March 23, 2021, cicadas and cannabis

 Hi Gardeners

Iris reticulata

There is hazy sunshine here today and it’s mild again, in the 60’s.  We are supposed to get rain tonight and we actually need it.  It’s very dry. Yesterday it got up to 70 degrees and I actually heard frogs midday. Calendar, meteorological and actual spring weather all combined.

I have quite a few crocus in bloom, iris reticulata, and some tiny violas. It’s about time for a trip to the greenhouse for pansies. I have been doing some cleanup, not too vigorous yet, mostly taking down any tall stalks left from things like phlox, mums, and lilies.  

I actually break these dried stems in numerous pieces and scatter them back over the bed. It keeps the chicken from spotting bare soil and deciding to take a dust bath there. And it returns nutrients to the soil as all these stem pieces will break down fairly quickly and foliage will soon cover them.

I hold off on any pruning of things like roses and clematis for just a while longer- usually mid to late April. By then I will know for sure what has been winter killed on these plants.  I shake the clematis vines to remove dead leaves and make them look a little better.  You can then see where leaf buds are better and make your pruning decisions as they leaf out.

We have started tearing up and re-doing our veggie garden. All the old raised bed boards have been removed. We wanted to save the soil in the raised bed areas, and we needed to level out the area.  So we are half filling the new grow bags with the old soil, so they can be moved easily. I am then going to lay the old boards down flat and put the grow bags on top of them, so weeds won’t grow up between them. Lots of work there but we have time at this point to do it in small portions at a time, important for old folk with mobility issues.

I’ll be fertilizing my garden beds this afternoon, just before the rain. I use an organic granular fertilizer on all the beds. It’s a growth booster for all the plants and it’s very good for the spring flowering bulbs to promote healthy bloom next year.

Inside the seeds I planted last week, cannabis and two types of tithonia are up and growing. This week I’ll start a few more types of seed. Cannabis plants are tough from the get go. I dropped one of the cannabis pots while moving them and it landed upside down and the seedling was bent in half. I put in back in the tray under the growlight hoping it would recover.  By the next day it had fully righted itself- there is a slight kink in the stem but its already racing upward toward the light. Ten days after planting the cannabis seedlings are several inches tall and have 2-3 sets of true leaves.  More about cannabis below.

I want to thank everyone who sent me condolences last week. It was a rough week and I appreciate your sentiments.

Get ready for gardening

If you don’t remember when you last had a tetanus shot check with your doctor.  It may be time for a new one. Tetanus bacteria are in all soils and tetanus is a very serious disease that’s often fatal. All the bacteria need is to get into your system through a break in your skin, and gardeners get a lot of cuts and punctures.

And when you are using potting mediums and bagged soils try not to breathe in any dust from them. Here’s where a mask can be useful outside. Several types of fungal spores and bacteria can be present in these mixes and some of them cause nasty lung infections.

Start gardening slowly, warm up those muscles. Don’t do the same task for long periods of time, break your chores up so you do some digging, then some pruning, then some pushing or pulling a cart, then some weeding and so on. If you spend hours spading up a new garden site, for example, you are going to be very sorry and sore the next day, unless you are very fit and used to digging all day. 

Remember to wear mosquito spray- they’ll be out soon- and sunscreen. Gardeners should wear sunglasses or something that shades their eyes when working in the sun. This will help keep your eyes healthy as you age. Dress in layers so you can remove things easily as you get warm. Certain medications can make you sick or give you a bad burn if you spend a lot of time in the sun. Check your prescription medicines to see if they have a warning label for this.

Brood X – the cicada plague

I’m sure that if you live in the Eastern half of the country you have heard about Brood X – the swarm of cicadas that will soon be hatching. Cicadas have varying life cycles by species. This year 3 species of cicada mark the end of their 17-year life cycle.  This group of cicada (Magicada spps.) is called Brood X. As soon as the soil temperature reaches 65 degrees, millions of the bugs will start emerging from the ground. They’ll emerge in the southern areas first.

It sounds scary but relax, Brood X will not harm you. They won’t devour everything like locusts, in fact they won’t be eating anything, all they’ll be doing is having a giant sex orgy. And many areas of the country east of the Mississippi will not even see the bugs (and none west of it). The USDA Forest Service map below shows where the different broods of cicadas will emerge by county. Brood X is the yellow counties.

