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As I finish my current grow (Day 60 from seed) of my first 4 autoflowers, I have decided to try and adapt my grow to a perpetual cycle.
Currently running 2 FastBuds Girl Scout Cookies and 2 Oasis Berry Blue, one of which is ~10 days behind the other 3 plants as a seed failed to grow and was replanted.
I definitely went too far with LST'ing these plants (my first in a long time), and two of them flowered prematurely after I bent their stems over too far and more then likely pulled the roots from one side of the seedlings. The BerryBlue that is behind the others was not lst'd as aggressively (learnt my lesson), and is the largest best plant at this point. Going forwards I am grommeting the grow bags to provide better tie down points and will be focusing on tying down the branches over bending the main stem horizontal. The GSC looks amazing, but I believe would have gotten bigger if I hadn't overdone it, I'm guessing yield will suffer but quality won't.
Today I planted a single Purple Punch from FastBuds.
This grow is more about quality and seeing what I can grow in organic soil, rather then about quantity. I have run hydro grows that produced well but require a lot of finicky maintenance. I chose this grow over an external reservoir DWC 4 plant system as a low stress highly interesting option. So far I have been monitoring the soil PH but don't need to, and I water without runoff aiming to keep the soil just barely moist before the next watering for the bacteria; colonies to thrive. I notice with these grow bags vs plastic pots, the soil dries from the outside in rather then top down. I will be applying a layer of mulch to keep in the humidity now that I know I can control the temps and humidity well enough to hopefully avoid insects. I have a large watering can that I fill and let sit between watering's to dechlorinate, and my water ph is ~6.5 from the tap.
I am currently running 1000w in a 4*4*7 tent. I have an old glass cool tube which I have modified to take two bulbs, one in each end. Running a 400w MH Hortilux Daylight Blue and a 600w EyeHortilux Super HPS. Planning to leave them both on for the whole cycle, 20/4.
Cooling wise I am running a 400 cfm vortex fan which dumps straight outside. I have a passive cold air intake that is hooked to a window to take advantage of canada's winter air temps, in the summer this will use air conditioned air from the house, Currently temps set to 27C and the fan only runs for a minute every ten-fifteen minutes, and its less and less as winter gets colder. I have a small 150cfm fan that I could use as an active cooling but so far haven't needed to. InkBird controllers for the humidity and temp. Two oscillating fans move the air arround.
With the new grow every two weeks I will plant an auto seed aiming for a 3 month cycle of 6 plants.
I like autos (fanboy) but was having to admit that simply swapping to 12/12 in an indoor tent at 30 days with photo period genetics would be a more reliable grow.
Perpetual grow leverages the abilities of the autoflowers to coexist at different maturity states under 20/4 light.
It will provide me with 6 plants at different stages of growth to look at (i find myself staring at these far more then I thought I would, they are just so interesting). I am betting that with the organic soil and only 90 days, these autos will mostly remain small and wont cause problems of shading, but I can always use stands to adjust them to similar canopy heights. I will be using LST to grommet tie downs that I am putting arround the growbag edges to shape the plants low and bushy inside their bag's footprint.
I will build a small drying box that can hold a single plant at a time, rather then delaying new grows due to the tent being needed for drying.
Humidity will be uniform for the entire grow, but I will use humidity domes on the seedlings and keep the RH at 50% to avoid mold issues during flowering. The VPD will not be perfect, but won't catastrophically affect the grow.
Purple Punch Popped.
Looking forwards to this one growing up. It will be my first purple weed if i get lucky on the pheno expression.
Included are some pictures of my other 4 plants with better lighting.
Jan 8:
Looking forwards to this Purple Punch seedling continuing its grow.
I'll be looking daily for amber trichomes on my GSC plants and I believe they will be ready before 80 days from seed, so the advertised 10 weeks is probably pretty accurate. I have seen a couple on one plant, but they are almost 100% milky at this point.
Jan 10:
PP looks great. No amber on my GSC yet. BB the younger starting to look really nice and full with normal bud structure so far.
I uploaded my cannabis autoflower schedule as a picture; I have all the seeds to take me deep into next year with this 6 plant schedule. Looking forwards to it :)
Still need to plan my outdoor grows this year. Currently nailing down acquaintances who will want plants in their yards.
Jan 12:
PP looks great. Ambers on GSC 1 at about 5-10%, ambers on GSC 2 more like 2-5%. the BerryBlue plants both look like they will need at least the rest of January to finish, just starting to see pistils turn orange on the younger BB.
