Sweet Seeds Femme Fatales

Early Flowering & Stretch (update 15 February) The plants are fully in bloom and the canopy is almost filling the tent now. Things have been a bit hectic lately but I managed to get a few photos over the weekend. I took a closer picture of each to show the flower development on Saturday, and a whole plant portrait on Sunday to show their general size and structure. The Dark Devil Auto is still looking the most developed of the five, and is absolutely gorgeous. Despite being the youngest she is also the tallest. I felt I had to do something more about it, so on Friday (day 31 for Dark Devil Auto) I squeezed the stem and bent her over again. This time she gave up the fight and has kept a zig-zag shape to her stem, which should help. The Red Poison Auto is just as pretty and colourful but not as tall. She’s not producing long sidebranches like the others, perhaps because I haven’t supercropped her, and have only given a couple of gentle squeezes to the stem. The Ice Cool Auto is just thriving. She’s starting to get quite big too, the internode spacing is increasing rapidly as she stretches up. I think the density of foliage is contributing to it now the canopy is full, and maybe the plants are starting to show shade avoidance as they compete for space and light. Gorilla Girl XL Auto has maybe slightly slower switch to flower development than the others, but is not far behind. She has lots of side branches, but the main stem remains a bit shorter. No shortage of leaves, though! The Cream Caramel Auto is doing very well too. I’m not sure why but she doesn’t like to pray to the light as much as the others, more often her leaves are flat or dangling down, but otherwise she seems as happy and healthy as the others, and is developing nicely. Her sidebranches really want to reach out wide. The plants are really rocketing upwards at the moment. Cream Caramel Auto and Ice Cool Auto are both well over 60cm now, and several of the Dark Devil Auto sideshoots reach even higher. To keep on top of it I am squeezing the stems of the plants every day, just gently where they are getting tall. Environmentally I have made some adjustments. My last update was on Thursday, and for the 48 hours between then and Saturday the temperature stayed constantly between 20°C and 22°C, and humidity 26-36%. It was very cold outside, so it was a struggle to keep it warm. Thankfully the weather has turned today and the snow has melted. I noticed that the fabric pots were getting very cold when I checked them with the laser thermometer - 18°C at the top, and more like 15°C at the bottom – one plant even read 13°C in one spot! :ohmygod: I’m not sure exactly how it gets so cold when the air in there isn’t that cold, I suppose it must be to do with the physics of water evaporation having a cooling effect like in leaf transpiration, and sweating, and the fact the fabric pots give a large surface area for evaporation… I’m not sure, but I knew something must be done to change it because that is too cold for the roots to work properly. I turned down the extractor fan even lower, it’s possibly at about 40% power now (but there’s no proper markings). I also bumped up the underfloor heating, and the oil-filled radiator to keep it warmer throughout the day. In the 48 hours from Saturday evening to now, Temperature has been up to a maximum of 27°C, and is more like 24°C with the lights on, down to a minimum of 22°C. Humidity has gone up a little in this time too, ranging between 27% and 46%. Previously I had been applying nutrient solution at 19-20°C, but now I have changed routine so I put the bucket in the airing cupboard with the hot water tank all day to warm up before watering, so it is given at 23-24°C instead. Additionally, the past couple of days I gave extra when watering to try and bring the pot temperatures up, 3 litres instead of the usual 1.5-2 litres they have been getting every day recently. I switched the food ratio over for the older plants to a 1:1:1 Grow:Micro:Bloom yesterday, as planned on their 36th day. The Red Poison Auto (being a day younger) was due to switch to this intermediate ratio today, and the Dark Devil Auto would have been due to switch another two days after this. I decided to switch Dark Devil Auto along with Red Poison Auto both today to the 1:1:1 ratio, since the Dark Devil Auto is already very advanced, and I want to limit her height so could do with reducing the nitrogen content in her nutrients, and also for the sake of simplicity so all plants are on the same ratio again. I also have replaced the old USB fans in the tent with new 120mm fans. I have two of these hung in the top of the tent. One blows across the tent over the light, and the other blows towards the wall and ceiling. They are much quieter than the old fans and seem to move more air. I’d had the old ones a long time (I think the older plastic one around 10 years) and they won't last much longer. These new ones were very cheap from a well-known online auction site. I also bought a new pH pen which was under £5. My old Bluelab one (again, around 10 years old) seems to take a very long time to reach a stable reading and I was becoming suspicious how reliable it