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Welcome to my new diary! After aborting my Skywalker grow and hastily move my grow from a cupboard indoors to a grow tent outdoors, I'm finally ready to pop some new beans! These will be the first beans to go from seed to harvest in my new space now that it is all dialled in, though I have some plants finishing up in there right now, they only spent a few weeks in there and got messed about a fair bit during the move, so testing out the new space from start to finish should be interesting to make sure everything is all a-okay! Im sticking with two plants of the same strain this round, as I'm a bit tired of juggling several different strains at once, though I'll probably pop another strain at some point about midway through this one.
>> SEEDS <<
FastBuds - Strawberry Banana Auto
How can you not want to grow a strain called Strawberry Banana?! If the terps are half of what is described, these are going to be absolutely glorious! I've not grown them before, so it's all a bit fingers crossed, but I'm hoping for a couple of cracking plants with this one. Here's the official blurb:
"With up to 27% THC, Strawberry Banana Auto is one of the most THC-rich strains to hit the market lately, this colossal autoflower grows up to 150cm and produces massive yields of up to 600gr/m2. An excellent strain for those looking for potent autoflowers that deliver both in quality and quantity. Expect an extremely sweet and fruity terpene profile with an obvious Strawberry and Banana aroma that comes hand-in-hand with a strong body high mixed with a cerebral high that boosts creativity; a strain that will surprise you to the powerful yet well-balanced Indica and Sativa effects."
Other details are 10-11 weeks flower time, 55/45 Indica/Sativa with a total size of 150cm! I'm absolutely not going to let mine grow that tall and will be training them heavily.
>> EQUIPMENT <<
I keep things pretty Lo-Fi:
3 Gallon Felt pot
Vitalink Calmag
Bio-Bizz Light Mix
Bio-Bizz Grow
Bio-Bizz Bloom
Bio-Bizz Alg-A-Mic
Fecida CR600 110w LED
Rhino Fan and Carbon Filter
I grow in an insulated grow tent in my back garden. It's not ideal, but needs must and the environment is pretty comfortabel for plants now that I've straightened it all out and got it nicely dialled in.
>> GERMINATION TIMELINE <<
25/05 - Seeds put in between two cotton pads, soaked in water and kept in between two bowls on a seedling heat mat.
26/05 - Taproots cracked out in just over 12 hours and they were placed into the mud in under 24 hours, that's rapid! I've got them under a temporary COB light for now, until I can get the space cleaned up ready for them, as I wasn't quite prepared to get them in just yet. Humidity dome placed on top so I don't have to worry about soil drying out on me.
28/05 - Only one seed popped the soil, the other did crack and a tiny taproot started, but it never advanced. I tried planting it anyway, but after two days of no show, I had a little look and it was completely dormant. Never mind. I've popped a Forbidden Runtz seed this weekend to run alongside this one instead!
Looking forward to this one, let's get some fruity terps going!
Here we go with the first week of the Strawberry Banana! As always, bit of a slow week to start, but it won't be long before things get more interesting!
Day 5 - Height: 1"
After sprouting this has grown really well and with some real vigour. Day 5 and its second set of leaves have already come out and are a nice size. I haven't been doing anything special at all, just spraying with plain water a couple of times a day to ensure the soil doesn't dry out completely. That's about that for this week!
Welcome back the Strawberry Banana!
Day 8 - Height 2"
Things are still going really well with this one. She's growing with some good vigour and in a good spot for Day 8, I think she'll be a good strong plant. No special care at all, just misting with a water spray bottle twice a day to ensure I'm not overwatering. I'll start her off with a super low dose of nutrients next week probably and maybe start training towards the end of the next week too, but for now just watching and waiting!
Week three and here we go! THings are starting to look a little more interesting!
Day 14 - Height 5"
Really nice little seedling here, her inter-nodal spacing is really tight and stalk is already starting to look strong. I fed her with nutrients for the first time tonight, very low with just 0.5ml/l of both alg-a-mic and grow. It still looks really nice and healthy and coming along well so no need to go in hard with nutes and figured I'd phase it in nice and slow so I can keep an eye on how it reacts.
Day 16 - Height 4"
Time to get some LST going. It was actually a little tough with how low and bushy it is, but managed to get it bent over at least, I'll probably go a bit easy on this plant this time, as I have the space to let her grow out a bit more right now, so it doesn't need controlling too much. I used a few galvanised steel gardening pegs for LST, usually you'd use them for pegging down netting or tents etc. but figured they'd work well for LST, so thought I'd give them a try this time round. They're a touch bulky, but certainly do the job and being thick, they don't cut into the stem at all.
Welcome back to the StrawNana grow, we're pretty much into liftoff with this week!
