Auto Blueberry - Winter Organic Outdoor

It's time for another grow! I was going to wait until Spring before getting started again, but I've been keen to see how autos perform outdoors in a cooler month - with less light hours. I'm stoked to be trying out these Auto Blueberries from Dutch Passion. All 3 popped happily with no hassles. Once they sprouted, I moved them into jiffy pellets and under CFL lights at night, outdoors in the sun during the day. I don't have an indoor setup to complete a grow, so I'm just using the light in the beginning to help get them started before venturing outdoors. Daylight hours are dropping here, and it's getting colder, so I have no idea what to expect from this grow - but I guess we'll find out together! See you next week :)

This week I started to harden them off outside and transplanted into their final 30L pots by the end of the week. Roots were looking healthy and I inoculated the soil with some trichoderma fungi at 1mg/L and gave each plant 1 treatment of 1L. I'll apply this again in 4 weeks. Also applied bone meal in each plant hole. Getting decent-ish veg being winter and all, so lets see how these go. Hopefully get some volume before pre-flowering starts! Peace, fellow growers✌️🌱

Started feeding this week, with 5ml/L of fish emulsions. They seem to be vegging rather nicely, considering it's winter. I was worried they might get stunted, but so far so good! What I like about the idea of growing autos outdoors this time of year, is that there shouldn't be too much pollen in the air from the wild males in the area. Cheers for now :)

These girls seem happy for the most part. I do feel that in spring and summer they would be growing much quicker. Having said that, I'm still impressed that in spite of the shorter daylight hours and cooler temperatures, they appear to be doing well outdoors. I'll keep you posted. Till next week :)

First sign of pistils this week, so I'm hoping for some nice growth during pre-flower. Touching the stems of this plant lets you realise that this strain will be big on flavour. Very keen to see how they turn out.! Cheers for now :)

They're definitely starting to push for growth now that flowering is beginning. They will be smaller plants than normal, but I'm just keen to try this strain out, so my expectations on yield aren't high. Keeping to a very simple feed of fish emulsion and molasses and will introduce whatever flowering nutes I have on hand next week.

There's a cold snap coming through and these girls don't seem to too fond of that. The leaves are warping and showing signs of deficiency but I think it's just the cold weather. 2 hailstorms almost ended this grow but fortunately the bags are light and easy to maneuver under cover. They aren't stretching as much as I hoped in pre-flower by this stage, but we'll see what happens. I appear to have a thrips or whitefly problem happening on the leaves as well. I'm spraying with an organic garlic based pesticide one every week/2 weeks but it doesn't seem to be holding them off for long. Cheers for now :)

These girls have had a cold week, and they started to look a bit sad at first - but they are picking themselves up! They're loving each bit of sun that they get and are starting to go wild with pistils. I reckon these are going to be some aromatic plants! 👌 Handling any part of the plants releases amazing smells... Not much else to comment this week. Still in lockdown, still growing ganja. It's interesting times here in South Africa, sale of alcohol and tobacco has been banned, visiting friends and family has been banned, among many other limitations on things we take for granted. Yet, amidst all of this prohibition, I'm legally allowed to grow and smoke my own weed, so I'm grateful for that! 🌱 Count your blessings folks, and be thankful for every good thing that comes your way. Peace ✌️

The girls are charging this week! Flowering is accelerating and the weather is starting to warm up a bit. Very happy with these genetics so far. Dutch Passion's seeds always seem to make the most of bad conditions. See you next week!

Hey fellow growers! A slightly warmer week has been well received by the girls. Still keeping to my simple (out-of-season, low budget) nutrient regime of fish emulsion, blackstrap molasses and bloom nutrients, but starting to cut back on the fish as flowering progresses. They don't seem to be needing for much, other than sun and warmth! The whiteflies (if that's what they are) don't seem to be causing much harm other than the appearance of the leaves. I'm laying off the organic insecticide for now, in the past I've seen something as gentle as garlic product, shrivel up the pistils and cause flowering stress - so I'm just going to leave them for now. I've started a mess-around, extreme training, photoperiod grow from one of my auto daiquiri limes from last season, it's going well! See you all next week :)

