Bubbleponics - Sour Apple Auto

Hey folks, I'm finally back at it again. It took me a while for a couple of reasons: 1) I usually only grow in the winter. 2) I completely revamped my grow room after the issues I ran into with the last setup. 3) It took me a while to brainstorm exactly what I wanted to do. I bought these seeds from D.C. Seeds and was very pleased with the experience. I'm very happy to give business to a fellow American and Veteran. I've only ever purchased seeds from the UK in the past and that experience has been "dodgy" to say the least (not the vendors fault, but the transit). I've only ever grown photo's, but chose to go with all auto's moving forward. After calculating the intensity of my current light, with it being on a 20/4 rotation I'm very close to hitting 40 moles per day, at least directly under the light. It doesn't quite cover my 2' x 5' trellis. I'll eventually upgrade my light, but auto's should get me the best bang for my buck with this light. Also, I spent a pretty penny building this new grow room. The other obvious reason for growing auto's is their shorter seed to harvest time. I've got a small grow area, and never plan on expanding. Theoretically, auto's will allow me to produce the most out of my room. A few things about my grow room: 1) I lined the whole closet with 1/2" plywood and put that piece of ply the air intake/outtake/power as the divider between each side of the closet 2) The grow room itself has ply on all wall surfaces so I could mount stuff to it and paint it 3) The other side of the closet is my storage/prep/power distribution/etc. area. Maybe I'll take a pic one of these days 4) My last grow my carbon filter/fan was venting into the other side of the closet. This created a headache for a number of reasons. I tapped a 4" hole through the floor and am now venting into my crawl space below the house. 5) I moved to bubbleponics to speed up my grows even more. I will be removing the drip system once the roots hit the water in the res. 6) The larger res. will hopefully make my life much easier. Late in the last grow I could only fit 3 gallons of water in the bucket and that sucker was pounding down at least a gallon a day. That required too much micro-managing for me (both ph and refills). 7) I no longer have a fixed trellis with chicken wire. The trellis is held in place by dowels that I can pull out by hand. The short sides of the trellis have hinges on the bottom, so I can fold it and pull it out easy-mode. Lastly, I'll be using string for the trellis so come harvest all I have to do is cut the string instead of dealing with trying not to destroy buds pulling them through chicken wire (it takes forever). 8) I built a light diffuser on the other side of the air intake 9) My res. is on a motorcycle lift I'm using a drill to move up and down I have now started using Jack's as my primary nutes. They tell you the full break-down of each macro and micro nute, giving me more control and understanding. I think House & Garden is a good product, but when stuff goes bad it's more difficult to troubleshoot when you have no idea what each piece of their full lineup contains. I'm assuming it's kind of a proprietary type thing, which I understand, but knowledge is power. I am still using their Drip Clean (while the bubbler is going) and Roots Excelurator Silver, both excellent products. I'm still using Hydroguard, and will FOREVER. I'm a true believer now of why Hydroguard is necessary for any hydro application, IMO. I also purchased water soluble fulvic acid, but have decided not to use it for this grow....or at least while the bubbler is going (I'll elaborate below). Ok...now that all that is out of the way.... I really wanted to use my well water instead of R/O to make my life easier. Soooo....I filled up my res., and put two seeds in the system immediately. Nothing happened after 1 1/2 weeks. I finally opened up the cubes and saw that the beans had popped, but it looked like maybe I drowned them, or they ddin't grow straight up or something. For round two, I didn't change the water out, and decided to soak the beans for 24 hours in R/O water first. I had the exact same problem. I'm still not really sure what happend, but I suspect it was the well water. My PPMs were sitting at ~500 with the well water, which was probably too spicy for the beans just starting. Also, my well water is questionable (even though it's at 165ppm), but I won't elaborate further....it's a long ass story and I've spent an absurd amount of money on it. Lastly, I did put the Fulvic acid in, and it was very messy. I really want to avoid having to clean my res. Once the roots get big it will be a real pain in the ass to clean. I'm leaning towards not using the Fulvic acid this grow just to see how things go. I had 10 beans total of the Sour Apple and have already ruined 4. So here's hoping third times the charm. So, I went back to my tried and true method: 0) R/O water for everything. Ditching the well water idea. 1) Soak beans in R/O water for 24 hours 2) Paper towel method between plates on a heating mat 3) Once the roots pop, I place them pointed down in the hole of the rockwool cube 4) Hand water once a day by dipping the cube in the pre-mix of 1/4 strength Jack's and everything else I've listed above. This put my PPMs at 300...a way more reasonable value for starts. It's been exactly 7 days since I followed the above. It's probably hard to see but the cotyledons came up, and multiple roots have come out the bottom of the cubes....way faster than I've ever seen since I started growing. That means even though I'm doing my old process this already shaved at least a week off of when I'd normally put it in my bucket in the past.

