Seedsman Freebies

These are 3 free seeds from Seedsman, so lets see how they go. It's a bit chilly down here and I thought maybe they would not sprout. Northern Lights Auto came up first after 5 days followed by NY Diesel, and finally Banana Kush the following day. Northern Lights has an extra strong stem. Otherwise everything looks normal.

Looking normal apart from the Banana Kush which is looking like there's a root problem. Spoiler Alert: she's comes out next week.

Topped The NY Diesel and the Northern Lights on day 17, the next day, I decided to pull the Banana Kush. The roots looked fine but there was no vigour she looked very ratty. However the other two are looking very sturdy. I would have topped all three to have four branches each but as it is I topped the other two at the third node. This time though I left a large as around of stem as I could leave and the two top branches seem to have grown out quite well as a result.

These two are looking super chunky, prolly a good thing that the Banana Kush didn't make it. Although I will be starting another three beans in one pot next week but I'll top them at the 2nd node.

I am really liking my new lower ppm. 800 is perfect. This two very lovely specimens of cannabis womanhood, they are in exceedingly rude health, because there's two beans so that gives me a lot of freedom to prune, and keep her very clean, because both of them are super stocky and not very amenable to bending the they are very similar in stature but the Northern Lights is more branchy, I like less branchy so I am not faced with these difficult decisions. I just started another two freebie beens from seedsman, I germed three but only two popped. I rejected a seed as looking like it had a split, and replaced it with another from the same pack of three, it also appeared to have had a very small space where the seed looked split, and that is the one that didn't pop. So I now examine my seeds with a loupe. Well I already did that because sometimes it's hard to tell which is the pointy end, but in future I'll take extra care to look for any splits, especially in freebies. So that's another advantage of three in a pot, if they all sprout, then you work with that, but if one misses, you still get a multi grow. Like you don't want to germ more than you need but you also don't want to have to start another seed a week late. So this worked out well for me. The big highlight this week is that I've been removing quite a lot of very large healthy leaves in order to do my thing. I'm realising that defoliation gets more specialised the longer you do it, I would not usually removed such large leaves if it wasn't necessary, but the plants were so vigorous that they give me a chance to do some experimentation and so far I can see that the severe leave removal has not had any effect on the plant at all, apart from making life a lot easier for me as I can make pruning decisions earlier. Anyhoo we shall see how this two pan out.

They are beginning to flip, huge leaves on the NYC Diesel, even though I've been cutting a lot off. The Norther Lights, is smaller and more branchy, I shall just let them do their thing now for the next two weeks and see what happens. Needing to conserve water at the moment so I'm going to see if i can keep the reservoir going for a few weeks or more so I'm just playing it by ear, a splash of micro, or a dash of bloom depending on how the stars are. Lots of nipping in the bud and defoliation and moderate tie down because both these girls are resistant to being bent over. Go figger.

Beginning to finally show some shape, won't know till next week exactly what I'm going to do. The NYC Diesel, has some of the biggest leaves I've ever seen this high up on the plant, some of the stems of the leaves are larger than the branches, does this mean large colas? I don't know, the other Northern Lights was getting a bit annoying with wiggly undergrowth however after clearing her up a bit, she is beginning to grow out. Funnily they are not fighting for the pot, they seem to have mutually divided it down the centre without much help from me. She's sort of pretty well flipped so I'll call this the last week of veg. Instead of changing the nute I just added some extra micro and some extra bloom to bring her back to 1:1:1 npk.

Flowering has begun albeit at a gentle pace. The NY Diesel has shot up 4" while the NL is a lot smaller in every way. Neither one is fighting for the space. It was getting to hard to see what was happening even with already constant defoliation so I went in for the total makeover pretty well took everything off, and then I could do a proper clear out and reorganisation on the fiddly Northern Lights. Funnily enough I'm growing another Northern Lights X Big Bud and it's tall and leggy so it will be interesting to see how the NL contributes to this cross. We are on the third week in the same reservoir, I have been adding nutrients based on my gut feeling and calculated guesswork, to keep the nutrient level up. All looking pretty fine so far so I'm going to continue another week. However each plant has it's own 30 litre res so that makes it easier.

10 days after the last major defoliation she needs another, especially the Northern Lights which is half the height and very branchy, I had to clear out a lot of undergrowth, not a type of plant I like so it will be interesting to see how she turns out. In a few days or so Lemon Pie will be out and I'll be able to arrange the lighting a bit better. She had a reservoir change today and this will be the last. Although she will be getting the reservoir topped up with a bit of concentrate each week depending on the ppm. She's starting out at 1500 and I'll see how fast she gets to 1100 and then aim to keep her there. It will all be a gut feel.

Northern Lights has staked out her claim to her corner of the pot, while NYC diesel is looking a bit odd, she's hard to bend so I'm just gonna let this take care of itself for a while. This prolly won't get interesting again for a couple of weeks. But I have plenty to keep me occupied meanwhile.

Bit of a boring update, not much happening. Both NL and NYCdiesel have their early buds but it seems very slow. Looks like about 5 weeks to go. Starting to get some stinky smell but there does not appear to be an over abundance of trichomes. Meanwhile BigBud next door is going gangbusters. The NYCdiesel is very solid woody and hard to bend, the N.L. is short and stocky.

12 Weeks and they are both looking a bit sparse, I can't really see many calyxes yet, hopefully these are going to improve but they both look like needing another four weeks at least. This doesn't look like it will be a big yielder, only looks about 5 zips right now.

Hard to defoliate or even bend the NYC diesel open. The northern lights is similar but she has terraced herself. I have been able to turn the pot around so that I'm getting better use of the lights. The NYC diesel smells very sweet like pastries, otherwise no strong smells no hint of diesel yet!

Both of these have begun to chunk up properly now, and there are a good density of trichomes. The Northern Lights is more slender but looks like she'll be quite resiny. The NYC diesel stem is amazingly chunky probably the thickest I've seen yet. However I was able to go in and bend some of the branches to open up the middle area. I'll just let her nutrients run down now. She's about 700ppm and i'll just keep topping up with water till she's finishes. The Diesel still smell like juicy fruit chewing gum.

Well these two plants started out well and looked nice but in the end I was undone by the structure, everything is very tight and very thick so there's a lot of moisture and humidity in the ever growing undergrowth, the branches cannot be manipulated, and I discovered the dreaded bud rot, so I had to harvest a little earlier than I'd like, but it was already taking too long. I shall not be growing any more of these two seedsman seeds indoors again. I wasn't expecting a big harvest and after I discovered a bit more bud rod when hanging, I went through it all very carefully and ended up throwing out quite a lot as i wasn't going to take any chances, you cannot mess around with bud rot. So in the end I was surprised to still end up with 8 zips. The final result does not have a very good bag appeal, but it is covered in resin and the buzz and the flavour is nice, although I find the NYC diesel a bit too sweet, and no diesel!