hey guys figured i'd make a journal to document the final few weeks of my flowering blue dream. long story short, i'd had this mother around for a while that i put out on the balcony back near the end of may. due to a recent and somewhat lengthy hiatus in the high sierra, i'd been unable to tend to her, let alone take pictures. thankfully i'd set her up with a water only pre amended soil mix so that my awesome girlfriend only had to give her a nice good soak every 10 days or so. i mix my own soil starting with E.B. Stone's "edna's best" potting soil as my base. to that i add a bunch of my homemade ewc, kelp meal, alfalfa meal, little bit 'o cottonseed meal, rice hulls, fish bone meal, soft rock phosphate, gypsum, sul po mag, green sand, and agrowinn minerals rock dust. it all goes in the big tub and cooks for about 2 weeks before going into my smartpots for the grow. she got a good foliar spray and soak with an aact before i left town and another nice soak upon my return. we'd had the beginnings of a little problem with those darn budworms that eat down through the calyx and poop all over the place. luckily with some tlc and a friendly bacteria strain we seem to have things under control. though i've had to be on the lookout since my return. i'm guessing she's got at least 4 more weeks left, though with the horrible marine layer in san diego this year, we'll see how she goes. have a look...
Beautiful! Especially the image '014.jpg' - lovely! Edna's Best is a big secret with cannabis growers for whatever reason. They sell it at Portland's largest nursery (est. over 100 years ago) and it's very popular with gardeners of all stripes. Solid product. All of E. B. Stone (at least their organic line) is of high-quality and priced fairly in the marketplace with a wide range of mixes as well as single-ingredient packs. For insect and pH issues take a look at Sample Package #3 at NeemResource.com - extreme quality at fair prices. Fair trade. Organic. Pure. Non-invasive. Safe for the environment. LD
thank you gentlemen, overgrowray and ld. here's a cool little customer story about e.b. stone and their family run business...testimonial pretty funny because in my childhood i remember my grandfather using the oldschool e.b. stone products, greenall in his garden and orchard back in the 80's in san jose. his roses and crops were always super healthy and lush. he used to say that he simply got the old family farming genes, though i'm pretty sure now that i know his secret... e.b. stone products had been unavailable in socal for just about the entire time i've been down here and have only recently begun to see local nurseries carrying their line of goodies. they are very well priced too, their soil is typically less than 1/2 the price of the fox farm stuff. also i can usually buy 5+ boxes of high quality, single ingredient dry ferts for less than one would pay for a single quart of overpriced "magic juice" from the jokers at AN et al. ld thanks for the link to the neem products, i'll be sure to check 'em out. those little bud worms are nasty little things. i've seen calyx damage from them that is then infected by this gray mold that literally makes pulp out of the stems, rotting the plant from inside out. it looks like i've gotten rid of them in time to avoid having to combat the mold, but for future reference are you aware if neem oil is effective in preventing/combating that gray mold? i'd like to take proactive measures against that stuff, just in case... thanks for looking guys, cheers!
Neem seed oil and meal are a very effective fungicide for plants, animals, humans, etc. It's widely used in India and China in medicines, shampoos, toothpaste, salves, birth control medicines, etc. I wouldn't grow without using neem oil and now that I was told about these folks (by a poster at GC) I am now using both neem as well as their karanja oil. HTH LD
btc2112 A couple of things about using neem oil and neem seed meal. The meal is what remains after the pressing. The best neem oils are those that are cold-extracted (like almost everything else in the horticulture world) vs. solvent extraction. In order to break the oil down so that it will mix with water is to use an emulsifier. You can use pure soap (like Dr. Bronner's that is usually sold in bulk at Whole Foods, et al.) and this will also give you a surfactant. If you opt for using soap (any many folks do) this is the one time where sourcing pure soap is important. Even Johnson & Johnson's Baby Shampoo is loaded with perfumes (excuse me - 'frangrance enhancers'), formaldehyde, stabilizers, etc. "Better Living Through Modern Chemistry" Another route is to use liquid silica (like Dyna-Gro Pro-TeKt) as the emulsifier. It's been my experience that liquid silica will disperse the oil better than soap but that's anecdotal at best. For a surfactant I use yucca extract and opt for the human food-grade which does not contain any preservatives as these agents do a real number on the leaf's microbe colonies. T & J Enterprises carries this yucca extract and is worth the effort to source but it's not absolutely necessary. You could, for example, use the silica to carry the load for emulsifying the oil and then add a few drops of pure soap as the surfactant. One word of caution - neem/karanja oils are not insecticides (as per EPA regulations) meaning that if you apply the oil today you'll probably see insects for a few days. The way the these oils work is to inhibit the insect's ability to eat and inhibits the larva from hatching and maturing. It's important to apply this mix a couple of times per week for 2 or 3 weeks. Because it's non-invasive the oils carry over 60 agents which bolster a plant's defenses against molds, leaf-eating insects, etc. as well as providing a wide range of micro-nutrients. To use the neem/karanja meals you can/should add to your soils as this will provide systemic defenses over the life of the plant. You can also make a tea with these meals for those times where using an oil-based product may not be the best option. Adding the neem/karanja teas an occasional part of your irrigation schedule will keep the aerobic microbe colonies healthy while it kills the anaerobic colonies which provide food for the 'good guys' - long twisted story that could be a novel perhaps. Anyway - that's what I know about neem seed products. BTW - the addition of the liquid silica is also beneficial as it 'toughens' up the leaves and branches making it more difficult for mold and insects to grab onto. HTH LD
great info there man, thank you. i was actually going to ask about the dyna gro as i know the liquid silica does wonders to help beef things up. but i was unsure about mixing the two or applying them too close, timewise to one another. though that doesn't look to be an issue now, scratch another question off the list... one last ? for you as im obviously in full flower, how concerned/careful should i be about applying a neem oil foliar spray to my flowers? i'm trying to prevent/combat mold, and wouldn't want to soak my flowers to the point where they could be susceptible to getting moldy or rotten. i've never sprayed floral sets this far into 12/12. any thoughts, am i too far into bloom to be spraying?