Just as I was about to celebrate the fact that I've had zero powdery mildew on these plants, it started this week :( It doesn't seem to matter what time of the year I grow, I always seem to have trouble fighting this. Real pain in the ass! But, on the flipside - I'm trying a previous product again to see what results I get. It's an organic fungicide by Margaret Roberts (South Africa) and its based on ascorbic acid or vitamin C. So I'm normally quite afraid to spray anything onto my buds in flower, but when it comes to any kind of mildew or rot, you'd rather risk it than lose your crop, right? I've tried all the home remedies in the past- bicarbonate of soda, dish soap, types of oil, milk, h202, etc and nothing has really done the trick. In fact, a lot of those remedies caused shriveled up pistils and stressed the plants out. In veg, sure - you can spray the crap out of your plants and hope for the best, but when they're flowering you have to be more careful. Here's a link to the product if you'd like to read more about it: http://www.kirchhoffs.co.za/product/kirchhoffs-margaret-roberts-organic-fungicide-reg-no-l7422-act3647/ It also seems to be good for botrytis and damping off - so this is good stuff to have around in organic grows! After some reading, I found an interesting article by Ed Rosenthal: https://www.edrosenthal.com/the-guru-of-ganja-blog/how-to-maximize-your-cannabis-harvest-finishing So, apparently ascorbic acid is a great finishing ingredient for cannabis? Okay so I might be on to something here! I sprayed the plants inside and out, covering everything with the organic fungicide, and the pistils couldn't care less! The plants seem happy and the powdery mildew hasn't carried on spreading. The instructions do read that the appearance of the mold doesn't disappear, but the infection will be under control. I'm thinking so far so good! In none of my previous have I ever come accross 1) ascorbic acid as a solution to PM and 2) ascorbic acid as a great finishing nutrient for flowering cannabis - so this may need validation from the fine folk out there, but this could be great way to treat powdery mildew in late flower - while simultaneously giving your plants something great for finishing. I'll let you all know how it goes, and hopefully this saves someone's grow out there! In other news, one of my 3 scotch bonnet pepper plants I'm growing turned out to be poisonous night shade - doh! Peace ✌️🌱

Trying to keep the powdery mildew contained, gave another spray of the ascorbic acid based organic fungicide, it definitely needs to be re-applied weekly. Lowered my fish emulsions further as we reach the finish line. The 3 phenotypes are quite different from each other. One is budding as expected, the other 2 are a bit odd - very stretched out leafy buds, going to be a nightmare to trim and have zero bag appeal. But, they're loaded with trichomes which is what I'm farming for at the end of the day I guess. Can always make some bubble... Peace, fellow growers!

Gave the girls their last feed on feeding day. Did some defoliation to help keep the mildew off and gave a final spray of organic fungicide. Getting some strange growth on the buds on all 3. It's as if they are re-vegging, which as far as I know is impossible with autos - but check out the buds - there's something funky happening there. Oh well, I think I'll harvest these next week in any case, getting tired of fighting the powdery mildew and they are in general looking like it's the home stretch. The garden is smelling good! Major smells coming from these :) Catch you all next week!

We've come to the end of the journey! Harvested this week, so my next diary will be the harvest. I'll wait for drying to finish and I'll post up my final harvest week. These are smelling SO good right now, I can see how they get their name, the blueberry smell is quite notable! The trichomes are are cloudy, not much amber. I could wait another week but I'm still battling powdery mildew and even though the pistils don't look ready, it's as if they will keep putting new ones out indefinitely - very odd re-veg/foxtail looking buds on 2 of the plants - but overall I'm impressed that these even grew during winter. I'm starting to plan my spring/summer grow and I have a great lineup of genetics to test. See you all at harvest time :)

I wasn't going to do a winter grow, but I couldn't help myself and was super keen to try this strain. As an experiment, I'd say it was a success, even though the yield was light. They definitely seemed to struggle a bit along the way with cold weather and short daylight hours, but they were strong genetics and pushed through. I did battle with powdery mildew, but I seem to have that with most strains based on my climate. Overall, I think I'll give winter growing another shot next year, the yield and quality isn't what you'd get in optimal conditions, but this is a lovely contribution to the stash jars. One plant had nice thick buds, one was average and one was larfy as hell - but will still make some nice hash or something. Catch you on the next grow!