Gardening with The Anarchist's: After Hours!

What's up my fellow Cannabis Lovers and Enthusiasts!? It's time again to welcome you all back to another edition of:

We had another good week here at "The Anarchist's Alcove", although, Plant 5 seemed to be doing pretty poorly at the end of the last edition, but we'll get to that in just a little bit! First off, I'd like to apologize for releasing this blog almost a week late!

The Special Update I made set me back a few days for Week 6, and after redesigning the text dividers and creating a banner for the blog, I lost another day updating my template before drafting out this week's update! But I sincerely hope you like them! 😊

But I digress, and as always, let's start with a little review of last week's highlights!

Week 6 Highlights!

We had a decent start to the week at "The Alcove", with all 6 Plants starting to do a little bit better after I started watering them later in the evening!

My hope with this was to help cool the soil in those little planters more, and help prevent the yellowing of the leaves, which seemed to work a little!

Midway through the week, Plant 5 and 6 both took a turn for the worst, with the bottom of the leaves starting to turn brown! Plant 5 also started to yellow more on the bottom leaves, as well as the tips of the top sets of leaves.

I was finally able to purchase some new buckets to use as planters, and two bags of Fox Farm Happy Frog Potting Soil to use for transplanting our little beauties! I was able to accomplish getting Plant 1 transplanted on Saturday, then the remaining 5 plants were transplanted on Sunday!

The only plant that has me a little worried is Plant 5, namely because of how small the root system was, and how stunted that made the plant in general! Hopefully this little one will make a comeback, but we will see by the end of the update on how it's looking!

With all of our plants now in larger buckets, I hope that our plants will have a chance to truly thrive in this new soil! But, I guess new soil and bigger buckets won't be much help if I don't learn anything from the grow!

So with that being said, let's move on to our…

Most Recent Learning Experiences!

I feel like I've learned a lot during this first grow, but the biggest learning curve I've experienced so far is with the soil inside the containers and watering schedule!

First off, I should have added something to the soil to allow for aeration; I'm not exactly sure what would have been a good choice, but I know that the soil from the garden proved too hard for the roots to grow efficiently!

Secondly, the substrate mix that I added during Week 2 proved to be a great addition for the roots, giving them a little bit more of an opportunity to reach their full potential! Although, the organic manure and fertilizer I mixed with it may have been too much for such an early stage in development!

As for the watering schedule, I feel like I watered them too much during the day, and since they were in those little milk jug planters, all I really did was cause more stress by heating up the soil more, rather than cooling them like I thought!

But, now that our plants have been moved into their new containers, I feel like a new chapter of challenges will start to present themselves, and along with that, all of the real learning will begin!

The first new set of challenges I'm faced with, especially because of this new soil, is exactly how much to water them, and when! I have also been considering getting a pH tester for our tap water, which is our main source of water for the plants!

I'm not exactly sure of the optimal pH balance to use for cannabis, but I'm sure with some research and with a little help from the Community, I'll figure it out rather quickly! 😊

Another new set of challenges were going to face is if and when we will be able to add nutrients or extra fertilizers into the schedule; and if we are able to, when do we start, and what do we start with!?

The last thing I've started to question is if and when I need to start trimming the leaves on the plants. Should I trim off the dead ones, or leave them there? What negative side effects could stem from those burned and dying leaves?

The answers to these questions can only come with time and more learning as a Cannabis Enthusiast and Grower, but those answers will also prove to be very valuable information for future grows once I do get a better system set in place! I just hope that my inexperience in growing won't negatively impact these plants!

But, with the review and our recent learning experiences out of the way, let's move on to the real reason why you stopped by!

The Week 7 Daily Breakdown!

Starting back up on Monday, July the 4th, all of the plants were looking good, and it definitely looked like they were doing a lot better in their new planters! I can't say that Plant 5 is totally making a comeback, but some of the leaves up too have started to turn green again!

The new Happy Frog Potting Soil, which boasts of its water retentive properties, also seems to be very accurate! The top seemed to be drying out, but an inch under the topsoil was still decently moist, so I figured I wouldn't water them just yet, and see how things went!