Brood X numbers will be highest in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, with a few other counties in other states. Michigan has just a few counties on its southern border that will see them.

In the places where they do emerge in mass it is quite the sight to see and hear. The 3 different species emerging each have their own distinct songs but taken all together it’s one giant buzz, waves of noise rising and falling.  The bugs will cover trees and a few other things that look like trees, and they will be mating, oblivious to what’s around them. They will not harm plants or animals, they don’t bite or sting.

Birds and animals will be feasting on cicadas until their stomachs bulge. They will be extremely happy with Brood X emerging. In fact, people can eat cicadas too if they want. When I worked at Extension, I had a booklet in my files with recipes for cicadas. One of the best ways is to heat up some oil and fry them up until they get crispy and pop. (I did not try this recipe.)

After they mate the female cicada lay eggs on trees. The female makes a little slit in a twig to lay the eggs, and this may cause the twig to wilt. But the tree quickly heals from this.

The eggs hatch and a nymph falls to the ground, burrows in and begins to eat tree roots. There they will stay for 17 years. The adult bugs die soon after mating and the whole Brood X thing is over in a few weeks.

If you are in a Brood X county it’s recommended you don’t plant young trees until after the bugs have disappeared for a few weeks. The larvae feeding on newly planted tree roots can be very stressful for the tree. But the cicadas don’t seem to significantly harm established trees by root feeding.

While the cicadas may be annoying do not attempt to get rid of them with pesticides. They will die soon anyway and putting pesticides into the environment for a harmless bug is not earth friendly or safe.

You may want to watch your pets if you are in an area where the cicadas are swarming. They are not poisonous, but pets may eat so many of them that they get sick or have digestive problems from the bugs hard shells. A few of the bugs won’t harm them however.

So if you don’t want to harvest cicada for crispy snacks, just get some earplugs and everything will be fine.

 

Cicada adult
Photo credit North Carolina State University

Growing pot in the garden

When I was in high school and college it wasn’t unusual to see marihuana plants popping up in summer alongside a porch, where someone cleaned them out of a bag of weed. Your weed had seeds back then. People also grew pot on the windowsill or tucked it in a cornfield or in a clearing in the woods.

This pot was not as strong as the cannabis grown today but as I can attest, it was good enough to give you a mellow high. And people thought they hit the jackpot when they were able to score some cannabis grown in a tropical place, like Jamaican gold, which was also grown mostly outside in the ground.

Somewhere along the line cannabis growing moved inside, where it could be hidden and where the growing conditions could be carefully controlled. A whole underground business developed with hydroponic systems, grow lights, grow tents, exclusive fertilizers, and other specialized equipment. Breeders hybridized strains of plants and produced a myriad of specialized varieties.

Once cannabis began to be legalized for medicinal and then recreational use, the business spawned all kinds of growing innovations, many of which were assimilated into regular horticulture. Cannabis became a multi-billion-dollar industry and to this day it’s the one of highest grossing horticultural crops. The science of growing cannabis has grown by leaps and bounds.

If you listen to someone who grows pot in a grow room in his/her basement you might be discouraged from growing cannabis. Indoor hobby growers go to great lengths to get the highest strength, and fattest buds, that they can grow. They use elaborate systems of strong lights, exacting fertilizer regimes, heating and cooling, pruning and other means to produce those crops. The instructions can seem daunting to people just wanting to grow a little cannabis for their own use.

Cannabis plant in my house in April last year.

But you don’t have to grow cannabis this way. It’s been growing outside since the beginning of time and if you can grow tomatoes outside you can grow pot out there too. If cannabis is legal where you live you can grow it in the garden right alongside your other plants. (If it isn’t legal in your area you may want to keep growing it inside.)

The cannabis you grow in the garden might not be quite as strong as that grown under rigorous indoor conditions. But it will be perfectly fine for most users and a lot less trouble to grow.

And you may want to grow some cannabis plants just for the fun of it. They are nice looking and get quite large, making quite the impression in the back of the flower border or veggie garden. Cannabis has numerous proven medical benefits and if you grow herbs for medicinal use, you really should have some. Pollinators love cannabis flowers, although if you are growing it you really don’t want or need it to be pollinized.

