Fastbuds Afghan Kush Auto

Looking good! Small and fragile, I had to raise the humidity in there slightly for a few days for them. I understand that having different plants at different stages in the same tent, I am going to have to make some compromises to get an average between them so they are all ok. I therefore raised the humidity a little to harden them off. Will power it daily over a week or so…

These are slowly coming along, i believe i stunted them by not hardening them off properly after they sprouted inside of the dome. Oh well, its all good. They are starting to get to a slightly bigger stage now and are evn starting to be able to be seen on the security camera, which is usefull!

I know, i'm slacking on this diary! What can I say, i'm pre-occupied and to be honest vegging is really boring! They start to interest me more as soon as they start stretching really! Actualy one of these was a little deformed looking for a bit, I just pinched it off coz It needed topping anyway - oh yeh shit I topped them too! Anyway, I dont know if I have stunded it its a bit too soon to see but I think I was also watering too much I had it set to drip for 60 seconds every 6 hours instead of 24! woops, I was wondering why they were going through twice the amount my autopots were...doh

OK so the afghans are interesting plants. Both of them started going a little weird and scraggley but I realised it was probably because I had the timer set the wrong way round so instead of watering for 60 seconds every 24 hours, somehow I managed to set it to 60s every 6 hours! No wonder they wernt very happy with it because there is way more soil in the medium mix for these plants so they obviously cant take as many waterings as if it were just coco. Now that they are being watered manually because iv actually been here and not away for once. They are definitely improving and also growing quite a bit too. I fimmed one and topped one but they were already a little confused about which direction they are growing so it appears as if I have managed to top them once and get four growth nodes. we will see but thats how it looks atm. Im also massively behind with another diary for 'smoothie' that im growing specifically to press into rosin (fastbuds suggested that when I told them I just got a new rosin machine) Edit: oh shit I totally forgot! I germinated two blackberry seeds as well and mentioned before that I had one in a pot which shrivled and died so I germinated two more (no idea why I did two and not one) and popped the rootriot cube into the medium and it happened again. I removed the offending pot and shrivled plants and had one left over. I didnt have the heart to kill it knowing it was a female so I just shoved it (for the time being!) into the side of one of the afghan plants. We will see what happens. The light will most likely block it from the blackberry but if dunno it will be interesting just to see. I was also looking at SIP bucket inserts. I used to use hempy buckets but I found the medium at the bottom didnt really allow for enough water and air. The autopot system works so well but is super expensive so I thoiught maybe a SIP bucket insert might work. There are a few I have seen but thew main choices are: Elho self watering insert (lots of sizes most importantly they do them the same size and actually bigger than my biggest buckets im using now, Oasesbox - these look cool and would probably be the best choice for a set and forget that you can leave for a longer period but I feel like the plants wouldnt get as big because of the HUUUUUGE water reservoir at the bottom takes up a lot of the root space, OR Mona Plantsava 10L Watering Tank - This also looks cool and has the same general idea. I think the elho and the mona are the two main choices for me - probably one of each! They both look cool and could be modified to both get filled up from my current reservoir via some sort of float valve box OR could be modified to take an airstone at the bottom aswell! I just think they are really cool ideas - probably really overpriced for a hunk of plastic, however, they are cheaper expensive hunks of plastic than the autopots and if they work as well it would be a good investment I think. If I pop on them ill do some sort of review...

These are going really nicely now. The one at the back was a little deformed but its ok now. I defoliated as necisary. As you can see, they have bushed out beautifully. I absolutely love the way the lateral branches at the bottom are the same height as the main tops. I hope they stretch pretty much exactly as they are tbh! Beautiful indica things! I am pretty certain they are right on the verge of starting to flower. I think I can see a few pistols right at the top but yeh, all good!

