Samsquanch OG x Forum Stomper autoflower

This is a test to see how well I can grow a plant using my Easy/Cheap/Efficient method (basically, doing as little as possible, and spending as little as possible). Almost nothing more than water-changes every week.

Chugging along...

Cheap $15 water-pump fails on Day 16! Uh-oh. The roots made it down to the water by Day 14, so all is not lost!...

LST'd the 4 main branches to the bucket - then forgot to unclip them when I went to chance the water - and broke literally a quarter of the plant off! Well, there goes that experiment!

Going strong. Running out of Micro/Grow/Bloom, thinking of switching to powdered nutes (cheaper). Flowers just barely noticeable on Day 34, fully noticeable on Day 35.

Ran out of space - so into the grow-cabinet you go!

Fixed the air-hose and the plant is recovering nicely. Switched to powdered nutes - and over-fed her. Doh! Isn't it interesting how the labels always tell you to use more of the product than you actually need (do I really need to lather, rinse, and then shampoo my hair a second time???)...

Recovering nicely from a whole host of avoidable mishaps. This would have been the week where I accidentally kinked her air-hose, and didn't notice it until a week later when the leaves all started to turn yellow and droop. Roughly half-way through flowering - and only one month to go until harvest!!! She's going to be pretty big for an autoflower. The breeder says there's a phenotype of one of her parents that they call 'branches on branches', that must be what this one is! Each cola branches off into multiple other branches over its length. The buds aren't big, but there are a lot of them. And, the colas look like they will eventually fill out quite nicely.

Still trying to dial-in the new (powdered) nutrients. Being so much cheaper, I assumed you'd need to go on the heavy side. Wrong! So, between the over-feeding and nearly suffocating her to death with the kinked air-hose, the leaves aren't looking too great. :o( However, the buds are filling in nicely, and she's a ginormous plant considering! Actually, the calyxes haven't even started the puff-up phase yet, so the colas are going to get considerably thicker before all's said and done! Yeah, this is going to be a huge plant. At least half a pound, I would think, maybe a fair bit more. The pics make her look almost close to done, but she's not even remotely close yet. Long way to go still.

The colors are coming!!! Looks like she's going to turn almost black! The next week or two should be fun. Tried to grow some seedlings but had to take them away last week, as they weren't getting any light and there was no place I could move them to that was any better - this girl is taking up almost the entire 4'x5' grow space! Which is amazing considering how many times I almost killed her accidentally! Two Days Later... And the colors are going! Uggh! It looked like the buds were going to turn almost pure black - and now it's gone! Even though the night temps were the same or colder (the daytime temp wasn't as hot the last couple days, so that must be the culprit).

Coming along nicely. She's now 2 to 7 days past the breeders' harvest-estimates for the parent strains - with no end in sight! There's still quite a while to go. The plant looks further along in the pictures than she does in real life. The beautiful near-black color that was coming along a week ago is now completely gone. Doh!

The color still isn't coming back, despite cool mornings, but she's about to start fluffing up the buds! So, not too much longer left. Will start the flush at the end of this week.

Almost ready for harvest! Started the flush a few minutes prior to the first pictures this week. This has been a weird one. The photos make the calyxes look full and ready, but in person, you can hardly see them, just tiny leaves. And, instead of large colas, it has smaller colas and a whole bunch of golf ball sized buds everywhere. So, I wonder what she'll yield. I always try a few testers along the way. I don't know why, no strain is ever good when harvested early. But, I try anyways. And, the testers were pretty dense buds. Odd plant this one. The genetics don't seem to be too great, even though it produces a gigantic plant. I guess that's why they only give this strain away for free... And... Things just keep going wrong with this one. Now I lost power and had to move the plant inside. So, giving her a bit of sun. Would probably go another week or so longer, just to see if the calyxes puff out more, or if that's all she wrote, but with the power issue (and the fact that we're already 2+ weeks past the breeders' estimated harvest time). I guess we'll see what she's like next week and chop. Bent some branches moving her - she doesn't even fit through a door without a bunch of branches catching on both sides and the top - so, between that and the testers, I've taken almost 2oz off of her already.

The calyxes are filling out a tiny bit. But, still nowhere near what I would have expected by now. I have a plant in a 1gal pot that's got calyxes that are 10x the size. When you look at this one up-close, all you see are leaves (that look like cotyledons). So, you'd expect the buds to be loose and airy. Yet, oddly enough, the buds are really dense. So, even though the calyxes are small, there must be a ton of them in there. Odd plant all around. Going to harvest her at the end of this week. Would have liked to go a bit further, but the power-outage in the building housing my 4x5 has sped things up as temperatures are starting to get well below zero at night. Bent a bunch of branches moving her (she doesn't fit through a door) and she was a new strain, so I took a few testers along the way, to see how she was at various levels of ripeness. So, all together, I've already taken, let's see... 51g off of her (with some more getting a quick-dry in the dehydrator as we speak).

Harvested exactly 100 days from when the seed was planted, 97.5 days from breaking the surface. 116oz wet ---> 12.875oz dry Easy to trim.