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This is a late start replacement for the Acapulco Gold Auto which can’t handle the overnight temperatures here. Too bad cuz I was looking forward to the AG. Oh well, so it goes.
This Cheese Fast Version from Ganja Farmer was a favourite smoke from the 40+ strains grown last year. I wasn’t going to repeat any this year but I needed a reliable replacement. Should be good and this one will be manifolded to 8 colas and I’ll wait a bit longer to force flowering in August to make up for the late start.
June 2 is Day 1 as she just broke soil. This was direct sown in soil outdoors which is risky here but she’s going now. Just two weeks later than last years plant. 👍👍
June 17: rain continues this weekend. Keeping plants up against house to minimize rain. Not that rainwater is bad, plants always like that the best, I just don’t want to drown them.
June 21: Happy Solstice.
June 22: fermented plant juice (FPJ) made from cannabis tops mashed with an equal mass of brown sugar and set aside at 25C in dark for a week or so. This was just a small amount from topping plants and the resulting mass was loosened with a few mL of water. The resulting FPJ is super potent so I used about 0.7 mL/L in a foliar spray with Extreme Blend and a drop or two of Dr. Bronners Peppermint soap as a surfactant and bug repellent.
June 30: considered just topping this one because of the late start (replaced Acapulco Gold) but decided to go for the 8 cola manifold.
July 1: brief hail storm on the afternoon of Canada Day. Plants were up against house and are fine.
July 5: looking good and growing fast 👍 About 4 inches in 3 days.
July 6: starting the new week with day count now fixed. You can get good at counting in multiples of seven on Growdiaries or you can smoke another one and fix it later. Speaking of which…
👍👍
July 9: hot again…should be fast growing here for a few weeks.
July 10: cooled off again. Two stems are now big enough to tie down for a few days using paper clips and pipe cleaners.
July 12: removed growth tips at second node. Not quite ready to do final topping for the 8 cola manifold but should be ready tomorrow.
July 13: going good at the start of week 7. Still have to do the final topping for the 8 cola manifold but doing fine.
A bit smoky again today but not as bad as it was in the spring.
July 16: looking good. Did final topping a couple days ago so 8 colas for this plant.
Have a bunch of Evening Scented Stock which emit a really strong smell in the evenings. Will provide plausible deniability for the pot smell.
July 20: this was a favourite plant last year for how it smoked, but it’s also a great grower. This plant seems to be going a bit a better than last year so I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes. It was started 4 weeks later than my other three so it will be smaller, but I think they will all be force flowered at the same time.
Grew 7 inches in a week.
July 22: the 8 colas are a bit too close together so I supercropped (HST) some branches to open up the centre a bit more. Stems are too stiff for LST and supercropping is the best option now.
July 23: growing about an inch per day. 👍 started another batch of lazy compost tea.
July 24: watered with compost tea and then applied top dressing of barley, Power Bloom and small amounts of Azomite and oyster shell flour for trace metals and calcium. Will start force flowering soon.
July 27: this is a great plant that is doing fine. It was started later than my other three plants, and won’t get as big, but it is growing fast. This was one of my faves from last year so looking forward to having this one again.
All the Ganja Farmer strains that I’ve tried have been very good.
July 29: pretty cool last night so I warmed the water up to 26 C before watering at 7 am to help them get off to a warmer start for the day.
July 30: still a bit crowded so I supercropped it again to get the top growth tips to the same elevation. This one was manifolded to 8 colas and by supercropping like this I’m trying to see if I can get something like 16 final colas after only topping for 8 colas. Whatever, messing around.
Aug 1: still supercropping main tips trying to see if I can get enough sunlight in to some of these lower growth tips. Might work, might not.
Doing today’s diary entry I realized that I should be scrogging this one…so SCROG net applied.
This new thing where Growdiaries hangs after entering your edits is annoying. Seems to happen with every third entry.