_{Looking good so far! I only hope I can keep them healthy!}

Unfortunately, we had a heat index of 106°F on Tuesday, July the 5th, and I was really regretting my decision to not water the night before!

Plant 1 seemed to be the most affected, but I was so afraid of watering them in that extreme heat, and possibly hurting the plants further, that I waited until the evening! I'm really hoping that I didn't wait to long to give them the water they desperately needed!

_{The others don't seem to be nearly as affected, but Plant 1 started to lay over really bad!}

That heat followed us into Wednesday, July the 6th, but it wasn't nearly as hot as the day before! Plant 1 is definitely looking a lot better than yesterday as well, which is very exciting to say the least!

Also, I noticed that a lot of the leaves have started to turn brown, and are looking like they are burning! I'm thinking that they may be exposed to too much direct sunlight? Or possibly the sun reflecting from the inside of the bucket? Either way, I will continue to monitor and see how it goes!

_{You can see here that the leaves are starting to burn up on the ends.}

After two days of blistering heat, we finally got a break on Thursday, July the 7th, when it rained off and on from the early morning until late in the afternoon!

Besides the dark burn marks that have appeared from the heat, all the plants seem to be doing really well! The drainage also seems to be working fine as well, because while the soil was wet, it wasn't muddy by any means!

_{The burnt leaves have gotten worse, and I hope that I can keep them from getting worse.}

Our drainage system in the new planters was really put to the test on Friday, July the 8th, when it rained very heavily and steadily from early morning until mid afternoon before clearing up for a few hours.

It stopped long enough for us to go grocery shopping and to purchase some Fox Farm Ocean Forest Potting Soil before it started raining pretty hard again until about 9 PM!

I have to assume that the drain holes that I added are working perfectly, because after how hard it rained, there were still no puddles present in the planters! :)

_{Hopefully, with this much needed rain, our plants will start to get better and thrive more in this new soil!}

We didn't get outside until about mid afternoon on Saturday, July the 9th, and I noticed that Plant 5 is not doing well at all! The top is still a little green, but everything is basically dying from the bottom up.

This leaves me to believe that the Miracle Grow Potting Soil mixture did, in fact, destroy the developing root system! This is a very tough lesson learned, and at this point, I'm not sure what to do for this dwindling plant!

Murty also started working again, so the kids and I had an eventful time playing around outside for the majority of the day!

_{Look at that change! In just a day, the plants have made a wonderful comeback! Plant 5 still isn't looking any better unfortunately.}

Finishing up on Sunday, July the 10th, I went out in the mid-afternoon to find that Plant 5 was almost completely dead except for the littlest growth of leaves on top. All of the other plants seem to have survived the transplant and are now thriving within the new Happy Frog Potting Soil, so that in itself is amazing progress to me!

_{All of our plants seem to be doing really well in their new environment, even though it's only been a week! Hopefully Plant 5 will start to do a little better!}

Plant 6 is starting to look better, and getting a little bit darker green on the top again! Also, I'm starting to notice little growths between the main stalks and the leaves on all plants; could these possibly be flowers in their beginning stages?

_{Plants 1, 2, and 3!}

_{Plants 4 and 6!}

_{I'm not exactly sure what these new growths are, but could they be flowers starting to form or possible plant sex indicators?}

Even though I did purchase more soil to fill up the planters fully, I wanted to wait to hear from our Community Soil Consultant (you know who you are 😉) before adding it to make sure it wouldn't hurt anything!

But unfortunately, that's where we'll end this one, and that little addition will be provided in the next Edition of "After Hours"! 😊

Thank you all for joining us on our journey, and I hope you all have a great weekend! Don't forget to tune-in next week for another Weekly Update! Stay Trippy, My Little Hippies! ✌️💚

---

• Pictures taken using my quickly-getting-slower Moto G Stylus!
• Image files compressed with Photo Compressor App for Android
• Signature created by @doze!
• Banner and Text Dividers made using Canva!
  (Side note @canna-curate, would I be able to use a weedcash logo in my Banner and dividers??)