A Tentful of Tangerine Dream Auto

Sorry for skipping a week, folks. Thanksgiving week was full of other activities and houseguests, so mostly ignored things. Hope y'all had a good week or good holiday, depending on where you are. Today is 12/2, making it week 3 and 19th day altogether. Updates: 2 of the 4 Tangerine Dream seeds didn't germinate. They got over two weeks to try then I pulled them. At 7 days w/o germination I ended up seeding two more Northern Lights autos, which have since done their thing. In the meantime I can say that I really like the .75 gallon pots and I like the Pro-Mix HP+. The pots are big enough that once you've watered, you can really walk away for nearly the week at this point. I did give a brief water last week; (not to run-off, but enough to keep the soil moist both around the seed and around the pot edge). Then this Wednesday I fed/watered to run-off. Still using GH Trio, and used the 'first week' schedule but tamed down just a hint (1.6ml instead of 1.8) across the board. No signs of any burn about 30 hours in, so that's good and I think that the HP is way less hot than the previously used Black Gold organic soil. The HP is also fluffy and hasn't compacted at all, so that's really nice too. Looking forward to lots of good root growth. I feel good about their size here at day 19 as well as their color. From the side I can count 3 nodes on each plant. I have fussed a bit with lighting. Early on in the first week I started at 100umol and moved it up past about 300umol across about 8 days...That was to take care of some initial stretching that was a bit too much. I had them up past 400umol for a bit and now I've tamed that down a little. Next week I'll start bumping it up again. The heat/humidity is set to ride between 75f-82f and that seems on course and the humidifier is set at a solid 65% for right now. Both small circulation fans are running, but the exhaust is only kicking on if we get up above 83f. 12/4: DAY 20 : Tangerine Dreams are coming along happily. The light feed I gave 'em back a few days ago seems to have been just the thing...No burn at all and the leaves are nice and dark without being too dark. They're also expanding nicely. 4.5" tall, but now working past their 3rd nodes. The stems are beefing up a bit and soon I'll both move 'em to bigger pots but also do a bit of LST to them. The watering today was to run-off and was just 6.5pH water with some root stimulant.

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.

12/14: Day 30. After being watered and the soil topped on 12/12 (day 28) we're just hanging and watching. The plants are growing around half an inch to an inch a day. They measured in at 7" yesterday and have put on more height. One of the two TD's shows leaf surface burning on a couple of the bottom leaves from last week's feed. Not bad, but a few leaves on one. This week, I do plan on bumping up the feed, but probably only to around 550ppm or so. I've reduced the humidity down to the 58-60% range and the PPFD for the lights is up in the 600 range. 12/15: Day 31 The S T R E T C H is upon us! RUUUN AWAAAY! Overnight we gained just over 3 inches. Ended up raising the light because there was a little tip burn on the ends of the new growth...Lights are now right around 24" 12/17: Day 33. Feed day, following the GHE Trio schedule numbers for 'light'. Coming in at 615ppm, which seems reasonable. Had some lowers get brown spotting this past week, pretty sure it was an over-feed and possibly too low pH. I calibrated my pH meter today and found it was off, and showing higher than it should have been, so the last cycle was probably down in the 5.7 range. Fixed that for today and gave everyone a gallon and a half of water (which is to a reasonable amount of runoff). Plants are still growing fairly aggressively, and at a rate of an inch or more a day. Up to 12" and we haven't gotten to that early flower stretch yet. 12/18: Day 34 Lookin' good after yesterday's feed. Time for some training and manipulation after yesterday's feed. No signs of it being too hot for these plants...they're just as happy as ever. TD#2 got folded over horizontally with supercropping at the main stem as well as a handful of the smaller lowers. Those have been trained out at slightly different angles so they get good light coverage. 12/19: Day 35: Checked in...the plants are happy and sprang right up after their supercrop and tie-down. They really don't seem to care much. Adjusted the lighting to hit week 5's desired DLI/PPFD...Now sitting right around ~700-730.

