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

Bud and leaves full of trichomes

Close up on trichomes growing on pistils

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 ^^

Thrips larvae’s moving on leaf

Larvae’s feeding on leaf

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

Severely affected leaf 

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 🙂

Until next time,
Be safe and grow easy!

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