So how do you grow marihuana outside? Start by reviewing your local laws. If it’s legal in your state, there still may be laws about how many plants you can grow and where you can grow them. For example, in Michigan each person can grow 12 plants and those plants cannot be seen from the street and must be securely enclosed. Other states have different requirements.

If marihuana isn’t legal for recreational use you probably can’t legally grow it, inside or outside, but there may be exceptions if your state recognizes medical use of cannabis. But do check out the rules because it’s not fun to go to jail.

What cannabis plants look like

Cannabis plants are often mistaken for cleome and vice versa.  The leaves are similar. Look for 5-9 leaflets arranged in a fan like pattern. Leaflets have wavy edges and coarse veins. There are some variations in leaf color between varieties, often called strains in pot lingo. Some plants have a purplish look, others may look frosted, especially near maturity.

Cannabis fan leaf

Plants are covered with small hairs called trichomes, which heavily coat the buds and leaves near them. These hairs produce the chemicals that make cannabis medicinal and fun. They feel sticky to the touch. Stems are thick and ridged.  Plants of some strains can get 12 feet high. Short stocky strains are available.

On the female cannabis plant buds begin to form in clusters at the junction of the stem and leaves, called a node. They also form thickly at the tips of main branches. They aren’t very showy or noticeable at first. They consist of several protruding filaments which are the stigmas. They are attached to a rounded pistil and surround by leaf bracts. Small leaves, called sugar leaves grow around them.

As the flowers mature- hopefully without being pollenated- buds become thick and fat and quite noticeable. But cannabis flowers are never very pretty.  

The right location

If it’s legal to grow it, find a sunny spot, marihuana needs full sun to grow well. You can grow it in pots on a sunny back deck or behind the garage if you don’t have yard space. Even if you don’t have restrictions on where it can be grown, I would suggest your outdoor grow area be out of public view, where those walking by or delivery people can’t see it.  A well grown mature plant can be worth around $1000, so you don’t want to tempt anyone. And it wouldn’t make you happy to lose that plant just before it was ready to harvest.

A dog kennel with a gate you can lock may be a good place to plant pot, make sure the dog has been removed.  Or just a good fence around the yard or garden with a locked gate can work. Fences also protect your plants against deer and rabbits, while cannabis isn’t their favorite food, they will eat it.

Marihuana plants are pretty sturdy but occasionally wind damage can be a problem as plants near maturity. You may want to plant your pot up against a fence or building to give it a little wind protection or support.

If you are planting directly in the ground, you need well drained fertile soil. Marihuana doesn’t do well in wet ground.  Working compost and aged manure into the area where you want to plant the pot can improve the growing area.

If you are going to use pots/grow bags for your cannabis plants use at least a 10-gallon size- that’s a deep pot roughly 16-18 inches in diameter. Cannabis plants are large and require a lot of soil to grow. You can start them in smaller pots and move them up as plants grow. Pots MUST have drainage.

Give each plant a lot of space. Crowding plants leads to poor air circulation and may lead to fungal diseases which are very hard to deal with when you want to consume the plants. A minimum of 3 square feet per plant is suggested. Don’t let other garden plants and weeds crowd them either.

You don’t need to grow all the plants you legally can. A well grown plant produces a lot of useable cannabis – up to a pound. Two-three plants are usually enough for personal consumption and it’s not like you can take it to the farmers market to sell. Unless you have a license, you can’t sell it.

Finding seeds and plants

The hardest part of marihuana growing for beginners may be finding a legal and honest source of seed or plants. Most pot that people are smoking doesn’t contain seeds anymore, so you probably won’t be saving them from your baggie. You can order seeds and rarely, started cuttings, online. But the best way may be to ask at a local marihuana dispensary.  I have heard a few are adding cannabis plants to their stores. Someone who grows indoors may sell you a cutting.

Should you buy seeds or cuttings, called clones, in the lingo of growers?  Both have advantages and disadvantages. Seeds are easier to find. Seed grown plants have a large taproot, good for anchoring plants in the ground outside. They are usually a bit more vigorous. But here’s the problem.

