Welcome back to the Big Buddha Cheese series! If you’ve been with us all the way, it’s been a fun but rough ride!
We started with 4 cuttings, only 1 survived, so to maximise the harvest we decided to try our first SCROG ever! on our first plan ever, a bunch of firsts ^^

As you can see, by now we’ve got one nice looking plant, developing a large number of branches.
At this point we really made a huge mistake, which we’re going to cover here so that you don’t make it with your screen of green!

Let’s get going, to recap in this article we’re going to cover:


SCROG: What nutrients to give your plant during the vegetative stage

Your plant is going need all the energy she can in order to take over this screen. Now its important to remind this, nutrients are not the source of energy for a plant, light is through photosynthesis, nutrients are only a supplement.
That said, the mix is pretty straight forward as always during the vegetative stage.
Here’s to mix we gave here so that you can adjust your own, as a reminder we also inputed the temperature and humidity levels:

Nutrient Amount
Nitrogen based 3/4ml for every 2L of water
Root booster 1.5 ml/2L the first weeks, after 0ml
Temperature Between 20°C and 26°C
Humidity Around 50%

Now remember with nutrients, it’s always better to go lower than over. If you notice Nitrogen deficiencies, just add a little more at your next watering, it’s always easier than dealing with nutrient burn


Ok, now you have you’re plant going on your screen, cool! but what to do? Do you just keep weaving indefinitely? Let her grow as much as she wants until your max is reached? sooo many question, we’re going to try to answer them all!

SCROG: What to do during the vegetative stage

While your Cannabis plant grows you’re going to need to guide her, make sure she doesn’t waste her energy.
On the pictures i’m going to share, you’ll see the example of… basically what not to do. This was our first run, I was thinking “Lets get as much branches, we’ll have a bunch of buds, yay!”, but really this is the worst thing possible.

Here’s what you want to do:

  1. Keep weaving the branches that you’ve dedicated to invading the screen.
    While doing so, identify the one’s you’re going to keep out of the one’s that are growing off of your main branches.
    Generally you’ll see 2 branches growing at each knot, I like to keep the top one out of both.
  2. Make sure there’s enough room between each branch you’ve chosen.
    I like to have one or two wholes of the screen of distance between each branch so that they have room to grow nice leaves to catch light, without making shade to their neighbour.
  3. Cut any branches that are not the one’s you’ve chosen.
  4. Cut any leafs that are too low, making shade to your branches or not generating any energy.
    Be careful when cutting top leaves, you want to leave some to the branch in question! She needs to make food too
  5.  Keep this process going during the whole vegetative stage

Cutting your branches and leafs in this manner will do 2 things.
The first, it will boost growth in the younger areas of the plant, that have more light exposure.
Secondly, the plant can focus its energy on a couple strong branches instead of spreading it out all over the place. This will give strong branches instead of many weak ones.
You’ll thank me for this when you have a couple nice huge buds instead of a bunch of shy one’s 😉

Now as promised, our free-growing scrog

plant weaved over the net and string pulling the branches


Weed plan growing all over the place due to uncontroled scrog


Cannabis Scrog during stretch stage


So full disclosure that last one is during the stretch. But you can see over her life she started growing soooo many branches, at that time I was all excited about it. But really, choose your branches, cut the rest.
For you guys to compare, check out our second run, this time we didn’t hesitate of cutting down what was needed. Look at the difference:


Stretch period of Blue Thai scrog


10 flowering buds on a scrog


Now you can see on this one that there are less individual branches than our Big Buddha cheese, but these buds are so much bigger than the final render is much bigger this way.

Appart from that look at the difference in size of those leafs!


Before we leave you, we wanted to make a last little part on defoliation and its importance.

The importance of defoliation

So defoliation is the action of cutting leafs and branches off your leafs.

As we’ve seen, when doing a screen of green this is crucial in order to contain and concentrate to growth of the plant. This doesn’t mean using other styles of indoor growing you should defoliate.
During the vegetative stage, you should always defoliate your plants, here are some quick advantages of doing so:

  • Your plant will grow faster
  • Your plant will grow newer leafs higher up the stem, thus have better access to the light source
  • A few dense buds are better than a bunch of buds with hardly no flowers on them
  • Your plant will look nicer


Alright that’s it for this one! next time we’ll go over the stretch of this strain, soon you’ll get to see her flowers 😉

Until then, be safe and grow easy

Hi there and welcome (back) to our weekly grow reports!
After just one small chill week the BBC started acting up again.. This time it’s calcium deficiency.. this really closes the matter for me, the soil is dead and we need to let it rest. Too add to this thrips are back and attacking the healthy plants & leaves :'(
The only positive point to this is that we got some pretty cool pics of them but really they’re killing me.. Let’s get into it


Trichome and Flower growth

We decided to go ahead and start with the good news, the awesome trichome and bud growth, even with all these deficiencies 🙂
FIY: click on the image to see the full view

Mid way through flowering stage the buds are nice and full of trichomes

Bud and leaves full of trichomes


Close up on trichomes growing on marijuana flower

Close up on trichomes growing on pistils


Leaf covered in trichomes starting to be milky

Close up on trichomes growing on pistils

As you can see, 6 weeks into the flowering stage the plant has nicely developed flowers and the trichomes of nicely formed and some have started turning milky 🙂

This means that cannabinoid production has started, especially THC hehe; now we’re no where near close to harvest, there at least 3 weeks left for the Big Buddha Cheese plants and most likely a little more for the Cheese, Blue Thai and Blue Kush.

Within 2 weeks we’ll start flushing the Big Buddha Cheese so that in about 3/4 weeks we’ll be good to harvest her hehe


The return of the Thrips

Thrips, thrips, thriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiips, I’ve been infested with these suckers for now about 4 months, we thought we had dealt with them during the first month of this grow but they’ve returned for the past 2 weeks or so, and they’re busting my b***s to be fully honest.

We changed around the fans to that the back of the room is windy so that hopefully they stay on the plants at the entrance of the room. Along with this we spend a little time every day spotting and killing them manually (I must say we’ve gotten pretty damn good at it), but every day there’s still some larvae’s and adults..

We’re killing at least 10 larvae’s a day and a couple adults. We haven’t been able to get a picture of an adult thrips since they’re much, much quicker and at a certain point start to be able to fly also, and between a picture of killing it… well we’re killing those suckers ^^

4 thrips larvae's moving on marijuana leaf

Thrips larvae’s moving on leaf


3 thrips feeding on marijuana leaf

Larvae’s feeding on leaf


Adult thrip close up and dead

Dead adult thrip (really hard to get a good pic of a live one)

We’ve got a sticky trap in there but it doesn’t seem to be very effective, even on the adults. We can’t use neem oil or spinosad since we’ve got flowers.. Even hesitating on black soap..
We’ve been spraying the plants at night with some water to bother them as much as possible and pruning the most impacted leaves as the one above but it’s not enough to eradicate them..

Tip: Don’t re-use your soil after being infested with Thrips!!!


Calcium Deficiency

Now that we were in the clear with the Phosphorus and Potassium deficiency it’s time for a strong case of Calcium Deficiency.
This one really snuck up on us, we’d never been confronted to it and when you have good soil it’s not something that you should be seeing.
In our case, as we’ve said in last weeks post, some of this soil have been re-used 3 times already, meaning that it’s all our of micro-nutrients.
After this grow we’re going to replace all the soil and plant some nurturing plants in it so that it can recover.

first signs of calcium deficiency

First Signs of Calcium Deficiency


leaf basically dead due to the calcium being extracted

Severely affected leaf 


massive foliage loss

Calcium deficiency severely attacking the Big Buddha Cheese

As you can see in that last image this went pretty quick. The first signs on clean leaves started showing up at the end of last week and it went so fast.
As an emergency we sprayed the plants foliage with a Calcium enriched solution and in this weeks watering. Hopefully she’ll recover quickly but since Calcium is an immobile nutrient it’ll take about a week for it to get from the soil to the foliage.


Alright folks that’s it for this one!
Before we leave you here’s a coupe pictures of the plants this week 🙂


Super cropped cheese strain flowering

Super Cropped Cheese plant growing nice flowers


Bottom part of blue thai flowering

Bottom section of Blue Thai developing beds


Big Buddha Cheese flowering while having a deficiency

Big Buddha Cheese a bit ahead in development


Until next time,
Be safe and grow easy!

Don’t want to go yet? Check out our other Grow Reports

Check out all our Indoor Growing Tips

Critical +2.0 and Fruit auto-flo:  First days of Growth

So for the past couple days we’ve been fighting this top heavy issue, and what a fight…

This morning I was pleased to see that 2 out of 5 are basically standing on their own (the bottom left one being a late bloomer, she doesn’t have this issue)

Had another surprise, which wasn’t so pleasing.
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words

Focus on a sprout still to heavy

As you can see this little one is basically parallel to the ground.

This one is worrying me a little, the stem just can’t hole up the weight of the leafs. We’ll see how she evolves during the next couple days but we might have to set something up to get her standing.

Apart from that they’re pretty much chilling, the leaf mass has been increasing nicely which is cool, the second stage seems to be appearing from the most advanced ones, I’m pretty confident on this round.

Heyheyy everyone, it’s been awhile since the last little grow report! 
We’ve been real busy improving the strain comparison tool available (check it out!) as well as the citizen lobbying tool that will be deployed on free-the-tree.org, so some exciting times ahead, but it leaves little time to write about our babies ^^

In this grow report we’re going to cover the past month of the grow. The little ones have grown nicely, we’ve got different levels of development as well as different strains, it’s going to be one interesting flowering period with all their different needs.

