Mould problems, and strategies to reduce them

In many parts of the US, there is high humidity and yet the good growers that balance their soil with enough Ca up front, get there P up high to begin with, get their metals ie Cu, Zn, Mn and Fe balanced and amazingly enough, no mold!

I know it is hard to believe and yes, it will only get one so far. Resistance is key, but what you will often see, is even the most resistant varieties need to have their nutrition balanced.

For sub-tropical and tropical areas where you can flower plants outdoors for most of the year, you will notice that at a similar time each year there will months of high humidity and high rainfall and there are months that are relatively dry. Time your plantings with this in mind. Plant fat leaved, dense bud, short flowering strains that are prone to mold so they will finish flowering during the dry months and plant your thin leaved, long flowering, mold resistant strains so they finish after the rainy season ...it's about timing and strain selection to minimize molded buds..and having a bit of luck go your way too!

To prevent damping off from killing your seedlings, have a well draining soil mix designed for seedlings (or use a standard bagged soil and add sand to lighten it..if the soil has manures, worm castings. compost &/or other natural ferts added to it then fungus gnats (fruit flies) and damping off is more likely to occur. I do top dress with some worm castings after the seedlings have grown for a couple of weeks and they respond well to this and anyway, by this time, damping off is not a problem as it only seems to affect just sprouted seedlings. When the seedlings have grown for 2 ~ 4 weeks transplant them into bigger containers filled with a soil that contains composted organic ferts.

If you have some seeds that you paid a small fortune for and you are loosing them to damping off, all is not lost, cut the seedling off just above where the damping off occurs (at soil level or just below) and treat the cutoff seedling like you would with any other cutting and it will root. Actually, I've found that these damping off seedlings will root faster than the usual branch cuttings. Anyone done this before?

Greetings All!


I 'm wondering how varieties from the very high rainfall areas of Northern California (the Humboldt Coast, Humboldt Valley) do here? the latitude is same as Victoria to Tasmania but of course, northern hemisphere.


there are some juicy looking varieties described in the Humboldt Seed Collective's catalogue ... but many varieties are difficult to source. eg: I found some at one seed company but Oz is one of the few countries it does not mail to (I wonder why about that too!).


Seedsman has Humboldt Sour Diesel so that's easy, but boy are there ever some juicy looking varieties ... and claims of huge yields ... in the above mentioned seed catalogue.


So you people who are more experienced with Cannabis than I am ... especially you US contributors ... what say you about the potential of these varieties in Oz?


cheers!

Mycoproducts with bacteria will help. Bacteria and fungus are enemies.

Normally you only get an outbreak of one when the other isn't present.

Which is why it's rare to see lots of mold outdoors in natural environments for example.

Nature is normally in balance if mankind hasn't messed with it.

Indoor grow environments on the other can be imbalanced easily in comparison.