ILGM Big Bud Outdoors

End of Week 1. Last Sunday I put 5 beans of Big Bud I got from from ILGM's High Yield Mix between two wet paper towels, and they popped in 36 hours. From there I transferred the seeds into 3" peat pots, and all 5 had their heads poking up and seed casing off by Thursday. Right now, I wake up at whatever time it is (time doesn't really exist right now, amirite?), usually as the sun is coming up, and move the plants outside. After sunset, I move the plants back inside. Once the plants reach 4" or so in height, I am going to plant them directly in the ground in my forest that you can see in the background. It's definitely not ideal light conditions, but there's nowhere else really safe for me to do it, and frankly I think plants grown outdoors in the forest will still get more light than a 600W HID. I may cut down a few trees to help there. I'll dig a 3' hole for each plant, fill it with a mix of 60% soil/20% perlite/20% worm castings, and then basically leave them alone. Maybe check them once a week or so for pests, top 'em a few times to get some branching. I've done this a few times with WW, and while maybe I'm not maximizing yield or whatever, I still pull pretty good harvests and the effort/gain ROI is pretty nice. I'm hoping to get ~150g/plant.

Week goes by trucking along...I started leaving them out at night, as it doesn't get below 45. On Wednesday we had a strong breeze that blew over one of the seedlings; I couldn't get her to stand up with toothpicks or anything, so I just re-potted her in a 3-gallon smart pot and used dirt to cover about 2/3 up her stem so she'd be stable. By Saturday morning she was popping off, happy and leaving the other girls behind; I figured I'd just give them all the same treatment. So this morning, started throwing in 3 fists of soil, 1 of perlite, 1 of worm castings, repeat until full, so roughly 60/20/20 soil/perlite/worm castings. Eventually they'll get too big for the 3 gallons pots and I'll pot them into the ground (or maybe just into 7 gallon pots and leave them on my deck). It's still cool in the mornings, so we get a nice cover of dew every morning - that tends to keep the girls watered enough give their size relative to the pot. Altogether an effortless grow so far. Clean country living!

Week 3 was pretty no drama, but since it's 2020 and everything has to be insane this year, on Wednesday I pulled my back so bad I could barely move, and then Thursday night we had a weird once-in-a-century May frost where the low was 31 degrees, so I had to bring the girls into the garage and then lug 'em out Friday morning with a bad back; no fun. And then last night the forecast said the overnight low would be 40F, so I left them outside, but it actually got down to 35 and we had frost. So the girls were pretty droopy this morning. I gave them each a gallon of water at 75 F to help them warm-up a little, we're already back to our usual warm temperatures, and they look much better. I'm guessing I'll be topping them around week 5 or 6. Sunwise, they're shaded from sunrise to about 10 AM, then they have direct sunlight from 10 - 7 PM before the sun is blocked by our western pines. Space is at a premium on the deck; I'm about to start 5 beans of blueberry autoflower so I have a crop between now and October when the big bud will be ready. So the tiny girl I've noted in the pictures will either be ready to top in two weeks, or I'll just plant her in the ground as is and que sera. Clean country living.

Week 4 was easy. Morning dew and evening showers are still doing most of the watering. Thursday afternoon though the girls were looking a bit dry, so I gave them each a gallon of water. That's literally all I've done all week. The growth between week 3 and week 4 is pretty dramatic; things have really picked up. I plan on topping and LST'ing the girls next Sunday. If the runt in the middle isn't tall enough by then, I'll go into my forest and dig about a 5 gallon hole, take some cut-up watermelon rind and coffee grounds and dump them in, fill that with my soil/perlite/worm castings mix, and then plop her in and check back in August or so. Space is too tight on the deck for slackers right now. Clean country living.