We’ve also still been dealing with these pests which has delayed us starting the flowering period. The hesitation comes from the fact that we’re mainly dealing with fungus gnats and these suckers attack the root system. Once we start flowering we want the plants to be in good condition so that they can focus on bud growth, not survival… sooo decisions decisions.. Anyway, here’s what were going to cover today

Table of Content – Grow Report n°5

 

Big Buddha Cheese clones rooting

Last grow report we told you a friend brought us some clones of one of our faaavorite strains Big Buddha Cheese 😀
We had had a mother of this strain for awhile but she didn’t survive last year’s crazy heat (RIP) and we were all out..

The little clones started rooting nicely, although we had a freaking stink bug-type insect lay eggs (ty to Bannana_bin for helping ID it). The larvae seems to have fed on the foliage of the cuttings, killing the weakest clones..
Luckily we noticed quickly and were able save one individual. As you can see in the pics below, the bugs larvae is chillin (and feeding) on the leaf, leaving black scaring behind.

Stink bug adult on cuttings

Beetle type pest on BBC clone


larvae feeding on leaf

Pest larvae feeding on leaf


Rooting clone being transplanted into soil

BBC survivor planted into soil

That said, she’s now fighting the fungus gnat larvaes and pupas… If/when she survives all this, we will have one stroooong mother plant!




SexBud going through the vegetation stage

Now this little SexBud, by Female Seeds is growing real nicely although our humidity levels aren’t optimal at aaaall 🙂
We had just germinated her when we wrote the last grow report and look at her now. We haven’t given her any nutrients so far, although we’re going to start adding some NP in the next feed to prepare her for the stretch

Cotyledon freshly deployed, seed shells still visible

SexBud cotyledons freshly deployed


First stage leaves fully grown


Second stage of leaves grown and third coming in

Second stage leaves grown, third level coming in


SexBud just before being topped


Sexbud freshly topped and growing multiple auxiliary branches

Auxiliary branches growing in

We topped her before writing this piece and are still hesitating on on scrogging her or going for the same LST training as the laughing buddha (see below).
Until we decide we’re going to let her grow a little and then place her in the special little spot we got for her in the flowering tent. Just before the stretch we’ll decide if we place her on the smaller screen or not.
Can’t wait to see go through the cycles of the flowering period!


Fungus gnats persiste and signs of other pests

Once introducing the nematodes into the tent everything started getting much better, we really though we had jumped through this hoop..
Turns out, we had forgotten a pot in the room and a little female laid some eggs in there. We were gone for 10 days, when we got back found a couple individuals within the grow room soo… here we go again..

We also had the pleasure to discover a blackflie and spidermite nest within our outdoor “garden”… hopefully we will be able to manage them well enough out there, avoiding any indoor issue

Cannabis plants attacked by fungus gnats

Sticky traps deployed to catch adult fungus gnats


2 adult spidermites and eggs under leaf

2 spider mites (and a couple eggs) under strawberry leaf


lemon grass with thousands of blackflies feeding on it

Hundreds of blackflies feeding on lemongrass





Making some Laughing Buddha and Blue Thai cuttings

For these 2 strains we popped our only seeds and wanted to keep the strain around just in case so we decided to go ahead and clone them hehe

2 out of the 4 cuttings ready to start rooting

2 of the 4 cuttings made


4 cuttings in rooting container ready to start rooting

4 cuttings in air-proof container


clones started rooting

about 10 days later – 1 visible rooted plant, 3 pending (but still alive!)

At the time we’re writing the article one of the laughing buddha cuttings has grown a nice, strong, tap root. We’re about to set it into soil to let it grow. 
The 3 other cuttings are looking ok, we’re going to leave them a couple more days in the container to make sure they’ve rooted nicely before planting them in soil




Laughing Buddha – About to start the flowering stage

Last grow report we had just topped this little one in order to prepare her for a scrog. As you can see below, the had grown nicely since. We defoliated her a couple times in order to keep these 4 main auxiliary branches.

Since the blue thai is about ready to flower, and we have successfully cloned her we’re going to flower her like this, can’t wait to see the first pistils starting to appear 🙂

Freshly topped laughing buddha, first auxiliary branches growing in

Freshly topped, first auxiliary branches growing in


auxiliary branches tied down to give more light

4 branches growing in 


4 main branches in a diamond formation

4 auxiliary branches grown in, flowing time approaching


Blue Thaï ScrOG setup

Sooooo, if you’ve followed some of our previous grows, you know we’re pretty big fans of scrogging. 
The thing is, with the back to back pest issues we’ve been having for the past year it’s becoming problematic not to be able to take out the plants for inspection during the whole flowering period.

In order to get the best of both worlds we decided to make some individual scrog screens for 2 of our plants. We’re definitely loosing a bit of room, but we figured it’s not a real problem, it’ll allow each plant to have a little room to breath.

Installing the wiring within the frame

Frame of the net and first wires in


screens ready to have cannabis plants installed

2 scrog nets ready to use


Blue Thai freshly installed on the screen

If you want to check out how we made the scrog net we documented each step over here, total cost ~5 bucks 🙂
With the screen ready we started weaving the blue thai. Once she’s covered about 60% of the screen we will change the photo-period so start the flowering stage hehe




Transplanting 3 little ones

On this 4/20 this little ones were ready to be transplanted 🙂 The laughing buddha and critical + will be flowered pretty soon. Since we just topped the sexbud we’re going to leave her a bit longer in the vegetation tent.
Once her auxiliary branches have grown a bit more we’ll place her into the flowering tent so that she can stretch and start growing some nice buds hehe

laughing buddha, critical+ and sexbud chillin in the sun

Freshly topped, first auxiliary branches growing in


transplanting laughing buddha into fabric pot

4 branches growing in 


4 auxiliary branches grown in, flowing time approaching





Alright folks that all for this one! Hope you enjoyed it, I know we love sharing the growth of our babies as well as what we’re learning along the way 🙂 
Remember, if you want to share your experiences, knowledge, or anything, you’re more than welcome to! Just contact us through the form or via instagram

Until next time,
be safe and grow easy


Hey there and welcome (back)!
This week was pretty chill, out little laughing buddha is coming along nicely, the Blue Thai is almost ready to get some cuttings done and we make a niiiiice space cake 🙂 
Apart from these d**n fungus gnats, really can’t complain! Let’s get into is 

Grow report 3 – Table of content


Laughing Buddha – Vegetative growth & Transplantation

Vegetative growth

This week our little sprout spread her leaves fully! Our fear of her getting top-heavy didn’t come true, we even set the fan pointing at her for awhile to test her and she stood strong 🙂 


laughing buddha with 2 stages of leaves

Little one at the beginning of the week


plant well developed with 3rd stage of leaves coming in

Couple days later, fans leaves well developed


laughing buddha starting to lean

3rd stage growing well – plant starting to lean


First deficiency signs

As you may have noticed in the previous pictures, during the week the little laughing Buddha started showing signs of a deficiency on her first fan leaves.

Pretty sure this is due to the fact that she needs to be transplanted more than a actual nutrient deficiency, sooo let the transplant begin! 🙂 


First fan leaves showing deficiency


Transplanting to a 2L fabric pot

As you may be aware, the root mass of a plant is general twice as big as it’s visible foliage.
With that in mind, the pot she’s in is now too small and since it’s made of plastic the roots are most likely spiraling around.

As we started saying above, her first deficiencies are most likely related to this more than any nutrient needing to be added into the soil, although we will start adding some nutrients soon.


Laughing buddha ready to be transplanted


root ball while transplanting

Roots circling in the soil (not good)


Plant transplanted in fabric pot

Roots circling in the soil (not good)



We decided to place her into a 2L fabric pot, which will allow the roots to prune themselves, and set her into our main tent, will a 400W LED light system.
The idea is to have her grow quickly, make a couple cuttings and then get her to flower. One of those will be used as a mother, the others will join their clone in the flowering tent 🙂 


Fighting off Fungus Gnats

As we pointed out in last weeks grow report we had treated the soil of each pot with a hydrogen peroxyde mix in order to kill all the larvae, the mix being ineffective against the eggs..
Apparently, there were a lot eggs.. as you can see on the image on the right hand side (click to enhance) within a couple days the sticky traps were filled with young fungus gnats.

We’re waiting for a package with some nematodes, gnats natural predators, in order to get fully ride of these sucker..


Hundreds of young gnats on sticky trap


Transferring plants to the big tent

Once we transplanted the laughing Buddha we decided to get the 3 main plants into our bigger room, where the light is much stronger. 
Our plan is to get them growing, make couple cuttings, then get to flowering.

With the cuttings we’ll keep one of each to make a  mother and the other will meet their sibling in the flowering tents as soon as they’re ready 🙂


Plants set under the 400W lamp

3 plants installed in main grow tent


Space Cookies

If you were with us last week, you’ve followed that we had made some cannabutter; now it’s time to take off. 
We used Flo’s famous chocolate cake recipe (;p). Butter wise, to be fully honest, we have noooooo idea of how potent it is, so we’ll find out.
Here’s the ingredients and so pictures to end this post in a tasty manner 

Space cookie ingredients (2 cakes made)

  • 480g of cannabutter
  • 400 of dark chocolate (the cooking kind!)
  • 8 eggs
  • Sugar

And that looks liiiiike :

480g of cannabutter

480g Cannabutter


cannabutter and chocolate heating up

Chocolate and Cannabutter heating up


2 space cakes out of the oven

Space Cake out of the oven (wish you could smell em)


Alright got some cake to go eat hehehe 
Until next week,
be safe and grow easy 😉

EDIT: that butter was pretty potent, got way too high


Hey there and welcome (back) to Free The Tree!
This week was pretty full of events, possibly too much to cover in just one post.
We kept on training our smaller plants for the ScrOG, did a cutting on the Blue Kush for a friend, started implementing automatic watering solutions and installed the Screen to start weaving the branches!

