Critical Banana Smoothie Auto

Not a whole lot to add this week, neither plant is looking fantastic, the bigger one that popped first is already a little discolored near the base of the first set of true leaves and the little one is staying little. She already looks a bit waterlogged. It’s still early though, I expect some good growth soon.

We’re rolling now, at least one is. There’s something going on with the small one, she’s either a dud or a late bloomer. She is developing a super small set of true leaves and she’s even starting to show the second set but she just won’t stretch. The second plant is doing great though! Her first set of true leaves only has 4 points which is a little odd and she’s definitely a lighter shade of green but I’m just gonna chalk that up to genetics for now. She’s actually showing a little bit of tip burn so idk if the FFOF soil is just too hot or what because I haven’t fed her anything but water so far so I’ll just monitor it for now. I’ll start training her in a couple of days!

Well she really hit her stride this week. I hit her with some recharge on Friday and she really seemed to like that. I also tied down the main stem on Saturday and another immediately took over as the main top and she’s bushing out really nice. Just cruising for now. I’m thinking she’ll probably start flowering in the next couple of weeks.

This week didn’t go great but the plant is doing well despite that. So last Thursday I accidentally topped her while tying her down. I was nervous this would really mess her up because I heard this strain is sensitive to stress but it was like nothing happened the next day. She didn’t explode with growth right away like when this happened last round to the purple punch auto but it doesn’t seem to have stunted her. Humidity has been a big issue in my area the last few weeks. Even with a small dehumidifier in the tent it’s getting into the 60’s and even the low 70’s. I also realized that the light timer has been set to 20-4 instead of 18-6. Regardless of this she’s doing great and looks super healthy. Zero signs of flower yet but I imagine she’ll start popping pistils soon. I gave her some recharge and have started adding cal mag with all of her feedings. She’s sharing a tent with a sweet mango auto that’s been treated better but is a bit less healthy, that one is showing some calcium deficiencies and is starting to flower so I gave them a light dose of tiger bloom today. I burnt the absolute fuck out of a plant last grow so I’m going to titer up the feeding slowly and definitely give straight water in between. The trellis is coming in a couple of days so that’ll probably be set up by next week. Hopefully she shows some pistils this week! It’s kind of wild how strong she smells already. Definitely more fuely than fruity but awesome nonetheless. Oh yeah, and the little runt is still doin her thing, not really sure what her deal is but she’s hanging in there, I don’t expect anything from her, she’s just another little science experiment.

The trellis came in this week so she’s all scroged up. I noticed there’s a strange branch that almost looks like it’s two fused branches. It has two sets of leaves and two tops combined into one. I feel like it’s going to make a massive bud. Speaking of which, she’s been popping pistils at most of the nodes and tops. She also stretching and growing taller daily and she’s starting to look a bit spindly and wilty so I gave her a heavy watering tonight to hopefully keep up with the growth. Hoping tomorrow she perks up a bit. Thinking this will be the last week of veg. A weird thing of note is that I swear to god, the stem rub on this girl smells like Italian sausage. It’s the weirdest shit I’ve ever experienced. Can’t wait to see what the flowers smell like.

Cool week, did some reading about that stem that looks like multiple fused stems and it’s actually something called fasciation which is pretty rare. It causes some really gnarly buds that are a pain to trim but aren’t harmful and usually pack a lot of mass so I’m keeping it. She’s stretching a lot so she’s looked a bit lanky and droopy but I think that’ll resolve itself one the early flower stretch is done. This is a pretty strange plant and the first I’ve grown from a small breeder but she seems pretty vigorous — lots of top sites and no apparent deficiencies or excess at this point. She’s definitely more vigorous than the sweet mango auto that she’s sharing the tent with. I’ve done a bit of defoliation each time I go into the tent but I think I’ll need to do a more thorough one soon so she can really thrive and get some long, dense colas. Still super stoked on this plant and can’t wait for her to start filling out with flowers!

This girl is doing great, no signs of spots on the leaves yet which has been an issue in a lot of my grows. She has thrown some really narrow leaves so the light and temperature might still need some tweaking before the next round. The sweet mango plant that she’s sharing a tent with started showing some signs of nutrient imbalance on the leaves so I think I caught this one before she depleted the medium. She has a ton of tops, I’m hoping she really bulks up. I think she’s about done stretching and can focus on bud development. That fasciated bud is looking pretty gnarly — just pistils popping out all over the place, I really can’t wait to see how that one turns out. I defoliated a bit to hopefully allow for some of those lower sites to really develop.