This was a rather dramatic week, although nothing to do with the plants. It rained everyday this week. Literally - every single day. So, the girls got plenty of water - here's where the smart pots really shine, keeping the soil from getting waterlogged. But it also meant the entire week was overcast - not a lot of sun. You can see the girls are getting kind of stretchy - about 1.5" between nodes. The stalks have gotten nice and thick from the wind (foreshadowing) - all of them are about as thick as a pencil right now, and growing thicker. So...about that wind...Friday evening, we got a tornado warning, and we had gusts up to 70 mph. Early, the biggest plant, was blown off the deck and took some damage. I pruned the damaged leaves, and since the top part of stalk was snapped, I just topped her below the break. So she looks kind of bare and small right now, but I think she's recovered well. I topped all of the other plants too except the run in the middle - topping the other plants means the run is now the same height as everyone else. She survives another week. I got a free sample of Happy Frogs Seafood for Acid Loving Plants, so I gave each of the girls 1 tbs as top dressing, and sort of scratched it into the surface. We'll see. Given the stretchiness of the plants, I'm revising my estimate downward - now I'm hoping for 100g/plant. That would get me 500g if all 5 come to harvest, which is probably 9 months supply for me. If I can get 50g each off the autoflower, I will be set for the year. Clean country living. With tornados.

This week it rained. And rained. And rained. And rained. And there were also riots and some other stuff that happened, but mostly it rained. It literally rained every day this week, and every night. My poor plants must feel so water-logged. On the other hand, this is where the smartpots really start putting in work. The plants really took off this week - what used to be a run is now a green tower of glory. You can see in the before pictures how big and leafy they were getting...but we want bushy. So, today I defoliated and tied down the girls. I'm attempting a couple techniques - we're letting Runt just grow; no topping, no training, nothing. What does this girl grow like wild with care. I took one plant we'll now call Manifold, and I...Manifolded her. The other three are kind of like a modified manifold - this worked for me with White Widows, which were a bit thinner. These girls though have thick, strong stems; not sure if this will help or not. Oh well, the joy of discovery. Hope everyone stays safe amidst the chaos and insanity. Not much of that over here - just clean, country living.

Last week, it rained all week. This week, it was just hot. It gets sticky in Dixie. Average temps this week were 90 F, with relative humidity 55%. After their haircuts last week, the girls continued bushing out, so this week we continued the grooming: I topped the traditional manifold girl and stripped her pretty bare below the top, and then did similar things with the three quadrifolds. Runt, the wildling, is now 24" and too big for my deck - it was time to find her a new home. So I found a spot at the edge of my forest, where I can see her from my deck - she'll get plenty of direct afternoon light, shaded morning light and she should have good balance between moisture from the forest and the soil I added to keep her feet dry. I dig a three foot hole, filled the bottom foot with compost and veggie clippings, and then repotted her directly into the ground. Unfortunately, she didn't have near the root ball I was expecting, and I basically tore the bottom half of her roots transplanting her :( Poor girl, has a tough start to life, finally starts flourishing, and then I go screw it up for her. She's turned out to be a resilkient thing, I think she'll recover. The four girls remaining on the deck I'll keep tying down and keeping them low-ish until they get a better root structure - don't want that to happen again.

Wow. So, I've done these outdoor grows for a couple of years now, sticking to my primarily organic mode of growing mostly because it's cheap and convenient; the closest store of any kind to me is about twenty minutes away, a gas station. For me to go to a gardening store better than Lowe's is about an hour drive. SO I've kind of always done it this way, and there's one consistent theme: nature needs constant taming. I've fought powdery mildew, bugs, rabbits, deer, beaver, you name it. But I've never fought them all at once. This strain of big bud is not mildew resistant at all. I noticed a dusty white patch on one of the plants on Tuesday. I treat powdery mildew with neem oil, but I was out of neem oil. So I put in an order of neem oil on Amazon; no big deal. Wednesday I notice the tips on almost all of my plants, both this grow and my corresponding blueberry autos, were browning. Nute burn seemed unlikely given my grow technique, but I have managed to make overly hot soil once or twice, so I decided to monitor it waiting for the neem oil to come (we don't get Prime out here). Thursday, the tip browning had spread and made itself obvious - magnesium deficiency. Awesome. Drive to Lowe's to pick up a sack of lime. Get home, and I notice two of my blueberry plants are showing beginning signs of spider mites. FFFFFFFFFFFFFF. I have spinosad, but I don't want to use it until the neem oil gets here. I'll just defoliate some of the bad leaves, and since the quadrifold plants were bushing out and needed their final tying to complete their crown, I'll just do that waiting for the neem to get here. And so I proceeded to snap a stem. Holla atcha boy. Neem oil arrived here Friday, I made a 4 gallon mixture of 5 ml/gallon neem oil + 2 oz spinosad/gallon, doused the leaves of all plants in both grows, making care to pay special attention to the undersides of the leaves, and then soaked the soil until water started dripping out of the pots. Now, I should clarify - that's the story of the girls on my deck. The girl I planted last week is thriving. She's 31" tall - she's gained 7" this week, and that's after having to repair all of the root damage I did when replanting her. She also has several beautiful little mushrooms growing all around her. I'd like to think there's some symbiosis going on there. Clean country living. Sometimes. EDIT: For those interested, the mushrooms are Coprinopsis lagopus.