Aug 3: this late start Fast Cheese from Ganja Farmer is looking promising. She is manifolded to 8 colas, but I’m trying to get more by supercropping and scrogging. Not really needed for an outdoor plant but it is a bit of an experiment.
That reminds me of a great observation I saw somewhere years ago:
humans are chimpanzees with double PhDs in Trial and Error.
Aug 7: watered with compost tea in early morning. Water wasn’t soaking in very fast so kept is to about 2 L per plant.
Plants up against house tonight due to possible thunderstorms and hail.
Aug 9: thinned out the understory that was shaded and small buds that won’t finish in time. Mostly fan leaves with a few small branches growing in toward the centre. Added two more pieces of Scrog netting that are clipped to the bag to open the plant up a bit further. Rain in evening.
Aug 10: this scrog is looking okay. Likely will avoid doing it this way in future, but it will work out.
Aug 11/13: don’t take flash pics of your plants unless you’re also immediately using a 730 nm light as a bloom booster. A bright light at that wavelength converts the hormone and allows the plant to go into dark mode two hours faster. Anyway, the red light cancels out the flash from the pics which is cool because buds look good in flash pics.
Aug 17: looking good and still growing fast.
Aug 20-ish defoliated understory to improve airflow and to direct plant’s energy to the upper bud sites. Plant growth has pulled scrog net from the bag, but I can’t be arsed to fix it further. Should be okay as is.
Aug 24: Cheese is doing fine.
Don’t take flash pics of photoperiods unless you’re immediately using a 730 nm far red light to put them into dark mode.
Aug 26: gave the plants another lazy compost tea. I was holding off for a couple weeks to avoid giving them too much N.
Aug 28: defoliated some inner branches that were crowding things.
Aug 31: Cheese is doing great. This pseudo-Scrog works well enough but I won’t do it this way again in future. Anyway this is a nice fast flowering strain and it’s progressing nicely.
Sep 2: flash pic taken right before using red light.
Water use is way down after last compost tea, and water is much slower to infiltrate the soil. This is a thing apparently and the trick is to not overwater. It’s also been much cooler so simple evapotranspiration was also way down. Now raining so I won’t have to water for a day or two.
Sep 8: Cheese is doing great. The manifold to 8 colas was good, and then tried LST to get more colas without another round of topping. Sorta worked, sorta didn’t. Ideal for me is either 8 or 16 colas in a manifold which means there’s no dealing with Scrog nets or ongoing LST.
Sep 9: nice and sunny forecast for next two weeks. Used last bit of Cal_Mag as all plants were starting to show a bit of calcium deficiency.
Sep 12: progressing nicely. This Fast Cheese is maybe just a bit slower flowering than the Gorilla Cookies, but still quite fast.
Sep 14: Cheese is doing great. She is definitely fast flowering and is starting to pack on some weight.
Sep 16: first fan leaves turning purple from the cool overnight temperatures. Light defoliation. Did a watering with some cal-mag.
Sep 17: The geese were pretty loud as they flew overhead in a great V formation. Applied a couple spoonfuls of Gaia Green Power Bloom for first time in about 15- 20 days maybe. We’re into the second half of flowering by now so no more molasses (stopped a week ago actually) and mostly just pHed water now.
Sep 19: this is a great strain and the buds are looking nice and fat. More sun in the forecast but getting some near zero overnight temps soon.
Sep 21: fall is here and Cheese is looking great with nice fat buds and great purple colouring. Couple or three more weeks ideally, but it will likely be forced by weather.
Sep 24: snow in forecast for late next week so it will be time to harvest soon. Likely four more days of good weather and they’ll it will be time.
Sep 28: close to done. Planning to harvest in two days. Removed some big upper fan leaves to get a bit more sun on the buds.
So 30: harvested 665 g of wet buds that was fresh frozen, and 80 g wet being hung dry. Total first round harvest of 745 g. Unlike the Gorilla Cookies from two days ago, Cheese here had several caterpillars for some reason. The plants were sprayed with BT once but it seems Cheese needed another one. Nothing too bad and no evidence of mould. Also the lower buds were not as ripe on this Cheese so I decided to leave it going on the plant rather than harvest all at once. Next two week forecast is much improved so I’ll try for a bit longer.
