Monkey Grease (outdoor)

Welcome to one of our vegetation chambers. It is a 4x2x5 tent, with 435W of LED lights: 2x 150W quantum boards hanging overhead, a wall of 5x 15W bar lights providing side lighting, and 4x 15W bar lights providing under-canopy lighting and a trellis. We started this one a while ago, but it was nearly dead, in the first week from a heater frying our germination box. It was decided to let it go, and try to clean it up. This is the result after 10 weeks, with about 8 of those weeks sitting in a small 1L pot recovering. As will always be the case, we will be using our own soil blend, conforming to the practice of "just add tap water". With a cozy medium and a practiced technique, we will expect the best. Specifically sowed into the soil is: 1x Monkey Grease (feminized), from Kannabia Seed Company Parental lineage: Monkey Grease x White Widow More information on this cultivar can be found here: https://www.kannabia.com/en/feminized-cannabis-seeds/monkey-grease

Week 11 is down, wow. We removed the trellis early this week because it was causing too much heat for other plants, and not enough airflow for this plant. It stretched. A lot. This is okay though, because we will be taking cuttings very soon, tying her right back down. This mother plant will exist until the beginning of May, where it will be transferred outdoors at the start of Spring, to continue many more weeks of vegetation.

So much was done to this poor plant this week. It is a mother and 30-40% was lopped off late last week. It is growing back pretty quickly already, but you can definitely tell she has outgrown her pot and is finally slowing down. Perfect! We want her to remain the same size for another month or so, to get her ready for the big outdoor transplant to finish off the season! We'll be posting a diary on the cloning progress in the coming weeks. We want to make sure we have enough vigorously propagated clones for that diary's agenda, and we are still practicing (but we do have roots so far). More on that later.

This plant has been sitting in minimum viable photon position for 3 weeks, just to keep her photosynthesizing without increasing biomass. She has 4x15W leds 5" above her, in the cool, very high VPD lung room, but with a high increase in light duration to increase keep the DLI just right, with a dehumidifier going for the tents. Surprisingly, all of her leaves look green and she's just hanging in there. We will be certain not to defoliate anything during this time, just letting her be. She has remained roughly the same shape for this 3 weeks. We will transplant her outdoor in approximately 1 more month.

Hey there, so we got high af and made a terrible video of how she's doing on week 17 of veg. The first half of the video first takes a look at one of our other 3 cannabis gardens, the flower tent most mature, for a nice look at what we think is some nice looking bud so far.

Heya everyone! This was an exciting week! I defoliated a minor amount of lower outside leaves still leaving the jungle in the middle. I didn't really have a reason for it, other than obsession and a little bit of boredom. She liked it though, and began growing tall very fast. As you can see, we are much taller than before. This is also a very exciting day, as today was the first time she got to meet her daughter. Yes, we cloned her a month or 2 ago, and the clone was sitting in a small 1L pot under low light for over a month. She was rootbound of course. I transplanted her into a 4gal pot, and put her next to her mother today. Mother, meet daughter. Daughter, meet mother. How cute :) This was our first successful cloning attempt and she turned out wonderful just like her mom. In approximately 2-3 weeks, we will be transplanting both outdoors to finish at the end of the season. One more thing: Kannabia did it again. This strain grows itself. Imagine this: at nearly 19 weeks old, growing in a 5-gallon pot, under a mere 60W of cool white light (not full-spectrum), using our own soil and plain old water, and not a single leaf bottom or top, has any deficiencies, pests, or disease. This is a hardy plant - extremely resilient through veg with a good soil. Oh yes, and she is growing is my lung room which stays incredibly dry (like 40-50% RH), and 68-72F. This plant loves those conditions. Kinda cool if you ask me, as normally I keep a close eye on VPD and DLI, but to her, it's like she's receiving everything she needs and then some, without any work from me. I seriously recommend anyone to try growing some Monkey Grease from Kannabia if you ever had problems vegging out a plant for a long time. I mean, I would have at least expected to see 1 or 2 leaves die off by now. Nope!