While all this was going on, our BBC’s started showing signs of Potassium deficiency and these darn Thrips keep on coming back.. pretty intense for just a week no? 
Let’s get into it, but before that here’s some links if you want to go straight to the section that interests you.

Keep in mind that we won’t go into each section in depth, but we will link to our articles where we do cover these subjects in depth if you want to know more, let’s get started!


 ScrOG Plant Training

If you went over last weeks post then you’re aware that we’ve been training couple of our plants to scrog. Since we’re going through the process we figure it would be good to share the plant training stages. 
So here we are, this week we will cover over the last steps of the training 🙂



Plant Training Continues

new set of branches growing near the cut

As a reminder, at this point we had just recently cut the tip of the 2 new branches. Doing this increases the energy sent to the 2 side branches growing at the spot where the knot is.

We decided to stop here, but you can keep of cutting the tops at each new stage for her to keep dividing and producing more side branches.




Step 5 – Wait until the branches reach the screen

Once you’ve decided that you have enough branches you’re going to have to wait for them to grow up and reach the screen in order to start weaving the branches.
You should try and pass the branches and leaves through the screen as soon as she can reach, this will push her to grow faster 😉




Step 6 – Weave the branches on the Screen.

branches weaved on the screen

After a couple days your plant will have grown enough and will start passing through the screen. At this moment you’re going to want to start guiding the branches over and under the screen.
This will allow the plant to develop some more branches that will grow vertically, increasing even more your final yield.



Installing the Screen for the SCROG

Although half our plants aren’t really tall enough to weave, the Big Buddha Cheese plants so far ahead that we need to get them scrogging;
The main issue being the height difference between the plants, if we hadn’t done this, by the end of the stretch we would have to choose between light burn on the BBC’s of not enough light penetration for our other plants.. Hard decision.

To avoid this we started to weave the plants on the screen, and clipped any branches that are growing too high up. 

We went in depth on attaching the screen over here if you want to get the step by step process.

top view of Screen set up for scrog

Screen attached in the grow room


top branches and leaves passing over the screen

Screen lowered to Apex level


View under the screen



First signs of Potassium Deficiency

During this week one of our Big Buddha Cheeses plants started showing the first signs of Potassium Deficiency which isn’t cool. 
We wanted to get the flowering stage started within a week, but since Potassium is one of the Nutrients that push the plant to flower, we must solve this deficiency before doing so.

We did a full guide on potassium deficiency, linked below, but basically in order to solve this issue you need to increase the amount of potassium given to the plant during the next waterings.


leaf with brown spots coming in, first signs of a Potassium deficiency


Making a Cutting from the Blue Kush

I don’t know if you’ve noticed in the previous posts, but we had kept a strong side branch the whole time without ever mentioning why. 
The reason behind this is that we want to make a cutting from it for a friend so that he can have one of these beauties also.

We’ll just put a couple pics of this cutting here, but check out our article on doing cuttings if you want to know more

View of all tools needed to do a cutting

Tools needed to make a cutting


scissors used to remove the branch from the tree

Removing the branch for the plant


Cutting growing its roots in the grow room

Cutting growing in the tent

Unfortunately this cutting didn’t take, we couldn’t keep the humidity level high enough for her, so she started sweating and died.
Once the plant reaches the screen we’ll prune the top of one of two branches in order to give it another run.


Automating the watering of Marijuana

Automating our watering system is really something we’ve been thinking about for a long time since it’s so time consuming. On top of that, this time around we’re using much bigger pots than before, meaning even more time to water… And honestly, we just didn’t have the time anymore to do it well.
We tested different techniques, that we’ve grouped together over here.

We’ll only show you our final setup that is now fully functional, saving us a looot of time

Water connected and secured to the container

Watering mix in the container 


Separation of the water flow to the plants

Water line entering the room 


Full set up of drip irrigation system

Drip System watering the plants

On top of saving time, this type of system actually waters your plant much more efficiently. Since the water flows much slower it irrigates the soil by capillarity, spreading much better across the medium. 
This means 2 things:

  1. The roots receive more water
  2. You use less water at each watering (no need for the 20% run-off



Alright folks that’s all for this one!
Until next time, be safe and grow easy 😉

Don’t want to go yet? Check out our other Grow Reports


Check out all our Indoor Growing Tips

Hey there and welcome (back) ! 🙂 
This past week was a pretty eventful one, these little ones needed a good amount of attention, which we were happy to provide hehe

As always, before we get into it, here’s a little overview of what we’re going to cover

Grow Report 2 – Table of content

Don’t hesitate to skip ahead if you want, for the others let’s get into the Laughing Buddha, she’s scaring us a baby bit


Laughing Buddha – Early stretch & First leaves

Growth of the first leaves

If you’ve checked out last weeks grow report you’re aware that this little one had just broken ground and spread her cotyledons by the end of last week.

Within 2 days she started growing her first leaves which is pretty awesome 🙂 really want her to get growing quickly so we can make some cuttings and flower them asaaaap


two first leaves growing over the cotelydons

Growth of first leaves


Seedling stem stretching too much

As you can see in the image on the right the stem of this little one is pretty long, showing that she’s not receiving enough light, thus reaching for it.

This is really no optimal, appart from the fact that she’s focusing on vertical growth and not developing foliage (leaves) she will most likely be top heavy once those leaves do start to grow..
This is something we’ve experienced a couple grows ago, and covered a previous grow report.
It’s not the end of the world if she does get top heavy, we’ll give her a crouch until the stem gets strong enough to for her to stand.


seedling stretching which en dangerous her capacity of standing upright

Plant place closer to the light source to avoid any more stretching


Growth of the second stage of leaves

This little one is a fast grower, the first stage of leaves had hardly grown that she was already sprouting the second one. 

She’s really looking good, still a bit worries about her balance, when we watered her she wasn’t holding up all that good.
We’ve also added [a much needed] fan in there to get some wind blowing, which will make her develop the stem much more, as well as help dry up the soil after watering, avoiding these damn fungus gnats (getting to that next)


laughing buddha growing second stage of leaves

Second stage of leaves growing


Critical+ Cuttings – Transplanting and Fungus gnats

Transplanting the Critical+ plants

Although it was a bit early to do so, we decided to go ahead and transplant the plant that’s going to stay in the vegetation tent as a mother.

For the the 3 other ones we’re going to wait until they grow a bit more than transplant & flower them right away, can’t waiiiiiiiiiit 🙂


Freshly transplanted plant into 2L pot

Critical+ transplanted to a 2L fabric pot


Dealing with fungus gnats

After thrips and spidermites here we are dealing with fungus gnats… haven’t signed up for pests control school, but we’re getting close to being experts here -_-“

We had been wondering why our little cuttings were growing so slowly and with unhealthy looking foliage; turns out, it’s linked to the fungus gnat larvae feeding on our babies roots..

We’ll do a full “how to” deal with fungus gnats soon, but basically here’s how we’re dealing with them :

  • Sprayed the soil with a mix of Hydrogen peroxyde (1/4) and water (3/4). 
    This kills the larvae, but doesn’t deal with the eggs or adults
  • Manually hunted the visible adults
  • Set a fan out in order to dry the top soil (fungus gnats need humid soil)
  • Put down sticky traps for the adults. This doesn’t seem super effective atm, we’re going to lay out a glass with a little beer for them to drown in (follow a tip through instagram)

Next we’re going to remove the top 3/4cm of soil in order to get any and all eggs out of there, and possibly buy some nematodes to get this soil living with healthy organisms. 
Hopefully this is going to be the end of that..

 


Signs of fungus gnats on the plant

Fungus gnat damage visible on the foliage

sticky traps laid out to kill adult individuals

Fungus gnat damage visible on the foliage


Makin’ some cannabutteeer

We had been putting it off for awhile but finally got around to making some cannabutteeeer!
Been saving up the trims of the past 5 grows so really exited to see what it’s going to turn our to be hehehe.

We’re not going to detail all the steps here, if you’re trying to make some check out our recipe over here, that said here’s a couple pics just cause 😉 

cannabis trims, butter and water set to heat

Leaves&Butter chillin in water


butter simmering for 5 hours

Leaves&Butter chillin in water


Separating liquid mix from leaves

Straining the water&cannabutter mix from the leaves


cannabutter mix ready to cool down

Cannabutter&Water
ready to cool down


after 24hours in the fridge the butter is solid

After 24 hours in the fridge,
cannabutter is solid.


Water poured out leaving the cannabutter ready for cooking! 🙂


Blue Thai’s first cutting 

Since we don’t want to flower our last blue thaï plant, we’ve decided to keep this one as a mother and flower some cuttings. Thing is… i’m not super super patient (workin on it ^^), and want to get her into the flowering tent asaaaaap.

In that spirit, I looked for a nice little side branch big enough to make a cutting out of. 

Blue thai mother plant vegetating

Blue Thai mother plant


small cutting rooting in water

Blue Thai mother plant

As you can see, we spotted one that was small, but not too small, and went for it. Hopefully, since it’s such a young sprout, it’ll still have a bunch of rooting hormones and will take quickly.

In order to keep it in a nice, humid, environment we placed it in a glass of water and placed cellophane over it, with a couple whole.
Water droplets quickly formed on the sides of the glass, showing that humidity levels are high. Hopefully she’s going to take!


Alright folks that’s all for this week,
Until next time, be safe and grow easy!

