2021 Small greenhouse and garden grow

[Socksnsandals]

Another 8 days, greetings peeps.  Garden has exploded into life now the warm weather is here but the stunting effects of the preceding cold remain.

 

 

Top and R the two LJEs for moving round the garden.  The pallor of the top one is puzzling as she and her sister are the same strain, age, growing conditions.  Before starting the LJEs I had popped a spare old Stardawg seed which doesn't feature in the diary but is in the square pot, with the same coco and nutrients as the others, also stunted by the cold and in early flower.

 

 

 

LJE in soil.  Upper leaves have grown since transplantation and look a little over-nitrogen fed, so I suspect it is getting goodies from the soil as well as the soil-tailored nutrients and I'll switch to double dilution of the latter. 

 

 

LJE in the ground but in the same volume of coco as the square SD pot and fed with coco concentration of nutrients.  The Easy Sativa/skunk seedling in its pot.

 

S6 outside.  I topped it the day before the photo and am waiting for the side branches to take off when training can begin.  The disturbed soil has exploded with poppy seedlings.  As y'all probably know, poppy seeds can lie dormant for many decades and then burst into life when soil is disturbed, so you see loads of them on new roadside embankments.  Famously, they covered the WW1 battlefields because the soil had been churned up by shellfire, hence the use of the poppy as a symbol of that and subsequent conflicts we have been engaged in.

 

 

Larger LJE in the pot for moving round the garden.  As it was stunted I did not really need to top it but did so a couple of days ago, although it is in early flower so I doubt it will ever achieve the size of the one from last year pictured earlier in the thread.

 

Right, that's all for this week folks.  Hope you are enjoying your own growing and the welcome onset of warm and sunny weather.

[AutoAberdeen]

Definitely enjoying the warm and sunny weather here after the grim period that proceeded it. Doing wonders for my pepper and chilli plants which double as stealth for my proper stuff 

[Socksnsandals]

 

Greetings peeps.  Not much to add.  Earlier cold stunting means they are still small but the autos are well into preflower/early flower. 

 

From top left clockwise.  S6 topped and still growing upwards (a bit more than I'd like) but side shoots have not taken off that much yet.  The poppies and rocket seeds in the disturbed soil have!  Will let them carry on for now to provide cover. 

 

Top R: The two LJE sisters for moving around the garden and, above them, the ES/Skunk photo seedling.  I don't understand why the sisters are so different.  I thought that the smaller one might have had a couple of days of relative nitrogen deficiency at the seedling stage but gave her a little more to compensate.  Only other thing is that she might be in the remnants of last year's bag of coco, though that shouldn't make a difference.  Who knows; it does not matter and I've popped another auto seed to compensate.  As you can see I topped her sister and am using rubber bands between the branches and wires to cushion the point loads on the branches, especially when the wind blows.

 

Bottom L: Another LJE in coco in soil in the greenhouse.  Size is way behind what it should be (and what last year's ones were like at this stage). 

 

Bottom R: The larger garden LJE with rubber band / wire training.  

 

I've had quite a few aphids and blackfly on these which I have removed by gently rubbing them off and extracting those less accessible with a toothpick.  Today I noted a ladybird larva on one of my dahlias so moved it to the trained LJE.  If you've not seen them before, ladybird larvae look like some strange creature from Dune and are our friends, eating aphids.  I could post a link but if you're interested, Google "ladybird larvae".  You can buy them as biological controls but at this time of year there are usually quite a few around in the garden. 

 

See y'all next week. S&S

[Socksnsandals]

 

Greetings peeps,

 

Cold and wet here today but the plants have enjoyed the recent hot spell.  Now on day 65.

 

From top L clockwise:  The two LJE sisters, the one which seemed to have had an early setback from an unexplained deficiency to the right (and is the one in the lower left photo).  I topped all of them and the Stardawg (to the L of the LJEs) but have only really trained the healthier LJE with just a little lower branch training to the other two.  I have put my patent cardboard wedge (a rectangle with V shaped notches at each end) between the top two colitas and will increase the size and therefore spread as they grow.  Otherwise either wires or wires with rubber bands.  The ladybird larva I referred to was busy on its LJE and helped reduce the green and blackfly but has now disappeared, presumably metamorphosing into a ladybird somewhere.  I was busy brushing the green and blackfly off with fingers and a toothpick every morning as well.  There are at least two spiders living in the Stardawg; I am careful to leave them alone to do their work.  The only other pest is a fast moving grasshopper-like thing about 6mm long and 1-2mm diameter which I suspect causes nibbles in very young leaves when compact, leading to a pattern of holes as they grow.  My real fear in the hot weather is RSM but the current cool damp spell should reduce that risk.  

