fungus.

It is a pristine place, and my evolution as a grower here is entirely reliant on my understanding, and best taking advantage of where I am.

What is a mycelium network?

Mycelium and mycorrhizal networks are common to forests. They work in coordination with each and every tree and plant. They work in conjunction with Mother trees to help communicate beneath the ground. Through this fungal network, resources are naturally allocated and shared. That would account for the uniformity of growth that one can see with the naked eye on the hillsides surrounding us. This happens through years of abundance and years of drought. It is constant.

When I began growing cannabis, as my soil became better conditioned through many winters of burying raw salmon and bones, I noticed that I did not have to water as much or as often as other growers I’d observed. I have been writing for years about “training” my plants as far as water, teaching them how to do more with less. My basic philosophy has evolved to giving my plants just enough water to make them go look for more. I have learned the hard way about over watering, which is something that most new growers are guilty of at one time or another. In my opinion, the greatest single factor holding plants back from growing to their full potential, is overwatering. 

Mycelium regulates water in the soil, and other nutrients, helping provide each plant with what they need, and when they need it. Though I attempt to do this through my compost teas, this is far beyond my power to completely emulate. This is nature, working at peak efficiency. 

Currently, almost all of my cannabis plants are flowering, and none of them are receiving any additional water. 

But cannabis plants are not the only kinds of plants I have growing in my beds, or in native soil around the beds. I have four different kinds of tomatoes and each of them is also no longer receiving any water.  

When you grow cannabis and tomatoes at the same time, the connection between them becomes obvious. This was taught to me on my first day in school, by my teacher, Natalie Darves. When she asked if there were any good tomato growers in the room, I knew that I was in the right spot.

I have been starving tomatoes for decades. I am known, amongst our friends, for my tomatoes. No matter what cultivar, I grow them so that they are very sweet. The way to do that is to stop watering them and allow the plant to die. The fruit gets all the energy remaining in the plant to become the sweetest possible.

So it has always been logical to me that the strongest possible cannabis would come from a similar, if not identical, approach to watering. I was taught to cut off water three weeks prior to harvest, and that’s what I did for many years.

In the last three years, I have dramatically reduced the amount of water I’ve used each year. It’s actually shocking how little water I use, once the plants are established in the beds, with their tap root obviously having gone below the hardware cloth. My plants get approximately 1.5 gallons of water per week. That water is the only difference between all my plants, and Cherry Punch 15, which hasn’t received pure water for 91 days. 

At the same time, my largest tomato plant has been cut off from water for the last month. We are starting to pick the fruit and it is predictably sweet.

The last three years of growing cannabis is when I’ve eliminated water during the flowering phase, and it is during these three years that I have received the highest terpene percentages that I’ve ever gotten. The THC percentage also is raised, though not as much as I thought it would. There seems to be a far greater relationship between water reduction and terpene percentages.

As I have been discovering, and recently wrote at length about in my blog titled, Terpenes, the terpene percentage might have more to do with how each plant makes you feel, vis-a-vie the Entourage Effect than any other single factor. 

Through water elimination, there does seem to be an increase in THC percentage, but it is not as dramatic as the terpenes. I have not noticed any difference in cannabinoids by starving the plants during flowering. CBD plants are not made more powerful by not watering, but their terpene percentage does rise, so again, there is impact on the Entourage Effect.

Mycelium is how plants communicate with one another. Trees communicate with each other, so that every living thing in a mycelium network knows the current moisture content and nutrients available. During drought years, the mycelium helps portion out resources so that the plants have a chance for close to normal growth. But during repeated drought years, the mycelium also knows when to send plants into dormancy, so they can survive drought summers. 

There was one year where we received only eleven inches of rain, 29 inches below our normal. We watched our 400 plus years old buckeye tree go dormant in July, with all of her leaves having fallen. We thought she was damaged, but she wasn’t. She was just waiting for the rain.

The last two years, I’ve been literally scraping raw mycorrhizae into my compost teas, finding fresh sources of the fungus just below topsoil next to some of our trees.

Once mycelium is in your soil, it will bond with plant roots, dramatically enhancing that plant’s ability to uptake nutrients. We have observed the phenomenon of expanding stalks. Usually, stalks taper in size, from thick at the bottom to much thinner on top. Raw mycorrhizae in teas has completely changed that. We now have plants with stalks that remain thick all the way to the top.

It’s not just the main stalk, it’s also in some of the branches.

To date, I don’t believe the fungus is specifically increasing our test scores. But it is making each and every plant the healthiest it can be.  

Obviously, these circumstances are exceptional. Not everyone has access to an ancient mycelium network. But I’d wager that more of you have access to this than you realize. How many of you growing have taken the time to see if mycelium lies beneath you? Do you grow near some large trees? I’m not a betting person, but I can easily imagine that there are growers out there right now reading this, wondering if their own grows have been unknowingly influenced by fungus. If you have ever noticed that you use less water than friends of yours, this is the most logical reason why.

Also, mycelium can be created. Google it. Mycelium grows on organic materials, a lot of them more of the waste variety. Some of the mycorrhizae that I’ve used has been attached to old, decaying wood scraps. I drop those scraps into my compost tea and that same scrap will continue putting fungus in my teas throughout the growing season. The fungus does not come off the organic material in the tea. I have literally used the same piece of mycorrhizae for multiple teas.

Inventive growers (including indoor) can create mycelium and introduce it into their growing mediums via a substrate (an underlying substance) that attaches to the fungus.

In my opinion, this is worth checking out. Anything a grower can introduce that allows for less water would be advantageous. Outdoors, less water means less mold potential. Less water means less slugs, because slugs don’t like crawling across dry surfaces (unless there’s beer).  Less water also means more fully realized medicine through increased terpene percentages.

I’m very curious if there are any indoor growers already making their own fungus. If you haven’t, you should start learning. 

My tests have proven that less water means much higher terpene percentages and hence, a more fully realized Entourage Effect, which is obviously the goal.

Years ago, I suspected I had a mycelium network beneath me. Now, I know it’s true and my grows will forever be changed because of this information. In an earlier blog, I mentioned that I’m probably two years from a grow that is almost without water. 

Frankly, that may happen next year. I’m on to something here.

Cherry Punch 11, day ten.

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