Slow, uneventful week for the girls, with a big weekend. It rained a lot this week, so I didn't need to give them any water. This morning, I woke up at daybreak, grabbed my shovel, and started digging holes. I ended up planting all 5 plants now in their permanent homes, will they'll stay until they get chopped down sometime around Halloween I'm guessing. The girl formerly known as 'Runt', who I just let grow untouched since she was so small, and who I planted ~2 weeks ago, is now 42" tall - she grew 11" this week! The three quadrifold plants are planted about 3 yards apart in a line so I can see them from the deck. The classical manifold girl I planets among some nettles. This was quite a workout! The one thing about digging holes in the forest...there's roots. Lot's of em. And I bought these new 3 pots that I am not fans of - they're tall and narrow. I never re-use the fabric pots, so next season I will buy pots that are lower and wider. When I plant the girls, I dig a hole ~2 feet deep that can hold ~15 gallons. I put a gallon of compost from my bin at the bottom, then whatever relevant kitchen cuttings I have handy: apple peels, coffee grounds, egg-shells, whatevs, and throw that in. Than I cover it with a layer of soil, put the plant in, and then fill in the space around with Foxfarms Ocean Forest soil. Finished up around 9:30, and treated myself to a glass of cold white wine and a bowl from last season's white widow. Clean country living.

Pretty easy week here. The girls seem to like their new homes in the forest, although Runt, the monster - who is now 52.5" high, having grown 10.5" over the course of a week! - was showing sign of magnesium deficiency, so I gave all the girls some Cal-Mag. Otherwise, they're all doing pretty good. But let's talk about Runt. She grew 11" last week to 42" high, and another 10.5" this week; she's really big. Her top has a ton going on, and it's rained a bunch this week (didn't have to water the girls at all, except a 1/2 gallon each today so they could get their CalMag and insect-prevention treatment. She's got a huge, thick stem - at the bottom her stem is as thick as my thumb. However, she still started leaning over, so I tied her to a bamboo stake to ensure she stays upright. That leads to the next issue...she's REALLY tall, and by my estimate, she's got another three weeks or so of stretch. At ~10" a week. Let's say she starts to slow down - 8" next week, 6" the week after that, 4" after that, and then she goes into flower. She would 70.5" inches tall, or ~170 cm. I'm guessing she'll add another 12" worth of flower or so? We're talking about a plant that is potentially 7 feet tall. I did not expect to grow a 7' tall plant. I do not think a 7' tall plant blends in. I may chop her down...I'm scared. Clean, probably too clean, terrifying country living.

For the Big Bug plants, things just seem to be humming along. These girls are really thirsty, I'm having to give them Cal-Mag twice a week. Being in the forest instead of the deck means they've got a lot more pests to deal with, so I hit them with the neem oil pretty heavy as well. All the plants seem to be growing and stretching pretty intensely, with the exception of the traditional manifold, which seems to be growing evenly. Runt grew 10 inches again this week. Runt is now 62" tall. I think I might have seen pistils, so this might be the last week of veg, which would mean Runt should top out below 8 feet. But if she has another 10" week, I think I'm looking at an 8, 9 foot tall plant. I have never grown an 8-to-9 foot plant. I am torn between my wonder at an 8-to-9 foot plant and what type of yield I would get from that, and the obvious fact that a plant that is 8-to-9 feet tall isn't exactly the most inconspicuous thing in the world. Clean Terrifying Country Living!

