RQS Critical Indoors

Gonna start my first diary! Here are the 9 criticals, after their first re-pot. They're 2 weeks in from germination. This is their first feed.

Not much going on. One of the 9 got too tall and fell over. So now we have 8.

Another quiet week of veg. No rush. Just getting on with life. Waiting for the right moment to repot again. Prob another week?

No drama.

Finally had time to repot + top this week. I plan to top two more times before flower - 3/4 weeks? A long veg!

I added the cages after topping last week. Keeping my options open - not sure if I'll mainline these plants or set up a scrog... Four of them grew back so vigorously that they've been topped a second time already.

Exciting week. Just as week 8 began, the flowering tent became available. They’ve moved to their new home. In this tent, I feed using Autopots. No more hand watering! I used Grotek for the last grow - great nutes, but maybe not the best for the Autopot system? I had to deal with lots of very dirty, sticky, muddy slime. This time I’m trying the Shogun range of nutes. First impressions are good: the nutes seem a lot cleaner and hopefully they’ll work well with the system. I was hoping to flip to 12/12 after another week. However, I just topped two of the plants and I’ll probably wait at least two more weeks. Training cages have been removed. I’ll be adding the scrog net this week and start training the screen… Now using Lumatek Zeus Pro 600w LEDs. Starting on 50%. They’ll be at 75% by the time we hit 12/12.

Got the EC up to 2.5 and the plants seem to love it. This is higher than suggested in the Samurai feeding chart. But these plants are big, I’ve got a handle on temps and humidity, and the lights are powerful. Next step is to get the lights up to 100% and see how the girls react. I love the Samurai nutrients, they’re really clean and easy to use. Wide necked bottles and everything to make life easier. Three of the plants were big enough for flower already, but I want to give time for the other three to catch up a bit, fill out the canopy some more before flipping.

Got the ec up to 3.0. Short plants remained short and stubby - will be interesting to see how they flower… Big plants are crazy, they got another topping to keep the main colas down. Lights went to 12/12 at the end of the week so next week the flowering madness starts. Oh, and I added a CO2 tablet to the reservoir last time I replenished.

A week of chopping them back and trying to keep the canopy under control. They’re growing like mad. No flowering yet, even though they’ve had 12/12 for a full 7 days. It will come. In fact, The days will shorten to 11/13 in the coming week.

Another week… The flowers have started to appear. Always a relief for me when that hapens! I partly regret waiting another two weeks to let the little ones catch up - they never got big, while the other four got immense. But it seems under control. The highest top is 1m and I’ll be watching for signs of stress from the lights. The rest of the canopy is okay I think. So that’s two weeks of flowering done! The climate here has changed a bit too. I don’t need to add humidity any more. In fact, the dehumidifier is now gently removing some of the excess humidity. But according to my measurements, VPD was in the right range last week. They reckon this strain can finish in seven weeks. Well, still a long way to go before we celebrate!

Week went well. They’re drinking like mad, but then they’re huge. I got my nutrient order mixed up and didn’t have any Shogun left when it was time to replenish a couple of days ago. So I had to switch to Athena. Not really a problem - the nutrient lines are actually very similar. But I did want to finish the whole grow with Shogun just to get a fair impression. Well, I’ll be using Athena for everything going forward. Really like these nutes and the company behind them. I would recommend Shogun too, though. Okay, if all goes well I can harvest in 4 weeks. Hahaha let’s hope all goes well…

We got through week 4! I’ve been nervous all week, since this is the moment when my last two crops failed. But these girls are just powering on through! Not a deficiency in sight. I’ll be defoliating over the next few days to keep opening up paths for the light to get to all the buds. So, week 5 is upon us. Time to lower the nitrogen levels in the feed and boost those pk levels!

They’re maturing! The orange hairs are arriving. I think some leaves are starting to yellow too, which makes sense since they’re receiving less bloom now. We’re entering week 6. I think things should start calming down after this. We’re getting closer!

Week 6 went in a flash! The fade has started. The big one is fading faster than the others - she’s always the early one. Also, she’s the biggest plant so I guess she’s using up the nitrogen stores faster? I lowered the lights a bit a few days ago to 75% of their full power. Now the lights are down to 50%. They’re getting less feed so I don’t want the stress of so much light. Also, it’s a way to start lowering temps. So we’re heading into the final few weeks. Fingers crossed these girls all finish well. They’re looking good right now :)

Apologies for the late post. The photos are actually from last week. An eventful and stressful week! As soon as I dropped the nitrogen levels a few weeks ago, the biggest plant started fading very fast. In the end, I decided to take it out early. I had issues with my Autopots for some reason - on three successive days I found a flooded tent in the morning. I replaced the aquavalve in the one that was flooding and it still flooded. So I removed it from the system totally and another flooded instead! Luckily they were the two “weird phenos” that are smaller. So they both got disconnected. I top up the reservoirs by hand now. The other 3, that completely fill a 120x120 space, are looking beautiful. The buds have just fattened and got frosty over the past few weeks. I had to get out my yo-yo clips to hold up some of the branches. These clips are amazing. I actually need more - I’ve got more big colas than I’d bargained for!

I picked Critical because I wanted a large yield with minimum fuss. I wasn’t disappointed. I was surprised by the two phenos that came out completely different to the other 4 plants. They grew and looked very different to any other strain I’ve grown so far. But they grew fairly well in the end. Took longer and didn’t yield anywhere near as much, but they seemed to want to grow their own way… A real shame that one of the big ones started to die as soon as I reduced the nutes - I’ve been trying the bud from that one, and it’s not bad, but the buds needed an extra 2 weeks or so to fatten up and mature more. The three other big ones came down at the weekend. They had completely filled a 1.2x1.2 space. I needed three tents to store it all for drying. I’ve never had to work so hard before for a harvest. It was a full day’s work. I’ll need help for the trimming! So the two weird phenos are still growing. Honestly, I would’ve liked to wait another week for them all, but I desperately needed the flowering tent. So the harvest isn’t even finished yet… This story will last another month!

And so, 12 days after the big three came down, the other 2 phenos finished up. They grew into a pretty spectacular mainline-esque pattern. In the final weeks I had to hold up some of the the branches with yoyo clips. They were just too heavy by this point. Most of the past 12 days were spent cleaning out the roots and then there were two days of just water at the end. I’m pretty excited about trying the bud. The buds are massive, heavy specimens. I’ve hung them up to dry now, I split both of them in two - and each half looks like a whole plant!