Cannabis plants are either male or female.  You want female plants. And when you grow marihuana from untreated seed you are going to get roughly 50% male and 50% female plants. The plants have to grow a while before you can sex them and destroy the males. And you do need to destroy the males, or at least keep all the flowers trimmed off, so they don’t pollinize the females which will then produce seeds. The male cannabis buds are not good for consumption and buds are the preferred harvest.

You can however buy feminized cannabis seeds. This is done by treating seeds with various chemicals. The percentage of female plants will be much higher from these seeds and so will be the price. Also, you may want to look for auto flowering seeds. These are seeds that produce plants that can flower without decreasing daylength. However, in the north decreasing daylength outside as summer progresses is usually enough to initiate bloom.

Clones or rooted cuttings will be just like the parent plant and most commercial cannabis is produced from clones.  They will be female plants. Clones have a fibrous root system which is good for container growing. Try to get your clones when they are about 8-12 inches high and have a healthy root system.

If the weather is warm- about two weeks after your last frost- clones can be planted directly in the ground. If you need to hold them inside in pots make sure they are under a grow light.  Start with smaller pots and transplant them as they grow inside.

Clones are hard to find unless you are friends with someone who is a licensed grower. Start looking well before warm weather and be prepared to grow them inside for a while.  Ask at local dispensaries and growing supply stores. The laws about selling live cannabis plants are quirky and murky.  Some places require buyers to have a medical use card.  Sending plants through US mail can be a problem.

Here’s a few places to try.

https://www.greenboxgrown.com/clones-for-sale

http://www.marijuanaplantsonline.com/  (says they offer free sample seeds)

Before you go hunting for seeds or plants do some research on what types of cannabis you want and what strains of the thousands available you might want to try. Look for fast maturing strains. It’s too much information to give here. But high CBD strains are for mostly medicinal use and high THC strains for recreational.

There are some strains considered to be better for outdoor growing.  Here are some of them; Honey Cream, Speedy Chile, Critical Kush, White Widow, Durban Poison, Blue Dream, Frisian Dew, Northern Lights, Royal Cookies Automatic, Quick One, Purple Haze, Sour Diesel, Candy Kush Express.

Starting cannabis seeds

If you decide to use cannabis seeds plan on starting them inside about 8-12 weeks before you move them outside- which should be about 2 weeks after the last frost in your area, when the weather is warm and settled. Cannabis seedlings do not tolerate cold wet weather well.

The seeds are usually easy to start. Soak them in warm water for an hour before planting. Use sterilized seed starting medium and clean containers. They usually sprout in about 7 days. Start the seeds in small containers and transplant them into larger containers as they grow.

Use grow lights unless you have a heated greenhouse. Cannabis plants need strong, bright light. Healthy cannabis plants grow like weeds- and you will need to start fertilizing them when they have 3-4 sets of leaves, unless the medium you used for seed starting contains a slow-release fertilizer.

Don’t worry about fussy, time consuming and expensive fertilizing directions the avid pot hobby grower will try to convince you to use. You can use any water-soluble fertilizer or granular fertilizer that is formulated for flowers. I actually use rose fertilizer and my plants grow very well. Follow the label directions for container plants.

Cannabis outside my house.  The fence was 8 feet high.
Picture taken in late August.

Finding the males and getting rid of them

If you did not buy female clones and started seeds, some of those seeds are going to be males. If you used feminized seeds you may not find many, but if you used regular seeds you may find a lot. You want to get rid of male plants early, both so they won’t fertilize the females and make them produce seeds, and because they are not desirable for medicinal and recreational use. They take up space and use valuable resources.

When seedlings are 6-8 weeks old, they start producing preflowers in the leaf nodes. You’ll probably need a magnifying glass to help you find the males. Male pre-flowers look like tiny sacs, with no protruding hairs. Females have those protruding hair-like structures, which will become stigmas.  As the male flowers develop, they lengthen and look like little bananas.  Females have those white hairs sticking out that become more prominent.

Sometimes a plant has both female and male flowers, usually when the plant is very stressed. Both these hermaphrodites and the male plants need to be destroyed if you want the remaining females to produce good marihuana product. You’ll need to remove the males before the “bananas” open up and release pollen.

If you aren’t sure if you have a male and don’t want to destroy the plant, you could take it far from the other plants. Or just keep checking frequently until you are certain of what you have. You could take a branch of the plant to an experienced grower and see if he or she can help you decide.