btc2112 Discussing foliar applications during the 12/12 cycle is fraught with complications and is akin to discussing abortion on a political board. Ambient humidity is the first concern - in the PNW where it rains during most of the year, anaerobic molds (which includes but is not limited to 'powdery mildew') we have few options. What I would recommend is using neem/karanja meals and make a tea. You would want to include kelp meal (or a suitable seaweed extract) along with the silica product. Leave out the surfactant to speed up the absorption rate. Spray in the late evening so that the regular dew/moisture that the plants are already used to will help to distribute the teas on the leaves and branches. The addition of kelp/seaweed serves a number of purposes with the main one being that kelp contains agents which also inhibit the ability of spider mite eggs from hatching. This has been known since 1919 in studies done in England so the science is solid on this paradigm. I will gladly give you cites to the original studies. Adding silica (in the appropriate amount of 1/4 tsp. per gallon) with each and every watering cycle is beneficial to limit damage and growth of both insects and molds but more importantly is the ability of liquid silica to move mineral cations into the cell walls in the roots. I have a couple of peer-reviewed studies that can explain it far better than I can. Trust me. Bottom line - healthy plants are far more resistant to invasion than sick plants. HTH LD
btc2112 I forget to mention the benefit of using EM-1 (the lactobacillus culture stuff). It is effective for stopping powdery molds from spreading and can be used to prevent an initial invasion. You can add EM-1 to either the neem/karanja/both oil mix as well as the seed meal teas. LD
many thanks ld, i've gone ahead and ordered some neem meal and cake from the source you recommended. in the meantime i just ran down to my friendly local nursery and picked up a $7 bottle of "Green Light Neem Concentrate". it's a 70% solution hydrophobic extract of neem. i'm planning on mixing this with some pro-tekt and kelp meal, and giving the plant a light misting this evening once the sun's gone down. we'll see how she does... thanks again for the always sagely advice
btc, Looking good bro......glad to see you're back with us and sharing your lovely ladies/grow with us. I for one am looking forward to updates. Take care my friend, chunk
thanks chunk! i'm going through some serious "high sierra withdrawal", and the only thing that seems to mellow me out is being out in my little garden. very happy to be back on the boards though, i'd begun to miss you guys... stoked to see our very own organic grow journal section too, very nice! i'll try to get a weekly update of my progress up for 'ya. this blue dream really reminds me(looks-wise) of an old, fruity hawaiian skunk that we used to grow, can't wait for her to finish. thanks for stopping by brother, have a great weekend!
the good ones though... so i was out messin' in the garden this morning and opened my worm bin to throw in some fruit and veggie scraps and was blown away by the amount of fungi that was growing on top of the dirt in there. i had recently spread a thin layer of organic cotton seed meal in order to help speed the composting process and it seems to have really given the fungi something to latch onto. the little baby worms really seem to like it too, as i gently flipped some of the topsoil over i was greeted by hundreds of tiny, white, wiggling worms that seemed to be feeding on the seed meal. but just below that i unearthed a decomposing bell pepper that was surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of red wigglers...more worms than i've ever seen have a look, though if you have a queasy stomach you may want to skip the pics... extreme worm porn!!!
btc, I was just cruising through and looking at your lovely ladies. Man, I tell ya....whatever that is growing is use awesome looking. Have you got an update you can share with us? I'd like to see what your grow looks like now being more mature. Thanks mate!
possuum- thanks for the props brother! unfortunately i had to chop the blue dream much sooner than i was planning. the damn moth larvae that had infected them while i was out of town left the door wide open for a botrytis infection. i started applying neem and dyna gro once i'd returned but i think i was just too late, the flowers were too thick and that damn fungus had gotten down into them. some of the flowers were literally starting to rot from the inside out, nasty nasty stuff. at some point i'd just had enough, i pinched off what i could find and cut the branches 1 by 1 and hung 'em to dry. i'm actually smoking some of it now, only been curing for about a week but fuck it, i'm a poor 30 year old college student who doesn't want to pay for herb anymore. very stony but definitely could have used another few weeks out in the sunshine. i'm sorry brother but i wasn't able to take any pics before i cut her either. i was actually pretty frustrated and just clipper her one day. i'll get a budshot or two for ya. i do have my big hash plant haze female flowering outside still. she hadn't really started budding yet, so i think i was able to prevent the botrytis from infecting her. i'll get some pics up soon as she's really starting to fill out and get nice and glittery.
That's too bad bro. That sure was a nice looking specimen. Very unique looking to me. Next though eh? There's always another time coming to us. Got to keep on keeping on.
i hear you brother. i did manage to keep a successfully rooted clone from her though so i'll be using that as a mother for a future generation of blue dream ladies. we're moving house(2nd time in 6 months...) in october but i'm going to get an actual yard and have a spare room to set up my darkroom. i love growing outside but i'm kinda looking forward to a pest free crop of sugary, sticky, smelly buds this time around. we'll see how she goes...
That is one absolutely sexy southern california lady, definitely worthy of attention!! Sorry to hear about its premature demise