Well, this plant was looking pretty sick last week, growing indoor under a mere 60W of total light output for 23 weeks. We defoliated a lot, transplanted her outdoors into the earth, and tied her down so that the wind would not damage her, as she had very thin and weak branching due to growing in a cool, open room without a fan for so long. She looks a little better now, after a week outdoors. It's still spring here, with 80-90F weather with about 16 hours of daylight, so she has a long time to go. Last week I foliar sprayed her with a home-made LAB (lactic acid bacteria) solution to try to protect her, and drenched it into the soil as well. This week we drenched her with a JMS (JADAM) solution we made from rice, salt, humic acid, and leaf mold soil.

We continued watering her with JMS this week (a Korean Natural Farming recipe). We also moved some branches around with our LST ties to break her open a little bit and try to get a more even canopy. I'm sick in bed today, so my SO took the pictures for once -- please excuse the shadows and feet :D When I first put her in the ground, nearly all of her leaves were yellow and crispy. She is definitely starting to perk up a bit now, and that makes me happy as well. Funny story: This was a mother growing for nearly 1/2 a year so far, and we took a clone, but that clone was root rotted and I decided to trash it -- by dumping it upside down out of its pot behind my tool shed. I went back there yesterday and noticed it is still growing with like 2 hours of direct sunlight per day. We'll see what comes of that. Side note: Next week she will be 26 weeks old, and will not even finish vegetating before the maximum allowance of weeks by GrowDiaries -- 30. I guess we'll just add a bunch of "Week 30"s to the list. I wonder what GrowDiaries was smoking when they coded this site. Such an arbitrary number...

Well, she is now half a year old. Her age is starting to show, with some old fan leaves turning yellow and falling off. We'll have to fortify the soil a bit with some calcium and iron and more organic inputs this coming week. Still though, she is hanging in there, and growing upwards with fresh new growth.

We fed her via a home-brewed lactic acid bacteria solution drench this week. We also did a lot of defoliation of dead or dying fan leaves. She only grew an inch this week, but she is starting to become more lively, with less fading leaves by the day.

This week was pretty rough for all of my gardens, indoor and outdoor. We had a heat wave in the triple digits (Fahrenheit) all week, with humidity, at times, over 90% outdoors. However, this plant seemed to not be phased by it. We still had some older leaves yellow and die off, but only as much as we have had since moving her outside weeks ago.

Week 29 of vegetation is complete. Her yellowing started to come back last week after a brutal heat wave. We performed some defoliation mid week. By the end of the week, she looks healthier than she has since she was indoor, several weeks ago, now with a vibrant green throughout her foliage, with no pest damage.

Well, we made it a whopping 30 weeks from seed for Monkey Grease! Also, this is the second week I didn't have to do any defoliation of old, dying leaves. She's pretty much on auto-pilot now. Days are getting shorter, and in about a month, she will start to flower! The only problem is GrowDiaries only allows 30 weeks, but I can repeat week 30 again. That arbitrary number doesn't make sense, nor does adding another week of the same timeframe. Weird site, but it is what it is. We'll now append a bunch of week 30's going forward until harvest!

Well, GD let me add a proper week number for this very old plant. That wasn't expected, cool! We are doing great, with lush green leaves still, and also slowly inching up -- now at 5ft tall. I didn't do anything to her again this week. No defoliation or anything. I like care-free plants! Now, when bloom comes, she is definitely going to need care, with strong support for her heavy branches. But, we'll cross that bridge soon enough!

She's growing like a champ. Just a few more weeks until flowers set. This plant is surprising me with how well it is doing, considering how long it was not doing well.