P.S: if you want to keep in touch, come say hi on our insta 😉


Hey there and welcome (back) to Free The Tree!
We’ve now arrived at the final post of this grow, it was short but intense! But don’t worry we’ve already got 5 seeds that have germinated and 4 Big Buddha Cheese clones going, next series is going to be even better 🙂

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, today we’re going to cover the harvest and curing of our 2 Fruit Auto flowering Marijuana plants, the 2 others aren’t ready yet.
As you will see, the 2 we’re about to cut are are super small, but the 2 one buds are looking ok considering, especially one of them. Regardless, as soon as those autoflowering plants started flowering on their own we knew that this would be a small one;

Let’s get into it!

Day 59 – Holding back on harvesting

By now we had been observing the trichomes every day or two for the past 7 days or so, the two plants on the left were entering their 3rd and last cycle of browning pistils and most of the trichomes were milky. Furthermore they had been in a Nitrogen deficiency state for awhile now, so we new those buds were going to be super light, but suuuper tasty.
So really at this point they were ready to be harvested, but so small that we wanted to give them as many more days as possible to fatten..

The two one bud plants (on the right) were no where near ready, many trichomes were still clear, they had little or no signs of Nitrogen deficiency and they hadn’t even entered the 2nd round of browning pistils. We figured we had at least a week left on those two.

Here’s a couple of pics of these babies at this stage, as always you can click on them to see the full screen version.

4 Fruit Strain plants at the end of the flowering stage


One of the 2 One Buds


One of the 2 not One Buddig
(remember on day 51 we cut the side branches)

Now to show you with more detail what we meant when we said that the one buds still had white pistils and the other 2 plants were entering the 3rd phase of browning pistils here’s 2 close-ups on one of each

Mostly white pistils on the buds


Marijuana Pistils have started to become brown


Day 61 – Harvesting and curing the 2 first plants

By this time we started seeing some trichomes starting to turn and golden/brownish color, which is a sign that the THC levels are reducing and the CBD is rising. Depending on the type of plant and what you want as a high you might want to wait more, but since this is a Hybrid we don’t want her indica side to come out too much, it’s chop chop time.

Close up on 2 fruit strains ready to be harvested

Fruit ready to be harvested


One Bud marijuana so heavy it leans sideways

One Bud leaning under bud weight


One of the 2 not One Budding
(remember on day 51 we cut the side branches)

As you can see once out of the grow room her colors finally show on camera 🙂 Her strong nitrogen deficiency is a sign that her taste should be great, and those purple hints on the top of the buds just make her sexy haha.

We also placed a little picture of our one bud in the middle. As you can see her root system and stem aren’t strong enough to hold the weight of the bud. We had to strap her up a little in order to help her stand up straight.

Getting back to the harvest, now that the plants are cut we need to get to curing them, we covered that with more detail in our previous article so we won’t go in detail on how to do so, but here are some picture (don’t expect the fattest buds..)

Close up on fruit bud with purple colors on the flowers and leaves

Purple bud


Fruit plant before curing


2 Fruit plants after curing

Crazy how much size they lose before and after curing them no?! Now it’s time to get them to dry for about 10 days.

[su_quote]Reminder: As we said in our previous article, don’t throw out your stems and leaves, you can reuse them for many things, from Hash with the leaves to Tea with the branches; (how to make hash over here) [/su_quote]


Day 63 – Nitrogen Deficiency kicking in

In just 2 days the Nitrogen deficiency had started to advance, the bottom leaves started drying and were almost ready to fall off and the symptoms started spreading further up the plant.

Here’s a couple pictures of the 2 last plants of this cycle

2 plants soon ready to be harvested

Nitrogen deficiency spreading upward


Close up on marijuana flower

Close up on bud on the right


Main leaves almost all eaten up by nitrogen deficiency

2nd plant about a week short of harvest


Day 68 – Harvest and Curing the last plants

By now the nitrogen deficiency had advanced well, the pistils had started to brown for their 3rd time and the trichomes were all nice and milky, time harvest these last babies! Here’s what they looked like

One bud fruit strain cannabis harves

Plant 1


nice plant freshly harvested and ready to cure

Plant 2

As always, after this we got to get curing, here’s a couple more picture

2nd plant about a week short of harvest


Top of the Apex bud

Close up on bud on the right


Cured fruit strain plants

Plant 1 and 2 after curing

Now that we’ve cured them we got to get them drying. As we’ve said in the previous post, we just tie them upside down either in the grow room or in a cupboard. Since we’ve already started germinating new seeds this time they’re going in the cupboard!

Here’s what the 4 plants look like in there, you’ll be able to see right away the different in size and in color. The color difference is due to the fact that the 2 smaller plants are now in their 8th day of drying. Actually a little of the size difference is also linked to this, since while drying they loose in mass.

Different stages of drying marijuana buds

Fruit Plants drying in cupboard


scissors after curing the plants

Scissor full of resin and pistils


leftover leaves from the harvest

Leaves ready to go into the freezer for later use (home made hash soon!)


Well that’s it for this one guys, next time we’ll cover the germination of the Blue Thai, Blue Kush and the Cheese seeds, can’t wait 🙂

Until then, be safe and grow easy!

Don’t want to leave just yet? Check out our other grow reports and indoor growing tips!

Grow Reports

Indoor Growing Tips

Hey there, welcome back to another edition of the Big Buddha Cheese series!

On this post we’re going to go over:

Being my first I was really exited at each new stage of this plant, and really just reading all over the place to try and find answers to all my questions.

So let’s get started

The vegetative stage of Big Buddha Cheese

As we say in the previous post we had just gotten out of Nitrogen deficiencies and Nutrient burn, so needless to say we we’re being veeeery careful on nutrient levels.

Basically our mix was of about 5ml of vegetative grow for every 2L of water, given every other watering. She seemed to react pretty good to this so we kept it going.

If you’re looking for tips on watering you’re marijuana plant check out our article right here

She was also growing a large number of new branches and leafs, I made the mistake here to let them all grow, when really I should of cut down the leaf and branch mass.

This is what she looked like at this stage

big buddah cheese - first half of the vegetative stage


big buddah cheese just about ready for scrog installation


In the left picture she’s 20 days into the vegetative stage, the one on the right is 2 days later.

You can see that we’ve chosen a couple branches and that we’re pulling them with string to the side. The objective for this was to get them growing laterally so that they would get direct access to light.
The second idea behind it is to have multiple branches “invading” the screen during the next steps. This actually worked out pretty well!

Once you have chosen your branches, don’t hesitate to cut unwanted starts once in a while.

I should have also gone for a big trim here, cutting of all branches and leafs that are useless so that she could focus on the growth of the rest.

At this point, we decided that the next day was the day to install the screen (drumroll)


Installing the Screen Of Green

So we did this over 4 days.

On day 1 we installed the screen and starting pulling the branches towards the whole we wanted them to go to. Each day we would lower the screen a little bit, that way we would gain space to start weaving her, without stressing her out too much, I call the “the acclimatation phase”

By day 4 they had reached high enough for us to start weaving the branches on the screen, let the invasion begin!

If you want more info on installing a scrog, check out our tutorial over here

Here’s how it went step by step:


day 1 : Installing the screen

just installed the screen, apex is passing over the screen

At this point all we did was get the screen in and slide it down at her level.
Now I strongly advise installing the screen high up and slide it down slowly. If it falls you might just brake your plant.

After getting it at the Apex’s level we got some of those top leaves laying on the screen so that they would get as much light as possible, but also so that she started getting used to the screen.


day 2 : Branches going through the screen

2nd day after installing the screen, branches are passing over it

By the end of the second day we we’re pleased to see that the branches had grown and started passing through the screen.

In order to take a little more advantage of the previous growth we also brought down the screen a little, which went pretty well. As you can see we also started bending the Apex over the first screen


day 4 : Weaving the branches onto the screen

As you can see by the 4th day after installing the screen, the branches had well passed over the level of the net, meaning it’s time for the first session of weaving :).
Here’s how to weave a marijuana plant for a scrog in image:


How to weave your branches for your SCROG

  1. Identify the direction you want each branch to go in. This planning step is important, you want to make sure that each branch has at least one free space to its left, and one to its right
  2. Bend the top of the branch over the first line and under the next one.
    Don’t hesitate to tie down the branch onto the netting so that it holds.
    In the first image on the side here you can see how we tied the apex on both nettings in order to pass her under and over the screen.
  3. Cut any leafs making shade to a spot where a branch could come out. You should also cut the branches that are to close to each other. At each not you should have tops 1 branch growing vertically.
  4. Take a string, on one end tie it around the top of your branch and the other tie it in the direction where you want you plant to go on the screen. Don’t hesitate to pull well on her she can take it.
    You can see on the last image of the set how each branch is weaving over and under the screen, as well as the green string pulling them in the direction we want her to go.

Thanks to this technique, with just one plant you can actually fill up a whole grow room! the only thing is that you’ll keep her in a longer vegetative stage.


guiding the apex over the screen during scrog
the top of each branch has been folded over and under the net
plant weaved over the net and string pulling the branches


That’s all for this one guys! On the next article we’ll go over her invasion on the screen, it got pretty dense hehe

Until then, be safe and grow easy

By now our plant was finally ready to get into the flowering stage so we changed the light period from 18/6 to 12/12 of lighting, meaning the plant gets into her stretch phase. This is where she grows a large amount over 2 weeks, by the end of this phase small flowers we’ll be visible on your buds.
If you’re want to know more about the stretch check out our FAQ on the subject.

We’re going to go over the stretch in 4 stages:

  1. Switching the light cycle to 12/12
  2. Changing to the yellow light
  3. The Stretch: Period of very strong growth
  4. The early flowering stage: Showing her first buds


Scrog just changed the light cycle


just changed to the yellow light for flowering stage of SCROG


Stretch of Big Buddha Cheese on ScrOG - strong growth


First buds showing at the end of the stretch phase of Big Buddha Cheese


Changing the light cycle

So in order to start the flowering stage you need to change the light cycle from 18hours of light to 12 hours.
That change will trigger a natural response in the plant telling her its time to focus on the flowers.
At this point the stretch starts, for 2 weeks she will grow before focusing purely on flower production.