Week 5, Day 36. These two continue to grow. The TD#1 with it's main cola untouched is now about 16.5" tall. Any branches have been LST out to create more room. Both plants show that they're in 'pre-flower' with the first of the pistils showing. Next week will be officially 'flowering'. Both TD's didn't mind the 615ppm feed a few days ago, which is nice, given my last batch couldn't hit 615 without some serious burn. TD#2 was super-cropped two days ago, and all the branches and main stem are doing fine. Over the past 48 hours they've extended and turned to face the light. Will continue to keep them stretched and low. 12/21: Day 38. Spent a little time adjusting the ties and keeping the ancillary branches out and wide. did some leaf tucking. Tangerine Dream #1 continues to grow. It's gained an inch or two a day to the main stalk but the smaller nodes have been slow. I have tied them down to train them out so we get a number of nice colas. Tangerine Dream #1 was super cropped and totally took it in stride. No problems and the budsites are doing well. You can see that it's low but full and keeps adding more. I did raise #2 so that it would get a bit stronger light, given it's about 10" shorter than the tall one. 1222: Day 39: I'd waited as long as I thought wise to water these two...I've been trying to align with the Northern Lights which were a few days off in schedule...so these went long and the NL are going a day shorter. As you can see from TD#2, it wasn't happy about waiting and has some droop, that plus the aggressive supercrop means that it's still drooping now (Day 40, 12/23) about 12 hours after watering. The 5g bags took more water than I'd thought they would with 2.5 gallons going in to get the kind of runoff I like to see. I think the #2 grumper will perk up a bit in the next few days though.

Welp, blew past the first part of the week due to Christmas family festivities...Fed back on the 23rd and really haven't had much to do until last night (12/28, Day 45). Still have some lower fan yellowing on the tallest plant and can't decide if it's just the last vestiges of the water/dry pattern I'd been using or if it needs a bit more nitrogen, even though we're in early flower. I'll bump up the feed pattern this week since the plants aren't terribly dark and obviously nowhere near nitrogen toxicity. I may add a few mg of Micro to the watering that will happen tomorrow morning. Earlier in the week I shifted their light schedule so that lights-out is 11am to 5pm...the temps in lights out had been running down to about 61f, which is a bit too low. Day 44: adjusted the lighting to make sure we're hitting at about 45DLI for both plants. The pics here look a bit droopy (for the supercropped low rider) but actually looks pretty healthy. I think the droop is that the tops have really grown pretty aggressively and that it'll look a bit more perky as it stretches. Also, the photos are taken about 45 minutes before lights out and that's their regular droop time.

Second solid week of flower here...1/3/22 (Day 50). Back on day 46 I watered, but added 2ml of Flora Micro since some of the lowers were looking a little yellow. That seemed to fix things up while I was gone for the weekend. Today (Day 50) was a day to feed and further fuss with the setup. The aggressively super-cropped TD still looks sad, but overall appears healthy. Just going to keep letting it do its thing. The bigger one has pretty much stopped stretching and is starting to grow its lower colas more fully. Humidity was adjusted to 55% and the VPD is reading a solid average 1.2. Lights were dimmed slightly now that Photone is suggesting we drop it to low 30's for DLI and we're sitting at about 33DLI. Feed was more aggressive...I'd been following the GH Trio's light schedule but with the hard water micro, I felt I was leaving some potential on the table so I bumped up to the medium intensity and further adjusted upwards (while keeping ratios constant) and ended up with 740ppm. 01/05/22; Day 52: Tent time... First time I've been in the tent and had all the plants with 'praying leaves'...tells me that my VPD is dialed in and also that the plants are happy. Removed a handful of fan leaves on the taller of the two. Not so much a de-foliation but just to give some of the stem/cola locations more direct light. The bigger thing was that the supercropped TD was looking spry enough that I could do some serious LST tie-downs to spread it out. I think it looks good and now has a wider footprint to work with. Having the SC'ed main stem pretty low means that many of the 'lowers have a chance to become full colas. NOTE: IT TOOK 18 DAYS (2.5 weeks) FROM SUPERCROP TO RECOVERY. Pics up of the newly spread plant as well as a couple decent shots of the main stem supercrop, though I did also do it to a handful of the other laterals. 01/07/2022: Day 54: Watered...each plant got ~6L each to get about 1l of runoff for each. Really happy with where things stand. Leaves look good and healthy no yellowing or spotting. Re-adjusted the LST ties and everything is spread out and starting to turn to the light. The TD#2; the supercropped one, is fine though it looks droopy in the photos. Similar to my last round with Tangerine dream, if you make 'em unhappy early on, they just stay pouty with their leaves.

