It may seem that all our projects always work out like we hope they will, and everything is perfect. However, life just doesn’t work that way. Occasionally we just have to try to make the least bad choice, and hope it works out. Welcome to The Hippie Geeks! If you enjoy this video, be sure to subscribe and leave a comment below!
I have mentioned before that we grow our own medicinal cannabis, it works well for several different conditions, and is legal to grow and possess where we live. This is our second year growing, and while we didn’t have any major issues last year, this year has been truly horrific on the pest front. It started out with what folks like to call budworms, which are really a caterpillar that burrows into the buds and not only eats them, but their poop also creates a mold that can spread and is fairly bad for you. Then we discovered russet mites, which are so small that you cannot see them with the naked eye, but will decimate a crop. Last but not least, spider mites moved in which are a nightmare of their own.
All of these pests started on the left side of the garden, and were methodically working their way across the plants. Stopping them wasn’t an option at this point as we were solidly into the flowering phase so that excluded any kind of sprays, which brought us to some hard decisions. Three plants were getting hit the worst, one of them being our largest plant “The Ultimate”. The other two were a complete loss already and we chopped them down and got them out of the garden. However, The Ultimate was still five weeks away from harvest, and was already starting to show signs of heavy mite damage. We could leave it there, which as our largest and one of the best looking plants was tempting, or we could chop it down as well.
With five weeks to go though, the most likely outcome that we saw was the loss of the plant anyway, and the mites using it as a breeding ground to assault the remaining plants. We decided that the best course of action was to remove it as well, and that is what we did. While it is the right decision, it wasn’t the easiest one. Many of our friends urged us to leave it in and hope for the best, but we just didn’t see any good outcome from doing that. We put an enormous amount of energy, time and money into the garden, so that losing any of it is heartbreaking and the loss of the potential medical benefits were also crushing.
That was a couple of weeks ago, and we are now beginning to harvest the plants as they are ready. We made the right decision however, and while we are still losing entire branches to some of these issues, the decision to remove the worst plants coupled with introducing predator mites to the remaining plants seems like it will carry us thru. While this year’s harvest will come at a cost, there will still be a harvest due to the decisions we made. The decision didn’t just end with taking out the three worst plants, as we still have to be vigilant with the remaining plants and stay on top of the damage that is still occurring.
For any folks out there that also grow, how have pests been for you this year? We will be more proactive with predator mites and other natural preventative measures next year, but this year we really got caught off guard and paid the price.
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