Big Bang

For my second grow I've decided to grow photo periods just because they offer me more control. With autos there is always a rush to get things done. I've chosen the Big Bang strain mostly because of its beginner growing difficulty and high yields. This strain has been also used for a very long time by the Dutch for medicinal purposes, so I'm quite excited about this aspect.

Nothing special. I've noticed one of the plants is growing a little bit different than the others, will have to keep my eye on it.

Done the first round of training this week, they're also showing some dificiences but I corrected them with some Grow and CalMag. The difference between the Big bang and Auto Banana Blaze is showing with how quickly they're reacting to nutrients. Banana was way quicker just a few days till I saw some resaults. With the Big bang it takes a week.

Some more training nothing special. I can really see the difference with one of my plants as its less dense and has some yellowing on its leaves, so I added Bloom and Top-Max to the nutrient mix as I suspected a Zinc deficiency, but to be safe I went with the full spectrum. The soil was probably depleted of nutrients anyway,

More training and spreading out the lower branches. I'll install a Scrog net by the end of the week and then switch to a 12-12 hour light schedule. The dificiences have basically gone away, new growth is comming out perfect. I've also taken off some leaves to have more space and so they don't rub the soil.

Swiched the light schedule to 12/12. I was planning to put a net in this week but I'll have to swich up the positioning to make it more efficient, as they're growing like crazy and I expect they'll at least double in size,

Amazing growth this week, they've just exploded. The training was worth it as they're growing evenly, except for a few branches that I need to get under control. I probably won't install a net just because I'm a little late and don't see the benefits in this stage. Next thing I'm going to do is some cleaning up, defoliation to get them perfect for flowering.

All of them are now showing signs of flower. They've grown alot in hight and not in width so the training has paid off. I am quite lucky for the genetics of the plants are almost identical with predictable outcomes, except for 2 which are a bit of a wild case as their growth is not as equal. I hope that in the next week I can get all of them to a fairly similar state.

Did some defoliation just to clear the lower side and open it to some air. I was late with the watering on the 18th as you can see in the picture but nothing serious happened. Other than that nothing special this week.

I wasn’t around much this week so there aren’t as many pictures. I regret not having much time as I had/have (not sure at the moment there are no more new white spots popping up) a thrips infection which I tried to correct with some organic insecticides and Neem oil which I always used in the past but completely neglected with this grow and am paying the price now. I haven’t encountered thrips or any other bug before but with a higher number of plants in one box and the fact that I was to lazy to clean my box after the last grow may be the cause of this now.

The thrips infection is gone but there’re still a lot of damaged leafs as you can see in the photos/videos, but the growth hasn’t slowed down which is good. Anyway after I did some research into the big bang strain I found out that the company that sells this strain recommends “flushing” for a few days every other week starting from day 16 of flowering. This is meant to speed up bud development and I think it really did something here as the buds got twice as big. But I didn’t exactly follow their recommendations as it calls for watering the plants with large amounts of water and letting the soil dry for a few days and I don’t feel comfortable with that, so I watered them every day but made sure the soil was dry.

Nothing special this week, just watching them buds grow :)

Week 7. About 1-2 weeks more for 4 out of 5 plants. I’ll feed them one more time with nutrients and then I’ll start to flush.

Almost one week of flushing and they’re showing signs. It smells full on like apples in the box and the buds themselves have an amazing smell. I think that they’ll be done in a week so keep posted.