Week 8: 3rd week of flower. 01/11/2022: Day 58. Simple feeding, using the GH Trio 'medium' chart. Snipped a few of the lowers that had started to go (on #2, the HST'ed one) , and just checked the overall LST situation. Not much work here, really. I'm really happy where these are. You can see #1 has a super tall primary and a bunch of shorter colas...they're starting to fill out and show some mass. At this point, they're pretty done growing up and are beefing up. Trichome development is now visible and active. 01/14/2022 Day 61: Added a bunch of pics, for no good reason besides that the plants have started to beef up their buds and are starting to really show that they'll be flowering the length of the colas pretty nicely. Trichomes are now visible to the eye and starting to cover leaves and calyx. 1/15/2022 Day 62: Watering day. Did add a little bit of Trio Gro & Bloom (2ml/g each) to the water. Each 5g bag got 2 gallons, and each bag had 1.5L of runoff, making just about exactly 20%. Did trim any leaves that were blocking bud sites and/or that have been damaged.

Week 9. 01/19/2021 Day 66: Fed with mid-strength/mid-flower GH Trio formula, Added a little Cal/Mag to the mix, mostly because some of the other tent occupants (the NL's) were showing some deficiency. While I'm using hard well water, the calcium carbonate isn't necessarily in the form the plants can use. Pushes my TDS PPM up to 745ish. This next watering I'll go a little heavier on it and see what happens. I don't think it's a lock-out because I've been careful to water to 20% runoff. Each plant got 2g with a 1.5 liter waste.

Week 10, Day 70... -Watered and measured runoff at 1.5, 2 and 3 gallons. Usually water at 2g, but wanted to rule out any kind of lock out for the few leaves that were spotting a bit. Overall the plants looked pretty good when I took 'em out of the tent, and I think any issues might just be from the transition to flower and maybe me not jumping on transitioning the feed. Runoff ended up being 850ppm at first check and down to about 500ppm by 3g. -I did buy a ZeroWater filter and will run our system softened well water through it though, that will remove both sodium and any hardness. 01/27/2022: Day 74: -Feeding day. First time through with the ZeroWater. Haven't decided if I'll use it 100% or if I'll cut our well water with a 50/50 mix in the long run. Either way, this time it was 100% filtered and reads at 1ppm (.002EC). With all dissolved solids removed, the pH drops to 5.2, so plenty of pH UP needed. Each bag got its usual 2g of fluid. Cut back a bit of the nutrients but the ppm was still up around 730 since I did drop 3ml of Ca/Mg into each gallon. I'll cut that back next round I think. -Overall, I'm pretty happy with the plants. Yes the Tangerine Dream #2 looks funky and sad, but it's doing not bad. not really losing any leaves and still progressing. I assume that given my experience last grow with the same-ish pheno/seeds the genetics are a little funky and the stress of supercropping just twisted her up a bit and will remain so. The TD#2 has burned tips but otherwise is a powah-haus...it continues to gain mass and develop and doesn't show any kind of deficiency issues.

