Super Lemon Haze - First Grow!

Started two Super Lemon Haze seeds germinating in wet paper towel covered with a plate on 5.29.18. They were left uncovered and dried out, so I left them another day to rehydrate before planting on 6.2.18. They were planted into plastic cups with drainage holes cut, with about 3 parts Happy Frog to 1 part Perlite, and started under an Aerogrow at about ~30Watts. Tried to swap out to my big grow light, but it generated too much heat, and was hanging at 90+ degrees in the tent, so until I set up some different ventilation, the Aerogrow will do. Finally got around to pHing my tap water, which was about 10, so pH downed it. Need to calibrate my pen and see if it's actually that high. Also got a worm composting system, so hopefully in a few months I can try using that instead of box nutrients.

This week I swapped out the little AeroGrow light to the Mars II 1600W, and because I don't have AC, the temps were creeping up to the high 90s, so I got some duct work to run the exhaust out to the window instead of just dumping into the room. It helped a bit, got down to hovering in the mid 80s, I'm currently on a 24 hour schedule, but with the heat this light pumps out, I'm going to switch to a 18/6 with the "night" set around noon to try and keep the temperature reasonable. I scaled up the feeding from 50% of the scheduled amount, and gave them a full dose, but I started getting what looks like nute burn spots on some leaf tips, so I did a plain water flush. The leaves got a bit droopy/curled down, probably from the overwatering. And then day 14, the serrated leaf tips started to curl up and taco a bit, which I'm assuming is heat stress, so I raised my light about a foot, and aimed my mini fan over the plants to eliminate any hot spots.

Heading out on vacation for a while, so I set up a simple remote watering system. I got a 5 gallon bucket, cut a hole in the lid for a watering tube, got a little water pump, binder clipped the edge of the pot and ran the tube through the binder clip arms. Glued and taped up the end of the tube, drilled a hole for each plant, and put the water pump on a smart switch I could turn on and off from my phone. I've had a little wifi camera aimed at the plants for a little while so I can check on them without actually opening up the tent. So in preparation for vacation I also aimed my temp/humidity meter so the camera could see it, and aimed the camera to include the water run off dish for the plants, in theory so I could see when it was starting to seep. In practice, the home computer running the camera server randomly restarted the first day of vacation, shutting off the camera hosting, and I had to wing it. Considering the small size of the water reservoir compared to the amount of time we would be gone, I decided a smaller watering for 1 minute once or twice a day would at least keep the plants alive, but not waste water that would just evaporate Considering the plants were coming off nute burn, and my nutrients say not to pre mix solutions before using, I didn't put any nutes in the water reservoir, though I did pH it. Now to wait and see!

So this is what I arrived back to after vacation. My camera set up failed day one, so I was watering blind for a week and a half, just hoping they didn't die by the time I got back. In that I was successful. It looks like the plant further from the water bucket (lefty) got less water than the other (righty), so is a bit smaller overall. I looked up the lower yellow leaves as soon as we got back, which is supposed to be nitrogen deficiency, which apparently is common when not using nutes, so that's not surprising. I was only using pH'd water. It does look like the nitrogen deficiency hit the littler plant harder. Lefty had a few bottom leaves totally yellow and shriveled, righty had some yellowing and some shriveling, but not as bad. Righty also had the in tent fan pointed more directly at it, which I think caused the lean in it's trunk away from the fan blast. I had only been doing a trickle watering twice daily, as I couldn't see the plant, and didn't want to soak the dirt through, just to have it evaporate, potentially running out of water before I got back. So the night we got back I resaturated the dirt just with the pH'd water, and the following day did a proper feed, (though technically that will be week 5) I did start to notice some smell from righty when I was pushing her around to scope out the trunk.

So this week was mostly recovering from being slightly nutrient and water starved while I was out of town. They both seemed to perk up after getting back into the groove. As soon as I find my garden twine I'm going to take advantage of righty's tilt and start tying her up for LST. I bought a vermiculture bin (worm composting) before I went out of town, but I didn't want to get the worms and then leave them unattended while I was away. But I did get the bedding all mixed together, and started tossing some kitchen scraps in. Worms should be here in a few days. I got 2000 Red Wigglers, and 100 Euro Nightcrawlers.

So this week is when I started tying the plants down for LST. My supplies in that regard are a roll of twine, and binder clips. I've been tying loose loops around the main trunk, and using the binder clips as portable anchors around the perimeter of the fabric pot. The first time around I was mainly trying to get the main stalk to tip over, so righty actually had an advantage there, as she was already coming in crooked. Later in the week, after the foliage had rearranged itself, they got tied up again. These plants were already pretty densely filled out, so with limiting their height, they're starting to look very shrubby.

Towards the start of the week I started to note a touch of nute burn at the leaf tips again, so I did a few days water, and I'll be continuing plain water alternating with nute water at 50%. I feel like the plants are getting to a good size, but the seed bank listing said the time to flowering is 64-70 days, so still a couple more weeks until I flip the lights. I have noticed that in my efforts to have the plants both as close to the light as possible, I am smooshing them against the foil walls on the front and back, which is pointing the leaves in odd directions to seek light. So I’ve scootched them so they’re both centered under the light with breathing room around. I think I'm going to clip a few clones from the undergrowth to populate a SCROG set up in the next week or two.

