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here: Issue #288 - Sunday, October 22, 2017
Dear Fellow
Grower,
In today's issue... - What are foxtails? Why do they show up? Are they bad for your plants? Get easy answers to all these questions in the article below!
- A 'normal', a foxtailer and a honest-to-goodness weirdo. There's a strain for everyone!
- Apparently, we're suckers for pics of cats with cannabis plants. We never claimed to be strong-willed!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside
(founders of GrowWeedEasy.com) "With foxes we must play the fox." ~Thomas Fuller
What Are Foxtails? by Sirius Fourside |
What to Do About Marijuana Foxtailing
Picture some dried and cured, ready-to-smoke bud in your mind. Maybe it’s some you’ve harvested yourself, maybe it’s some exotic-looking unique strain, or maybe it’s just a generic picture your mind pulls up when you think
‘weed’.
I’m sure there are a few exceptions, but I’m betting most of you didn’t automatically picture this:
Picture of a cannabis bud with a major "foxtail" coming out the top. In this case, the foxtailing was caused by too much heat, though some types of foxtails are caused by
genetics.
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We tend to think of buds having a round, oblong shape with a pretty much even surface like this:
A marijuana cola with a typical shape.
Many auto-trimming machines cut off foxtails, so if you used to purchase cannabis regularly
you may have bought buds with foxtails without knowing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though!
So, What Exactly Are Foxtails?
The bud we know and love is made up of a bunch of calyces
(that’s the plural for "calyx") and each calyx is a potential home for a seed. However, those seeds will only develop in cases where pollination or hermaphroditism (developing both male and female sex organs) occurs.
As female cannabis plants mature and soak up light, they grow calyces in groups which pile up on each other until they end up looking something like the plant above. Even the more exotic looking strains tend to form buds with a somewhat even-ish surface:
Buds are made up of many calyxes stacked on top of each other, but generally, buds grow evenly and stick together in bunches. "Foxtails" are made of several calyxes stacked on top of each other in a relatively long structure.
Foxtailing bud is a bit different in that the bud has parts where calyces grow on top of each other to form spires. These spires/towers throw off the overall shape of the bud as we’re used to, so they look odd to most people. However, there are also plants that grow bud where all (or the vast majority) of the calyces foxtail.
Even when you can very clearly see each individual calyx (which is natural for some strains), they tend to be relatively symmetric, with a similar amount of "foxtailing" on all sides. (Why are these buds pink and purple?)Note that on these plants, every calyx is foxtailing...even the calyces on the underside! It appears to be the same action
that’s happening in the picture above, but it’s much more complete.
So, is foxtailing a bad thing? Well, it depends…
I know, I
know...no one likes an ‘it depends’ answer. A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would be a definitive answer and it feels so nice to feel like you know something for sure! Luckily for us as growers, you can learn to tell if the foxtailing you’re seeing is good or bad in just a few minutes! Now you can impress your friends!
Note: That was a
trick! Impress your friends with cooking and/or Karate, but tell no one if you grow cannabis! The Two Types of Foxtailing
(Good vs Bad)
Before we go any further, I have to admit that designating one type of foxtailing ‘good’ is a bit misleading. I call it ‘good’ in that it doesn’t provide any positive or negative benefits; ‘good’ foxtailing looks a bit funky but ultimately, it’s purely a cosmetic issue. However, 'bad foxtailing' really is a bad thing and comes with consequences...
Being able to tell if the foxtailing you’re experiencing is good or bad is as simple as being able to tell the difference between two foxtailing pictures. Here are two more examples side-by-side: Let’s start with the one on the left. This type of foxtailing is caused by: Genetics
Some strains of cannabis have been bred - by humans and/or mother nature - to form buds where foxtailing is the norm. Although often foxtailing is caused by heat or light
stress, when you’re growing a strain that is genetically predisposed to foxtail, the whole bud joins in on the foxtailing action. This makes it so that genetic foxtailing looks more uniform than the other type of foxtailing we’ll review in a minute. The picture to the right is a strain
called ‘Dr. Grinspoon’ (named for the esteemed cannabis activist, Dr. Lester Grinspoon). The look of this plant could be considered another manifestation of genetic foxtailing, and it’s important to note that this action happens everywhere on the plant.
