Suburban Housewife Grows Early Wonder Skunk Outdoors

Hello folks,

This will be my grow diary (more feminine a word than 'journal'). I'm a suburban housewife who has a fair sized backyard and will be growing Early Wonder Skunk outdoors this year. I have been a member here for some time but mostly just lurked until now. There is an abundance of information here and I think I could read forever and always be learning.

My husband recently brought me back some seeds from Vancouver for this variety and I'm going to do them outdoors. We've done Lowryder 2 inside previously, along with a few different bagseed plants, but we've never grown outdoors before. I'm excited at the possible differences we'll see between the techniques.

They will fit right in with our large vegetable gardens and potted deck plants, which include many potted miniature tomatoes, flowers, and a potted lemon tree

I'm late planting so I'm doing them in pots to encourage a smaller size...which should help equal out being late planting. I planted 5 seeds directly into the pots on the 13th of June in my Zone 4 climate. I planted in the same soilless compound that I use for Square Foot Gardening, a high yeild/low space system of gardening. It's peat moss, compost, and vermiculite. It has proven it's reliability and growing power with other foods grown here and so I'm trusting it in this usage as well.

They are on the steps of my deck, and get 8 hours of direct sunshine a day, and, of course the sun is up for 15.5 hours a day at this point.

Here is the first picture of one of the sprouts we've got. She shot up yesterday morning and is one of 3 sprouts.



Please feel free to comment, critique or question my methods as I am fairly new to this and could use all the encouragement, and advice I can get. Thanks!

Checked on the ladies today and, out of 5 seeds planted, we have 5 little sprouts! It took them between 6 and 8 days to germ and sprout.

I just went outside to check on my 5 little seedlings and am so angry! Something plucked the top leaves off one of them! WTF?!!! That's a waste of a $5 seed. You expect to lose some to failure to germ or environmental factors, but this? Rogue bluejay, maybe? The poor little stump of a stem was just sticking out of the soil-less compount, all sad and lonely without it's leaves. At least it's not too far after I planted...I have time to plant another.

My cat is never allowed inside anymore. She's brought me tons of mice, birds and even 5 chipmunks this spring and has been an excellent guardian of our garden. Maybe she can catch whatever committed this atrocity.

Crazy though...I've got ripe peas, lettuces, spinach ready for the picking...and growing tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, carrots, green beans, melons and herbs...but the f*cker went for the GOOD stuff before it was GOOD. Pesky little varmint.

i grew some plants indoor in nebraska my first grow ever 15 years ago. my plants got 2 big for my closet so i transplanted a couple outside with about 2 months invested in them. the very next morning before work i go to check on em and the only thing i see is a 6" stem and a bunch of deer tracks. I'm an avid deer hunter now. good luck to kitty huntin the critters.

Venison is tasty AK49th...I don't blame you for getting two birds with one stone.

It rained last night. And it's supposed to rain later today but it's gorgeous and sunny right now. I love it when the sun is out and shines on the part of my yard where they're growing, and then it rains when it would be shady anyway. Good deal.

I've planted another seed where the other seedling was beheaded. Hopefully it was a freak accident and none of my babies will be decapitated again.

Here's the same little girl 10 days from planting the seed in the ground. I've put a penny next to her so you can relate size.

Today is Day 12 for these babies. Here's the same girl with her 2nd set of true leaves coming up.

Today is Day 17 from the day I planted the seeds. We have 4 beautiful little plants coming along and loving all the sunshine they get.

First, I'll post a pic of the plant we've been following on Day 17.


And here is what I found on one of the other plants this morning. What causes this? Anything I can do to stop it?

couple of gardening tips, a small coil of solid copper wire is true anti slug protection, a nice wire mesh dome is great June Bug / other insect protection. Hot pepper wax spray (gardens Alive) is petty decent racoon/deer protection. Also if you dig a hole big enough to put say a mayonaise jar in filled 3/4 with beer and fill in around it with the dirt, slugs will flocked en masse to it lean over to drink up fall in and die, en mass. Which makes you a serial slug killer, psycho. Good luck.