Play the audio, read along or watch the full video on YouTube

* This is an auto-generate transcript and won’t be grammatically correct.

Andy
Going into flower this year, you obviously want to maximise your yields and get that nug. So we are going to be chatting with Dean today and he’s going to be telling us a little bit more about about how to maximise your yields coming into flower. Let’s check it out, you

Dean
know, these kinds of tips that we’re going to be chatting today are relevant indoor outdoor doesn’t really matter. You know, just before you’re getting into the flowering period, there’s a couple, a couple things you can do to to improve. So yeah, I’m keen to chat about a few tips today and see if they can be of use to to our listeners out there.

Andy
Is this going to be like a do some do’s and don’ts? Or is it mainly dues? Or what do you what are you learning today?

Dean
I think some do’s and some don’ts. You know, don’t slack off. Now’s the time for work on its own. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it well, you know, but you might get into the period and then regret not having just put in that little bit of extra work. Now, there’s still time to put put into place some resolutions to make sure you don’t have issues in the flowering period. So yeah, I think just a couple mostly a couple tips for for for everyone. And some things that I would personally that I’ve personally been doing over the last sort of two weeks, and I’ve got a big session this weekend as well. And then I’m kind of going to ride right into the period.

Andy
bang on. Okay, so where are we? Where are we starting today? What’s Jesus? Like? Are there going to be an audit as well like, least important and most important? Where’s your

Dean
steps stairs, like steps, what one would do first, I think first right now you need to identify what’s going on in your garden. Like, if you’ve if you’ve just sort of left your plants through the summer period, and everything’s super super bushy, you might not even be aware that you are facing particular issues. So I would start off by doing a massive inspection of your of your gross space. Um, you know, it’s super Leafy, I definitely look at some defoliation and some Lolli popping. If you’re in somewhere like Cape Town, where the where the wind is super hectic, I’d probably look at okay, cool work, where could I potentially support some some branches. So just sort of have a scroll Stroll through the Garden and identify where you think the weak points of your grow currently are. And from there, you can kind of start to steer set up the strategy for what can I do now, in order to make sure that these plants are going to are going to yield super well. And also while doing the inspection, pay attention to, you know, colour of the leaf, any weird disk configurations, or discolorations, or marks on the leaves as well, because all of those could be indicators of a potential issue. And luckily, you know, a lot of us won’t be into flower just yet. Some of us might be seeing a little bit of pistol, but there’s, you know, or some strains would have maybe been already a little bit further down the line, I have one plant that’s like quite well into flight and how that happened. Everything else around it isn’t. But you know, it’s still got enough time to just jot down a couple notes and then either procure, or get the equipment needed in order to just make sure that you’re entering into this period with a bit of a with a bit of a plan. So yeah, step one would be probably set up a plan for the next sort of four to six weeks.

Andy
Yeah, so you say, obviously, you’ve got defoliate lollipop a bit, obviously check the space. Is there like any sort of extra tips was like IBM or, I mean, that’s obviously something where it could go quite wrong at this stage.

Dean
Yeah, so I think that’s the main thing once you’ve, once you’ve got your strategy, you know, it’s time to put in some work. So I’d get in there and do a massive defoliation you’re only going to be able to defoliate again probably three, four weeks into three weeks into flower most people do foliage day 21 So you know now is the time to get into the centre centre of the plant report all that leaf matter that’s not getting any light. Pull any random stems down there that’s also not getting any light or limiting airflow. That’s obviously the defoliation and Lolli popping and then to get the get the spray bottle out and to start to mix up some some IPM you know pm for for us by the coast Pm is massive, you know in the Helderberg base and we’re we’re situated it’s like a pm breeding Wonderland. So that’s one of the main issues that we face, but also caterpillars, red spider mite thrip. All of that is going to be doing doing its thing in the garden country wide universe. Just getting something in order to start to build up some resilience against that would be would be advisable.

You know I’m doing all of those weekly,

you know any of those pests that if you get an infestation at this point, yeah, it could turn into a massive infestation can flower and really negatively affect the end results, you might still get through it, you know, but you’ll probably have a plant covered in webs by the time if you have spider mites now in Ridge, by the time we get to week nine of flower, you’re going to have like one of those horror stories like we’ve looked at in some of those episodes when we’ve done sort of pest pest identification. So you know that that IPM strategy would probably be step number two, you know, a bit of physical work and in the identification, and then number two, just making sure you do have the products at hand and some kind of strategy for for your IPM. I’ve recently also started using a product called like Fany, bio sulphur, which is a super, super powerful like sulphur product, and that you can’t spray at all into flour. But it will wipe any pm that you have spores and stuff like that, that you’ve got now. So you can still spray that now as a last sort of if you haven’t gotten the pistol shown yet. And then after that for sort of week 123 of flower, you’d swap into some biologicals, like AQ s, f. And bio Traco, both of which are biological products or sort of disease pro, you know, from ego, advise whatever product you have at hand, and those were all helped to build our pursuit of biological resistance on the leaf. But there’s still time now in the veg to bring out the sort of the hardcore, the more hardcore kinds of kinds of products in order to you know, in order to just make sure that everything’s nice and clean going into the going into the period. What about feeding and boosters? Is it too early for Bute boosters? are

Andy
you adapting your feeding schedule now.

