Sweet Seeds Femme Fatales

Seedling to Vegetative Growth (update 25 January) The gang are growing up and moving on, now they’ve established some roots. Once an auto is about two weeks from sprout, they begin a phase of vegetative growth, with rapid leaf expansion and quick node production. Sidebranches will begin to sprout soon. I planned to raise the EC to 1.0 on day 14, which I did for the older three according to schedule on Saturday. This is the point I begin regularly watering through with runoff, rather than just keeping the big pots moist, so I have raised those plants on cake racks above the Tupperware. I am going to water on a 48 hour cycle to begin with, so I did it for those three again today. The three older ones are doing great, as is the Dark Devil Auto. The Red Poison Auto continues to struggle. She’s not always by the humidifier vent – besides the Gorilla Girl XL Auto, I have been switching their positions in the tent. The environment has been very steady in there, humidity is nearly always between 50-60%. Across the past four days since my last update the maximum was 67% and minimum 39%. Temperatures have been between a low of 20°C and high 27°C, usually more like 25°C with the lights on. I didn’t raise the EC on day 14 for the Red Poison Auto, I kept her on 0.9 EC. To keep things simple, I will raise it a couple of days late, so her feedings are the same as the Dark Devil Auto. I’m not sure what is wrong, I suspect I have kept the coco a bit too damp which will not have helped. I’ve not watered at all the past couple of days. Here’s a closer look, you can see the damage has got worse and spread to other leaves. She has an interesting superpower: webbing! Or at least one webbed leaf, like a duck’s foot. The Dark Devil Auto may have sprouted two days later but it’s a much bigger plant now, much more healthy and green. All of the plants are showing their Auto heritage proudly now, with very broad fat leaves. The indica dominant Cream Caramel Auto is surprisingly possibly the narrowest of them at this stage. The Ice Cool Auto is a bit taller than the other two, and she loves to pray to the light – I caught her during her Sunday session. Some double-serration saw edges starting to appear. My Gorilla Girl XL Auto likes to reach up too. I’ve been working on the video again. Serendipity came my way this week, as I have just been given a nice surprise bonus for work I did in April, when the pandemic lockdown first hit the UK. I also have a bit of money left over from my diary prize last year – there’s not been much opportunity to spend it, and I had not quite managed to send it all to messrs Vapefiend, Vapewellness, Vaposhop, Namaste et al just yet. It made perfect sense to spend it on a laptop actually capable of editing video, and so I ordered an Asus Zenbook. It arrived on Friday, and I’ve spent the evenings over the weekend trying to learn how to use it, and being in awe of how nice it is. I tried a few open source video editing packages, mostly without any kind of success, before I settled on Shotcut. I managed to pull together the pictures from the first two weeks, stabilise the footage, and add a bit of text. I’ve put it on Youtube again, and this time I’ve tried to do everything I can to avoid it being tagged as possibly inappropriate on upload. Hopefully embedding it will actually work, and you won’t need to log in this time: https://youtu.be/s-B3XSWgzZM I am very pleased with how this has come out. I can be critical about it, and notice how the camera wonders around a little bit off centre as I struggled to keep it still. I would have liked to have moved the shot a bit less in the second week, with fewer steps out. I missed the focus around day 8 which is a bit of a shame. It is difficult to get it where I had positioned the camera to see the screen and make adjustments, something I am definitely considering more as I think about recomposing the tent and the camera for veg. The text is mostly just there as a test, as I try to learn about keyframes and filters and the other video editing basics. But overall, yes I am very happy, and looking forward to seeing her really move this next week. I will have to try and work out a soundtrack for her to strut her stuff to. Vegetative Growth, Updated Feeding Schedule & First Pistils (update 30 January) Earlier this week I looked at my plants, and again over my old diaries, and I realised my plan to water every 48 hours from day 14 was too much to young. The bottom of the pots were still saturated after two days so I knew I needed to leave it longer. The old diaries have been really useful for planning, but one thing I didn’t properly account for in my thinking was the larger fabric pots I’m using this time. Previously I have tended to use airpots with less coco, which would dry out quicker. I’ve made an updated feeding schedule and included the planned watering frequency. Four of the five plants are following this exactly so far, the older plants are up to day 21 today. A 72 hour cycle seemed much better for this past week, I need to make sure I do not drown the roots at the bottom of the pot. From tomorrow they should be ready to move to every two days. The youngest, Dark Devil Auto, is also bang on schedule, just three days behind. The Red Poison Auto schedule is slightly delayed/relaxed by a couple of days – the move up from 1.0 to 1.1 EC was on day 16, and she’ll go up to 1.2 EC on day 22. I also sprayed all five plants with Epsom salts twice this week, on Monday and again on Friday, keeping up a four day cycle. I managed to take a photo including the spray last time, but not mention it in the text. I’ll keep up the spraying whilst they are young, but once flowers develop I will stop. I rearranged the tent on Wednesday, and I took out the humidifier. I spread the plants out and moved the camera, and I hung a t-shirt up to be a background for the next shot in the video. Without the humidifier, the tent tends to level out around 26°C and 40% humidity with the lights on. Since Wednesday the maximums were 27°C and 50% humidity, and minimums have been 20°C and 37% humidity. I’ve been looking at leaf temperatures too with an laser thermometer and typically finding these between 21-23°C. Looking at the VPD charts/calculators in a few places shows this to be a bit drier than would be ideal, but so far the plants seem to be enjoying it. The problem might be that I end up overfeeding the plants due to the increased transpiration. I know I am pushing the food hard, hopefully I am as close to the limit as possible, whilst still being inside it. I took some pictures yesterday and the day before. The Ice Cool Auto is the leader of the gang so far. She’s very vigorously producing lush green leaves, and already developing a thick trunk and decent side shoots. The Cream Caramel Auto looks just as nice and healthy too, but not quite as tall and chunky. The Gorilla Girl XL Auto is doing fabulously too, all three older ones are still almost synchronised in development. The Red Poison Auto is one day behind those three, but much smaller, and still very yellow. I’m not worried, I read over my diary from last year where I had a Sweet Gelato Auto which struggled to get started a bit like this one (not pale, but it was virtually as small)… but she gave a great result – great taste and effect, and it was the biggest out of three Sweet Seeds plants that time. Hopefully Red Poison Auto will prove you don't need to be a hulk to be a superhero. She is continuing to grow and develop. I noticed she is the first plant to get pistils. I had a good look over the others yesterday and I couldn’t see any at all on any of them, but today I had another peek and it looked like all the older ones were just beginning to show female parts too! :naughty: The Dark Devil Auto is younger than the others, but the main stem elongation means it’s already the tallest. I’m not sure if it is the sativa heritage causing it to start to stretch up already. I want to supercrop them very soon, they are producing their fifth nodes now and will soon be adding them quickly, as well as putting more space between nodes whilst the plants begin to flower. If I do it at the right time I hope to limit the height and cause the sidebranches to develop more, without the hassle of tying them down which is tricky in fabric pots. Thank you for looking.