A Tentful of Tangerine Dream Auto

Technically Veg week 3 begins tomorrow, but today is a great cutoff point. So it's Week 3 (minus one day)...and Day 21. As we move into the more aggressive side of the vegetative stage, it's time to bump up the lights and move these Tangerine Dreams into bigger pots. I could wait a week, but no real point and since autoflowers hit flower on their own right around week 5, I wanted to give these two plenty of time to 'recover' should they need it and get into some LST. Day 21: -Adjusted lighting to be @ ~500uMol at the canopy top. That's a little more aggressive (suggested is 460ish), but not the kind of brightness that's going to cause damage. -Moved seedlings from their 3/4 gallon containers into 5 gallon bags. ...My process is to scoop about 3g worth into a 5g bucket, add a couple tablespoons of Mykos and mix well to distribute. Add in about 1/3 of a gallon of water (6.5pH) and also mix well to distribute. From there I add more water until the soil is uniformly wet/damp without being soaked. It will clump together if you squeeze it but should remain fluffy and granular otherwise. ...Next I fill the bags about 2/3rds of the way up and use an empty 3/4g pot to create the right sized hole to drop in the seedling. ...Seedling gets gently depotted-turned out and after a quick look at the roots, gently moved into the void in the soil in the bag. It should literally have no trauma from moving. The soil is still very loose and damp from Saturday's AM feeding. The soil it's being planted into is also loose and has the same moisture content. ...After that, top off the pots fully, careful not to pack the soil down. The new soil covers a bit (about half an inch) of the stem base as well. On that note, I'll say I LOVE ProMix HP+ right now. It's so light and airy and easy to work with. It's also pretty neutral and inert. As another grower commented to me "it's as close to Hydro while still be soil as you'll ever get." and I'm finding that it allows me to do what I want to the plants for nutrients and watering without worrying about a pre-baked soil/nutrient content. So, I could do a small feeding mid-week 2 of veg and not have the plants freak out. Actually, these seedlings look the best yet of any I've grown. 12/7: Day 23. The Pro-Mix HP in the 5g bags went in reasonably damp and over two days all the moisture was either sucked out by the plants or evaporated. Not surprising since I pre-wet the soil and it wasn't super saturated, just nicely moist. So today was feed day for the two Tangerine Dreams...They took to the ~300-330ppm feeding last week in their 'nearly new sprouted seedling' phase, so this week I went up to about 450PPM. We'll see how it takes. The ProMix really is different from the previous soil. Just getting enough water in it for run-off brought me to about 1.25g per bag, and once there it did take a while to start draining. This watering should last about twice as long as the previous transplant wetting. Also, no signs of any transplant trauma. 12/9: Day 25 Added a single picture. Still happy where things are, and overnight we gained about an inch in stretch. Here in Veg week 3 the plants are starting to really expand and I feel good about what's probably happening in the soil that I can't see...the Mykos a good feed earlier in the week and that light fluffy ProMix seem to be just the thing. The PPFD is sitting right around 470 which theoretically provides dialed in DLI for this stage. Though I always have to fight to not give 'em more light. I've started to adjust tent humidity downward...it had been sitting in the mid 70% range during the day and up to around 80 at night. Dialed back to low 60's. 12/12: Day 28: A couple quick pictures. Plants are now growing aggressively now, adding an inch or more per day (now at 7"). Adding about an inch a day. Watering is looking like once every 3 days, though I waited an extra day this time because I wanted to align the watering schedules of these Tangerine Dreams with the Northern Lights that were started a week later (due to two of the TD seeds not germinating). The Northern lights were watered a day earlier than they probably wanted, though I don't think there will be any trouble. I did also top off the bags with a bit more promix to get as much soil in place for the roots. Watered with pH6.5 well water, etc. I do note that two of the lower leaves (the first node single lobed 'true' leaves) show some burning to their tops. Not terribly surprised since this week's feeding was a strong ~450ppm. I also adjusted the lighting to match proper DLI for the coming week. We're now at about 680PPFD. This should further drive growth. The Tent's RH is being dropped to ~60% from the +70% last week...The bags are evaporating & the plants are expirating enough moisture that the humidifier is unneeded and the fans/controller is modulating the humidity by bringing in the ~40RH air outside the tent.