For the first couple days after the switch, I like to keep the vegetative stage light in order to reduce the amount of possible stress given to the plant.

Here’s a picture of her a day or two after changing the light. As you can see, no real big change between the vegetative stage yet.



Scrog just changed the light cycle



Changing to the Sodium light

I’m using two 400 Watts MH/HPS light bulbs. During the vegetative stage I use the Metal Halide (MH) based light, then switch to the High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lighting during the flowering stage. We’ll do a piece on this, but basically it’s the technic that’s proven to work, although you get more heat issues.

After two/three days of switching the light schedule that’s when I switch from the MH bulb to the HPS one. I do this in order to try and reduce the stress given at once.
After this, she’s fully in her flowering environment.

You can see in the image below that she already started growing nicely during the couple first days.



just changed to the yellow light for flowering stage of SCROG



The Stretch: Period of very strong growth

Now I don’t know if you can really tell with the picture below, but for an indica strain her stretch was pretty decent. She grew at least 60% on her main branches.
It’s really too bad I messed up and didn’t cut down most of those branches, I could of had a real nice flowering stage with this one.

If you’re wondering what are the differences between indica and sativa check out our piece here.

At this time you should be reducing the levels of Nitrogen given gradually, once the stretch begins her intake will reduce little by little.
While reducing the Nitrogen increase little by little the levels of Phosphorus and Potassium that you give them.



Stretch of Big Buddha Cheese on ScrOG - strong growth



The early flowering stage: Showing her first buds

By the end of the stretch we enter the early flowering stage. You can see in the image below her the first little buds. This white little string like pistils will grow in quantity and size, by the end of this transformation they will look like the buds you’re familiar with 🙂

By this time you should have cut off the Nitrogen nutrients, and start the Phosphorus and Potassium one’s. By now your plant won’t ingest Nitrogen through her roots anymore so you might as well safe it.
She needs Phosphorus and Potassium now in order to produce the flowers we all love so much.



First buds showing at the end of the stretch phase of Big Buddha Cheese



Alright folks that’s all for this one! next time we’ll go over the flowering stage of this little one.

Until then, be safe and grow easy! 😉


Check out all our Big Buddha Cheese grow reports

Hi there, Welcome back to another edition of our Critical + 2.0 and Fruit culture!
We’re now about three weeks after the germination of these little ones and they’ve been coming along pretty nicely.

Critical + 2.0 And Fruit: Third week of the vegetative stage

For the past week we’ve had issues in the balance of 3 of our plants and it’s been pretty rough. I’m happy to finally say that by day 21 we passed that hurdle! We actually did an article covering balance issues during the early vegetative stage if you want to check it out.

During this week, apart from those balance issues we went through heat stress and a nice watering, By the end of the week they were looking pretty happy and soon to be ready to get transplanted, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.
Let’s go through these couple days together.

Day 16 – Final days of our balance issues

Focus on four weed plants in early vegetative stage

At this point the plant on the bottom left corner was now stable, we had had the fan blowing over it for the past 2 days and the stem got strong enough to hold. We still decided to keep the pencil in for a couple days just in case. The 3 other ones.. not so much
You can see that the one with the biggest issues (top right) is still very top heavy, without the 2 stakes she would be totally horizontal to the ground. Technically she could survive that way, but we’ll agree that it’s not optimal.

On this issue, only time will tell if what we’ve done is enough, any way she should grow strong enough to stand straight, but it’s using up energy to do so instead of growing leaf mass.


Day 17 – It’s getting hot in the grow room!

Themometer showing 33 degrees in the grow house

Sooooo woke up this morning, the humidifier was out and it got up to 33°C(91°F) in there!! (Reminder: You really don’t want to get over 29°C), with the 14% humidity, really not the best way to wake up.

Luckily it didn’t really last very long, filled up the humidifier and it dropped back down to 27°C pretty quickly. It didn’t seem to really do much damage, although one of them is showing signs of heat stress.

On the picture below of day 19, you can see the edges of the leafs curling up, this might be signs of heat stress happening, so I really got to be careful during the upcoming days that the temperature doesn’t get too high (just bought a brand new fan!).


Day 19 – Watering time for these  plants!

Drooping marijuana leaves showing that it's time to water

See how the leafs of the plant are drooping down? This is the plant showing that its thirsty and you really need to water them ASAP

Now we did a whole guide on watering your marijuana plants that you can check out here but as a reminder here are the main points:

  • During the vegetative stage you want to give Nitrogen based solutions.
  • Give about a quart of soil volume in water.
  • Add some root booster to your mix
  • Keep the pH between 6 and 7

Now as you can see on the image, I already watered her and she’s still drooping. This is normal, it takes a couple hours for her to get back to her good old self!
Now if that’s not the case then you might be overwatering your plant so cool down. We’ll do a whole article on that soon but if you’re suspecting this, just chill out on the watering for a little less than a week, then water her, she should be better by then.


Day 20 – Nicely watered plants, getting back to growth

Top view of critical + 2.0 and Fruit plants after watering

These little one’s really enjoyed to watering, look at the nice green color, their leafs are nice and strong, basically just looking great 🙂
Now if you can notice, on the 2 right ones the soil is already dry on top layer and you can’t see but it’s also the case within the medium. These are the first signs that they are going to need a new home.

We still have stakes holding on all 4 plants just to be safe, although they seem to be holding up by now.
At this point, better safe than sorry so we’re going to keep them in as long as there’s hesitation.
Apart from that they’re pretty much living their lives now, chilling.

That’s it for this one guys, on the next post we’re going to go over the transplantation of these little one’s among other things.

Until then, be safe and grow easy


Looking for tips on indoor growing?


Check out our previous culture: Big Buddha Cheese using SCROG

This plant was actually my first personal one, so the experience was full of learning, multiple mistakes were made, spent hours scouring the internet trying to find the answer to what was my issue, between forum threats and sites pushing their products, didn’t what to do.

That’s actually when I first thought of making a site regrouping all the info we’ve gathered through time and experience. Couple years down the road finally making it!
So let’s get started on these first weeks of the vegetative stage of this Big Buddha Cheese clone.

In this post we will cover :

  1. Getting the Marijuana cuttings into the soil
  2. First days of the clone
  3. The early vegetative stage


Getting the cutting into soil

However you got your cutting going, your going to have to get her in a new pot.
I didn’t take any pictures at this moment, but for you to see what to expect I’ve gathered a couple pictures out there.

Now if you don’t have this many roots no worries! mine had just a couple and finished just fine 😉


Marijuana cutting full of roots


Marijuana clone ready to be potted


image credits to Grow Weed Easy


If you’re looking to get a friend to give you a cutting to get started, or you’re trying to clone one yourself, here’s a good guide to Cloning in 10 steps.

So let’s get the main part of the section, now that the our roots are going let’s get them into soil for the branch to finish her transition to a plant


How place Marijuana cuttings into soil

  1. Prepare your soil by making a whole to the depth and width your roots or cube.
  2. Place your Cannabis cutting into the whole you’ve prepared.
  3. Fill in the gaps with soil if needed.
  4. Prepare a water mix with a Ph around 6.5.
  5. Water the soil favouring the outsides. You want the roots to start conquering the new soil, best way to do so is have more humidity there.
  6. Let her do her thing.


Cutting in soil not yet recovered
Cutting in soil recovered

image credits to weedsthatplease


Now that you know how to plant your cannabis cutting, let’s get back to the evolution of this Big Buddha Cheese

First days of the clone

The initial plan was to have about 4 plants, unfortunately 3 out of the 4 didn’t take.. I decided pretty quickly that this would be the opportunity to go for a SCROG, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Here’s a couple pics between day 0 and days 4 after potting the cuttings into the soil. She took real well and just started growing 🙂

BBC cutting growing


Vertical view of the first day after potting

You can see on the left image that she’s already go 1 good branch already going on the side.
This picture is actually about day 3/4 so she had already started growing, but pretty cool for this scrog testing

We’ve also got 3 nice leafs for her to produce energy, new leafs growing and 2 or 3 branches starting to grow. All good signs for a nice big plant.

Make sur you keep the Ph around 6.5 during this time period, this will allow the plant to get all the nutrients she’ll need for her gwoth

My mix was simple, mainly composed of root booster and a little Nitrogen.




The early Vegetative stage

This plan got pretty big pretty quickly which is awesome. Before getting into it here’s a couple picture of her at this stage


Blue Thai - first steps of the vegetative stage


Blue Thai - second steps of the vegetative stage


Blue Thai - Final step of the early vegetative stage


You can see that during these first couple weeks those first branches, we talked about earlier, started to stretch out and get pretty big, developing their own leaf mass allowing the to produce more energy. Perfect.

In length the left one’s actually almost as long as the Apex, pretty nets!

By the time we got to the third picture I should of starting cutting branches more intensively. I had my main one’s to keep and just let her produce more and more branches.
She got all over the place pretty quickly. meaning the energy is spread out producing a bunch of little branches instead of focusing on a few strong one.

Even when going for a SCROG you want to choose the branches that you will use to invade the screen.



Looking back these first couple of weeks were pretty chill, I tested different types of dosages of nutrients for the plant, and that where it starting going sideways.

It started with nitrogen deficiencies, then nutrient burn… tell you all about it in the next post on of our Big Buddha Cheese series!