Day 25: Height 6"
Looking great! She took to LST really well, normally I'd probably look at tying her down again at this point and spreading a little more, but I think I'm going to leave it this time since I have a little more space now. I want to let it go a little more and see how it goes! Everything is going well though, I've started nutrients really lightly and it seems to have been fine with that, so that's nice. Pre-flowers started showing yesterday so I guess we're about to hit the stretch and see this one fly off over the next few days!
Welcome back to the Strawberry Banana grow! Been a steady week with this one but she's flying now!
Day 30 - Height: 9"
She's really launching into the stretch now and growing at a steady rate, putting on inches every day. She's also gone into full flower mode and developing all the bud sites which is nice Really healthy looking so far and no problems in terms of the grow whatsoever. I've been feeding quite lightly so far and I continued to do so this week with just 1ml/l of grow and 1ml/l of bloom which I'll keep up for this transition stage between veg/flower and then ramp up a little more perhaps next week or the week after. I'm trying out a bit of a new feed schedule with this one as I notice that autos don't really need much in the way of nutes at all until about week 5-6, then you can go in a little more with bloom and a little grow. That's my theory anyway, so we'll see! Looking healthy so far!
Day 32 - Height: 11"
Looking good! I think over the next week or so she'll probably double in size, but already she's developing some great bud sites and good internodal spacing, very tight and bunched bud sites up each stem and developing a good bush shape. Happy days!
Cheers all! x
Welcome back to the Strawberry Banana! Going well!
Day 39 - Height: 14"
Moving into full flower and the home leg now. I've upped nutrients to 2ml/l bloom and will knock it up to 3ml/l next week whilst beginning to reduce grow nutrients at the same time. I defoliated her quite heavily this week because she had so many leaves crowding out the middle and lowers. I took off probably around 30-40 leaves total and she could probably lose a few more yet, but I'll just chip off a few here and there daily over the next week or so. Looking healthy though and I expect to see some nice growth in the buds over the next couple of weeks. Nothing special to the smell yet, I'm looking forward to it gaining its unique scent profile that its supposed to have.
StrawNanaaaaa!
Day 48
Week 7, going well! My nutrient schedule is pretty much how it will be to the end of life now, 3/2/1, Bloom/Alg-A-Mic/Grow, although I'll probably cut grow out entirely in another week. The buds are looking good considering there are at least another two weeks of fattening up to go yet. The final plant should be a nice, stocky structure with some real fat buds on each branch and I'd guess finishing quite quickly, sometime around day 65-75. Health-wise we're looking good, there is a little bit of yellowing on the leaves and a few dark spots here and there, but it's not spreading quickly at all and could largely just be to leaf cannibalization for the late flower. I'm not going to fuss over it as my PPM and PH readouts look good, so just trucking on!
Smell is quite good, very sticky buds if you touch them but nothing too unique just yet. We crack on!
Homestretch for the Strawberry Banana now! I didn't bother with an update last week as nothing was happening at all, but then this week, they were chunking up real fast and are looking amazing... but then tragedy struck!
Day 59 - BUDROT! (Botrytis)
Absolutely gutted to have found a load of budrot in my main cola. I cut the top off and hopefully that will isolate it so that the rest of the plant won't be effected, but I'll just have to keep an eye on it and make sure it hasn't spread. It's really easy to see this, the leaves died off all around the affected area and when you pull at the bud, you'll notice it just split open easily. Inside you can see fuzzy white mould and right in at the stem, the bud just turns to brown mush. It can spread quickly, so the plan is to cut off the infected area and isolate the plant as best you can from other plants and/or harvest early if that is either an option or a very last resort. It spreads FAST, so you need to make a decision and go for it.
The rest of the plant, however.... looks great thankfully! I'm going to start winding down nutrients after this week and get the plant ready for harvest, but for now, I'm still feeding 3/2/1ml per litre with Bloom/Alg-a-Mic/Grow. This week the buds have got real chonky all of a sudden, but the trichomes are still mainly cloudy. I think they have at the very least another 7-10 days before chop time, but I will almost definitely be harvesting early due to the rot and aim to rescue as much of the yield as I can. Far better to harvest early than not harvest at all and have the rot spread to my other plant too.
I'm going to be a bit harsh on this rating, I really liked this plant, everything grew well, had a good to great yield and the plant took to training well, but at the same time suffered from Budrot late in flower and this is the only time I've ever seen that happen. I also had a seed not germinate, which is another rarity. It was definitely good enough to grow again though, but I wonder how strong the genetics are for this one. I'll give it another chance in the future because the yield and terps seem worth it, but I'm on the fence with this one a little for now. The early smoke was really nice, a reasonably heavy hitting relaxing, body stone with a nice happy vibe to it. Probably something I'll keep for nighttime to help me sleep.