I built an initial dry box that will maintain 50-60% humidity using a humidity controller. Not sure what I'm going to do regarding odor control, for this first run it looks like it will just vent to my laundry room. There will be a large gap between first harvest and the perpetual harvest every two weeks, so improvements will be made once I understand better what characteristics the box needs beyond the environmental control and ease of use.
Jan 13: PP still looks amazing. Final seeds arrived today, FB Purple Lemonade and Blackberry, as well as a freebie 00 Seeds Chocolate Skunk XXL. I'm revising my schedule to start with the Purple Lemonade this Saturday as the second in the perpetual cycle. I am SUPER excited from what I've seen in the FB PL on various grow journals here.
I added a small amount of Bloom nutes top dressed for the BerryBlue that is only ~60 days old, as it looked like it was showing some nute issues. It's definitely the biggest hungriest plant. If it gets worse I'll try and pin down the particular problem but I suspect it's just a little hungry.
I also received my 400W MH Hortilux Blue light to replace my previous generic 400wMH bulb.
Jan 14: PP looks great.
Purple Lemonade seed just went in the ground. Very excited for that one.
GSC's are still not as amber as I'd like, so they may outlast the weekend.
BB's still need lots more time. I'd guess they will take at least 90 days from seed. I hope I can harvest them at the end of the month but if not they have a place to finish.
How do people do time lapse with hid lighting? Do I need to set timers to turn off hid, turn on fluorescent and then take the picture? Is there a filter I could buy that eliminates the horizontal scanning lines?
Jan 17
Cut down the 2 GSC's the evening of day 75. They were showing sufficient amber.
I built a prototype slow-drying chamber our of some computer fans, storage bins and travel humidifiers. It's working well at regulating the humidity in the box, i can set it at 80% and it hits that easily. I started at 80& for the first day, then 60 the next day and now I have it at 55% where it will stay for a couple weeks.
The main idea is a two chambered design which disperses the moisture really well, with the sensor mounted in the top chamber with the weed controlling the humidity production in the bottom chamber. My RH in my house is in the 20's in the winter, so some sort of sealed chamber and humidifiers are mandatory. I am loathe to blast humidity onto a bud and see it rot, so proper moisture diffusion into the air is very important. Moving the air without blowing directly on a plant is also important, so the lower fan blows into the chamber, mixing the moisture and passively forcing it up through the holes in the lid. The two boxes are not perfectly sealed so some humidity escapes and some drier air gets into the top chamber. The exhaust fan on the top of the top chamber is on the dehumidify circuit of this inkbird controller, and also adds some airflow as the weed loses moisture.
If it seems to work well I will build a more robust and finished version with whatever improvements I discover it needs in prototyping (odor control, locators for the bin to bin connection, fit on a shelf somewhere, etc). I will need this box to function essentially 24/7, cutting down a plant every two weeks.
I am a tiny bit worried there is not enough actual airflow arround the buds, so I will be watching for rot like a hawk. I can always add more fans but in a small chamber its hard to not have them aimed at a plant. This is the first time I have tried this small scale drying with the proper environment in mind, and I did not find any really concrete examples of similar constructions online. It seems like the Boveda moisture packs have even taken over the Cigar industry for maintaining humidors and such.
Both the BerryBlues are looking nice, with the younger one looking very chunky and well filled out. Both are showing some purple. The temps in the tent get down to 18 C for four hours every night.
My Purple Punch and Purple Lemonade seedlings are doing great! The New Generation is coming! Next to be planted will be a FastBuds Blackberry on Jan 31! I started individual journals for the different strains so I can give data to the site properly and qualify for contests and such. I will continue to post pics of the whole tent here and updates on the perpetual cycle as a whole, but detailed tracking of the individual strains will be in their own journals.
Jan 18:
BerryBlue is looking good, the Purple Punch is an incredibly strong seedling, and the Purple Lemonade is a happy sprout. The weed drying box is working, some issues with condensation in the lower chamber so I turned down the humidifiers and added a little piece of wood for them to sit off the floor of the bin. The leaves on GSC 2 are just starting to be crispier, but are still malleable. It's certainly different drying on this scale, you can examine 100% of the product closely. I think something close to this concept will work though :)
Day 80:
The BerryBlue plants are still growing, so I'm going to give them till the end of January. They'll probably come down on the 31'st.
The other two plants are looking great.
Day 81:
BerryBlue still getting thicker.