Good or Bad? In short, there’s nothing wrong with genetic foxtailing.
The fact that it’s genetic means that it was going to do it regardless of whatever specific growing technique is being used. These strains are also capable of containing high amounts of THC, so it doesn’t seem that genetic foxtailing reduces the potency of the plant.
This type of foxtailing is the good type. Again, that only means that it’s
good by comparison to bad foxtailing in that it doesn’t cause any negative effects.
Now for the other picture. The other kind of foxtailing - the bad kind - is usually caused by:
Heat/Light Stress
The second cause of foxtailing is environmental and it's usually caused by your lights. If you’ve ever parked a high-powered HPS or LED light (CFLs and T5s aren’t usually strong enough) too close to your cannabis, you might see it grow these odd spires. What about when buds keep growing new white pistils over and over? This is another version of foxtailing that is caused by heat and light stress. If it's only happening to
the parts of the plant closest to the light, that's a sign that it's being caused by stress instead of genetics. Good or Bad? Bad! This type of foxtailing is a sign that your buds are getting
too much light and/or too much heat! These odd spires can also be accompanied by light bleaching and cooked leaves. Any one of these signs is a message that your lights need to be backed off immediately to halt any further damage. Although light bleaching and burned leaves are obviously damaged, foxtails don’t look damaged so much as they just look weird, so they don't register as a threat to new growers. Unfortunately, they’re the harbingers of heat damage which means
lost potency; if you see this type of foxtails on your buds, you’ve likely already lost potency to heat and now the mission is to lose as little as you possibly can.
Luckily, this type of foxtailing is usually localized, so you’ll only see it in spots where light intensity is super-high. This usually means they’ll be found in a small circle directly under the light, but that small circle gets larger as the light gets
closer.
Now with all that being said, plants are weird! It’s totally possible that many of you growers have already seen a plant that makes the ‘bad’ looking foxtails but all over the plant. Or maybe a plant that only grows in spires! The point is that there is bound to be plants that break these rules, but at least until then you’ll know what you’re dealing with. Good luck and happy growing!
Learn more about why some plants keep growing new pistils on top of their buds
The 'normal', the foxtailer
and the absolute weirdo! |
Whether you consider yourself straight-laced or a flat-out weirdo, there's a strain for every preference of grower!
Original Amnesia is the least weird of the bunch; potency with the classic shape and
smell!
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Cole Train foxtails all over all the time...starting to get a bit weird... Frisian Duck is just plain odd!
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"Thanks for helping us with our legal plants this season here in
Or-E-Gone!"
~Mark
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Trophy Picture of the Week! |
"Here's my cat sitting in front of my indoor garden. I and some others of the Grand Daddy Purple that is just beginning to flower. She is sort of super cropped around a tomato ring/rack. I love your emails. Super duper helpful. Keep it coming. Two weeks into flowering on the GDP. My second flowering plant ever. Already going much better and faster. Thanks
again."
Your friend and fellow freedom fighter,
Brian
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Who Runs This
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Nebula Haze:
I'll be honest with you, when I first started growing, I struggled. Now, it is my mission to
make it easier for new growers to get started as well as help advanced growers get bigger, better yields with less time and money. We are updating and adding articles every single week and our goal is to eventually build a comprehensive growing resource so anyone and everyone can grow if they want to! If we all share the knowledge there's more buds in the world for everyone :) |
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Learn which seed sources are personally recommended by Nebula Haze |
Sirius Fourside:
Sirius Fourside is a hobbyist grower who has gained the bulk of his experience growing in water as a medium (deep water culture, bubbleponics).
"Growing cannabis can be a relaxing hobby in and of itself, but it also saves you money and keeps you from having to deal with shady characters. Cannabis is much easier to grow than people give it credit for, and growing in water
doesn't increase the difficulty much, if any. But whether you want to grow in water, coco, or a different medium, we'll show you how easy it can be!"
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