Hello again fellow Publish0x goers, and welcome back to my medical cannabis blog. Todays blog will mark the sixth installment of the series. Todays update we will go over some issues that needed to be addressed. There is also some excellent news about the Assorted Chocolates, both plants are doing great overall.

Now let's dig into it...

The canopy is filling out very nicely.

Pictured below you can see I mowed the cover crop down. I left the roots and clippings to mulch down, and help build the soil more. I saved the two best growing peas plants, and trained them up to the trellis for them to grab onto. I'm hoping they keep growing and produce some peas to eat. The wheat grass, hairy vetch will grow back again, and if not I can always spread more to grow.

So during this last week, everything was growing and doing well. Something happened though, and the humidity spiked above 80%. I knew the Goldust clone had powdery mildew at one point, so there was a chance of it returning. PM (Powdery Mildew) tends to be systemic, at least in my experience. Meaning the PM will be transferred to the clone whether or not it's present when the clone is taken. The jump in humidity was all the PM needed to start resurfacing. Pictured below is an example of powdery mildew on the Goldust. It's not bad now, but if left unchecked, will spread like wildfire. So if I tackle and maintain it early, it won't be an issue down the road.

My solution for the PM is spraying an organic rated (OMRI) fungicide and insecticide on the plants. My second issue I encountered this last week, was the bugs in the tent. Fungus gnats have reached the point of being a problem, because they started flying. This means they will start to eat foliage on plants that's higher up , rather than on just the ground where they could only reach in the beginning stages of their life. During and after spraying (for about 45 minutes) one needs to turn on the lights. The intensity of the light with the moisture on the leaves can end up burning the leaves. The moisture spots on the leaves create a magnifying glass effect which in turn creates hot spots that burn the leaves.

Below are pictures of some leaves with spots where some fungus gnats started feasting on the leaves.

Goldust: She seems to be having a small slump but still growing well. just not at 100%. If you look at the picture, you may be able to see some of the leaves have a slight warped to them. I think this is because she might be a little over watered, which can lead to slight decrease in growth. The PM starting on the plant might hinder some growth, but it would be miniscule to nothing at this stage. Usually it's when the whole plants is covered. This prevents the plant from photosynthesizing properly. 

Assorted Chocolates: I have had my fingers crossed that this plant would be female, and the universe must have heard me, because we have signs that Assorted Chocolates seed is a female! This is exciting, because I will be harvesting two plants for medicine. To be fair, I was going to let it run in the tent if it turned out to be a male. It has solid growth and structure and would be good for breeding. I thought crossing the two would probably produce a good hybrid. 

Female preflowers showing! This lets me know the plant is female!. To verify that she was in fact a female, I compared the pre flowers on the Goldust to the ones on this plant.

On a few final notes. I did prune up the plants a little bit. Some of the spots were over crowded, and I wanted to clear it out. It will help with airflow through the plants to help prevent potential spots for PM to grow. I also decided to flip the plants to flower today. That means I have changed the light schedule to 12/12, which is twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness. This is a typical light schedule to force the cannabis plants into flowering. 

That wraps up the sixth installment of this series. Though I had a few slight setbacks the week, the plants still seem to be growing strong and continue to persevere. I'm excited to have these plant going into flower and see how they develop. 

Peace, love, and understanding. Until next time Publish0x goers.

- The Nordic Buffadillo