Until then, be safe and grow easy

Hi there and welcome to the 8th week of the flowering stage!
Sorry for being late posting the grow reports, we’ve been working hard on getting the Strain&Seed comparison tool up and running 🙂 We’re still working on the styling and getting many more stores, strains and characteristics but soon enough it’ll be awesome ^^

I’m getting off topic here, this past week a lot has been going on in the grow room. The smell is just crazy (my neighbors started to complain…), the buds are getting thicker and thicker, just looking beautiful. We’ll also get into the topping of Cheese plant and harvest a BBC bud.
On the negative aspects, we’re still manually hunting thrips manually, which is oh so fun… and the Calcium deficiency is still spreading a little, which was expected.

This week we also decided to germinated 4 seeds for the next batch. Their seedling stage will overlap with the flowering stage of our other buds allowing us to save about 3 weeks time.
Next round we’ll be growing 3 Blue Kush’s and 1 Critical + plant

Here’s some links if you want to skip straight to a section:


Calcium Deficiency still Spreading

We’ve been treating the plant for a little under 10 weeks now and as you can see on the image on the right, the deficiency is still spreading.

Since Calcium is an immobile nutrient it depends on the plants transpiration is order to move around. Within the next couple days the spreading should stop.
This deficiency definitely gave the plant a hard hit leaf mass wise..


Brown spots showing up on the leaves


Topping the Cheese’s Apex Bud

If you’ve been following this grow then you’re aware that our cheese plant’s stretch was pretty massive and we’ve had to deal with a very un-even canopy ever since.

Although we had super-cropped the Apex, the plant was still was still waaaay to tall and shading the two on each side, and now that the trichomes are starting to be nice we decided to go ahead and top the Apex.
It could of definitely grown more, and denser, but now all the buds underneath have direct access to light AND she isn’t shading as much the Blue Kush and the Blue Thai


Apex Flower of cheese

Cheese before being Topped


After cutting Apex bud of cheese plant

Cheese after being Topped


Cheese bud harvest and pruned, ready to dry

Nugget harvest and Pruned, ready to be dried & cured


I won’t lie, it did kind of hurt to chop down this bud, especially since the Apex generally’s the best bud on the plant ^^
It’ll give us an early taste of this cheese, although it isn’t ready.. Here’s what her trichomes looked like


milky trichomes under the miroscope

Mostly Milky Trichomes of the Cheese Strain


milky trichomes of the Cheese cannabis strain

Trichomes under the Scope



Harvesting the First Big Buddha Cheese Bud

Our 2 big buddha cheese plants are really massive and it’s difficult for us to really be able to see the trichomes. Normally within 55-60 days of flowering she’s ready and were nearing the 60th day now.
With all the deficiencies they’ve had we’re pretty sure that they’re no where near ready but we still decided to go ahead and harvest a bud.

We chose one that’s near the Blue Thaï, compressing her and not giving much room to breath. This move will at least have the benefit of giving a little more room for her.


Big Buddha Cheese 8th week of flowering stage


8th week Harvested bud

Small BBC Flower harvested


BBC trichomes on the pistils

Trichomes all over the Pistils


Trichomes on the leaves of marijuana

Trichomes on the leaves


Buds Fattening Up

During the past couple weeks the buds have been getting fatter and fatter, the pistils keep growing, the smell is getting extremely strong and really they’re looking awesome 🙂

Looking at the small bud further up as well as the others, I think that we’re about 2 weeks out in order to harvest the Cheese and the Big Buddha Cheese and maybe a week more for the Blue Kush and Thai. With this in mind we’ve decided to start flushing the plants little by little.
For the next watering or two we’ll reduce the amount of nutrients (except for the Calcium), then just give them pure water (still keeping the molasses though)

Here’s a couple picture of them at the end of the week


Cheese flower thickening up

Cheese Buds fattening after topping


Big Buddha cheese colas doubled in size

Horizontal view of Big Buddha Cheese multiple Cola’s


Close up on big buddha cheese flower

Close up on BBC flower developing


Germinating the Next Seeds

Since there’s about 2/3 weeks left in the flowering stage of the current grow we decided to go ahead and start the germination of next round in order to save some time.
Since plants don’t need that much light during the seedling stage, we’ll keep them under a side light for the first couple weeks, until we harvest this round.


Seeds germinating in paper towel

Kush and Critical Seeds Germinating


4 seeds with tap root breaking out of the shell

Tap root breaking the seed shell


Germinated seeds planted in organic pot

4 Germinated Seeds planted into medium


We decided to germinate 3 Blue Kush’s and 1 Critical+.
We’re going to do a quick round with those, do a LST and try to get some little fat bonsai’s for that round 🙂


Alright folks that’s it for this week.
Until next time, Be safe and grow easy!

Miss a couple episodes? Here’s all our other Grow Reports

Read up on our Indoor Growing Tips!


Hey guys and welcome (back) to Free The Tree!
This week is pretty weird. On one hand we’ve got 2 plants that are growing real quickly (the 2 BBC’s) and 2 plants growing reeeal slow (cheese and Blue Thai). We’re already trying to figure out how we’re going to deal with the different sizes in time in order to avoid issues during the flowering.

That said, in this post well go over the plant training that we did in order to prepare for the SCROG, as well as the reasons why these two little one’s have been growing slowly.
Let’s get into it!


Training Marijuana Plants for ScrOG

Setting up your ScrOG is something you need to prepare for pretty early on in the life of your little one. I’m not saying that you can’t decide later on, but the best moment to start training your plant is at the 3rd stage of leaves.
Little pointer before we get into it, we won’t have the last step on the training since it takes a little more than a week to grow. The last step will be in our next post 😉


2nd round of branch pruning to train for scrog


Training Weed for a Scrog Easily

So we’re going to go through each step in order to train your Marijuana for a scrog.
As a reminder, these are the steps before setting up your screen. If you want to go to the screen set-up check out our ScrOG guide.
The first picture will show the plant just before we started to train her, after which we’ll get into each step.


Plant 1 – Young Blue Kush Weed Plant

Blue Kush about 15 days old before starting the scrog training

You want to wait until the 3rd stage of leaves before doing anything. In the picture above we must wait a little before starting to train this one.




Step 1 – Pruning the Apex

Once your plant has grown her 3rd stage you’re going to want to cut (prune) the top section of the plant with a pair of clean scissors or a blade.
As we show in the picture below, you’ll want to do this just above the knot, be careful not to damage the side branches that are forming!

In the next step you will be able to see what it the plant will look like without the Apex. If you’re worried about the fact that the Apex is supposed to be her strongest and best bud, don’t worry, you’ll get that bud x10 😉




Step 2 – Let the 2 new Branches Grow

2 strong branches growing where apex was cut

After cutting the Apex you’re going to want to wait until each side branch has developed a new stage of leaves.




Step 3 – Prune Tip of the 2 new branches

2nd round of branch pruning to train for scrog

Now as you can see we waited a little too long to cut the tip of the side branches. Generally you’d want to cut it before the growth of the next stage in order to avoid any waste of energy. With that in mind, we’re still going to keep the 1st stage branches, in time we’ll prune the 2nd stage growths and that top leaf that’s shading the branch.




Step 4 – Let the new sets of branches grow

new set of branches growing near the cut



Once you reached this stage you’re going to wait a little until those 4 branches have grown enough to start training them. As you can see above, at this point in time they’re way to small to start doing so. We need to wait a couple days, so the second half of this section will be on the next post 😉


Slow Growth during the early Vegetative Stage

As we started saying in the beginning of the article, 2 out of the 3 plants originating from the germinated seeds have been growing really slowly, especially compared to the third.
After reading left and right, this is due to the fact that we planted them straight into the final pot, whereas the other plant was in a small pot before being transplanted into the final one.

We didn’t know this at first, but a weed plant in that it in a pot that’s too big for it will grow much slower since it’s focusing on root development. This means that the root system will be well developed, but there’s definitely some time lost.

Here’s a couple picture of the growth during this week.

Weed plant growing normally

Normal Growth – Blue Kush planted in small pot than transplanted to larger pots.


Slow Growth – Blue Thai and Cheese planted straight into the large pots.

Just with these 2 pictures you can easily see the huge difference. Keep in mind that these seeds germinated at about the same time! (couple days delay for the Cheese plant on the far right).
Crazy how big of a difference in growth there is no? Thankfully this week the 2 slower plants started getting there growing on, but they’ll never catch up the other plants.

As we said earlier, the reason for this is the fact that a marijuana plant that’s planted in a large pot will grow slower during the early vegetative stage.
On the upside, these plants won’t have any transplanting stress and once the root system is well developed they’ll get growing strongly.

Bleu start just clipped to start scrog

Blue Thai – Apex just pruned for ScrOG preperation


Cheese plant still very small, developing the third stage of leaves

Cheese plant event smaller – 2nd stage of leaf growing


As you can see in the two images above, by the end of the second week they had grown “a lot”. The Blue Thai had grown the 3rd level of leaves so we decided to cut the Apex on this one.

On her side, the Cheese is still hanging back. We decided to cut all new side branches in order for her to focus on vertical growth.
I’m not too sure what we’re going to do with her, if she catches up we might do a small scrog, or else we’ll just keep a couple side branches and work her more when we get into the re-vegetation cycle (spoiler ^^).

Before we let you go, here’s a couple last pictures of them at the end of week 5, as always click on them to see the full picture.

Focus on 2 BBC plants about to start scrogging


Cheese, Blue Thai, Blue Kush during the vegetative stage

Hopefully these 2 little ones are going to get their grow on.. Next week we plant to make the cutting of the Blue Kush for a friend and place the screen, so they need to hurry up ^^

Alright Folks, that’s it for this one.
Until next time, be safe and grow easy!


