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Here we go again! Back in the swing of things for the first time in a while. Began germination on 8/4/21 using paper towel method.
Update 8/6/21: Checked seeds yesterday at the 24 hour mark since germination started and they hadn't popped yet. Checked again today, less than 48 hours and all 5 are ready! Planted in solo cups in FF Happy Frog and sprayed/misted with distilled water. Using only the XS2000 light for now, set 30" high at about 45% on the dimmer.
Update 8/9/21: Yesterday, 3 out of 5 had sprouted. Today, all 5 are sprouted and looking good. Adjusted light height to 28" and turned dimmer up to 60%.
8/14/21 (day 6): Added some blue light via the 2 additional LEDs in the tent. First three-finger leaves starting to form. Still not adding any nutes and letting the happy frog soil feed the plants for now.
8/17/21 (day 9): Seeing some clawing of leaves, I'm thinking the happy frog soil is a little too hot for the seedlings and they're showing some nitrogen toxicity. Continuing to water with only distilled water in the hopes that they'll outgrow it. I also noticed a bit of over watering since I had been keeping the soil moist with a spray bottle every day. Now I'm watering via pour instead of spray and only watering every 2 to 3 days as needed, letting the soil dry out a little bit in between each watering.
8/19/21 (day 11): Update: the plants have all responded very well to the new watering cycle. I will probably water them one more time before transplanting them into their final homes (7gal fabric pots).
8/21/21 (day 13): Transplanted into 7 gallon fabric pots. The soil is a mixture of 75% Coast of Maine Stonington Blend and 25% Fox Farms Happy Frog. The roots all looked great and had taken up most of the volume of their solo cups. Watered lightly after transplanting.
Update: My wife says now we have to name them. Thoughts/ideas??
8/25/21 (day 17): Four days after transplant into the fabric pots, they're ready for another watering and they're starting to accelerate in growth. Watered again today. Still not adding any nutrients, since the Coast of Maine super soil will provide all the nutrients the plants need for the next few weeks or so.
8/29/21 (day 21): Well they exploded in growth in the last 4 days. After the last watering I started adding the blue lights again after some time using only the white. They seem to love it! Watering again today and getting ready to do the first topping in the next few days.
8/31/21 (day 23): Watered again today, getting ready for the first topping. The plants all have 5 nodes and are working on their 6th. Once all plants have a 6th node I will top them all down to the third node to begin the main-line/manifold. Almost training time! I've been slowly bringing the blurple lights down closer to the plants while also slowly turning up the white QB light with the dimmer knob. The blurples are set to veg only (white and blue) for now but I will set them to veg and flower (add red lights) probably next week to get the fullest light spectrum possible. Fingers crossed hoping they respond well to the main-lining...
9/3/21 (day 26): Topped to the third node and removed all growth tips below the third node. I'm keeping an extra set of fan leaves on them for the next few days to hopefully reduce some shock to the plants and help the two new main shoots grow out on each plant. In the next one or two days I'll be tying down the new shoots.
9/6/21 (day 29): Today I stripped away all remaining growth except for the two main shoots themselves. Watered with plain water and adjusted the ties to keep the growth horizontal and attempt to get all 5 plants to the same height.
9/9/21 (day 32): Watering again today, still not adding any nutes yet. I'm letting the shoots grow out a little bit more and then I'll be topping to the third node on each main shoot to continue building the manifold.
9/12/21 (day 35): Topped again today, down to the third node on each shoot. Now there's 4 total shoots per plant, and I'll only be topping one more time. I've had to let the front right plant get a little too tall due to a little split in the stem from bending down a little too much during LST and I wanted to be gentle with it until fully healed. Still not using any nutes, the super soil is completely feeding the plants on its own. There even seems to be very slight nutrient burn, so I don't think I'll be needing to add nutrients for a little while longer.
9/16/21 (day 39): Tied down the 4 shoots and trimmed all fan leaves. Just waiting for the shoots to grow a couple nodes, then I'll top each of them one more time and then let them grow for a couple more weeks before flipping to flower. Still haven't added any nutrients to the super soil.
9/23/21 (day 46): Topped today for the final time. One plant is much taller than the rest at this point so I'm only tying down the tall plant for now, in the hopes that the rest of the plants will catch up to it in height. I'm leaving the fan leaves on for another few days to reduce stress from this topping. Still watering with only plain water. I will be adding tomato rings to the pots in the next couple days to help shape these next couple weeks of vertical growth before I flip the lights to 12/12 for flowering. Also, they're starting to smell SO GOOD!
9/26/21 (day 49): Today for the first time I noticed a slight nutrient deficiency with one of the plants, so that means it's time to start adding nutrients. Watered today with Advanced Nutrients organic Iguana Juice Grow and Advanced Nutrients Ancient Earth organic (humic acids), both at half strength.
9/29/21 (day 52): I finally gave up on thinking the shortest plants would be able to catch up to the tallest ones, so I brought the shorter plants up off the ground to create a mostly even canopy across all plants. I also got some nutrient burn from the first feeding I did, even though it was only at half strength, so I'm going at quarter strength with nutrients from now on. The plant growth in super soil has been somewhat slower than I hoped, but I'm being patient and letting these girls take all the time they need to bulk up before switching to flower. Hoping to switch to 12/12 in the next couple weeks, at this point I'm only waiting for some more vertical growth now that the mainline/manifold structure is built.