Finally, week 1 of flower! That is a big relief, because Runt was getting out of hand. I had told myself if she gets taller than me before flower, I would cut her down. She came real close. All 5 big bud plants are in flower, although Runt hit it first. Given the pH issues we experience with the water from our well, I bought two new soil testers, and I used them both at each site to compare the readings; I'm believing the 6.9 number. This means I am going to need to be giving them apple cider pretty regularly to keep acidifying the soil as the groundwater is very alkaline. Now that I am highly soil pH conscious, I think I can prevent what happened to the blueberries. These plants are largely just killing it. Give them their acidification once a week and let them do their thing. You'd think insects would be more of a problem, but this forest is very primordial; almost more a bog, really. Dragonflies the size of your head buzzing around, frogs everywhere...an infestation is just a frog restaurant, you know? A little spinosad to kill things like aphids, thrips, and leafhoppers. The forest down most of the rest. Clean, Ancient Country Living.

The Big Buds are doing much better than the Blueberry Autos, because they get most of their water via rainfall. I added a half-gallon each of a molasses mix to help with carbs during flower, and sprayed them with spinosad and neem oil to help with insect and bug control. Otherwise, these girls are just cruising. Runt is a mighty 70" tall at this point, and her main cola has a lot going on. I think it's reasonable to expect 3 - 4 oz per smaller plant, with 4 - 6 oz from Runt. If I can pull a full pound out of this grow, that would be awesome, and make up for what seems like an underwhelming BlueBerry Auto grow.

The Big Bud girls right now are on cruise control. We got lots of rain this week, I've got the pH issues dialed in, and there's nothing but green, healthy plants. Runt is now 72" tall, and has a main cola the size of my forearm. The manifold plants are also all doing really well. I'm thinking I could pull a QP (4 oz) from the four manifold plants, and 6 - 8 oz from Runt. That would be a heck of a harvest! This is the first week you can really smell the girls from a few feet away. There's wild jasmine, honeysuckle and lavender in our forest which smell amazing when mixed in with the Big Bud's citrusy/pine smell. I suspect a harvest in early-to-mid October. I've never grown Big Bud before - I was almost exclusively white widow for a few seasons because I had a great mother plant - but I'm pretty happy with this strain. Where the BlueBerry was fickle, inconsistent, and sensitive to...well, anything really - these girls are classic "They grow like weeds". Clean, on-autopilot country living.

Pretty wet week. We got a lot of rain, and my girls aren't thrilled about it. We have clay soil here, so it holds water for awhile. Although I dug a hole and filled it with my medium, eventually those roots break through into the clay, and I think they're water-logged. Lots of leaves yellowing, lots of fading. I defoliated the yellow dying leaves, so many plants now have "holes" in them. The budsites still continue to produce, though. Runt in particular is developing a main cola that will be pretty impressive - I bet it's the size of my forearm come harvest time. Clean, wet, country living.

Last week I started to notice leaves were yellowing at the bottom, kind of fading out. I buried them with a lot of compost, so I thought they would be fine, but as this week progressed the yellowing of the leaves started creeping up the plant. So, this morning I got out with my hand cultivator (little three-pronged claw thingy) and dug down about two inches all around the plants' canopies, trying to stay away from the stem, and sprinkled about 10 tablespoons of worm compost. I have a worm bin, so worm compost is available to me 100% of the time, plus I know what's in it. When I dug around the plants, I saw plenty of worms there too, and although my natural soil is clay, the areas around the plants were rich earth not only because of what I've buried them with, but because those areas of the forest are getting attention. I'm guessing we're ~10 weeks away from harvest, and the bud sites on these girls are looking nice. The plants are starting to smell pretty strong - it's a strange smell, like a skunk and grapefruit rind. The smell hits you pretty quickly once you walk into the firest - thankfully skunks are very common around here, so it's nothing out of the ordinary to smell them. Clean, dank country living.