Decent week for this girl, she really just seems to roll with the punches. She’s sharing a tent with a GHS sweet mango plant that is really struggling with a calcium deficiency but this one is doing fine. The leaves have been getting a bit lighter so I started feeding her a bit heavier. I expect the buds will start bulking up some this week. She’s definitely a slower developing auto but I think that might be partially why this one is in such better shape than the sweet mango plant.

Another week down, this is definitely a slower auto but she’s getting there! She’s not a very heavy feeder so she has a bit of tip burn but nothing too serious. I accidentally watered with nutrients and forgot to pH yesterday and it was super acidic but she seems to be doing alright today. Hoping to see the flowers bulk up some in the next week.

Another pretty good week for this one, still a bit of nutrient burn, she’s definitely not a heavy feeder. I let the runoff ec get down to ~.5 mS/cm before feeding again and the burn still progressed. I really think she only needs nutrients once every 3-4 watering, maybe even less. I’ve also dialed the lights back a bit since I’ve had them on full blast @ 18-6 and I’m starting to see some cupping leaves. This one really has the weirdest smell, I swear to god it smells just like lasagna or ravioli or something. Super strange. I’m stoked though, she’s bulking up and despite the bit of nutrient burn this is the healthiest plant I’ve ever had this late in flower. Thinking she still has a few weeks left, she’s definitely a slower developing auto but I’ll trade speed for a healthier plant any day.

This girl is still doing great. I harvested the sweet mango plant she was sharing a tent with on Monday so I’m letting this one really stretch out and take up the whole tent. This one still has some nutrient burnt tips but it hasn’t progressed too bad. I’ve been watering 3-4 times between feeding. This past week was a bit strange, I checked the runoff the watering two days and the ec was ~1.6, the next watering it was ~1.2, the next watering it was ~.9 but then increased as more ran off, getting up to ~3.2. I thought maybe I walked off and the salts on the pot might’ve dissolved into the runoff water, but the next time it was still about the same. I think she probably still has a couple weeks left. She’s starting to fade some but I’m hoping the buds plump up a bit. They’re long and look pretty full but don’t seem to have a ton of mass to them. We’ll see how she finishes out though, she still has some time to pack on mass. The buds also don’t smell all that great, they’re a bit funky, but not in the pleasant fruity way. For a while there it was smelling like pasta or something but now it’s getting a kinda cheesy funk. It’ll be interesting. I’ll reserve judgement until I smoke it.

Getting close to the finish line with this girl. I’ve started dialing back the nutrients in response to the nutrient burn and the fact that she’s almost done. I think I only fed her once this week and that was a pretty scaled back dose. She gets thirsty about every other day still and she’s fading. The pictures really don’t do it justice, it’s prettier than it looks in the warm tint from the LEDs. The leaves are fading to yellow with pink edges on the sugar leaves and some of the buds. Im guessing by this time next week she’ll be chopped and hanging, if so the next update will come the following week once it’s dried.

Struggled a bit to get the feeding right here, overfed early and got some tip burn and got some yellowing sporadically but anytime I tried to feed it seemed to progress the tip burn. All around though it was one of the healthiest plants I’ve ever grown. It yielded pretty well and I probably could’ve easily gotten another 10 grams of decent flower if I really wanted to trim some of the mid and lower buds but I have more flower than I can smoke so I just put anything that wasn’t a nice top in bags for the freezer. There was another ~80 g of trim and larf and small buds. Unfortunately I overshot the dry by a day or so so the humidity in the jars are in the low 50’s. I tried drying in a small tent hoping that I could control the humidity better but I think the fluctuations from trying to keep the small climate in the target humidity did more harm than good. Lesson learned for next time. It definitely doesn’t have the hay smell this time though. The odors are really interesting, all throughout the grow it smelled like Italian food or lasagna or something, but that’s gone now that it’s dried. I get zero fruit, banana, or citrus, it’s all pepper and spice which I actually really like, it’s just not what I was expecting. Not a ton of bag appeal, at least not what I’m looking for. The flowers have tons of orange hairs and greasy long narrow bud structure. Not sure how much it’s going to benefit from the cure being over dried but we’ll see. All in all I’m not sure it’s really what I was looking for but it was a joy to grow, it produced a good yield and I’d recommend tastebudz and would definitely grow their genetics in the future.