Just a warning ahead of time, this is a long one documenting the entire grow from seedling to harvest. This past April I decided to gather up all my bag seeds that have collected over the years on my rolling tray and toss them outside in a raised bed in my backyard. I have no idea what strains these are as some of these seeds had been sitting in the tray for at least 2 years. Many years ago I was growing indoors out in Washington state but have never done an outdoor grow, especially out in the desert here in New Mexico. The raised bed had been dormant with no plants in it for a few years. Prior to that it was mixed well with organic potting soil, compost, manure, and some other additives that I don’t quite remember. I did very little prep to the soil, just tilling it lightly, and tried to keep it super simple. I started out with 13 total seeds. They were germinated using the paper towel method and had 100% success rate. I planted some of them directly into the raised bed and some of them into solo cups. I live in southern New Mexico where temps get hot very early in the year but I managed to only lose 2 seedlings to the heat. This picture is from April 29th with all 13 seedlings in the bed.
This is 2 weeks later and you can already see the 2 seedlings on the left in the paper cups are significantly smaller than the rest.
1 week later and I’ve transplanted some of the cups directly into the raised bed. The taproots of 2 seeds were tangled to a point that I was worried I would break them if I tried untangling them when I originally germinated the seeds in a damp paper towel. I ended up planting those seeds into the same spot in the raised bed. It’s hard to see that in the photo but those 2 are at the bottom right of the bed. The 2 small seedlings continue to struggle as seen on the top left still in the paper cups.
The next picture was about a month later on June 26th. So these are about 2 months old now and the 2 smaller seedlings have died off at this point. I also have planted 2 pepper plants on the far left of the raised bed as I thought I had plenty of space on that side for some peppers. Boy was I wrong. They ended up getting completely overshadowed. At this point I have topped several plants, introduced some low stress training, and also let some grow as is. My goal was to keep the plants from growing taller than the rock wall so that people walking down the alley wouldn’t be tempted to reach over and help themselves. This, like my pepper idea, did not go according to plan and I was unable to keep one plant from getting too tall. Clearly a strong sativa and that plant is still the only one that’s currently still in that raised bed, not quite ready yet. You can see this plant already the tallest on the left side of the photo closest to the camera. But more on that plant later.
About a week later, July 6th, and you can see I’ve actually got the canopy relatively even across the plants and things are looking healthy. The only fertilizer or nutrients I was using at this point was Dr. Earth that I had mixed into the top inch or 2 of soil as a top dress, along with whatever was already in the soil that just needed to wake up with some moisture. I had also built a box of sorts wrapped in patio screening that I would put over the top of the bed to help with some shade and keep some of the bugs out. I end up really battling pests, mainly leaf miners and cutworms, towards the latter part of this grow as this box ends up being too small and the plants just grow way too tall. At this point I have also installed a drip irrigation system that’s set to water every 2 hours for 15 minutes with 1/2 gallon per hour emitters at each plant. Even watering that often would sometimes not be enough for the desert heat out here. This summer was a bit hotter with temps sitting around 102 for most days. But I knew I was going on vacation soon and it was absolutely necessary to get this drip system running before that trip.
July 17th and I put up some trellis netting to help with low stress training and my efforts to keep the plants from growing taller than the rock wall behind them. Growth has been fairly steady but there were definitely times where the plants were wilted due to the excessive heat. The makeshift shade box I was using had also gotten too small at this point and I start to see leaf miner damage on some of the perimeter leaves. I was spraying with neem oil every few days with little success but as time went on the leaf miner activity seemed to level off and did not end up being a major issue as they just burrowed into the large fan leaves which were easily plucked off the plant.
Only 5 days later, July 22nd, and we’re finally starting to see some signs of flowering. Out of the 11 seedlings that actually survived up to this point, only 2 of them ended up being males, which I quickly disposed of. While trimming this whole harvest I only ran across 1 seed so I’m thinking I got the males out just in time. I was also excited to find this little praying mantis hanging out who ends up making many appearances in the months to come. My pepper plants at this time were attracting a good bit of ants which would occasionally go explore the other plants so I was using diatomaceous earth to mitigate the ants which worked well.
About 2 weeks later, Aug 6, and these girls stretched like crazy. They had grown taller than the rock wall at this point and I realized there wasn’t much I could do at this point. Any low stress training resulted in some snapped branches so I stopped trying. Bud development was also coming along nice. I ordered some PK booster from Amazon and started adding that every week or so to try and get some denser, bigger buds. Not sure if it actually worked or not since I have no basis for comparison. Still gotta do some reading up on that.
Better view of the stretch 3 days later, Aug 9. And this gives you a better view of those poor pepper plants just struggling to catch any sun.
