Chocolate & Cheese

Day 100: Well, last week's mysterious sudden death was figured out. My wife happened to use my watering bucket with bleach. Oops. Only Sweet Cheese F1 was affected, and quite a bit of one side of her had to be topped. Chocolopez height: 58in Sweet Cheese height: 52in Day 101: Today I began pruning small branches from Chocolopez's bottom - the ones that are tiny and buried inside/under her canopy. There are a lot of them, and I am going to be doing this over the next week or so a little bit at a time. I don't want to interrupt her incredible volume that is increasing very fast. The bugs seemed to have stopped biting Chocolopez. She is doing quite well now after my peppermint water treatment. I use a diluted peppermint or habanero water to combat bugs. It usually helps. Just keep the concentration low, especially with peppermint. I'm confident Sweet Cheese will have plenty of time to recover. I may even top her right before flowering starts to set it (which should be in approximately 1 month from now), to put all of her potential energy into buds and keep her short and bushy. Day 102: Sweet Cheese is already starting to look better. I bet in two weeks it'll be almost as if nothing happened. Chocolopez is still climbing tall, and she's a very wide bush, but that doesn't matter outdoors I guess. Today we have a severe wind/rain storm heading our way. I put some stakes around some of the plants in my garden and hung a large tent rain fly over them diagonally to catch as much wind and rain as I can. Last year a storm like this only tore off 1 branch late into flower when we weren't prepared. This time I am somewhat. I can't find my tarp or else I would have protected more plants. In this diary, Chocolopez is protected. Sweet Cheese is not. :) Day 103: Both plants survived the storm thanks to my shelter! Today, Chocolopez is 61in tall and Sweet Cheese F1 is 55in tall.