 

Top R, rather pathetic plants inside the GH.  Out of shot is the photoperiod Easy Sativa / Skunk seedling, now about 4" high with the 4th leaves appearing.  I will top it once they are established and you'll see more of her in coming months.

 

Bottom R, the S6 in the garden, rather difficult to see detail because of the poppies etc around it - which is deliberate as they disguise the characteristic leaf shape.  One set of neighbours can see that bit of garden from their upper floors though anyone in their garden looking over the wall cannot see it as there is screening from various innocent plants.  The S6 only really started to put on length in the side branches this week after topping a week or two earlier and has continued to increase in height so I have bent the top (to the L of photo) right over during the last couple of days.  I am experimenting with the curved plastic trainers so that I do not end up with a forest of training wires.  Because the trainers are bright white I am trying various disguises and you can see that some I have Sharpied black, some green but, drawing (geddit!) from camouflage principles, am now colouring them irregularly black and green which works best.   There is some compost in the bed, a little (couple of tsp) FBB mixed in the soil in the hole before planting and I am feeding with liquid tomato food at 2/3 strength once a week.  When it gets going in earnest I will train the topmost branches each at 90 degrees to the stem in opposite directions, the next lower two at about 60 degrees and the lower ones at 30 degrees to achieve a fan shape extending horizontally - well, that's the plan!

 

No other news of note in the garden except that everything is growing like mad, there is a plague of blackfly and the slugs and snails are out in force now we've had a bit of rain.

 

I am very busy and not looking at other threads on the site this year so sorry but no feedback from me on your (doubtless sterling) work. 

 

That's all for this week folks!  S&S

 

 

Edited June 18, 2021 by Socksnsandals

[Revive]

@Socksnsandals hey dude just had all catch up here.. looking good.. shame about the stunted girls.. cold start this season so no surprise if they went out a bit early.. good luck man 

[Socksnsandals]

 

 

Greetings peeps; the two LJE sisters continue to show a discrepancy in bulk with the lagging one at far left of pic.  The SDawg is at the right (untopped but lower branches trained).  Flowering is progressing well.  Still picking off blackfly but the ladybird larvae are doing a good job against greenfly.  Incidentally, I tried putting a ladybird larva on a blackfly-infested dahlia but the ants which shepherd the blackfly to milk them of the surplus sugary sap they secrete turned on the larva to defend their flock so I moved it to a less uncomfortable environment!

 

 

Here is the weedier LJE showing wires holding down the first internode branches and cardboard spreaders pushing the 2nd and 3rd pairs away from the stem.

 

 

Because we had poor weather over the w/e and at the beginning of the week I'd not been paying enough attention to the S6 and two issues arose.  Firstly, the stems were growing so fast that the plastic trainers were getting tight and digging into the bark so I removed them.  You can see where one was digging in a bit in the branch about 40% of the way up and 60% of the way across the photo.  Interestingly the branch within the trainer is slightly swollen.  Secondly, one of the apical (4th, just below the topping point) stems (adjacent to LHS of the photo) and one of the 3rd branch stems (upper R of photo) had become sufficiently rigid that when I tied down the growing tips they partially snapped. 

 

Seeing great recoveries from serious wind damage in some of the GG threads last year I bound up the wounds in, Blue Peter style, sticky backed plastic (you can see condensation under it where the fractures are).  Today, a couple of days later the 4th branch has recovered its turgor whilst the 3rd is still limp but I expect they will be OK.  I will remove the Sellotape soon to minimise the risk of mould in the wound.  I will have to be very careful training them until they form a strong repair but want to keep the plant low and if they don't make it, too bad, other branches will take over.

 

Not much else; the autos in the greenhouse are doing OK-ish albeit stunted by the poor early start to the season.  The ES/Skunk photo I topped above the 4th internode but it has really minuscule side branches at the lower ones so I am waiting to see if they develop.  If not, there is plenty of time to germinate another or a S6 to replace it.  

 

That's all for this week folks!

[Rustybiff]

All seems very familiar @Socksnsandals, it’s still feeling like it did in april/may today. Cold days and cold nights with not a lot of growth in between. Hoping for a kick when this heatwave arrives! Enjoying the diary, cheers 

[Crow River]

Sunshine and higher temps due from tomorrow supposedly. Fingers crossed!  

