Blue Dream (first grow!)

Having killed my first two seeds with a strong nutrient solution, I decided go very slow with the nutrients this week (0.1 ml/L for each of the Flora's from General Hydroponics). It's been 1 week and Mishka's (I named her) looking really nice and healthy. Definitely don't want to be ruining that anytime soon!

D14: I have to say, I never thought I'd be able to get Mishak (her name) this far with 0 experience! Growing weed is much easier than I thought it would be! D19: I noticed the aggressive vegetative growth this week. I decided to increase the nutes this time around (FloraMicro 5ml -> 6ml, FloraGrow 5ml -> 10ml, FloraBloom 2ml -> 4ml) for a total of 20 ml/gal. I plan to maintain this new feed for all of next week. Might increase If I notice a good response of decrease if the nutes turn out to be too much (hopefully not).

Disaster struck this week. In fact, I thought my plant was going to die, hence delaying the weekly diary progress. D21: I spotted these fucking spider mites on the leaves of my plant. I freaked out and doused Mishka with semi-hot tapwater (~50 degC) as well as huge amounts of hydrogen peroxide for the next 3 days. D22: I noticed white spots on the leaves which I mis-diagnosed as spider mite bites, hence continuing the hydrogen peroxide treatment. D23: I'm not sure, but the whitening turned to browning and the leaf trips turned brown as well, including the newer baby ones! I'm freaking out here. D25: I realize there's no spider mites in sight and looking online, the browning tips indicated Calcium deficiency. I immediately order Cal-Max by Grotek which takes a few days to get to me. It's here with me now on D28.... D26-28: What can I say, the browning hasn't worsened, so that's good news I guess. I mixed in some powderized eggshells at the top soil, but they don't seem to be decomposing well. Ahh well, might as well wait for the Cal-Max. Lesson learned: Never pour hot water and hydrogen peroxide over your plants. I ordered Neem oil just in case, but the freaking out might have really damaged my plants from the pictures you can see. :( Let's hope the Cal-Max treatment helps her recover next week. I was planning to start Flowering next week but I'll let her veg-recover for a week and start flowering on Week 5.

I started off this week by mixing in 18ml/gal of CalMag by Grotek which I hope will fix the brown tips issues. I'll also be pruning the bottom dead leaves later this week after I notice the effects of CalMax strenghtening Mishak overall. D30: Officially a month old! Still alive and kicking! I cut the fabric pots to open them up. This was a stupid mistake on my part, but it was an interesting experiment to see how light starved the bottom leaves could get if they are too deep in pots. A rookie mistake, I know, but won't ever make such an oversight again!

Starting flowering this week (12-12)! Missed a few photos from last week because I had to leave my plants for a quick trip for 2 days. So far, I'm not even fully sure they're flowering. The white center of the leaves seemed to have opened up (where I'm expecting the bud sites to be). And each of the leaves are now clawing as if petals for flowers. Will keep updated next week!

D42: First day of the second week of flowering! Hoping for some nice pistils this week. From last week, I've noticed some serious stretching. I'm kinda getting worried that my grow tent doesn't have enough space now. Shouldn't have vegged that extra week.

Pistil Week, Fams! Saw the tiny little hairs called pistils at the start of the week. I'm uploading 2 weeks later so I can say I've seen some amazing growth throughout these 2 flowering weeks in pistil growth (D57). I also noticed the top soil was drying out with the regular 650ml of water I've been giving her (in a Gatorade bottle, conveniently enough). I started doubling to 1300 ml (2 Gatorade bottles worth) on D55. The pistils grew quite exponentially the first few days. D55 was when they really started to show, even from far away. The smells also got strong this week towards the end! I would say the smell went form moderate to strong! My wife can smell it from upstairs (we live in a duplex) and my grow tent is downstairs and all zipped up! Expecting some stanky babes out of this one <3

D57 Starting off the week with a quick height check, and I notice that Mishka is 28 inches high (71cm in the first pic)! All the bud sites seem to have developed over the past week with very visible pistil growth. Now, one problem is that given the limitation of my grow tent, I cannot raise my lights further up and am stuck 6" from the top. I can already see light burn on one or two of the leaves at the top, but I'm expecting to fail with the top buds for this grow to compare and have a sense of the maximum I can push certain strains in terms of PAR (Photosynthetically Available Radiation). Planning to buy a PAR metre soon to get more details on the lighting and plant growth. In terms of bud sites, I haven't done an exact count, but it's somewhere around ~20 bud sites. Given the top nug gives me 7g (fingers crossed!) and the ~20 sites give me 5g each, I'll be happy if I can get at least 100g for my first harvest! Another issue I've noticed is keeping the humidity down (currently I'm sitting at ~75%). I didn't realize that it would be so tough to keep humidity down, especially now that it's summer in Toronto where relative humidity outside is already ~40% going up to 60% on cloudy days. I've ready for flowering, humidity should be kept ~40% to prevent bud rot, but because of watering and plant transpiration, it seems I would have to buy a dehumidifier for the next grow.

—

—

Moved the light 3" from the top. Ran out of space at the top of my grow tent, as I didn't expect Mishka to grow so tall! The light is now awkwardly positioned above the ventilation fan and carbon filter. For the next grow, I'll definitely keep the ventilation fan and filter on the floor to enable more space for the light to be lifted.

As I was planning to harvest this week, I started flushing Mishka with PH 7.5 water and no nutrients as per guidelines.

Still drying (curing tomorrow). After 6 days, I noticed that the weight dropped from 900 grams to 700 (day 3) and then finally 450 grams (1 lbs exactly)! I expect after deducting the weight of hanger and excess leaves after 2 weeks of curing, I'll have a grand total of 150 grams (fingers crossed).