Transplanting outside

After all danger of frost has passed and the ground and air are warm your cannabis plants can be planted in the ground or containers moved outside. They need to be hardened off first. That means move them outside in a shady place for a few days. Then move them to the sunny spot where they are to grow and provide light shade for a few more days.

You want to get the vegetative stage of growth largely finished by the end of June. Plants started early can easily be 5-6 feet tall at this point. Plants will continue to grow larger more slowly at this point and as the days get shorter, they should start setting flowers. It takes a long time for flowers to mature enough for harvest – harvesting is done before frost, but preferably in late September and October.

Watering and fertilizing

Cannabis uses a lot of water, but it never wants soggy soil. Check containers particularly grow bags, every day and water if they are dry. For cannabis in the ground water plants when it’s dry- about when you would water tomatoes. If they wilt and the soil is dry, they need water.

Try to water at the base of the plant and water early enough that plants dry before the sun sets. This helps avoid fungal disease.

As I mentioned earlier cannabis needs fertilizing for optimal growth, but you don’t need special fertilizers or complicated routines. When planting outside in the ground, work in some slow-release fertilizer for flowers.  Or use a water-soluble fertilizer formulated for flowers as the label directs. If you use organic fertilizers make sure they are not too high in nitrogen. Do not use Epsom salt on cannabis. Do not use fresh manure.

Problems

Few insects bother cannabis. I have heard that Japanese beetles will eat it, but I have not seen damage from them.  But deer, rabbits and human pests can take your crop, so protect it.

The biggest problem cannabis has outside is from fungal disease, powdery mildew can affect it. Make sure plants aren’t crowded so air flow is optimal. You won’t want to use fungicides on the plants since you will be consuming them, and they don’t help after the problem has started. Home remedies like baking soda or milk don’t work. Plants don’t die from fungal disease usually, but the quality and quantity of buds produced will be greatly affected.

The best thing to do is try to increase airflow around the plants, avoid watering near dark and hope for the best.

Harvesting

Cannabis takes a long growing season to get a good harvest. In many planting zones, 6 and lower, you’ll need to start the plants inside early. As the plants mature it’s natural for leaves to yellow, beginning at the bottom first. The stigmas turn brown and dry, the buds will be fat. In zones 5 and 6 harvesting is normally at the end of September or early October. Cannabis has to be harvested before frost, unless you can move plants inside.

There are all kinds of tricks to telling if the buds are at the optimal stage and you may want to do some research on that. But even if your buds aren’t at the peak, they will still probably be pretty good. Even if somehow your plants got pollinated and seeds develop, you can clean out the seeds and still get a decent harvest.

When the plant is ready, cut it at the base and bring the whole plant inside to a warm, dry, dark place and hang it upside down. Closets and basements work. These plants can take up a lot of room so plan accordingly.  After 10 days or so you can cut off the bud clusters, break up the bigger clusters a little and spread the buds out on paper towels to dry further. After another 2 weeks or so you can store the buds in clean, sealed containers.

One thing to note is that drying cannabis stinks- it’s a very strong skunk like smell. It’s most noticeable at first, as it dries the smell gets less. But you may want it somewhere away from the main living area.

If you notice any moisture in containers open them immediately and spread the buds out to dry again. Discard any moldy buds.

You can dry cannabis in a dehydrator but even one plant will probably overwhelm your capacity. Do not use the microwave or oven because high temperatures can destroy the active ingredients or cause a fire.

New growers growing cannabis may not have the perfect, high potency harvest of professionally grown indoor cannabis, but you can get a decent amount of good herb for personal use. It’s fun. Try it, you’ll like it.

 

 

Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of his instruments, not the composer.

-Geoffrey Charlesworth

 

 

Kim Willis

All parts of this blog are copyrighted and may not be used without permission.

 

And So On….

 

Find Michigan garden events/classes here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118847598146598/

(This is the Lapeer County Gardeners facebook page)

 

Newsletter/blog information

 

If you have a comment or opinion you’d like to share, send it to me or you can comment directly on the blog. Please state that you want to have the item published in my weekly blog if you email me. You must give your full name and what you say must be polite and not attack any individual. I am very open to ideas and opinions that don’t match mine, but I do reserve the right to publish what I want. Contact me at KimWillis151@gmail.com