Garden Maintenance

By Grammy Green

We're a few days away from September, and here in southern California the weather is warm and humid, and shows no sign of cooling down.  All of Grammy's plants have burst out in pistils, with the indicas ahead in the race to set nice fat buds.  

Two questions have come in to Grammy from neighbors who are first time growers, and we do our best to help them out.  First is the unfortunate appearance of caterpillars in the more mature buds up at Dev Green's house.  Just like the first time Grammy encountered their damage, Dev thought he had a case of bud rot.  But after some gentle probing of the affected buds, he was able to extract some inch-long caterpillars, likely from Cabbage moths.  Grammy doesn't like to spray anything on her plants, but if the caterpillars are out of control and you can't keep up by hand removal, a couple of organic choices for spraying are Azamax and spinosad.  And it doesn't hurt to spray your plants with water occasionally,  especially if you have spider mites anywhere in your garden.

The next question was about the fan leaves turning yellow and brown, and falling off.  That's normal!  As the plant devotes its energy to bud production, the larger leaves start dying off and can be safely, yet gently, removed.  If you remove them as they turn yellow, by the time harvest comes around you will have gotten all that out of the way, and in the duration the inner leaves and buds will have better airflow.

Since the crop has been perking along all summer without intervention, it's tempting to think you can just wait until harvest before doing any work.  But don't overlook the possible presence of pests, and now that the pistils are present, it's time to switch to a flower boosting fertilizer, like Dr. Earth Flower Girl Organic Bud & Bloom Fertilizer, with an N-P-K of 3-9-4.  Keep up the good work!