OK so I just wrote all about these in the smoothie entry, so I cut it in order to paste in here and then f**ked up because I copied and pasted some files in the meantime! Oh well its all good. So these afghans are developing nicely. One has obviously gone into flower before the other and it happens to be the one I LST'd. Not sure if that actually had anything to do with it, it may well have stressed it out enough for it to start throwing pistols. Oh well, they arnt that much different in size. It just seems like the one that is bigger and has less pistols is still stretching more than the other. They are still both in stretch but the one with less pistols, I think, has more stretch left than the one with more pistols. We will see, but thats my educated guess! Also I was looking at another Ecothrive product which looks great for adding organic nutrition to coco or used soil/coco. Whatever really - looks like it would be good to pre-mix with my soil and then it can also be used to top dress so I would probably do weekly top dressings as well. it just makes it waaaay easier if im adding water only to my res. If i am only adding water, I wouldn't even mind if I had to PH it but I dont think I would have to given the microbe buggers and the fact its all organic. Hopefully it would be a lot less faff to mess around with the EC and PH and shit. I dunno, im lazy but im also in withdrawl so its the msart move to make everything as automated as possible. The only slight thing I may find is every time I add a new piece of automated equipment, it needs checking to make sure its working so every time I add a new piece it saves time but also uses time because everynew piece I add takes time to check every week. So set and forget....no not really but would it be easier for when im feeling shit like I am atm. it just makes sense for my life style as I also go out for a few days every now and then. I decided I am going to go take some trichome macro photos of the OG or Blueberry and try out some photo stacking. Nope idea if it will work or not but its worth a try. The software hack i am using called 'Magic Lantern' does allow for automatic photo stacking for macro photos where you set a start focus point and an end focus point and it takes however many photos you want automatically. Thats great but the problem is the fact I dont have an actual macro lens. For anyone who is interested in cameras or photos, particularly macro photos, I am using a canon 5d mii body with either a 50mm canon f1.8 lens using extension lens rings (I can use the built in photo stacking feature with this setup but the magnification isn't even close to my second option. The second option is using an old 35mm-55mm EF-C fitting lens mounted backwards onto a reversal ring. This option is great because it allows much larger magnification, however, it means I cant use the focus stacking built in feature on my camera and also I cant change the aperture, however, it gets much higher magnification than the 50mm. It also doesn't use anywhere near as good quality glass for the lens so it isnt as good quality. It is very annoying that I cant change the aperture though. It means my depth of field is stupidly low and I have around 1-2mm area that is actually in focus. Therefore if I took 10 different photos using a tripod, being very careful not to move it at all, I can use the slither of the photo that is in focus and bang them all together in photoshop so that you can get much more of the subject in focus. I was actually reallym lucky yesterday because I have been meaning to buy a new tripod and I walked downstairs in my building yesterday and someone was throwing one away and had left it in the hallway with a note to take it! Great, I thought! Its actually a really sturdy one as well! pretty psych'd That is the theory - in practice it is much harder, I can assure you!

Going nicely although I’m pretty sure it is one of these in particular that has the bugs. Either gnats or root aphids, I dunno. It’s not something I have dealt with before. This is the reason I have been taking so many macro shots of them, just to check really close up that there are no bugs crawling in the actual buds and there are none on any of the buds I have taken photos of, which is all the ones deep into flower. Once iv harvested the ones that are deep into flower I will re-assess the damage and assess whether I can take the other autos to flower before pulling everything out replacing the media and bleaching everywhere. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass - that will FULLY teach me for being unprepared and buying soil from a garden centre. I do it one time and it totally FUCKED my grow! As I said, serves me right! The good thing is the damage isn’t huuugely severe right now. Iv laid quite a lot of traps which are working but I know it’s not going to fix it. If anyone has any advice please do let me know…

Ok so sorry I have missed a couple weeks - I was busy harvesting and drying and trimming the blueberry and the og Kush. They are both FANTASTIC! They also both make amazing rosin which I have been taking advantage of pretty frequently. It’s like if I drank over concentrated squash. You get used to the concentrated taste and then go back to normally concentrated squash and it seems super weak. That’s essentially how I feel about the terps of rosin compared to flower - not that I don’t smoke or love flower, I do. It’s just one you pop you can’t stop as they say! Aaanyway So I left these ladies for a while - over Xmas etc and tbh they have been PROPERLY abused. I thought I had them hooked up to a dripper but it must have clogged so they weren’t getting fed or watered for a while. I just have been watering daily Since I got home and they have been much better. These guys are some strong genetics. I havnt abused them to the point I thought they would die like the critical orange punch but they have been abused for sure. Since I was feeding daily it probably took them about two or three days to get back to normal and stop eating the nutrients in the bottom leaves then shedding them. That’s all stopped and the buds got huge. One plant may well have the biggest buds I have grown yet! Not the hugest harvest I don’t think. Although the flowers are SUUUPER dense. In fact I had to stake the plants with cut in half bamboo stakes because they couldn’t take their own weight and one of the main colas fell over. I can’t get over how dense they are. Also the smell is incredible. It’s not super over powering so as soon as you open the tent it stinks but when I rub a bud it smells like rotting lemons or something. It’s incredibly citrusy and actually really reminds me of the smell of super lemon haze when it’s been dried and cured. It’s very nice. I really hope it tastes like it smells because I love love love the flavour profile of super lemon haze but i am not a fan of hazes. I don’t really like the sativa leaning hybrids. Definitely more of an indica man so I think if it tastes how it smells and acts like any other indica then we are in business and I could see me growing it again. It will definitely add an amazing citrusy fruitiness to my collection of flavour profiles 😀 Again I believe I have two different phenos as they look totally different. It seems to be the case every time with autos. I don’t mind this though tbh, some people do but it gives me a little variety within the variety. The first plant is super dense as I said and the second plant looks as If it’s been abused a little more than the first. Looks a bit more rugged and rough. Both smell great though so I’ll just press the ugly looking one.

Overall this has been a fantastic grow. These are great genetics and the fast buds seeds ALWAYS pleasantly surprise me. Whether it’s the colours they show, the size buds they grow, the sheer crazy amounts of buds they grow and the intensely amazing smells the terps create. It’s fantastic ALL AROUND!