Day 83:
BerryBlue the elder has been chopped. She looked ready and was turning all sorts of purple.
The drying box worked pretty well, I got through 9 days of drying before the stems started snapping. Gonna refine the concept and create vers 2.0 over the next couple weeks. V2 will include odor control, side by side chambers instead of stacked, and a floating puck cool mist vapor maker in a contained reservoir with auto fill plumbed into the mains, as well as UV to sterilize and a heater to warm it in the winter. I had it set under 60% in the box, and I think I will bump that up to the 62% i want out of the final weed. I was worried about mold but it doesnt look like it will be an issue. I'd like to get it to 10-14 days drying time with V2.
Blackberry seed will go in the ground next monday!
Smoking the GSC, I have named it "Highly Motivational Weed". My wife and I have been getting a SHIT ton of stuff done we usually procrastinate about. The taste was actually stronger a few days ago when we poached a nug while it was still drying. Currently one of them is quite cheesey, the other one more like berries. The hygrometer in the jar says the weed dried to just under 60%, the Boveda is probably bringing that up a couple %, so probably like 55% moisture.
Day 90: BB the younger got chopped on Jan 29, was smelling of blueberries and looking good trichome wise. So all of the original plants are down.
Current plants:
FastBuds Purple Punch: Day 31
FastBuds Purple Lemonade: Day 16
FastBuds Girl Scout Cookies: Day 1
Future plants
FastBuds BlackBerry: Day - 14
FastBuds LSD-25: Day - 31
FastBuds Mimosa Cake: Day- 45
I also built a V2 Drying box which seems to be working VERY well. I'll do a full write up at some point, probably when I tidy up all the wiring and cables/tubes. It is keeping the drying stuff at 18-20c in 60% humidity at all times with light air movement in the bins. Never needs to be refilled, basically set it and forget it which is ideal because it needs' to run pretty much all the time.
Planted a Fastbuds Blackberry seed on sunday Feb 13 noonish. I am LOVING having the different plants 2 weeks apart, it's so interesting to see the differences between them.
Blackberry popped Feb 15th midnight.
5 plants! All FastBuds
Purple Punch
Purple Lemonade
Girl Scout Cookies
Blackberry
LSD-25
Check out my individual journals on each strain for details/pics of each plant.
coming next week: Mimosa Cake
Well March 15th was the day I put the 6th plant, FastBuds Mimosa Cake, in the ground, so the 90 cycle has begun. Two weeks till first harvest, but I think that Purple Punch might need to come down a week early if the trichomes are amber. We shall see!
Purple Punch ended day 77, she was ready for the chop and I'm worried the Purple Lemonade is almost ready too. I need the drying box to be ready for it, so the PP came down.
One week till harvest begins of the Purple Lemonade!!
Current Plants:
Fastbuds
Purple Lemonade
Girl Scout Cookies
Blackberry
LSD-25
Mimosa Cake
00 Seeds
Chocolate Skunk XXL
Well today is the last day (day 89) for the Purple Lemonade. She gets harvested tomorrow, and I also get to plant a new seed. The schedule says Gorilla Glue, but I also have a couple one off seeds Do Si Dos and Amnesia that I could change in the schedule. We shall see!
The GSC and Blackbery look amazing, the Blackberry is a huge plant with massive buds. The LSD looks a lot more like the purple lemonade did, just not a lot of bud sites so I expect them to get large and foxtailed.
The Mimosa Cake has come round and is small but normal at almost 30 days. No signs of flowering.
The Chocolate Skunk has grown vigorously and is touching its humidity dome at 14 days, so that is on par with my largest plants, great job there.
The cycle begins! A new journal/plant every two weeks from now into the future!
I really want to do a good photoshoot for the FastBuds pet contest (i feel like i have a leg up over the next 70 days i have 3 different purple plants finishing :P),but I am aware my photography skills suck.
Currently running;
Fastbuds Gorilla Glue- 8 days
00 Seeds Chocolate Skunk XL- 21 days
Fastbuds Mimosa Cake- 38 days
Fastbuds LSD-25- 52 days
Fastbuds Blackberry- 68 days
Fastbuds Girl Scout Cookies- 82 days
Just harvested the GSC and planted the Amnesia Auto from Canuk seeds. The Blackberry is pretty much done but I'm going to let it keep going to 90 days.
Tent is great, we are well and truly in summer temps here and this is the first time the tent needs to deal with aircon from the house to cool rather then passive outside air. Looks like its working well, humidity is certainly up but staying stable-ish around 50%.