This week was a good week for the girls. All their leaves are back to being a dark, healthy green, so it looks like I successfully addressed the nitrogen deficiency with last week's compost top dressing. I will probably do that every couple of weeks until the last month or so, which I expect to be around mid-October. The smallest girl is the traditional manifold, at 44" tall. The others are 47", 51", and 53", with the exception of the christmas tree, "Runt". Runt is 6'6" tall, or 78" if you don't want to do math (198 cm for the intelligent world that uses the metric system, f*****& America). Runt's main cola is...it's ridiculous. It's about 14" long, and the buds are already nice and thick. Her lower buds are all the size of bic lighters - and I think I've still got 8 weeks or so to go. If I harvested the girls now, other than being crummy bud for being harvest too early, weight-wise I bet I would pull 6 oz dry already. I think Runt might put out 300g by herself. I just couldn't be happier with how these girls are growing compared to that crappy autoflower blueberry grow (the bud from that is 'meh' at best). These girls are much more akin to my WW grows over the last couple of seasons. And LORD do these girls stink! Every one smells like an overripe dead skunk. LORD do they stink. Other than giving each girl a gallon of molasses tea and a pre-emptive mold/pest spray on Wednesday, I haven't done anything. It's rained pretty much every day, so I'm sure they're a bit water-logged. The rain is making sure the nutrients from the compost make it to the roots though, as shown by their vigorous growth this week. I suspect I will do a final intense defoliation this coming week to make sure all bud sites are getting direct sunlight, and then just cruise-control until harvest. Clean, no drama country living.

This week we broke the record for rain in August, and it's only the 23rd. We received 19" of rain this week cumulatively, adding to an already soggy month. This causes a raft of issues: * humidity obviously attracts bud rot, powdery mildew, and other nasty funguseseses. * My clay soil already holds a lot of water and doesn't drain well, meaning roots are soggier than they like even in the best of times. * The compost I scratched in a few weeks ago to address a N and/or P deficiency has been washed away. Three of my girls are kind of struggling at the moment - Ironically, all three quadrifolds. Runt The Uncut and the traditional manifold seem to be doing fine. I think the traditional manifold is doing well because she's planted amongst stinging nettle and red clover, which kind of naturally keeps the soil in a good NPK ratio. I can't explain Runt The Uncut, but she is the most amazing plant I have ever grow. Her trichs are like 95% clear right now, so still a long way to go, but her buds are thick, dense, sticky, stinky, and frosty, and there's a LOT of them. Her main cola is **huge**, both in length and girth (ladies...) and she is 6' 8" tall at the moment and ~4.5 feet in diameter. There's nothing particularly different about her soil relative to the quadrifolds...she just refuses to allow anything to stop her from Becoming. She is Runt The Uncut, Runt The Unbowed, and she will not be stopped. So, with all the rain, this morning I just bowed and used some Tiger Bloom mixed in with the Spinosad and molasses. It's not growing naturally the way I would have preferred, but sometimes you just have to play the cards your dealt. Today is Aug 23rd, and my wife (who is a Certified Master Gardener in our state and knows these things) says that since our first frost is estimated to be between Oct 27 - Nov 3rd, she expects harvest to be right in there, a few days after the first frost. Then again, she only grows vegetables. But if the harvest is that first week in November, we have TEN more weeks to go. There's no way Runt's branches can stand up to 10 more weeks of bud development. I may need to begin thinking of how to suspend those branches, outdoors, in an inconspicuous fashion. 16 weeks of flower is...that's insane. Clean, Soggy, Mind-blowing Country Living.

