Spring 2021

Starting the week strong let the 3 autos go a day without watering and they were happy and healthy the next morning. I have been putting yellow sticky traps everywhere to keep the gnats under control. The CDB is probably old enough to pull a clone from now. I would like to clone and then force flowering with her to ensure sex. I was able to get clonex and a couple of tray/dome combos from the local hydro shop. I need to get some rooting cubes. Last year when I tried cloning I went just water and never saw good root production. This year I want to learn more to be able to clone from my best pheno's when I get back into photo's again. I think it would be interesting if the CDB was male to collect pollen to cross with another photo later. I have been reading up on breeding and I think I need to learn a lot more before I really try something to have a better understanding of what I am trying to accomplish and how to get good results by breeding to get the desired traits. Right now I am not 100% sure what I would be looking for other than something like a good Indica with a CBD kick and eventually working in more CBN/CBG? I think before I get too crazy into that though I need to understand what a plant like that would be good for. I don't think a kitchen sink "throw all the good stuff into one plant and it must be good, right?" method is the best approach. I think having a better understanding on how everything interacts more to have a plan for the amounts I would need to achieve for each cannabinoid to have a good balance that would benefit someone medically. Also paring that with the right terpene profile at the same time. It seems like quite the undertaking to create strains that have a good high and good medical benefits for specific ailments. It may take a long long time to breed for something that specific. But I think the idea of having strains targeted for specific benefits would be great. I kind of seems like a pie in the sky idea of being able to some day go to some one that grows and get an 1/8th of Kancer Killah OG or Migraine Mellower Kush. I have gotten in a package of recharge and have applied a little to all the girls. Mixed it at 1/4 tsp for 1 ltr watering jug, gave them some just around the plant then gave some water. 06/06/21 This was a good week for the girls. I am watering every 2 1/2 days trying to get them up to 3 days. The Autos are growing great getting bushy and adding nodes pretty quickly. The White Widow seedling that popped up around Mar 28th is growing rapidly. She has been without a humidity dome for about half a week. She is almost as tall as the GSC which is a little squat and bushy girl. I gave the girls recharge twice this week. I am still not giving nutes as the soil should be good enough until preflower/flower stages. The first recharge was a lite watering then came back the next day and heavy water. The second recharge was a heavy watering. I waited till the girls showed signs of drooping before applying in the evening. Trying to learn and do better with the watering, I think at points I have both under and over watered the CBD. From the CBD plant I pulled a cutting from a side branch, since I had already topped her. I did a final cut diagonal through a node and then dipped in clonex and stuck in root cube. I have her on a 12/12 light cycle under the dome with a large florescent tube light hanging about 1/2 inch above it. I took a par reading and the florescent I have sucks, very low, I went to the local hardware and picked up some grow led T5 replacements, and they were blurples that read even lower on the scale. Those may be useful later but for now I went back to the white light tubes. I will need to research what tubes are best for keeping clones under. The CBD plant always looks like the leaves are a bit droopy and curling under at first I think I had nuted her too soon and over did it with the soil already being a little hot. I have not nuted since but she still looks like she is not doing the best. One if the things that could be part of it is that the seeds are from Sisters of The Valley and they came from an outdoor plant that was huge and got pollinated by another outdoor plant. It may not do the best indoors and maybe that's why she does not really look the greatest no matter what I do, even after a watering she perks a bit but not like the other girls. I am still working on maintaining the optimal VPD in the tents, the smaller tent actually seems easier to maintain temps and humidity level as it seems to oscillate less than the big tent. The temp gauge in the bigger tent always shows bigger swings, but usually when I check on it the temp is somewhere around 77 and the humidity is around 60% unless the humidifier runs out then it drops to 50% I think the min and max values seem to be outliers and having something that can record these readings regularly and see when they dip and for how long they are outside of optimal range would be ideal to learn more. I have removed the carbon filters from the tents themselves, there is a slight weed smell but nothing strong enough to let anyone know I am growing from outside the house. I noticed that after a couple days the 4" fan was having a hard time pulling air out of the small tent and the temps were getting up to 80+ that is when I pulled the filters and then the air flow improved. I think I will try to filter the air being sucked out of the room instead of filtering each tent. I am not worried about the room smelling, just the air venting to the outside of the hose smelling. I have found a c02 / temp / humidity sensor on adafruit that I want to get and try writing a program to log out the data in the tent to see what the levels are at all times and be able to learn more from the data, also an alarm would be nice as well. I have 2 soil water sensors as well I may try to hook into the system to monitor the soil moisture of the girls as the grow proceeds. I have given some thought to adding c02 to the tent but feel I should make sure my environment is dialed in first. I am thinking about adding a small evap cooler in the room that can run to cool temps and add humidity in the evening. I think it would be nice to simulate the cooling off in the evening that happens in nature, not too cool but enough that there is a temp drop the plants need to respond to. Another thing that I have an idea for is using the rj-45 jacks that the dimmers communicate over to try to control the lighting schedule. I think it would be cool if during the first and last hour of lights on/off I could raise/lower the light levels over that time period to simulate a sunrise/sunset. I know there have been studies showing it does not seem to make a huge difference as far as yield and growth but it may add to the complexity of the terp profile of the plant to simulate nature as close as possible. I really wish I could do an outdoor grow here. All though I know from growing other things outdoors in this region bugs are a pain in the ass here. But maybe an outdoor greenhouse would be good, with ventilation and air filtering. I am always jello of my co-workers outdoor grows with photos in SoCal. So much good breeze and so many sunny days that they grow massive trees there.