It's not overly rainy. It's the south east. Anything I should do or watch out for during flowering outside? Other than bud rot. I'm ultra paranoid about that with my indoor plants. If I stretched a tarp out over them, connected to some poles, for colder type rainy days in the fall would that be a bad idea? I'd make it 2 or 3 feet above the plants so they still get plenty of air and some of the rain.
I live in the mid Atlantic /Appalachian region and the biggest concerns for me during those final days when all of my efforts are coming to fruition is:
1: bud rot, I grow an old school skunk strain and the buds get huge , but maybe too big, as I've noticed that the largest buds are also the most likely to become infected.
2: budworms, (yes there are such things). There are these small harmless looking light brown/tan moths that lay a single egg on the underside of the fan leaves, these eggs go on to hatch out a small worm that once out of its little egg shell/cocoon will proceed to eat its way into the center of your biggest buds and then continue to live through the next cycle of its life, happily gnawing its way through the bud. I have found them still alive and eating during the final trim of some of my buds, in other words, they seem to have no problem living through the plant dying and curing stage, ( I cure in mason jars) and last but not least
3: All herbivorous wildlife, We have an abundance of wildlife where I live and anything that eats leaves or plant matter will not hesitate to dine on your final product as though it were a buffet at an all you can eat special. Outdoor growing has its challenges but I find that with the strain that I grow none of the the lighting technology that exist today can replicate the sun for producing the best product, I know other growers locally who grow the same strain indoors and it just does not even compare to mine in areas like bud size, product quantity per plant and the smell and taste , and that comparison is coming from them.