10/4/21 (day 57): Today I trimmed away the lowest growth nodes on each of the 8 main shoots of each plant. Except for the little slow-growing plant in the back-left, where I'm letting her grow out a little longer before I stress her again. The mainline form is really starting to take shape! Also,these girls are starting to drink a lot more water, and I'm slowly increasing the nutrient strength as I go. At this point I'm at about 90% on the QB light dimmer knob, aiming to get to full brightness before I switch to flowering.
10/8/21 (day 61): For the past few days I've been working on recovery from a little nutrient deficiency but things are now looking good. Today I did the final tie downs before switching to flower. All that's left for training is a little bit of pruning and defoliation over the next couple weeks.
10/13/21 (day 66): I expect to be flipping these girls to 12/12 next week to start flowering, and I'm hoping for a decent stretch. The tallest plants are about 17" tall now and the shortest are about 12" tall. I'll be trimming away a little bit more of the lower growth on the taller plants before sending them into flower.
10/20/21 (day 1 of 12/12): I flipped the lights to 12/12 last night so today was the first full day of 12/12 lighting. Let the flowering stretch begin! The tallest plants are about 20" tall while the shortest plants are about 13-14" tall. I'm still watering them with veg/grow nutrients for the next week before I switch to flower/bloom nutrients.
Over the past week, I dealt with what I believe is a combination of cal-mag deficiency and also some light burn because I allowed the plants to grow too close to my lights. I raised my lights farther away from the canopy and I dialed down the light intensity a little bit on my dimmer knob. The plants have responded well and the newest growth all looks healthy.
10/24/21 (day 5 of 12/12): The plants are starting to stretch a little bit. The tall ones are 24" now.
10/28/21 (12/12 day 9): The plants are still stretching but the stretch hasn't been as significant as I had hoped, so these girls may not get as tall as I wanted them to get. I continued to use veg nutrients for the first week of 12/12 but now I'm using flowering nutrients. The first bud sites are visible now as well.
11/2/21 (12/12 day 14): For the past couple days I've been defoliating to allow as much light as possible to get to the lower parts of the plant. I'm defoliating just a little at a time to hopefully avoid over stressing the plants. The tallest plants are about 31" tall now. I'm hoping they still stretch a little bit more over the course of the next week..
11/6/21 (12/12 day 18): It seems like the stretch is pretty much over at this point and they're starting to produce bud sites everywhere. I'm continuing to defoliate the big fan leaves to expose the lower buds to more light and air flow. I'll defoliate one more time at the end of this week and then no more training until the finish!
11/10/21 (day 22): Added some wooden stakes to spread apart the main colas and expose the lower bud sites on the middle plant. The stretch seems to be over, but the buds are all fattening up more and more each day. Light height control has been tough because the middle and right lights are now hanging up as high as they can go. Now entering week 4 of 12/12 I'm excited to see the bud production start to take off!
11/16/21 (12/12 day 28): The plants are focusing fully on bud development now and they're doing really well so far.
11/18/21 (12/12 day 30): The buds are starting to swell up and get bigger every day. I love this stage of flowering! We have a long way to go, but I'm liking the progress so far. Although all the plants are mainlined, I decided to treat each plant differently when trimming away the lower growth based on how the plant looked and how it handled the stress of trimming. It'll be interesting to see which trimming structure does the best...
11/27/21 (12/12 day 39): I've been bringing the lights closer and closer and turning light intensity all the way up over the last week. I'm worried I might have hurt my yields by keeping the lights too far away from the canopy over the last few weeks. This is my first grow with the new light and I was a little too worried about light burn. I'm thinking I have about 3, maybe 4 weeks until harvest at most. Let's hope the buds swell up a decent amount more between now and then. I'll be continuing to feed with bloom nutrients for about another 7-10 days before switching to plain water for the finish. Let's hope these ladies stay happy and healthy until then!
12/3/21 (12/12 day 45): I decided to add some advanced nutrients overdrive to my feeding schedule to see if I can add some extra weight here in the last few weeks. I think I'll be adding nutrients for one more week before I switch to plain water for the rest of the way. They're starting to develop tons of trichomes and some of the buds are tinting purple as time goes on.
12/14/21 (12/12 day 56): The plants are maturing nicely. Some of the taller stems had to be tied up because they couldn't hold their own weight anymore. I'm still seeing growth on all plants, but one plant still has mostly white pistils and clear trichomes, so she may take longer to finish. I'm just giving them plain water from now until harvest. I expect to harvest in about 7 to 10 days, right around Christmas!
12/21/21: Just waiting for the trichomes to get more cloudy and less clear, but the buds are still growing in size. These were an 8-10 week flowering strain and it's looking like it will take all 10 weeks.
12/25/21: Merry Christmas! These ladies are still taking their sweet time, so there's not much to update on. Hopefully ready within the next week. Almost harvest time!
12/27/21: UPDATE: Yesterday, on 12/26/21, I decided to harvest. This was on day 68 since the flip to 12/12. They're hanging up to dry right now so I will post a harvest update once they're ready to put into jars for the slow cure.
After hang drying for 8 days, the buds are finally all trimmed and in jars for curing.
Final dry weight:
-Plant #1 (front-left): 57g
-Plant #2 (back-left): 44g
-Plant #3 (center): 63g
-Plant #4 (back-right): 53g
-Plant #5 (front-right): 63g
TOTAL: 280g dry weight
MainelyGrown