This week was our first dry spell in quite awhile. I decided to just let the girls dry out, so I didn't provide any water all week...by yesterday evening, they were beginning to look a bit droopy and wilted. I'm ok with this - they're at the stage where a little bit of managed stress just keeps them pushing those flowers out. Runt, the almost 7 foot christmas tree, has such fat, dense buds. It's hard to capture her in photos, especially because to get her into the frame means you have to stand fairly far back because she's so big. But the little side buds underneath the main cola are very fat, and very dense. Squeezing them releases a pungent odor of skunk and citrus, and when you squeeze you really feel how dense and solid they are. I bet you each one of those buds gives me 7 - 10 g, and there ~15 of them. The main cola is also really developing, although it's not quite as fat as the lower buds...but it is thick and long. About 18" and about as wide around as a clenched fist, again very dense and pungent. I bet the main cola gives me 50g all by itself. The traditional manifold is also starting to fatten up nicely...nowhere near what Runt is doing, but she has 6 "main" colas due to the training that each are probably going to put out 20 - 30g, and smaller side buds that are fattening up nicely too. She really seems to like her home among the nettles; I'm going to grow this strain again, and when I do I will probably go deeper into the forest to find a bed of nettles, cut down some smaller trees to make sure they have enough light, and just let them grow. The nettles really keep the soil nute-packed. The other three plants, the quadrifolds, are still putting out new flowers, they haven't really begun the fattening process. They may end up being harvested later than Runt and the traditional manifold. Where runt is beginning to frost up and her pistils are beginning to curl and go orange, these plants still have stark white hairs and look like they may have another 8 - 10 weeks to go. I suspect Runt will be ready to harvest in the next 4 weeks, and the traditional manifold not too long after that. I'm really liking this strain - so much more enjoyable to grow than the Blueberry Autos. I'm just not into autos; too finicky, not enough time to really get them to do what you want them to do, not a lot of yield for the effort. Good things come to those who wait. Clean, Patient Country Living.

Runt was an amazing lady, a cast-away I threw into the forest because I didn't have time or space for her on the deck during the Spring. All she did was grow into a 7+ foot tall and push out an amazing yield of super sticky, super glittery, super-stanky buds. Runt is dead, long live Runt! I did a trichome check on Runt on Monday, and she was ~75% cloud, 25% cloudy. I checked her again, and she was about 25% amber and 75% cloudy - so it was time she comes down. I didn't take the wet weight, because as you can see I left her on long stems as part of the drying/curing process; any wet weight wouldn't have any bearing on the actual dry yield. I will let her hang for a week, and then paper-bag cure her for another week, then I'll throw her into some 2-gallon jars with Boveda 62% packs. I generally get ~2 oz of loosely-packed herb into a 2 gallon jar, and eyeballing things I'm guessing I'll need 4 jobs, so I'm eyeballing something between 6 and 8 oz off her. We'll see what it actually turns into once in a few weeks; I'll update dry totals as the girls come down, and then my 'Harvest' entry will be when all 5 plants have dry weights and a a smoke report. The other 4 girls are trucking along. The traditional manifold amongst the nettles in fattening up really nicely, and right now is about 75% clear, 25% cloudy trichs. I think she'll come next weekend. Quadrifold 3 is also starting her fattening process, with 90% clear trichs...she's probably two weeks away. Quadrifolds 1 & 2 are still developing, with Quad #1 still filled with larfy popcorn-style buds. She may be closer to a Halloween harvest, who knows. The trichs tell all. After being really disapointed with ILGM's autoflower blueberry strain, I'm really happy with this one. Assuming the smoke matches up with the sticky stank, this will be one of the best harvests I've ever had. Really happy. Clean, Stankonia Country Living.

Last week I harvested Runt per the diary; the next day I harvested the traditional manifold. Both plants were up hanging 3 days to dry, and then 5 days in a grocery paper bag to cure. The total yield of those two plants: Runt: 151g Manifold: 137 g. After the 5 days in the paper bag, they were seeming a bit too dry,. so I tossed them into jars with a Bovada 62% pack to finish curing. I haven't smoked any yet; I will have an initial smoke report next week. Family pic of the harvest shown; each girl managed to fill a not-too-tightly-packed 1/2 gallon jar, as well as at least 1 quart jar (run got about half a second quart jar). The smell is like a skunky peppery lemon smell, and really strong. When you unscrew the lid of a jar, the whole house instantly smells like skunky lemons. As for the other three girls, I'm kind of just letting them run right now. Their trichomes are about 80%/20% cloudy-amber...but they're packing new ones on every day, so that ratio is more or less being kept, and the flowers are starting to swell up. Quadrifold 3 is almost falling over because she can barely support the weight of her buds. She also has a resident - a jade lynx spider! The lynx spider is not threatening to humans, and she will keep this plant free of all nasties. She's also beautiful. As long as they keep packing on new trichomes faster than the old ones can amber, these girls can stay out there - at least until the branches start breaking under the weight of the flowers. They may be an October harvest, who knows? Clean, 8-legged country living.