I took down the Strawberry Banana on Day 61, which was much earlier than I had planned but after the attack of budrot and with nowhere to isolate this plant, I decided to take the decision to harvest early. To be honest, it was probably going to come down this weekend anyway, so I feel like I only went early by about 5 days or so in the end. The vast majority of trichomes are cloudy with only one or two ambers loosely dotted about due to this, but it's okay. Better to harvest early than lose the whole crop!
The smell is fantastic. I gotta be honest, I don't get defined strawberries or bananas. It smells like a vaguely fruity, slightly sweet weed to me. It does have quite a strong scent profile, so not one for a stealth grow and it's very, very sticky.
>> HARVEST AND TRIM <<
considering the fact I had to throw away the main top of this plant, I think the yield was really good. Coming in at 211g wet, I think I'll be looking at a good couple of ounces dry. I reckon the cola I tossed away due to rot would've gotten this to around 300g wet, which is not a bad effort at all! Real shame about the rot, but that's life and we gotta look at the positives!
Trim for this one was nice and easy, not a massive amount of sugar leaves and what was there were nice and big so very easy to snip off. I trimmed it up and hung it to dry in 25c temps with humidity floating between 40-45%. Overall this only took me about 45 minutes for the plant, so I'd say that was good!
>> DRY BUD REPORT <<
So after a good dry, the final weight came in at 51g, a little lower than I expected, but it's pretty good again, considering I had to throw away the main top. The scent has really come along and the buds have a really great, pungent, sweet and fruity vibe. I still don't think they smell like strawberries or bananas, but they do have an indistinct fruit smell. They're a little airy, not too dense, but overall have good structure and I'm pleased with them!
>> EARLY SMOKE <<
Here's what it's all about. The early smoke was a little harsh honestly, but that's okay. I'm used to smoking well-cured bud so I expect a little bit of harshness with bud that's had only a short dry period and no cure yet. I'm quite sure they'll smooth out in time. As far as the stone goes, this hit me quite hard, though I am quite a casual smoker. Probably I would keep this for a nighttime smoke, as it was very relaxing and gave me a happy, contented head stone, with a nice mushy warm chest. I liked it, strong enough but gentle on the up.
>> FINAL THOUGHTS <<
A good grow overall, marred by the Botrytis attack on the home stretch. I managed to catch it early enough to move past it though and rescue a good amount. I think Strawberry Banana is a good plant to grow though, a good yielder and relatively unfussy. Judging the early smoke, this is a really nice bud, so I'm going to grow it again in a couple of rotations and see how that one goes before making any final decisions. Always happy to chalk this one up to new experiences dealing with budrot anyway!
And that's about that! Thanks for reading! Stay healthy, grow well! x
Best of Luck with the grow, really excited to see yours off to the races. Only 3/5 of My Strawberry Bannana germinated and 1 of them never did more than put out it's tap so I'm gonna live vicariously!
@scotch_egg, I honestly don't know. I have been following Fast Buds since '18 and they were my first grow based on how reliable their stuff seemed to be. All of my Forbidden Runtz thus far have popped and been incredibly resilient so maybe the SB is just a lot more touchy. Out of curiosity did you use Paper Towel method for yours? I did 3/5 Paper towel 2 put out taps, 1 pushed the top of the seed out of dirt once it was in and the other died in the soil. The other 2 I popped in peat pods and they got above ground but both had a hard time shedding the seed and their cotyledons were severely damaged.
@thebyrdman, ah that's interesting, I've always had good luck with germination rates, but my Strawberry Banana was the same with only 1 out of 2 germinating. The second one shot a taproot, but it didn't ever grow more than about .5cm long and ended up just rotting in the soil. I wonder if it's a strain thing?
51g, a little lower than you expected?!?1?1?!? unbelievable !!! wake up man!!! with that shity light you should kiss somebodys arse!!!!! get a proper light and you will get result like pro!!!!next time try grow under 5w led!!!! lol
@scotch_egg, gotcha 👍👍man well thats what probably every grower hate-after when you dry it its like 80% or i dono exactly how muchs gone!!!!😂👺😡 thats why we must try our best all the time cheerio👌👍
@skako3377, I think you misunderstand me, I meant lower than expected when I looked at the plant itself, it seemed like it would be more than that before harvest. Not sure about the rest of your comment 🤷♂️
@MrHightimes, Thank you mate! I still feel like I'm learning with every new strain, but it's been a fun couple of years of growing! Your Purple Lemonade is looking friggin gorgeous! I hope you're doing well!
Прекрасная работа , отлично выглядит !!! Будет хороший урожай👍Если у вас есть желание , посмотрите мои репортажи и оставьте своё мнение в комментариях😉
scotch_egg