Week 8 So we finally got some rain in my area, so our humidity has been a lot higher than usual. I got used to the plants needing a gallon per day. With the higher humidity they’ve only needed about 2/3 gallon. So I flooded my plant dishes once or twice before I got used to that, so I did a thorough clean of all the dirt and twine bits that have accumulated over time, and lysol wiped the tent’s tray. I do have a few crinkled or damaged leaves, so I think that might be a calcium deficiency. I have been pHing to the lower side of the range, so I probably just locked it out. At least the next few gallons I’ll try to shoot for a pH of 7. I’m starting to see the yellowing under leaves again, so nitrogen deficiency. So apparently I have a pretty tight line to walk with these ladies to avoid nute burn, and avoid nitrogen deficiency, so I’m switching to 50% dose of nutes every other watering, and for my plain water for the alternate days, I’m adding just the ‘Grow’ 4-3-3 stuff to maintain the nitrogen levels. I noticed a lot of the lower branches were getting pretty beefy, so I went through and did a more thourough LST. I was able to create some air flow and spread the canopy through the middle, so hopefully some more light can get down into the dense foliage.

Lighting transition, taking clones! I added on the “Grow” switch, I’m going to give it a week to get used to the intensity, then drop down to the 12/12 schedule. I took off two clones from each plant. I have a few spots that look a little curled up and rusty, but I think I just splashed some nute solution on the leaves when watering. I'm going to put a pump and tube together for my watering can so I don't have to try and dump it in around the base. With everything trussed up so well it's getting difficult to miss the leaves. I found why my plants had been stressing. I had bumped the switch on my light timer from scheduled to 100% on, so they haven't been getting any rest. I think you can actually see in the photo progression when I bumped the switch, between day 58 and 60 the plant gets super wilty and starts showing signs of heat stress. So I was seeing signs of nitrogen deficiency, what I thought was calcium deficiency, and some splotches from pH swings. I had been running pH at around 6 give or take towards the low end, and I think my abrupt switch to pH 7 to fix the calcium deficiency lock out then also caused that rusting look. Hopefully the lights being on schedule again will give the plants some time to recover.

This week was pretty standard normal, except still occasionally cleaning out the undergrowth of any leftover wilting leaves. It seems like the plant is reprioritizing any damaged leaves to death. Because all the new growth still looks green and healthy, but anything that had started to wilt from the light schedule is still dying off. Overall they seem to be recovering, and honestly having some of the leaf density cleared out it probably opening up light to some leaf nodes.

Same old, same old. Clearing out some dead undergrowth. I do have a bad habit of getting lazy with my plant tending, (or sick this week) which is where basically any and all issues with my grow have stemmed from. So I think the hydroponic setup I'm trying out with the clones for next grow-round will help with that, keeping the water supply constant. I did remove the LST lines, at this point the branches have the strength (and desire) to stay spread on their own, and I don't want to have to keep fiddling with the plants to check on the lines to make sure they're not cutting in, getting in the way, etc. I have been sticking with watering at 50% of scheduled every other day, alternating with plain pH'd water, but I think they're ready for the full dose. I upped the 'Grow' bottle to full strength, if that goes well I'll adjust up the rest of the nutrients. At week's end, Lefty (SLH 1.0) is 18.5 inches tall, and Righty (SLH 2.0) is 17.5 inches. There are a few leaves I was wondering if anyone had input on, still just pH fluctuation recovery, or something else?

Week 12 Got some new clip fans so I could reclaim the real estate under the light that my floor fan was in. I calibrated my pH pen, I think it was running a bit high (so the ladies were probably a bit low). Hopefully fixing that will stop whatever wierdness is happening with the yellowing leaves. I've been giving the yellowing ones a light tug. If they fall off, I figure they were ready.

I switched over to using different nutrients that I had around to see if that helped with whatever is going on with the plants, and I raised the lights.

Same as last week, looks like the yellowing is slowing. The plants are starting to stretch, and the humidity in my area is up a bit, which the plants really seem to appreciate.

Looks like whatever was wrong with the plants cleared up by switching to different nutes and adding cal mag. I’m thinking it was a magnesium deficiency. The buds are stacking up, I took out a loupe to check the trichomes, I think they’re still all clearish, but the pistils are definitely starting to go amber in clumps. Hope I have enough headroom in the tent!

I've been slacking on the weekly journals, so here's the photos for the final weeks. Everything had stabilized, so there were no real nutrient variations after the switch to General Organics stuff. I did 3 days of molasses only on Days 120-122, then I started the water flush. Harvest was day 135.

Pretty straight forward grow, final weight tally is 10.45 oz flower, 8.5g shake, and the light fluffy buds from lower on the plant that didn't get great light I turned into 32.6g of dry ice bubble hash. I should have weighed the fluff before I ground it up. For the dry ice bubble hash I tried using a coffee grinder with minimal success, so mostly ground it up by hand, which may have limited my hash output due to less surface area for the dry ice to freeze. I did take some clones, and I'm growing the best looking one for my second round. I'm using hydro instead of dirt, and I am trying to SCroG this one.