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Hey there and welcome (back) ! 🙂 
Here we are, back at the beginning of a cycle! Can’t wait to share these upcoming weeks with all of you 
Couple changes since last grow, so to start off clean here’s a recap of the strains and equipment we’re using 

Grow Report 1 – Equipment & strains

  • Strains: Critical+ (cuttings) & Laughing Buddha
  • Seed Type: Feminized
  • Seed Bank: Barney’s Farm
  • Nutrients or Additive Used:
    – Bio Grow NP and PK mixes


  • Grow Lights
    – Vegetation Stage : 75W LED table
    – Flowering Stage : 400W LED table
  • Grower experience: 6th grow

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into the first steps of these little one’s lives 🙂 
We’ve divided this article in 2 sections starting with the cuttings and end with the seed germinating


Critical+ Cuttings – Rooting process

As some of you are aware we’ve had a critical+ mother plant for a little while, this is our 3rd round of cuttings with her. 

Here’s a couple pics of the process but, in full honesty, we slacked off a little and left them in the cups for too long, which made us lose 2 little ones and a bunch of time. If you want to know more on how to make a cutting, check out our how-to article over here 😉

Picking and cutting the branches

The first step to making the cuttings is obviously picking and cutting the right branches from the mother plant ^^
This round we started with 7 branches, planning that we would lose one or 2. 
As we detail in our how-to article on making cuttings, the branches don’t need much light in order to root, what they do need it NOT to sweat, so don’t hesitate to chop off most their leaves (the left one still has way too many leaves) and place them in a very humid environment (aim for at least 90% humidity).


Cuttings rooting in the vegetation tent

critical+ cuttings in a box to keep humidity

We left the little one in the cups of water for about a week, the time for some roots to grow.
At this point we lost one of the little ones, we had left the top latch open, it wasn’t humid enough and she didn’t make it… (told you we were slacking off :/)

As you can see on the pic one of our mothers isn’t looking well at all, all dried up and dying… We were so focused on the citizen lobbying tool that we didn’t water her enough and lost her :'(.


Passing the cuttings from water to soil

5 successful cuttings rooted and ready to grow

Once we had some nice roots we went ahead and transferred the cutting into our pots.
As you can see we have them in different size pots. The idea here is to keep one as a mother plant (top left). The 4 others we will re-pot and transfert into the flowering tent once they’re ready to stretch.

(Yep, we lost another little one between the 2 steps… we took wayyyy too long to transfert them into the soil)

That’s it for these little ones! As we speak they’re getting growing nicely, but we’ll tell you all about that in the next post 😉


Laughing Buddha Seed Germination

Here’s a little one we’re really excited about! First time growing it and really curious to see what it’s all about.
For a long time it was a best seller at Barney’s Farm, a coffee shop & seed bank in the Netherlands although now, unfortunately, a bit it’s harder to find these days.
Luckily, during our last trip in Amsterdam we were able to get a little seed! 🙂
(check out the trip on our insta account)

Alright, enough said, here’s some pics of the germination process of this little one 

Seed Germinating – A humid and dark environment

Just like for the cuttings, we’ve made a full how-to article detailing the best ways to germinate your seeds, if you want to know more on that check it out over here

We set the little one in a humid paper towel between two bowls. At first it was wayyyy too humid in there, so we left a little crack between the bowls in order to let some humidity out.


5 days later, the tap root has broken the shell

The morning after leaving the crack between the bowls we saw the tap root starting to break the shell; The picture above was taken that night and, as you can see, it’s big enough to plant 🙂


Seed you soon cotyledons 😉 

seed ready to develop in the soil

With the tap root about a centimeter long we planted the soil, about 1.5 cm deep. This depth gives it enough room to break soil and deploy the cotyledons with little effort, while the tap root can get comfortable in her new home.

As soon as we covered the seed, we set the pot in a bowl of water in order to humidify the soil without disturbing the seed. 


48 hours later – Soil has been broken and the cotyledons deployed

cotyledons are out and first leaves starting to grow

A little under 48 hours later she had broken the soil and deployed her cotyledons and, you can’t really see it but, the first leaves are starting to grow.

We actually missed the ground breaking process which sucks… so awesome to see ’em say hello to the world for the first time.

As we speak the first leaves are starting grow more and the cotyledons are starting to die out; We set the pot on a box in order to get the Apex closer to the light in order to avoid any early stage stretching, we don’t want her to get top-heavy ^^


Alright folks, that’s it for this one! 
Until next week, be safe and grow easy 😉


Hi There and welcome (back) to Free the Tree!
This past week we’ve seen some nice bud growth all around, although the BBC is still showing signs of Phosphorus deficiency… Hopefully we’ve added enough PK for them to be happy, and not too much for the others..
You can also see that Cheese plant was really getting too tall and close to the light source, which we can’t really raise much more than it is or else the Big Buddha Cheese and Blue Kush won’t have enough light.. So we decided to fold her Apex.

This is the first time we’ve done so many different strains at once and I think we went a little too far by having 5 different ones in there;
Furthermore, the BBC’s are mainly in re-used soil, maybe even dating back 4 grows, I think it may be totally out of nutrients and needs some time to recover..

Let’s get into it!


Phosphorus deficiency

If you read last weeks post you’ve seen that we’ve been dealing with phosphorus deficiency issue showing up so at your last watering we pumped up the amount of PK in the solution.

Since then we haven’t seen new leaves being affected by this deficiency which is a good sign, hopefully it’s the last one of this grow..


Leaves turning purple & black

Leaves turned purple/black


Nice Bud growth

Although we’ve been seeing these deficiencies, over the past weeks the buds have been nicely developing, especially on the Big Buddha Cheese.
Her flowering cycle seems to be shorter than the 3 other plants, we might finish by harvesting her a couple weeks earlier 🙂


Buddlets developing into nice buds


Big Buddha Cheese further along than the others


You can clearly see that the BBC is further along the road than her cousins in the room, her buds are looking sooo nice and their full of trichomes, really can’t wait to smoke up.

The smell has also been getting pretty intense, the whole room smells strongly, and when I open the grow room an even stronger odor is released, smelling beautifully sweat. It’s a real pleasure to see these little ones grow!


Apex Too close to the Light

Our cheese plant  is the only one we didn’t weave on the screen since it was so small, at first. Now she’s way too tall messing up our whole canopy, make the Blue Kush stretch and is covering up the light of the blue Thai.
On top of all that she’s now way too close to the cooling hood and the Apex is starting to cook, really not an idea situation


Leaves standing up showing the plant is too hot

Leaves going vertical


Folded apex during the flowering stage

Super Cropped Apex during the flowering stage


Since we didn’t want to up the hood even more, making it too far for all the other lights, we decided to super crop the apex. Don’t really know what it’s going to give out, we’ve read left and right and there really all opinions about supercropping during the flowering stage.
Since it was divided we decided to go ahead and try it out. This little one will have been super cropped twice during this grow

I think that this will make her produce fatter buds lower within the stem and the top bud might be a little smaller and with less THC density, but… at least it won’t be all burnt up.


Alright folks that’s all for this one!
Until next time, be safe and grow easy 😉

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Hey there and welcome our weekly grow report!
Here we are in the 5th week of the flowering stage and it hasn’t been much of a smooth road ^^
That said, these babies are still looking pretty nicely, their smell is getting stronger and stronger and seeping into the rest of the house.

This week was actually a pretty smooth one and we were able to get some preeeetty awesome pics hehe, lets get into it 😉


Trichomes fully formed

We’ve bee keeping a pretty regular eye on the trichomes all over the different plants and we’re pleased to see that they’re now globally all fully formed, still mostly clear no the THC production hasn’t started yet but things are looking nice 🙂
Here’s a couple pics, as always you can click on them to see the full version

Marijuana flower with trichomes all over the pistils and leaves

Flower full of trichomes


close up on pistil and trichomes

Close up on Pistils and flower trichomes


Close up on fully developed clear trichomes

Close up on Pistils and flower trichomes

Aren’t these little things just beautiful? 🙂 In the picture all the way to the right you can see there full form and color, stem and the clear balled tip; those little guys will be full of THC soon enough hehe


Uneven Canopy

We’ve been saying over the past couple grow reports that a couple of our buds were too tall, especially the Cheese and, consequentially, the Blue Kush; We finally got some pics that really illustrate this disparity!

Very bid size difference between different strains

Huge Size difference


2 Plants much taller than the rest of the canopy


Big Buddha cheese side pretty even

Big Buddha Cheese side is pretty even

Now keep in mind that cheese plant has been supercropped, she’s actually much taller than the Blue Thai next to her.

You can also see the Apex of the Blue Thai is suffering, looking all flat. I think it’s too hot for her so close to the hood so we decided to lift the right hand side of the hood as well as get the extraction hose near her in order to extract the heat right there.
Hopefully this will solve the issue..


Weed Buds developing nicely

This week the flowers have grown well, especially the Big Buddha Cheese.
As you can see in the images below Blue Thai is still between the buddlets to the flower, while the Big Buddha cheese is further along with long buds.

Blue Thai flowering

2 Blue Thai Buds developing


Big Buddha Cheese bud week 5 of flowering

Big Buddha Cheese flowers and trichomes growing


Main Apex of BBC developing well

Main Big Buddha Cheese full of flowers

I think we’ll need to need to start flushing the Big Buddha Cheese a while before the other plants, which isn’t ideal since we’ve installed an automatic watering system.. We’re going to have to personalize it and set up switches in order to water the BBC separately.