Oct 5: lower half of the Cheese is still going. Sunny and decent for next two weeks but cold overnight tonight and tomorrow.
Oct 6: wow the weather forecast is much improved and there is likely another two or three weeks available. Cheese won’t need that long.
Defoliated large fan leaves for sun on the buds. Purple leaves aren’t doing much beside looking pretty and shading the buds. At this stage the buds need UV light for the trichomes so also hoping for hours of midday sun over the next couple weeks. First round harvest that was hung was moved into jars this morning.
Oct 8: lower buds are looking nice and will likely be harvested soon. Summer like weather for the next week so I’ll let it go a bit longer.
Oct 9: harvested this evening. Rough trim and then fresh frozen to be made into hash later.
Nice big frosty buds on a robust fast flowering plant. Turned really dark purple in the final few weeks due to cold overnight temperatures. Great plant.
Nov 13: hash washing using fresh frozen plant material. Cheese was great and produced lots of trichomes. Good hash plant with probably almost four times the hash recovery percentage as the Bruce Banner (twice as much extract with half as much flower).
Extract looks perfect and will be freeze dried this week once the electrical outlet is upgraded. 👍👍
@musashi_miyamoto, it’s easy once you’ve tried it a few times. Proper stretchy florist tape is a very good way to secure it after supercropping. Somewhere on the blog at Lucky13 seeds there is a very good guide to it.
@Northern_Ent,
Im gonna have to super crop my Durbans - still need practice because I def broke a branch’s outside stem my last attempt (although she perked back up an hour later)
@musashi_miyamoto, I was thinking that too when I checked it this morning I always end up defoliating as it progresses, but she’s growing so fast I’ll likely supercrop and tape to separate the colas. Stems are too stout for LST now. Should have tied it back some a few days ago. Seems like a particularly robust plant even more so than the one I grew last year. Cheers.
Looks great 👀!!
Your cheese looks exactly like my Marathon OG. It has distinctly different looking buds and is the most cheesy smelling plant that I have had.
My marathon OG reeks like cheese, maybe my clone guy mislabeled. 🤷♂️🏼
Hope you’re finishing strong 💪
@Northern_Ent, man I understand what you’re going through. We had the wildfires here a few years back. Ash all over the plants. Ash everywhere. I was worried but I decided to wash my outdoor buds. I really liked the end product, so I always do it now. A lot of contaminants floating around here in LA. Luckily no wildfires around here so far this year.
I just wash and hang (or put on the drying rack) with a dehumidifier @55 + fan and I haven’t ever had any mold in the drying room. The buds dry right out after the wash.
@Todzilla, thanks. I grew this strain last year and it was a fave. This year’s plant produced nice big buds and I’m looking forward to trying it. Most of my harvest will be made into hash to avoid what is likely a bad smoke taint. I didn’t think the smoke would have been much of a problem but then I wiped off the patio table and saw how much black crap there was on it. It’s been a super bad fire year so to be expected I guess.
Nice wash, I seen you have the same machine as I do, its worth it to replace the stock hose with a smooth flexible one. Shit gets caught up in that stock corrugated plastic hose. I opened up the bottom, cut and took the hose off, cleaned off the glue they used, used some JB weld (for plastics) slid the new hose on and hose clamped it. Better than brand new. I also put a screw on cap on the end of the hose. Definitely worth doing. Happy growing!
@greenAF, thanks. Yeah, I’ve been meaning to do that since day one but haven’t got around to it yet. I’ve got about six months before I need it again so maybe it’ll get done this time. Cheers.
@yan402, thanks. I love making hash and this is the first try using fresh frozen. Recovery was good for Cheese and I’m excited to see how the cold curing will work out. Cheers.
Northern_Ent
