White Widow 1st Go

—

—

Thought there were some problems in the last few days. I know the first few leaves turn yellow and fall off, but it looked like the yellow was spreading to the newer 3 leaf set. There were also very slight browning of the first set of leaves on the tips. I’ve been watering every 3 days or so, when the top seems dry. It didn’t seem overwatered but there was some green algae starting to grow on the tops of the soil of all 3 small pots. I scraped it all off and it hasn’t come back. I also pulled the lights up a few inches and turned up the fan because it was hot in the house and the temp has been high 70s/low 80s. The leaves were also starting to taco a bit so I was thinking they were too close to the lights and it was too hot. They seemed to have bounced back since but I’ll closely monitor.

This was a tough week, as the ladies were all struggling with some yellowing of leaves and slight browning at the tips. Since it wasn't overwatering, my guess was nute burn from the potting soil or my water PH. So I decided to put the runt outside, finish my indoor setup (small 3x3x4 room), and get ready for repotting the indoor two.

Another tough week and signs of stunted growth in my two indoor plants. On the other hand, the growth of the outside plant was inspiring and hopefully the indoors ones will take to the new soil just like the outdoor one. It will be interesting to se the indoors vs. outdoor as this moves towards harvest.

Interesting week here on the ranch. After a heat wave, the outdoor plant is 5x the size of the ladies inside. Indoors have responded well to the new pots and soil, but growth has been slow. I ordered a 600W LED light made for a 3x3 enclosure that was rated pretty well by Amazon and some "Best of" reviews. Since the beginning this was going to be a DIY room on the cheap, and for the most part it has. Now I'm seeing that this will pay itself off faster if I can yield a better end product. I am starting my 2nd round of seeds this week, and I am changing a few things. #1 - I'm starting the seeds in the final pot. #2 - upgrading the lights from 4, 45 Watt CFLs to the new LEDs. Next grow will also be 100% in the grow room, rather than the open bedroom on a tray with veggies and only 1 CFL for the first few weeks. Look for NY Diesel and Kush coming up!

I decided to ditch the CFLs because I've got a new grow coming - Auto Kush and NY Diesel and I wanted them under LEDs for their whole cycle. I realized I'd need a silly amount of CFLs to grow a bigger plant/yield and knew I wanted to upgrade to LEDs eventually, so I figured I'd get my ROI quicker. The plants responded well and were growing and fattening up within 6 hours. My main concern is light burn, with the 5 gallon buckets I don't have much headroom. So with my next grow I'm using fabric pots (5 gal) but folding them down to shave some height, so they are probably more like 3 gal instead of 5. Meanwhile the "runt" that was put outside as an experiment is thriving. It's 5-7 inches tall and very wide, growing like crazy in her 4x4x1 foot raised bed in the hoop house. Even with heat 90+ in the last week and a couple windy storms, it is really showing the potential of these plants.

These last few weeks flew by! Outside the experiment still continues and she's doing great. She did go hermie and grow a few nanners, but I got some tweezers and plucked them off. Inside is still stunted and showing some signs of nute burn or PH imbalance. I did a flush and tested PH, N-P-K and everything was good except for high N. Other than my supersoil, I'm trying not to add more nutes so I was a little surprised. My Soil is heady organic compost, peat moss, vermiculite, organic tomato fertilizer, Azomite, Lime, Kelp... So I'll add some wood shavings to my soil down the road if it still keeps testing high. My new grow is starting well with NYD popping up and growing like a champ. Meanwhile I can't seem to germinate my 2nd plant to save my life. I've had 2 Auto Kush from Seedsman pop open, but then die. Now I'm trying a Auto Blue Cheese from Barney's and it opened but seems to be stalled now as well.

Another HOT week and our outdoor experiment is still going really well. Inside it's a different story with the microbuds. They are clearly suffering from a multitude of things, but the proof of my little room setup will be the NYD I just started and that plant is doing really well!

Our experiment outside has become the star! It's done growing tall and just filling in nicely despite the heat this summer. As for the indoor microbuds, they just kept looking worse after the flush and their leaves developed a scaly rotting kind of thing, in addition to some gnats as well. Since my NYD Auto from Barney is doing so well, I didn't want any of that to contaminate the healthy one. So I decided to chop early, but our outdoor plant remains strong. The wet weight combined of the microbuds was half an ounce, and it smells amazing!

After drying for about 1 week, the indoor micro buds weigh in at 4.8 grams and smell good in the jar - a little earthy and peppery at this point. The outdoor plant has been bulking up and looking good, but I noticed the beginning of some bud-rot. I decided to cut my losses and harvest the plant because I didn't want that shit to spread. I did a wet trim because there were lots of bugs and unhealthy looking leaves, but the total wet weight was 4.5 oz of nice white sparkling buds. If I get an ounce of dry weight, I'll be very happy. I'll update when they fully dry/cure, but overall I'm very happy with how this one turned out and learned a lot of lessons. The latest revelation was about pest control - I need to have an active pest management process, not wait for a problem. I ordered some Mountain Organics Botanical Tinctures that I'll be trying out, so I'll update more in my NYD diary about that.