Week 11! 01/31/2022: Watering day! Over all, these two have been going great. The HUGE cola on the taller plant keeps just getting beefier and beefier, the smaller one has remained somewhat sad and I've been doing my best to prop it up, I've adjusted my Ca/Mg and am using filtered water with C/M added now rather than the calcium carbonate in the well water..though I know that Ca/Mg issues are not quick to resolve; I got some Real Growers Recharge and hit all the plants with 1tsp per gallon of filtered water that had been PH'ed up to 4mg per gallon. For the rest of the grow I'll keep Recharging every water. Ran into an issue where my cheap 'yellow' pH meter gave up. I do what I always do, which is calibrate with fluid and it wouldn't 'grab' my middle range (6.86) fluid and kept locking it to 9.0. I could get the calibration to 4.0 to work though and used that, though I know things may have been funky. I think the Recharge should buffer the pH with it's bacteria/fungus so I'm not too worried. 2/3: Note that Recharge seems to be somewhat magic. It's not only got mycos, but also fulvic/humic acid, kelp, molasses and other beneficials. I used it for the 'tent plants' but also fed our houseplants with it, especially a few sadder ones. The 48 hour results on houseplants was VERY noticeable in a positive way. On the Northern Lights it also gave the plants a definite look of better health. The paleness is fading and they just look happier. Will continue with them. I also received my new Bluelab pH meter...looking forward to using an industry standard-ish pH meter though the cheap yellow did well for a grow and a half. 2/4/2022: Feeding day. All plants got 2g to run off with slightly lighter nutrients, right around 550ppm. The Recharge works and the plants overall look healthy. There's definitely a few less leaves per feed/water for me to remove or that have become spotty. Lights have been adjusted to about 650PPFD for 15 hours to get maximized DLI but with less energy usage. In general, just moving along. Probably about half way through flower at this point. Tangerine Dream #2 (the supercropped one) still looks a mess but is doing just fine. There's a lot of biomass on that little one.

Week 11 2/8/2022: Day86: Watering Day Back to using well water, as the ZeroFilter was well killed in less than 20g of filtering. Used Recharge again, no other big changes or new info. Didn't take pictures due to time-crunch. 2/10/2022: Day 88: Just some updated pictures. One of the two NL's is still ugly. Not the prettiest, but not awful. Only a handful of weeks left though, we'll just run with what we have. The other one is fine, minus what I thing was a cal/mag issue weeks back.

Week 13: 02/16/2022; Day 94. Overall plants doing OK... TD#1 showed some fans getting chlorosis and it's probably mostly due to being close to finish, but I'll be fussing with nutrient changes this week as I transition over to using Maxibloom. I've also started to add a 0/10/10 Fish emulsion to the mix, so that hopefully will continue to prop them up a bit. This watering (today), beyond recharge they got some of the 0/10/10 as well as half a gram of epsom salts.

Week 14: Day 102 (2/24/2022)...I missed posting earlier in the week, but things are really just about the same. The theme of the week is 'fade'. Starting at the end of last week the larger TD#1 showed the first signs of fading, and though they're getting a full compliment of feeding you can tell it's the end of the road. The first of the pistils have browned and mostly receded and the 'second push' of pistils started last week. Generally the rule of 2 weeks or so after that last push for harvest seems about right. Although it's really a weird time to do it, I moved over to GH 'maxi' series as well. Just got tired of having to measure and mix the 3-part series along with all the other stuff in the mix (pH adjusting, adding Mg, etc.). Note that I won't be 'flushing'...No actual scientific proof that it does anything, and I'll keep caring for the plants until the end. I'll run through the next week then I'll chop/defoliate and hang until hopefully low 60% range then cure. Interested to see where this ends up. First round of 4 plants was about 8oz total, this looks to be more. Would be happy with 12oz or whatever since it's not really about volume for me. The fan/filter/tent is having a hard time controlling smell, and its probably a good time to go another round soon. Next round of seeds is incoming. This batch is all photo/fem and leans heavily on modern versions of classic sativas that are probably as close to landrace stuff as you can get. I'm going to start with some Durban Poison, but have about 8 different strains on the way including things like Lamb's Bread, etc. Also some classics like Super Lemon Haze and Blue Dream to mix it up.

Really just the start of harvest. Plants have been trimmed of their fans and are now cut and hanging whole. I don't do a 'flush' or any of that, so they were fed on schedule earlier that week then left in the dark for 48 hours before chopping. At 65F and 60% RH, they'll hang for the week and slowly dry down. I'll trim them out this weekend and they'll go in jars after that for a good slow cure. Will post weight once I've got them dried down (but before cure). DRY WEIGHT (after Trim/Jar): 8.15oz and 3oz trim/popcorn