Here we go again. This time I'm going to start the challenge with a focus on a Praying Giraffe and a Vietnam Black. The PG will be my main plant, the one I flip on the start date and hopefully follow through harvest. The VB is already under 11/13 in hopes that it will go into flower around the same time as everything else. The VB will likely take a week longer than hybrids to show flower and is a 100+ day plant so the challenge will be over before harvest.
The problem that I'm carrying into this challenge is a thrip infestation. I did the exact thing every grower tells every other grower not to do. I took in a clone from a friend who said it was clean, and, well now I have thrips. Yesterday I began a nematode and lacewing attack to clean out the little bastards. I'll be reapplying nematodes in a week and hopefully all the plants will be ok until the predator population reach sufficient size. I just couldn't help myself, the clone was for a really heavily orange scented and uniquely chunky phenotype of Dr. Grinspoon.
Updates and grow room details to follow.
Let's get some images up here to kick off this thing.
Here's the Praying Giraffe
Here's the Vietnam Black
And last, but not least, my backup, backup plant: Anslinger's Demise
I flipped this Vietnam black a few weeks early in hopes that I could follow it for most of the PTGC. After about 2.5 weeks she decided it's time to start showing who she is. I'm counting the flip days on the praying giraffe for the PTGC.
The praying giraffe I intended to journal is out. It showed sex as a male and is not something I plant to use for any breeding projects so it's out.
It looks like my war with the spider mites is headed in the right direction. Luckily my early, incorrect diagnosis of thrips hasn't hurt. I started with a heavy spray of Dr. Zymes every day for 6 days. Next I hit everything with 4 applications of beneficial nematodes, then 2 applications of persimilis. I had planned to use lacewings when I thought I was looking at thrips. Under the scope I can still find a stray spider mite, but the plants all have a large population of persimilis. There is still a little webbing and lots of old damage, but there doesn't appear to be and new damage in the past couple days. I'm not ready to declare victory, but things look good.
This is one of the biggest problems with the perpetual grow, IPM is complicated and I'm always dealing with all stages of flower.
The Vietnam black is looking good under the circumstances. You can see that the plant next to it is the favorite of the spider mites.
Anslinger's Demise is a polyhybrid (9lb Hammer x Amnesia Haze x Bruce Banner) from Kineo's Genetics. This will now be my main PTGC plant. I'm not sure how I did it, but I messed up the labels on these plants with some (Violeta x Honduras) x Congolese black. The plants should be easy to tell apart, but so far they're leaving me at a loss.
I'm pretty happy with the direction my war on the spider mites is heading. They're still there, but the persimilis are getting the edge on them and I'm hoping that things keep going in the right direction as I keep the parade of new plants marching through my perpetual. Here are a few images from the grow today. The following two images are the battle in action. The red/orange ones are the persimilis and the gray/tan ones are the spider mites. First is my keeper cut of My Sharona and second is my current favorite plant, a Luana crossed to Congo IX. Both got hit pretty hard and are key battlefronts in the war.
The Vietnam black below was pretty badly infested but seems to have bounced back.
This last image is an Anslinger's Demise that escaped the worst of the infestation and seems to be doing well
