Blue City Diesel Platinum

Northern_Ent Had a shitty run of luck germinating seeds....I think I must have buried them too deep in the soil. Two of four seeds made it above ground (so far) but only one survived. Having problems keeping seed starting room humid enough and I lost one seedling from drying out I think. Fuck. Oh well, still learning. May 2: it seems the well water here is not good for starting seeds. Ones started with city tap water had a high germination rate, but the well water germination rate was much lower. Now using distilled water with much better success. Some good seeds were wasted before figuring that out. Oh well.

Northern_Ent May 10: transplanted into 5 gallon grow bag. Leaves are a bit burned, but it should be getting better soon.

Northern_Ent May 11: nasty nutrient burn and/or frost damage. Still working on balancing things out a bit better... May 12: overnight lows are now reliably above zero. Woohoo, hopefully the plants start looking better. Growdiaries database limit is 10 C but overnight lows here are still only about 5C with some nights near zero. May 13: bought Cal-Mag to try and fix nutrient burn. Combination of cold temps, high sodium well water, FPJ, LAB and barley sprouts was obviously way too much. I stopped LAB and FPJ a few days ago now, and things improved for some plants, but today I concluded it had to be the excess sodium and lack of calcium that is the main problem. Not just frost, and not just barley sprouts/FPJ cuz even new seedlings were showing the same kinds of distress, and (likely) not the soil mix. Excess sodium is ugly and can even be enough to kill the plant. This water is exceptionally sodic (95 %meq/L) and that means the sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) is about 20 which is impossibly bad. Cal-Mag to the rescue (or at least a short term fix until the water hardener is working). May 15: still burnt but I think (?) it’s recovering. And the water hardener looks like it is going to work. 😎 May 17: the water hardener is completely effective at exchanging sodium for calcium and magnesium. Red Sea Reef test kit used to measure Ca and Mg confirms 100% sodium replacement by Ca and, surprisingly, Mg. That is surprising because limestone is CaCO3 and would not be expected to have much Mg available. Anyway, 11 meq/L of Na (250 mg/L is replaced by about 5 meq/L of Ca (100 mg/L) and about 6 meq/L of Mg (80 mg/L). The plants like this hardened water much better than the super soft well water. Now if I can just get this plant looking better.

Northern_Ent May 19: cold overnight near 0 C but plants were covered and seemed to do alright. Foliar spray at 11 am. May 21: cold overnight four or five nights in a row. Plants generally are recovering from the early sodium overload. This Blue City still doesn’t look great but it’s slowly getting better.

Northern_Ent —

Northern_Ent June 7: still slow likely due to coldish overnight temps but making progress finally.

Northern_Ent June 14: topped. Been applying full foliar (LAB, silicate, soap, fish) and also FPJ nettles on June 13. June 15: thunderstorms yesterday and today so no foliar spray last night or today.

Northern_Ent June 22: she’s happy now and is picking up speed with the nice sunny and hot weather (28 C).

Northern_Ent Historic heat wave. Three days of hitting 36 C.

Northern_Ent July 3: heat wave is now over. She has grown 2 inches in 2 days so maybe she won’t be so small after all.

Northern_Ent It’s a sudden sad ending for this girl. No indication of hermie at all until this morning when there are suddenly a bunch of male flowers. Damnit. I was looking forward to trying this one. Likely mostly due to heat stress but she’s done no matter how it happened.

Northern_Ent Damnit.