Alright folks that’s all for this one!
Until next time, be safe and grow easy 😉

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Hey there and welcome (back) to Free The Tree!
This 3rd week of the flowering stage was pretty calm, we did our final pruning, removing the Cola’s that needed to go, our Big Buddha’s started showing some strong phosphorus deficiency signs and those darn thrips won’t die.. So yeah, not all that calm but we’ve had worst ^^
On a better note, the pistils have been growing like crazy, trichomes have been appearing all over the place and the smell.. oh they’re starting to smell up the room very nicely.
Let’s get into it


Pruning Marijuana during the Flowering Stage

About a day after the the end of the stretch we decided to go for a last round of pruning on the Big Buddha Cheese plants.
Since we scrogged them a massive amount of colas were present and most of them don’t cut it.

“They don’t cut it” means that they either have a stem wayyyy to weak, the flower nodes are spaced out too much or they don’t have a direct access to light source.
Either of these situations indicate that the cola will consume more energy than it can produce. This means that the cola won’t produce much AND take energy away from the other colas; For those reasons it’s best to let them go.


Colas and leaves pruned during the flowering stage


As you can see we didn’t prune that much this time around, but the colas we did remove are pretty long.

Most the colas could have been kept but their placement wasn’t optimal and had no direct access to the light source.
Since they were weaved on the screen we could of un-weaved them (carefully) so that they could reach the level of the canopy.
It’s actually what we did with some of the them, but these one’s we’re just in the way or too short.


Pistil growth and Buddlets appearing

Now that we’re really into the flowering stage the plants have been focusing their development on the flowers, and it’s been pretty visible.
Since the second week of the stretch trichomes have started to appear but they’re now growing much more and starting to form little budlets on the Apex of each plant.

From now on their just going to grow grow grow until they form some nice and dense flowers ready to be consumed  🙂
These next couple weeks are going to be really exciting, can’t wait ^^
(if you want to be notified for the next posts clic on the little bell on the bottom left)


first buddlets appearing on the apex of the plants

Pistils forming buddlet on Apex


Signs of Phosphorus deficiency on the Big Buddha Cheese

Since the end of last week we’ve been seeing the leaves of the Big Buddha Cheese plants starting to become brown, curl down and the most impacted ones are actually turning a purple/blue color..



It took us a little while to diagnose what was going on, but as soon as those leaves turned black we knew.. Our babies can get enough Phosphorus.
Know we know that our pH levels have been between 6 and 7, meaning that the roots are able to extract it from the medium so that’s not the issue.

In order to solve this next watering we definitely need to up the levels of Phosphorus. Hopefully the other strains won’t get into a nutrient burn situation.. that would be one headache to handle


Couple Early Flowering Stage pictures

Since this week was mainly marked by deficiencies and pruning we figured it would be good to finish on a positive note, that is some nice pictures of them during this stage of flower growth, as always click on the image to get a full view.

pistils developing into flower

Apex Pistils growing


Big Buddha Cheese flowering

Scrogged BBC flowering


full grow room after 3 weeks into the flowering stage

5 Strains flowering


Alright folks that’s all for this week!
Until next time, be safe and grow easy 😉

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Hey there and welcome (back) to Free the Tree!
This week we finally got enough soil to transplant the Blue Kush plant which started showing some Phosphorous issues which got us a little worried. 
Apart from that we also finally received the Neem Oil to start application on the plants and get rid of these nasty little Thrips; Let’s get into it.


Blue Kush Phosphorous issues and Transplantation

We had definitely waited way too long to transplant this little one, the roots started coming out the bottom of the pot, the veins of the leaves were turning purple, safe for the underside…
She also had totally stopped growing which really had us worried. He’s some images, but before that check out our article on transplanting a weed plant if you want to know more.

Blue Kush Phosphorous issues

So this was the first time it had ever happened to us, the plant had stopped growing, the veins and the bottom side of the leaves were turning purple. 
Here’s a couple pics, as always you can click on them to get the full view.


Signs of phosphorous issues on weed leaf

Leaf turning Purple – Signs of Phosphorous issues.


Main leaf Vein turning purple

Main vein turning Purple and stopped growth.


Weed plant starting to grow back

Growth starting back up after Transplantation.


Transplanting our Blue Kush

We definitely waited waaaay to long to transplant this little one. The main reason why was that I didn’t have enough soil so really couldn’t..


Compressed roots starting to sick out of bottom pot holes

Roots starting to stick out of the bottom of the pot.


Compressed roots at the bottom of soil

Well developed root system of the Blue Kush


Half way through the blue kush transplantation

Well developed root system of the Blue Kush

As you can see with in those 2 first pictures the roots were definitely blocked and compressed, which easily explained why the plant had stopped growing and the Phosphorous issues. 
Since the roots of the plant is her only way to get nutrients from the soil to the top of the plant, by having them so compressed there was no way she could develop well. 
During the couple days following the transplantation she started showing signs of growth right away which definitely reassured us.


Thrips Treatment continuing

During this week we’ve been spraying the plants about 15 minutes before lights out every other day. The objective of this is to kill any survivors or newly hatched Thrips that could start the infestation back up.

Since the first treatment we’ve only seen 1 larvae on the plants so it seems to be working pretty good. Really hoping that this is the end of this infestation, but just to be sure we’ll be spraying neem oil every couple days for the next 10 days. 

We grouped together all the info on how to kill Thrips over here if you want to know more.


Organic Neem Oil used to kill Thrips

Bottle of Organic Neem Oil

5 Plants at the end of 4th week


Alright guys that it’s for this one, until next time
Be safe and grow easy!

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Hey there ! 
Wish we were writing this post on a happier subject… But for the past couple months we’ve been battling a spidermite invasion, and what a battle it’s been ! 

The infestation started in our little garden, on our tomatoes to be specific, but with time these suckers spread… Outside they got to our a bunch of our plants and while we were busy raising money for citizen lobbying tool these suckers got to our flowering tent…
Let’s go over this whole o’deal together 😉
Excuse us for not having the best quality pics available on this post, our camera broke and we haven’t been able to replace it yet


The first signs of Spider Mites…

As you’re most likely aware, spidermites reveal their presence by leaving little white spots on the leaves. If you’re seeing this, ACT NOW, the earlier you start fighting back the infestation the better your chances are.

On our end when we noticed we had just gotten back from vacation so the infestation was already massive. 
The image below shows a couple leaves totally infested. The plant was over 4 feet tall, just imagine how many individuals were on there..


Every red dot… is an adult spidermite 



Our first strike – Black Soap & Neem oil Combo

Since we already had dealt with a thrips invasion during our previous grow (yeah, we’re not lucky), we already had black soap and neem oil around.
These 2 ingredients work just as well as on Spidermites as they do on thrips, on paper. As we cover in our guide on how to deal with spidermites, the importance here is coverage, coverage, coverage.



Our neem oil & Black soap mix ready we started spraying all the infested plants, making sure to cover as much the top of the leaves and their backside, where the mites lay all their eggs.


The spidermites strike back, viciously 

After applying the mix all over the plants, twice, leaving a couple day intervals we had to leave for a couple days again.
When we came back these suckers had come back too, and with a vengeance! Honestly I think there were thousands of them on just this one tomatoes plant.


click on the image to get the full view, and again every red dot is an adult spidermite…


At this point it started really impacting the development of the plant with some sections totally dying out (the ongoing drought didn’t help out).
The fruit bearing sections went from 12 flowers to 2/3 per ramification, new growth slowed crazily and older sections started dying out.

Clearly, these pest don’t hesitate to suck the live out their host, literally.


Nature does things well… Investing in Predators

The Neem oil and Black soap mix is effective against the adult mites but I’m not so sure about their eggs, and since they can lay up to 20 of them a day, the adults are really just the visible part of the iceberg.

That’s where investing in a predator is useful, in our case we’re talking about the Phytoseiulus Persimilis, which feeds exclusively on spidermites and their eggs ! 


Predators that eat spidermites and their eggs


The number of individuals you want to get will depend on the size of your infestation, on our end with 500 we clearly under did it since we had about 6 infested plants by the time they got here.

As we point our in-depth article on spidermites, linked above, applying a round of neem oil & black soap mix a day before introducing the predators. 
In doing so you will reduce the number of pests drastically, and then the predators will swoop in to finish the rest of the adults and eggs that are still around.


Not enough predators, the mites spread to the Cannabis plants

By now it’s been over 2 months since the first signs of the pest and they started infesting the flowering plant mid-way through the flowering phase.
The worst part, we were in the middle of the crowdfunding campaign with United4Earth so let’s just say that we weren’t the most attentive to our babies at that moment…
The mites had fully infested our Blue Kush by the time we even realized they were around.


First white marks appearing on cannabis leaves


As you can imagine, we were unhappy of this discovery, to say the least. Here we were, back preparing a mix and ordering some predators, again… 
Since we were in the flowering phase we just used the Neem oil the first time, as ingesting it can get you sick, so we didn’t want it all over the buds we were going to smoke.


A very weak harvest..

Every couple days we kept spraying the foliage, but there was so much damage done that we decided to go ahead and harvest, clean the room before placing the rooted clones into the flowering tent.


Critical + Apex bud freshly harvested and pruned




Blue Kush and Critical buds drying

2 plants drying – Super small harvest


Just as we saw with the tomatoes, since the plants were battling for survival, the amount of flowers produced was severely impacted. We haven’t weighed it out yet but i’m thinking it lost us at least 50% of the harvest..

Hopefully our in-depth clean of the grow room got rid of the last suckers, but just in case we still have that batch of predators that should be arriving soon. We will introduce them in the grow room regardless so that they can go hunt for eggs.
We don’t wand to get a surprise in a couple months when the ones laying around start hatching. 


That’s it for this one ! Hopefully this will be our last post regarding spidermites (and thrips)

We’ve decided to start posting an article every friday from now on, so until next week,
Be safe and grow easy!