[Socksnsandals]

Greetings peeps, another week.  The plants in the greenhouse continue, rather small but in flower, the ES/Skunk photo which I topped above the 4th node and about which I was slightly worried last week because the branches beneath were tiny, only about 1mm long, is putting more energy into them now that the inhibitory drive from the removed apical shoots has gone, with the upper of those branches now about 7mm long so that's fine.  Will post photos in a few weeks when it is more interesting. 

 

Here are updates on the others. 

 

Above the Stardawg, upper portion in late flower, lower still blooming vigorously.  Occasionally picking off blackfly but the ladybird larva has been keeping the aphids under control.

 

 

The LJE which had an early setback (you can see that the older fan leaves are still pale whilst the younger growth is greener) has developed a much more open structure than her sister (below) and is blooming later. 

 

 

Her sister, denser and flowering more advanced.

 

 

The S6 continues to grow vigorously and the broken stems have recovered well.  The photo foreshortens the perspective but the plant is 50cm tall. I will try to train the side branches down to about 40cm.  It will stretch about 20-30cm in flower in the autumn but that should be manageable.  I am allowing the poppies to continue to provide cover and thinning them out so that they do not touch the S6, not that mould is likely to be a problem at this stage.  Because she became taller than I would like the bending of the tip has resulted in a spiral twisting of the main stem but previous experience shows that that doesn't matter.  I feed with 2-3 litres of half strength tomato food once a week and there is compost and a little FBB in the hole it was planted in.  Otherwise she is watered by rain alone.

 

 

The lesser break in one of the side branches has recovered.  The flaccid leaves distal to the break recovered in a couple of days and that branch is growing well.

 

 

The other break - this took a bit longer to recover and a couple of fan leaves just beyond the break have died.  When I started to train this shoot again it gaped a bit more, but despite only having about 25% of the circumference of the stem still bridging the break the growing tip is doing fine as you can see.  I removed the Sellotape bandages today because they were about to become too tight for the rapidly thickening stems.

 

The pictures of the breaks are there to show that one should not worry if these plants suffer injuries as they are very robust.  One needs to be more careful when they are in late flower as any injuries at that stage increase the risk of mould considerably.

 

That's all for now folks!

Edited June 30, 2021 by Socksnsandals
Gramma / speling

[Socksnsandals]

Greetings peeps and a belated update as I have been away. 

 

I was away for less than a week and had to leave the move-around-the-garden autos inside the greenhouse in my absence.  The humid weather means that relative humidity (rh) in the greenhouse hits 95% at night when the temperatures drop.  For a few days before going I had been bringing the plants in bud inside every evening.  The rh is only about 55% in the house.  I considered chopping the upper 2/3 prior to going away but decided not to because I did not want the house to reek of weed from the drying plants and a neighbour was coming in to feed a pet.  As I feared, there was some mould when I returned. 

 

I chopped the buds and used a food desiccator.  If you've not come across one of these it is a device with a stack of clear plastic meshwork trays through which a timed and temperature adjustable fan blows warm air.  They are usually used for drying fruit, tomato slices etc.  I separated the mould-free buds separated into nugs the size of a hazelnut and up to a max size of a cherry tomato.  I set the desiccator to 45 degrees and ran it overnight for 10 hours.  The product will not taste as good as it would slow air-dried and cured but I needed to get the humidity of the buds down rapidly to prevent any further mould.

 

A reminder that mould is a risk at any time of year when densely budded plants are in late flower and the rh rises.  Fortunately only a few buds were affected, not the sad wipeout the GG boys sometimes post in October.  Sorry to them and all of you that I have not time to look at all your own grow diaries this year. 

 

The SD at day 85

 

 

The more advanced LJE sister at day 85

 

 

Mould

 

 

Mould

 

 

Post-chop of those two with the LJE sister who was retarded early on and so is behind her sibling.  I will bring her in at night until she is ready.

 

 

The S6 continues to grow strongly as do the volunteer poppies around her.  She seems to have shrugged off the branch fractures.  When the rain stops I will remove some of the nearest poppies and train the side branches which have not had any attention for nearly a week.  I was surprised that the poppies are self seeded from some I grew last year from a packet and not the more usual red ones.  They seem to have plenty of vigour and are true to the phenotype of the F1s in last year's packet.

 

That's all for now folks!

[HullFeltMashematician]

Lovely little update socks  hope you had a nice time away!

 

Glad to hear you didn't lose too much of the crop to mould, like you say it's so heart-breaking to turn up to find whole plants decimated by botrytis early Oct at the GG plot. 