I had intended to do this post over the weekend but was slammed. I don't have much to report here other than "so far so good." The roots are looking healthy and I'm not seeing any issues with what I'm doing. One of these seedlings looks kinda punk. I'm thinking it might have just been the seed. The one in the back left is looking just fine. I took these photo's this last Sunday 1/23/22. I haven't done a water change yet. I'm trying to do two week water changes with the larger reservoir.

This week I started noticing some signs of root rot starting. I considered my water temp.'s but they have stayed in the 60's and never gone above 71. Additionally, I'm using Hydroguard. I then realized that the lid on my reservoir was letting light leak through, and possible the 1/4" bulkhead adapters I used for the air hoses on the back of the reservoir. I completely covered the lid with poly-panda and put black tape around the bulkhead adapters in an effort to get rid of all light leaks. Hopefully this will clear up my root rot issues. I did a water change Thursday 1/27 late with half-strength Jack's. I'm not reporting above ratio's because the majority of the week was still quarter-strength. I'm not sure my sad plant is going to make it but I'll leave it in there till it's for-sure toast.

This week I did a water change on 2/28 and bumped the Jack's up to half from quarter strength. On 2/1 I noticed there was light getting through the cups, so I created circular cutouts using poly-panda to cover them as well. I think I've finally gotten all light leaks taken care of. As you can see in the root pictures above there is some root rot in both. However, that was the initial root rot that got me on the path of fixing all the light leaks and it hasn't progressed any further than that. I will definitely be keeping a close eye on that. I believe I'm getting to the point of needing to set my trellis up because by the end of this next week they will surely be above it. It's shame I ran into issues so early on, but not unexpected with so many changes from what I'm used to. Lastly, I'd like to say that the Jack's 3-2-1 is freaking amazing so far. I did not have to PH the water at all when I initially mixed it, and so far this whole last week the reservoir has stayed at 5.9 without budging. That right there blows my mind.

I had a busy weekend again so I didn't take these pictures till today. I've only taken about 6 large fan leaves off the happy plant. I'm going to whittle away at the larger leaves on that plant, and a few on the sad plant over this week. Everything I've read about Auto's makes me not want to get to aggressive with any stress. I really wanted to top them, but I need to see what things look like without a top. Based off of my math, my harvest day should be around 3/17. It is going to be interesting to see how much more these are going to stretch. On 2/8 I setup the trellis. On 2/10 I did a water change and bumped the Jack's up to 3/4 strength. I was going to try and keep it at half, but I started seeing some slight deficiencies starting on the lower leaves. This is a very fragrant strain. I can only imagine how strong it's going to be when it starts filling in the flowers.

On Friday, 2/18/22, it has been exactly 6 weeks since I dropped these seeds in water. It's so crazy how fast these Auto's grow! I think graduating to Bubbleponics (coming for straight DWC) has accelerated the process for me as well. This is record time for me by a large margin! If you notice in the pictures the happy plant has over twice as much root mass compared to the Sad one. You can also see that the Sad one went to flower sooner than the happy one. I think that makes sense considering the Sad one is more stressed. I'm actually pleasantly surprised how the Sad one looks like I might actually some decent buds off of it after all barring any unforseens. These are very leafy plants. I'm trying to to take many leaves off and doing as much tucking as possible, but even now I'm still having to pick at least a few off every day or so. I am finished training these plants and will now be letting them grow straight up from here on out. I'm always shooting for about 8" buds, but I've not managed to really get that dialed in quite yet. One thing I'd like to point out about this breed is that when I was doing some defoliation and tucking yesterday the plant had a distinct sour apple jolly rancher smell! How cool is that?

This was the second week of 3/4 strength Jack's. Everything I've read about Auto's is that they generally require less nutes, but these ladies seem pretty hungry. I am seeing a slight Calcium deficiency on some of the mid and lower leaves just starting. For week 8 I am going with full strength Jack's. Overall though I'm a pretty good position: My water level is dropping, my PPM's are dropping, and my PH is going up consistently. I am having to defoliate pretty heavily about every 3 days. The sad plant is requiring significantly less defoliation in comparison to the happy one. However, the sad plant is, at a bear minimum, one+ weeks further along in the flowering process. You can clearly see this from the pictures. The Sad colas are between 8-9" tall and the Happy colas are around 6-7" tall at the moment. I moved the light up further where it's about 18" above the Happy colas. I'm definitely seeing signs of light burn on the very top stuff (something I've never had happen to me until now with this 20 hour light rotation). I feel kinda miffed about having to continue raising the light because I've got buds that are just now peaking through the bottom of the trellis. Overall, I think things are still pretty solid so far. P.S. This is very strong smelling breed, but my carbon filter is doing a great job so far (it's not new, I used it for my last photo grow so it's technically past it's usable lifetime. I do have a brand new backup though if needed).

This week I went with full strength Jack's. It seems to be keeping the equilibrium with water level, ppm, and ph. I clearly didn't anticipate the stretch as the sad plant has stretched to at least 14" and in some places even more. Just to reiterate, I was trying to shoot for 8" above the trellis. This is has definitely been learning experience, although every grow is in it's own way. However, my only comparison is photo's, and generally once the buds get to the size of my sad plant during this grow, it should have stopped stretching. I have been pretty heavily (IMO) defoliating every 3 days still. Since things have eclipsed my 8" target, I feel I'm having to defoliation even more than is necessary. All things said, I still believe things are going fairly well.