Back from a week long vacation, Aug 27th, 3 weeks since the last photo, and I come home completely stunned at the progress that happened while I was away. I’m assuming we’re about 5-6 weeks into flower at this point. The closest plant on the right hand side had grown to over 6 feet tall and wasn’t showing signs of stopping despite the low stress training I had done to it. The other plants were really developing nice big buds and my drip system seemed to work exactly as I needed it to while I was gone. It was about 105 degrees during the week that I was away and the plants were looking good…at least at first glance. I notice lots of the fan leaves had holes in them or huge chunks taken out of them. I start to investigate further and find lots of small green grasshoppers scattered about the garden having a feast. A few early mornings in the garden and I’m able to catch most of them by hand and get rid of them. But it was what was happening at night that was the real problem. What I didn’t realize is that my garden had a huge cutworm infestation. I was being a bit neglectful because from the surface everything seemed to be going okay. I spent about a week straight going out to the garden every night with a flashlight handpicking cutworms off my plant one by one. There had to be hundreds. I stopped counting after a while. This also lead me to find a small red spider mite infestation down at the bottom of a plant that was leaned up against the rock wall. I’m too far into flower to want to spray my plants with anything so I ordered some predatory mites from Natures Good Guys hoping that it would at least slow the spread until it was ready for harvest. Although the company was easy to work with in terms of getting a refund, the mites I ordered had no activity whatsoever and ended up being a waste of time. All I could do at this point was hope for the best and
A little over a week later, Sept 6, and all I can do is use a jewelers loupe to time my harvest and hope the bugs don’t gain any traction. The weather is still in the high 90’s during the days and I’m starting to notice bud rot in some of the denser buds, but they didn’t quite have enough amber in the trichomes for me to think they were ready. Monsoon season was coming to an end and this one was relatively mild in terms of rainfall so I was surprised to see bud rot out here with so little humidity in the air, usually around 15-25% Most plants had about 5-10% of their trichomes amber so I decided I’m going to wait one more week and chop them down.
Sept 9, 5 days from harvest. I’ve been keeping an eye on the plants at night and I’m not finding any more grasshoppers or cutworms. So that’s good. But the spider mites are still there and have spread slightly higher up the plant. I decided to just cut my losses and chop those branches off where I can see spider mite damage. Trichome progress is looking good and on track to harvest the upcoming weekend. Although as you can see in the last photo, that sativa is nowhere near ready. I’m assuming like a 12+ week flower for that one.
Harvest day is upon us! September 14. Just days before the harvest moon. I’m up bright and early to get started chopping these girls down. I prep by getting 2 large tubs, one for a diluted hydrogen peroxide wash, and one with clean water for rinsing. Now, normally I’m not an advocate for washing plants at harvest unless you have some powdery mildew problems or something but I’ve never done an outdoor grow before and a friend suggested that I do a wash and rinse to knock off a lot of the dirt, debris, and any bugs that are in there. And I’m glad I did. The amount of bugs and dirt that fell to the bottom of the tubs was quite surprising. I changed the water in the rinse tub out with each rinse, and the peroxide tube every 3 rinses. Mostly because I only had 2 bottles of peroxide so I had to stretch it a bit. I tried rinsing whole plants as best as I could but had to cut a few plants down a bit to get them to fit in the tubs. After some good shakes, I took the plants over to a makeshift tent I made for drying. The biggest reason I needed this tent was to control humidity. The humidity inside my house is usually around 30-35% and in order to slow the drying time down and preserve those terpenes I had to increase the humidity and lower the temps. I bought an AC infinity humidifier that has a build in digital controller, and I hooked up my portable AC to cool down the laundry room, which is where I kept the drying tent. I blacked out the window and kept the room dark with around 60% humidity and 65 degrees F inside the tent. The total drying time was 9 days for me hanging whole plants which is exactly what I was really hoping for. Anywhere from 7-10 days is what I was anticipating. From there I spread out the trimming over 2 days and ended up with just over 12 ounces of smokeable flower. The end product was surprisingly smooth and tasty smoked in a joint and I’m expecting it to get a lot better as it cures. I have all of the flower in glass mason jars, in a dark pantry, with 62% humidity packs inside. I’ll burp the jar once a day.
As I mentioned earlier I started finding bud rot in my plants a couple weeks before harvest and I probably lost a couple ounces to it that I had to toss out. I also mentioned I still have one plant, the tall sativa, growing in the raised bed. It still looks like it has a long ways to go but it’s already rotting in a lot of the main colas. I’m not sure whether or not I want to let this plant finish out or just cut it down now and salvage what I can for hash making. And if you’ve made it this far and have any tips for preventing this in the future it would be greatly appreciated.
I mostly put this post together for myself to look back on in the future, but if anyone has any questions about specifics, or has any advice for growing out here in zone 7b, then please feel free to chime in. I’m new to overgrow and plan on spending a good amount of time here reading up for my next grow. I did recently start growing indoors and just made a post about that earlier if interested. But this outdoor grow brought back the passion I had for growing cannabis so many years ago and I’m excited to see where this journey takes me. Cheers and happy growing.