 

Must be lovely to be able to have a few out in the garden to nurture and admire as they grow. I got away with 1 in the garden last year and while it was a lovely experience it also felt very risky as I'm in very close proximity to the neighbours. I won't be doing it again until I have a more suitable garden in the future. 

 

Anyway, enjoy that early bit of bud!

 

All the best.

 

[Socksnsandals]

Greetings peeps.  Not much to report.

 

 

Bringing them in at night means no further mould on the LJE and SD which I part-chopped last week and the LJE which was behind her sister is budding nicely.  

 

 

The S6, as is always the case at this stage, looks a tangled mess as it struggles against me trying to make it into a horizontal plant.  I will wait to thin out the centre until the side branches which I'm training along the wires take off.  Have left the odd poppy to grow up through it for now as the flowers are nice, the whole place is buzzing with bees, they provide stealth and don't shade it much, plus there is no risk of mould at this stage. 

 

The ES/Skunk inside the greenhouse is rather elongated for a 4 node plant but is now growing side branches which I have started to train.  Will post pics when it is more interesting.  

 

@HullFeltMashematician thanks, yes, it is really nice to be able to grow in the garden - I'm not GGing this year nor again (unless I get busted and liable to unannounced visits from the police).  I am absolutely confident that my neighbours either side wouldn't grass me up but there is one set of neighbours I do not know and who overlook the S6 so I tend to train it early in the morning before they are up and ofc can tend the plants in pots at leisure.  There is an occasional waft of weed drifting about but atm the jasmine, sweet peas etc are all smelling great and we are close enough to the street that weed smells float around every so often anyway.  Last year the S6 in flower smelt more cheesy than weedy so that's not a problem.

 

I can fiddle with the ES/Skunk photo in the greenhouse to my heart's content!  Because mould will definitely be a risk in the greenhouse when it is in bud in the Autumn I am growing it at the far end and will make a wooden frame/polythene screen to wall off that 2 foot section from the rest.  Then I can put a dehumidifier in that bit which means that 1) I won't be using loads of electricity trying to dehumidify an entire greenhouse and 2) the warmth of the dehumidifier won't cause the roof vents (which are not in that section) to open, releasing all the dry air.  Because it is concealed I can let it grow to 6 foot tall and espalier training means that it can be confined to its 6x2' section.

 

That's all for this week folks!

 

 

Edited July 15, 2021 by Socksnsandals
Typo

[Socksnsandals]

Greetings peeps.  

 

 

The last part-harvested LJE.  Final chop today.

 

 

The one which got off to a poor start - doesn't look bad now.  Will chop all bar lowest buds today.

 

 

S6 looking a little tidier.  I've started to remove any side branchlets near the centre to encourage more radial growth.  Intense green a bit obvious against the now-silvery poppies but I've got salad leaves all around the further bits of the bed so they form a distraction.

 

 

This is the superskunk auto which really did nothing in the cold start to the season and which I thought would end up as a 6 inch runt but, weirdly it didn't go into preflower when the other autos did and has grown surprisingly well.  As I had the training wires for the photo going past it I couldn't resist spreading out the side branches a little but I'm not topping it. 

 

 

The ESxSkunk photo.  It is trying hard to resist training with a new technique for me, using rubber bands cut open as ties to provide less of a pressure point on the stems than wire loops.  Manipulating wiggly rubbery rubber bands difficult and intense if baked but super-engrossing which is the main point of the exercise!  The pepper to the R will have to be trained out of the way or sacrificed if it gets too big.

 

My concern in this sizzling weather (39 degrees in greenhouse yesterday) is red spider mite.  No sign of them yet but I should put in an order for predator mites.

 

That's all for this week folks!

Edited July 22, 2021 by Socksnsandals
Punctuation

[Socksnsandals]

Greetings peeps.  

 

Well, lesson learned.  When I checked after posting my last entry there was an established population of RSM on the ESxS and on a tomato plant in the greenhouse so I ordered predators.  Next year I will order preventative sachets as soon as the weather warms and full-on stormtrooper predators as soon as we get a forecast of a heatwave.

 

 

Dull day so poor photo.  The ESxS is not enjoying training although I am.  Snapped one stem completely (3rd internode to L) and out of curiosity I've wrapped the break in sticky backed plastic to see if it will rejoin.  Unlikely but I've been impressed at how the S6 can mend a severely snapped branch with only 10% of the branch bridging the gap.  Given how much space I have above it I may continue training the main side branches but allow alternate branches from them to grow vertically which will also inhibit lateral growth.  It is for fun, not yield as I've got sufficient from previous years and this year's autos which I moved around the garden. 

