Great report Repuk, a lot of great information. I too have a problem with ants. I've been putting a sticky spray on the stalk, but they find other ways to get in there. I've got a big bag of DE and I'm going to put it on my plants and water it into the soil also today. Thanks for sharing. Very interesting hybrids as well. I'm really enjoying your posts, looking forward to your harvest, a bountiful one!As mentioned all girls have their main stems (including the 6 or so on each of the Golden Tiger x Panama cuts) staked, I propped them so that everything has good sun exposure.
No untopped plants this year, all have been topped, tied, propped, etc.
EM-1
smells like sweetnsour chinese sauce, remembers me to ketchup too...
I have my 5L container "brewing", and used the one I received stock at 1:1000, along with molasses at 1:1000, to all the plants, and they loved it.
Thanks Sticky_Sat! EM-1 worked wonders.... !!!!
Wild Pots
The girls in "wild pots", whose soil is the same as last year, are being fertilized on almost each watering: mostly Terra Vega (about 2ml/L), but also some chicken manure tea, bat guano tea, leonardite tea, hens "brewed water", and SOP a couple of times.
Diatomaceous Earth used every week to sprinkle pot surface after watering, also around the tops, or on the leaves/branches when I spotted ants on them. DE is incredible to convince ants on moving their colonies away, just sprinkle it around the colony holes, next day they will be gone.
Learning to "read" the soil... is it really obvious when microbial/bacterial life thrives on it: it gets that dark color and characteristic fresh bush smell.
Panama Haze
Today I smoked the last spliff from last year Panama Haze, to discover she left me a gift in the jar a lone seed!!!, which looked viable and definitely Panama Haze like.
Sowed already!
Sticky_Sat said:i hope your smart mastif got double ration for avoiding the wild sprout...
Thank you so very much for that information Repuk. I also really appreciate that you put up pictures as illustrations, thank you very much! I've been battling ant colonies for years. I have the DE down and can't wait to put out the rice. I'll let you know how it works my friend.Thanks!!
DE is super effective with ants, I sprinkle it generously around the ant trails, colony entries, etc.
If you have a big colony, there's another non-toxic thing that works wonders to really force them to move away: rice.
You need the cheapest kind of rice you could find, the most crudest, starchy, humidity hungry the better, and a small plastic water bottle.
Depending on the ants and rice grain size, you can leave grains as they are or grind them with a kitchen mortar or a couple stones, the idea is making easy for the ants to haul the most of the rice inside their colony the faster the better.
Important: use gloves all the time. If you handle it with your hands ants will "smell" you and will unlikely fetch the rice.
Fill the empty water bottle with rice.
Put a clothes peg on the water bottle mouth.
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Prop the bottle upside down on the ground, so that as ants haul rice, it will "auto feed" rice to them by gravity. Make sure it won't fell, use stones to prop it (wear gloves all the time)
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How it works: Most ants feed from a fungus culture they have inside their colonies, and need proper RH to keep them, and to keep their food reserves edible.
The moment they bring rice inside, the starch in rice grains will fetch all moisture available, making their cultures to die, and then forcing them to leave elsewhere, or controlling drastically their population.
This is specially effective with leafcutter ants, which exclusively feed from fungus culture over leaf matter.
Also effective even with ants not relying so much in fungus, as whatever food they bring will be ruined by the lack of humidity, or even worse, if rice ferments inside the colony will become toxic for the ants.
Original video, from a popular Spanish Youtuber is of course in Spanish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwXR3Tu3BNU but really worth a watch, really nice macro shooting, and great for "how to stage" the bottle.
Tips:
Is it important to place the bottle on a covered spot if there are rains, is it important for the rice to be dry. They also prefer shaded spots, ants won't work with intense heat and will favour a food source in the shade.
Around 8:00 he shows how to strategically sprinkle DE around colony entries.
How often do you feed with EM-1?