Welcome!

My name is Apothecary and I have been a medical cannabis user from California for upwards of five years now. In 2004, I got fed up with making the cannabis dispensary sleazebags rich and bought my first round of gear to grow outdoor. A few thousand bucks later and countless hours taking clones, trimming, mixing nutes, pruning, suppercropping, singing to the girls and all the other fun stuff that goes into growing the good stuff has fostered a love of gardening. Cannabis in particular has grown from a hobby to a passion for me. This blog is my attempt to give something back to the cannabis community.

I have encountered many problems that can hound the indoor grower. I have learned by both researching and doing. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with anything that is unclear or you need some advice that isn’t covered in the blog. Bring your friends and let’s get a dialogue going!

First Orange Hairs

Orange hairs are a sign that the buds are starting to ripen. The resin glands are frosting up nicely and are really starting to swell. No more vertical growth at all.

Trichomes Developing

Here we see the flowers with early trichomes developing. These ladies still have about 40 days left to bulk, so I am feeding them a bit less and have added Cha-Ching to the res, to promote heavy buds.

We want lots of these

Fuzzy, dense nugs is what we are going for. This lil berry looks like a sweety.

Powdery Mildew

The bane of my existence, powdery mildew. I had one crop a few years back get infested with this stuff and got pretty ugly. When discovered on flowering plants, I spray wipes with a mix of Serenade and Neem oil and give infected leaves a rub down. The flowers hate to be sprayed, so this is pretty much the best option.

Prevention: Vaporize sulfur during veg. I really want a sulfur vaporizer because this stuff is such a pain to control. The sulfur vapor coats the leaves and makes it immune to a variety of diseases and fungi, including powdery mildew.

Another option is to use a ozone generator to sterilize the reproductive cells of the mildew. The downside of this technique is that ozone is harmful to human health, so you have to suck all of it out of you want to work with your plants. It also robs the flowers of their aroma.

For now, I stick with constant rub-downs to eradicate the mildew as best as I can. Please let me know if you have a better way to control PM.

Undercarriage

Here we see the grooming that has been done under the canopy. I am aiming to have all of the flowers in the sweet spot of the light from the tops to the level of the netting, and then clean and breathable under the net/canopy.

What net?

The netting here is completly covered. At this point, I clean out the lowest leaves and proto-flowers. They will not get enough light and will end up being shitty bud that attracts molds and pests.

No more holes

Canopy thickening up nicely.

Weaving the SCROG

Wrap stalks around netting if they are tall enough, or use velcro. Abuse the stalks a little bit to make them strong like bull. Break fibers in the stalks for thicker, healthier buds down the road.

Canopy with holes

Looking healthy, but still waiting for that canopy to fill in.