Monkey Grease is looking like a monster now at more than 33 weeks old. She's still on auto-pilot. I didn't do anything to her again this week, except measure her height. 64 inches. Not bad :)

Early this week, we noticed a slight bit of white powdery mildew on some of her lower leaves. This is the only occurence I've had this year on any of my outdoor plants, so we immediately brought out my fermented citrus/lactose solution, and sprayed her down. It helped quite a bit, but I wanted to be thorough, not only with regular treatments, but by also removing some un-needed foliage. We have just been letting her grow LITFA style since being placed outside, but I thought it best to lollipop her. We removed 20-25% of her foliage, and even some small branches on the lower half of her. We then took out her LST stakes, and spread her open a bit more for some added airflow, tying her down once again. We'll be keeping a close eye on the situation, and regularly spraying her down. Hopefully we'll be able to fix the problem. Powdery mildew outside can be really challenging, but my foliar IPM usually does the trick, and without the trichome damaging effects of sulfur, nor with a strong smell. Infact, this solution I make can even be applied on flowers with a 0-day REI/same-day harvest.

On day 5 of this week, she got hit by heavy winds from a nearby tornado. Two of her large branches snapped off. An additional one was split and is barely hanging on, sagging to the ground, and probably won't recover. I'll probably chop it off, and clean her structure up a bit. She isn't as much of a monster anymore, but maybe she'll produce bigger flowers as a result. We still have a couple weeks before I expect her to start blooming.

Welcome to the start of flowering. I didn't pay attention to any of my outdoor plants this week except to take pictures on the last day. Nearly all of them are flowering now.

I've been lazy for the last couple weeks, only getting out to check on my plants on the last day of the week, both weeks. I can't leave my bed most days, actually. It's hard for me to tend to my garden like I used to with some medical condition I have now, which is the whole reason I started trying to grow indoor 3 years ago. I hoped to be done with outdoor a couple years ago now. Not because of the work involved as much as the region I grow in, with a shorter warm period, lots of rain, and extreme humidity. It has always left me with a lot of pests and mold, despite treating with sulfur, organic pesticides/fungicides, and every other trick in the book. Every year, I plant a lot outdoors, in an attempt to harvest about 10-20% of it successfully. This year was a little different. I didn't really care if any plant survived, as I am more confident with my indoor growing ability now, having harvested enough to last me more than a year. So this year, I planted a fraction of what I normally do outside, and decided quite early on that I wasn't going to babysit them, and just let them grow as naturally as possible. This plant was originally a mother plant of some cuttings I took for an indoor grow. She was grown indoor for the first 3-4 months of her life, and then moved outside to make room, without needing to care for her any longer. She was sick when she went outside, being old for her age and under sub-optimal light, but she recovered and grew a lot in the sun. Except for about 3 weeks ago when a storm snapped off a few of her main branches, and she was pretty hurt. Then, the next week she started flowering. I don't think she liked that stress right before she was about to start to try reproducing, as this week, some of her leaves have started to turn a really pale yellow/white. I don't think it's much cause for alarm, and in fact, I still don't care if she makes it to the end. It would be nice for the sight and beauty of it all, but it's really no sweat off my back if she doesn't. That said, I am optimistic, as she has been resilient and bounced back from being sick a couple times already -- another one was from a slight case of powdery mildew, which I happily intervened to remedy about a month ago. That said, I think the recent storm damage to her will affect her overall yield and strength going forward, as the timing was pretty awful, happening just a couple days before flowers started forming. But she has been with me the longest of any plant this year (actually, I started her in December of last year), and has made it this far. It would be nice if she kept up her streak. I hope this phenotype finishes rather quickly, as in my region, the nights start to get pretty cool, towards the middle of September, and by late September/early October, it's pretty cold in the daytime even. That has been the downfall of many gardens of mine, and why I usually stick to fast finishers outdoors. We will just let nature run its course, and hope for the best.

This is a placeholder week. I didn't actually get any pictures this week, but I need to add week 38 manually in order to add week 39 next with such an old diary and this wonky diary system.

I lost her. She has really bad powdery white mildew, and is rapidly dying. I expect bud rot to show soon. I'm just going to let her grow in any case, but there's nothing I can do at this point since the weather is crap and my PWM treatment didn't last. Edit: After looking at her today and seeing how fast she is deteriorating, along with the mildew everywhere, I decided to chop her down for some kindling in the fire pit. You win some and you lose some. I started her in early December and it is now mid-September. Some annuals don't like this kind of torture. It is what it is.