Devil XXL B and C

Northern_Ent —

Northern_Ent May 13: starting to transplant into final grow bags. Tried some immature seeds a couple weeks ago and 5 of 8 germinated so good success. Then tried another batch of immature seeds and only had about 10% germination. Otherwise identical methods so I think I must have used the high sodium well water when preparing the soil. Who knew excess sodium was such a problem for starting seeds?

Northern_Ent May 19: cold last night at 0C and rain but it didn’t quite snow. Plants were covered and seem okay but the Devils are a bit off colour...smoothies look happier. Foliar spray at 11 am (LAB, FPJ, soap and silicate). May 20: 0 C again last night. Foliar spray at 7 pm followed by warmed water at 9:30 before being covered for the night. Forecast is for -4 C but I don’t think it will be quite that cold. Growdiaries minimum night temp is 10 C but we’re routinely below 10 C overnight so far this year, and I doubt the high was above 10 C today. Very cool for mid-May here. One or two more cool nights in forecast. May 21: cold last night but clear and sunny today and feels warmer than the 12 C it actually is.

Northern_Ent May 23: LAB only foliar in evening. A lot of Devil seedlings were badly burned after being transplanted. Too much potassium mainly and this is likely due to using Barley SST as a pre-treatment for the soil. Plants love the SST, but this was too much for the seedlings. When combined with high sodium well water (since fixed) the seedlings were hit pretty hard. Grow bags were flushed but many of these plants likely won’t recover.

Northern_Ent —

Northern_Ent June 5: cooler today with a small hail storm that didn’t damage. LAB silicate and soap foliar spray this afternoon. Topped plants that were past the third node. June 7: Alaska Fish Fertilizer foliar for N in afternoon and LAB at dusk. June 9 and 11: foliar at dusk.

Northern_Ent June 13: hot and sunny and things are growing fast. June 15: thunderstorms yesterday and today.

Northern_Ent June 20 and 22: full foliar at dusk. June 25: hot (28 C) and getting hotter. The heat wave from SW US is coming here for the next week or so. The forecast is for six days of 30 + C with next Wednesday (June 30) to be 36 C and “feels like” 40 C. That is very hot anytime and especially for Alberta in June. About five weeks ago we had five nights below zero C and now this...plants shutdown photosynthesis above 27 C so I’ll be trying to keep them cool with water mists and a bit of shade.

Northern_Ent Middle of historic heat wave. Hit 37C yesterday today and tomorrow. July 1: yep, 37 C. Show weekly temperature as 33 C as it will cool off tomorrow. Full foliar at dusk…upping LAB and lowering fish dosages.

Northern_Ent —

Northern_Ent July 18: full foliar at dusk, but fish dose increased back up to 4 mL/L as too many plants were getting too yellow and needed more N. July 19: gave everyone a dose of Megacrop (1200 ppm TDS) to get the plants more N. Later upped the fish dose back up to 4 mL/L for the foliar at dusk.

Northern_Ent —

Northern_Ent This was a good week for the plants. The plants had been too yellow so I upped the fish fertilizer back up to 4 mL/L and did a second round of compost tea (see Smoothie x Panama Lime diary for details). This batch of plants are smaller than I hoped but the buds are looking great.

Northern_Ent —

Northern_Ent Aug 10: first harvest due to the appearance of some mould. Wanted to wait a few more days but taking mature top buds down now to avoid problems. Minor issue at this point but will have to watch it closely. Aug 14: definitely a good choice to take that first round a few days ago. Without staying on top of things with daily checks to spot any problems things would have gotten out of hand. As it is, looking good with lots of nice buds forming during this sunny and hot weather. Oh, except for the fire smoke that blocks the light and keeps temperatures down. Even with the smoke it still hit 32 C here today. The Aug 17 overnight low was 5 C which is a 27 C range in three days. Alberta weather. Some buds were adversely affected by the temperature swings (Six Shooter) but Devil and Gorilla Glue are totally fine and making nice buds.

Northern_Ent Aug 15: fun with flash pics.

Northern_Ent Harvesting top buds as they ripen leaving lower ones to mature for a couple weeks. This allows the lower buds to mature nicely.

Northern_Ent Harvest continues. Sep 3: holy crap, it was only 2.5 C last night which is a bit early for almost frost weather. The next two weeks should be nice enough with sunny weather and temps in the high teens and lows near 10 C. Sep 9: should be a new week but squeezing it in...lower bud harvest continues and pheno 2 plants are almost ready now too.

Northern_Ent Plants did okay despite being almost killed during transplant to the final containers. I had applied a barley sprouted seed tea before transplanting, and the combination of potassium (K+) from the barley and high sodium well water (Na+) caused a bad cation imbalance of monovalent cations relative to divalent calcium (Ca2+) and magnesium (Mg2+). The osmotic pressure sucked the moisture from the plants as soon as they were transplanted and I thought they would all die. However, I was able to treat the well water using a kiddie pool with limestone that was activated using vinegar to provide exchangeable calcium to replace sodium in the well water. I also dissolved feed grade limestone in vinegar to make water soluble calcium (easier and larger scale than suggested KNF method using eggshells) and added Epsom salts for every watering to provide Mg. This water treatment was good enough and the plants recovered from that initial shock. So, yeah, farming is hard.