is these days. It has a strange brown stain on the glass bulb but it calibrates reliably, if slowly. I thought the new pen was perhaps a gamble and too good to be true for the price, but it’s fantastic, very quick, and so far seems accurate. I cannot believe how little it cost. Thank you for looking at my diary! Video Update & Trimming Lower Branches (update 16 February) I have a video update showing the Gorilla Girl XL Auto, from 1 to 14 February (days 23 to 36): https://youtu.be/9kxMeRE8YEc I hope you enjoy watching the plant twirling and reaching up and outwards, whilst I try to tuck the biggest fan leaves back down! Hopefully you can see it. I've just uploaded it for the third time, I am not sure what I am doing which has been causing it to be flagged and restricted to 18+. It may happen again to this one, so I am keeping it very simple with the video name and description and not adding much info on Youtube. I really wanted to include this with my update yesterday, but I just didn’t get a chance to put it together until now. It’s half the speed of the last video with music, to make it last longer, since this only covers a couple of weeks - this one is 25 frames a second. I will probably go back up to 50 fps for the final video when I put it all together, so it’s not too long. I will take this opportunity to say that today I trimmed the lowest two sidebranches from the first node from the Gorilla Girl XL Auto, Cream Caramel Auto, and Ice Cool Auto, which are all on day 38, plus a few extra tiny bits from low down. These plants are all very thick with leaves now at the top, and I know from experience these lower branches won’t produce much. They can’t make it to the top and get light, there is just no space for them, but they are trying anyway. The individual plants, and the tent as a whole will be better without them, so I snipped them off. I’ve left the Dark Devil Auto and the Red Poison Auto alone. Here’s a look in the tent again this evening, after the trim. I am tempted to go a step further and take the Red Poison Auto out completely. It’s stunted and pale, and the leaves have developed a mottled unhealthy appearance. I think the tent works very well with four plants in a row. It’s a bit of a squeeze with all five in there. I really think the gang might be best dumping their weakest member, and carrying on without her. She’s an interesting plant that might do well with some special care, but perhaps the others will be better off and more productive with the extra space? I don’t think she’ll be yielding much. I’ll sleep on it tonight and make the decision tomorrow. And Then There Were Four (update 17 February) I was ruthless and did it, I took the Red Poison Auto out of the tent. I didn’t need the night to make the decision, I did it shortly after my last post, before I went to bed. I did not like to see the others squashed in, the tent was unbalanced and overcrowded. I mentioned a previous Sweet Gelato Auto which got off to a slow start but ended up producing very well – by the one month point it had bounced back and was much bigger than this Red Poison Auto, which just hasn’t got going. Taking it out now seems like the obvious and sensible choice. The four remaining plants now stand in a row, so are allowed a 60cm x 30cm footprint each. The bit of space in front and behind them there is now allows the light to reflect down lower, which should help limit the stretch. I’ve moved the lamp up slightly too. There’s not much room, but the tops were almost within 30cm of the reflector which is too close. I will cycle the three on the right so different plants are directly under the lamp each day, and the Gorilla Girl XL Auto will stay posing nicely on the left for the timelapse. I think it’s better for the plants with more space, and it’s definitely better for me when I have to water. It's still fairly crowded! I don’t like to defoliate, only when leaves are ill and need to be got rid of, or a very small bit from lower down as I showed in my last post. I’ve been tucking the larger fan leaves on the plants constantly instead, so the smaller shoots and budsites lower down can get light. Unfortunately the Cream Caramel Auto has lost a few leaves this way. The petioles seem to break off very easily at the main stem, they are very hard and rigid on this plant and I just pushed them too far. I broke one off over the weekend, and another last night. I was trying to be careful but today I broke a third off. So (for lent) I am giving up tucking leaves on the Cream Caramel Auto. They are such lovely leaves too, lush and green. One has 11 fingers, a sure sign the plant is happy and healthy (or was, until I had a go at rearranging her!). I still had the leaf from yesterday, so I took a picture with todays leaf and a Dynavap and a regular lighter for scale – I can’t believe I’ve made it this far without including a Dynavap yet. A quick update on the environment: over the past 48 hours it’s been a maximum of 25°C, minimum 21°C. I’m very glad that the cold snap is over. Humidity has been between 40% and 53%, usually somewhere in the upper 40s – it’s getting damper in there as leaf mass increases, transpiration rises, and the plants start to drink more.