 

The pale debris on the leaves and on the peppers is the carrier matrix for the Phytoseiulus predators.  The RSM still outnumbers them considerably but the predators are scuttling about, going red and I even saw one giving birth to an egg, so I have faith that they will prevail.  RSM damage to plant seems to be limited.  The Super Skunk which had been a runt earlier has taken off so I've tied the top down to stop it getting too tall.  Oddly, it is only just beyond the ESxS in early pre-flower, making me wonder if some auto crosses can revert to a photo phenotype.  Next photo illustrates.

 

 

Here the SS top tied down showing how, at over 100 days, it is only in pre-flower.  Odd.  Not a big deal but it and the ESxS will start to need the same space if it continues growing much.  I will need to bend the SS around a bit to fit behind my proposed screen which will allow economic dehumidification of just a subsection of the greenhouse when it is in bud.  I hope the RSM will have been gobbled up by then because the predators like a relative humidity of 75%+ in order to breed well but if all goes to plan the dehumidifier should keep it drier than that to prevent bud rot.

 

 

S6.  Now standing out against the dry poppies but its odd shape and low habit provide some stealth.  I'm still training it as you can see and snipping off vertical branches.  I reckon it would have been 4 to 6 foot had I not tormented it on the rack.  Feeding with half-strength tomato food and it gets rain.  

 

That's all for this week folks!

[Socksnsandals]

Greetings peeps.

 

 

This looks more and more like an early flowering photo rather than an auto and, having tied down the top towards the camera I decided to partition off the distal 2 feet of the greenhouse ready for dehumidification once they start forming buds.  Because the plant needs to remain in that section and it won't stretch that much I have let it grow vertically again.

 

Red spider mite predators are scuttling about and seem to have got on top of the RSM before there was any significant damage to the plants.  Baby snails are a pain, more so on the S6 outside and there are leafhoppers but they don't seem to be doing much damage. 

 

 

 

Well, the ESxS (central in photo) which I was topping and training is now being allowed to grow vertically as there is more than enough room and it is into preflower.  S6 outside is showing no sign of flowering yet.

 

As the relative humidity in the greenhouse hits 95% every night as the temperature drops which would cause rot once the buds form, today I started to make a removable wood and polythene partition in order to wall-off the far 2 feet of the greenhouse where the weed is to allow that portion to be dehumidified when the plants develop buds. 

 

The type of dehumidifier I have has a belt covered with silica gel.  The gel absorbs (or, strictly, probably adsorbs) moisture from incoming cool damp air and that water is driven off the gel as the belt passes through a heated zone.  The water then condenses on a heat exchanger cooled by incoming air, dripping into a reservoir (or into tube which then drains it away).  The warm dry air is then expelled into the space to be dehumidified.  The warmth means that last year the auto vents in the roof and louvres in the walls of the greenhouse opened, allowing all the nice dry warm air to escape, and it it very inefficient and costly to try to dehumidify the whole greenhouse, especially as I have a soil floor.  Answer seems to be to partition off the weed-growing part and to disable the auto louvres which are in it.  There are no roof vents in that section.  The partition needs to be removeable during sunny days and for the majority of the plants' growth until buds form.  

 

I found that M4 panhead bolts (Screwfix [other suppliers are available] 8224J (40mm) or 3908J (30mm) and "large" (11mm diameter) washers 194FT with the appropriate M4 nuts 8398T) allow you to make cost-effective alternatives to the white plastic clips the greenhouse manufacturers sell to tie things to and, in my case, allows me to attach stripwood to the greenhouse frame.  There is one truncated triangular insert for the top portion with a central reinforcing strut and tomorrow I will make two rectangular partitions for the lower portion.  They will fit with sufficiently tight tolerances that no fixings should be needed and should be easily removeable.  Wood isn't treated but I hope it won't warp or rot in the short time it is needed each year.  Photo shows the frame and upper truncated triangular insert (without polythene atm).  The frame and partition could be moved to any one of the 2 foot sections if in future I want to use more of the greenhouse for weed. 

 

Sorry I forgot to photograph the S6 outside; will do so for the next update.  It is bigger and the older central leaves have baby snail damage, otherwise not much change. 

 

That's all for this week folks!

Edited August 16, 2021 by Socksnsandals
Punctuation and Screwfix part numbers