Dean
So yeah, step three would probably be to now start to get the plants as healthy as possible. You know, if you’ve, if you’ve still got growth on the plant, that if it’s still not sort of dark green, and things aren’t looking 100%, or maybe you’re not super happy with how the veg plant is looking, trying to correct those things. Now, it’s really going to help your plant a seed when it kicks into flour, because when it kicks into flour, we’ve got our stretch phase, or our rapid growth phase, where we’re looking at sort of two to three, two weeks of massive growth. And if your plants super, super healthy, going into that into that phase, they knew you’re going to get even more growth. So a lot of the time it comes from two reasons, maybe you haven’t been dosing, maybe your soil is not that good. If you’re growing in the ground, and you haven’t been dosing anything additional. But a lot of the time, we will see people growing in containers, okay, and you’ve probably planted in this container in September, October, November, and your plant might be quite decent size now. But you might be finding that you’re having to water nearly every single day. And that would be and also maybe your plant is starting to yellow a bit or it’s sort of starting to look sort of not as healthy as it did earlier on. And that would indicate that you might be pot bound. So there’s still time now also to report into a bigger growth container. Like we’ve got some, we’ve got one or two plants that are in 50s. And they’re quite big. And I thought the 50 would be the final home, but they’ve completely outgrown that 50. And now the growth compared to another plant, which is in like a massive grow bed, and it’s a month younger is starting to catch up on those. So you can see that they’re starting to run out of Route space, and they’re not really uptaking nutrients as well. So maybe doubling your pot size now to allow for that that rapid sort of burst growth, there’s still going to be time for you to report for your plan to get through the little bit of shock that it has just settle into its new growth space, and then to really maximise its roots during that during that period. And then obviously dosing dosing a couple of things to to hopefully give it a boost even further, if you do go for the for the for the report, I definitely suggest like a nice foliar feed with some fish mix and maybe a dose of some fish mix into the into the substrate. And then just sort of maximising some molasses or sort of some, you know, some some grow orientated nutrients. Now just for that final couple weeks of boost, you can still see some really good growth in this period. And, obviously, just to make sure that you do have some kind of strategy for a flowering feed, like a lot of the time I found I can get through a whole veg period with using little to no nutrients. But if I ran it through the flowering period the same then you sometimes don’t get the same results. So maybe looking to dose bit of extra nutrients during your flowering period could also be high really beneficial in order to increase those yields because, you know, they’re getting really hungry, they’re going to consume a lot of what’s in the, in the soil, they know that plant their lives coming to an end, they need to attract, attract some pollen onto them from the farmer in the wild, you know, so if they’re super dank and smelly, they’re they have more chance of survival. So if you feed them more, they’re going to uptake that better to try and just danken out even even further. So yeah, correct your, I suppose as to three correct what issues you do potentially have now with relation to pot size, or, or feed, and then prepare your arsenal for, for for a flowering period feed, because that’s also going to be beneficial. If you have everything at hand, and you know, what you you know, what you want, and you’ve consulted to know the correct feeding procedures and, and things like that.

Andy
Brilliant. Any other last closing tips or thoughts?

Dean
Yeah, so my final tip is want to try and avoid some disappointment. So the like, I once again, try to avoid disappointment.

So I think for this one, I’ll tell a little story. I remember back in probably 2019, I had these massive green gelato plants. And they were super resilient, they were doing super well, I was like, No, I don’t need to do anything to them. And I kind of just lost them. And then one super windy night that no support didn’t have anything. One super windy night, they were week four, Week Five into flower, you know, proper narcs had started to form. And I came outside and they were all just like broken up into a million pieces, because they had no support. And now they had this weight on them all of a sudden, that they’re not used to having because I mean, they did grow outside. So they had grown in a natural environment. But the buds had gotten so big so quickly that I think it kind of just like off weighted the plant and cause the plant to snap in the windy period. Now, I mean, you can you can try to as much as possible to avoid it, but it will start to sometimes still happen. But there are a couple things you could potentially do to to lessen this. So maybe getting some support to support onto the plants like you could do that in various different ways from a couple tie downs to potentially adding a net into into the your outdoor space or indoor space, or, or maybe doing a cage if you are going outside, you know, a chicken, a chicken mesh cage, but looking at speaking Google a couple things as well to get some sort of visual visual assistance here. But looking at just a bit of support for the plants is going to be one of the main things you can do to avoid disappointment during this period. So think about massive nags the size of your arm, think about how heavy they’re going to be and think, okay, cool. Maybe this plant could use just a tiny bit of, of support during this period. And it will be better to get it in now. So that when it stretches, it can grow say you do a cage and when it stretches, it grows through the cage, and now boom, it’s supported. And also, the whole, the whole idea behind support is okay, cool. If the plant knows that it’s supported, it now knows that it can put more weight onto the bag, because it’s, it’s not going to be so worried about about it breaking. So if your plant is well supported and your plant is healthy, it’s going to give you better results in the long run. So yeah, just once again, it comes down to like a little bit of pre preparation and decide how you can support in your growth space and just add in a little bit of support, it can only be beneficial and you’d only wake up one morning and look out your window and everything’s lying on the ground and snapped. So yeah, that would be my final tip for for preparation in this in this period. I think if you follow the four the four tips, you’ll be well on the way to to having a successful successful growth during this during this period.

Andy
I was going to also say that just watch out for anyone with prying eyes that may want to take your pants because as soon as they see some sort of nugs forming on them they become a hot commodity But anyway guys, we are running out of time today as I do want to say thanks everyone for watching. Make sure to like and subscribe and we’ll see you guys next week. These guys these guys