I was out of town for the last few days so this post is later than my usual weekend post. It's kinda turning into a cluster like my last grow but I'm more proactively removing leaves. I hope I'm not stunting the growth. The sad plant started budding out weeks before the happy one but so far the buds haven't gotten as big as I thought they would be by now. Per the breeder this strain can go up to 85 days which is close to three weeks from now (April 1st would be 85 days). I'm really hoping these buds start putting on some mass between then and now. It may also be that because both of these plants aren't getting root-bound they may go longer than projected. Pictures were taken today, and I also had to pretty heavily defoliate again.

Been busy so I'm posting this a bit late again. Can't say much about this week other than I did my last fairly aggressive defoliation for the week. The stretch of the happy plant is problematic. I'm going to try and leave the light low until I feel it may be damaging the top buds to give a chance for the lower growth. Otherwise, I think things are going ok.

It's been a couple weeks since my last post. It looks like the full strength Jack's is a bit much for this plant. I will be backing the strength back down to 3/4's for the remainder of the grow. I had the light very low in the hopes the lower growth would get some light, but I just raised it yesterday. It's definitely caused some damage to the top growth, in addition to the nutes being too strong. The breeder has a harvest from seed between 75 - 85 days. 85 days was this last Friday, and the happy plant easily has two weeks to go in my estimation. The sad plant has mostly stalled in it's bud growth. It may grow a slight bit more birth, but I doubt by much. It's trichomes are still all clear. However, the healthy plant could really bulk up in the next two weeks and I'm really hoping that will be the case.

This last week my PH was dropping like a rock until I got under 700ppm. I think I've been running the nutes too high for too long. I just did a water change today and went back to 3/4 strength. Between the high nutes and keeping the light too low I've got pretty substantial upper leaf damage. I was thinking I was going to be really close to harvest and wasn't super concerned. I just hope that I haven't stressed the plants too much. The sad plant has ever so slowly bulked up slightly. I doubt it will much more than where it's already at. The trichomes are still almost entirely clear on this plant. The happy plant still looks like it's at least 2 weeks from harvest, maybe even longer. All the trichomes are entirely clear. I'm ready to get this wrapped up (plus I'm almost out of my Liberty Haze from my last grow...lol), but I'll just have to wait till these ladies are ready.

After dropping the nutes to 3/4 strength the ph was still dropping, but not nearly as fast as the week before with full strength nutes. I should have probably done a flush, but that is difficult for me to do with how I'm generating my RO water at the moment. I was hoping the Happy plant was going to bulk up a bit more, and was thinking I would push my harvest out till the the weekend of Apr. 30/May 1st. However, I'm anticipating (fingers crossed) that by this coming weekend, my trichomes should be mostly cloudy with 5-10% amber (typically where I like it be.) I will be starting my flush between Tues. - Thurs. of this week. Most likely it will be Wednesday, but with how these plants have not been uptaking nutes, I feel like I should flush for longer than 3 days (normally how long I flush with RO in DWC).

I started the flush on Tuesday 4/19. I chopped both plants on Saturday 4/23. The Trichomes are just about perfect in my estimation: > 5% clear, 10% amber, 75% cloudy. This is my first time drying the whole plant (I have always wet trimmed in the past). I read a bunch of good stuff about how hanging the whole plant and dry trimming makes better bud, so I'm giving it a shot. My main concern is possible mold with how tightly compact these plants are. I am keeping the humidity between 50% - 55% right now. I am hoping these plants will be dry enough by next weekend to start trimming and jar curing.

As you can see I had some growing pains during this grow: 1) With my brand new grow room 2.0 I built, I found out the hard way during this grow that I didn’t do a good enough job preventing light leaks into my reservoir. This caused some slight root rot early on in the grow. 2) I clearly nute-burned the plants against my better judgment. I’d read a number of things about how you need to take it easy with nutes and autoflowers, but I didn’t listen. I had mistaken some signs on the healthy plant that I was having a deficiency and over did it with the nutes. 3) I light burned the plants. I’m not used to this ever being a problem either. The economy LED I was using was just barely powerful enough to get a half-way decent yield off of a photo-period but ended up being too much for the autoflowers running on a 20/4 schedule. 4) I still haven’t quite figured out how to get an even canopy. In this case I had no idea what to expect for the stretch on these plants. I think I would have done a better job with a photo-period honestly. However, now I have somewhat of an idea what to do moving forward with future grows. With two pheno’s growing at different speeds and heights, a light with a small footprint, it was not ideal. All that being said, this was my all time best grow EVARRRR. I’m in love with my new grow room. I spent a lot of time dwelling on the design, and how best to utilize that closet space. It really exceeded my expectations. There were some flaws though that need to be addressed: 1) Light leaks I mentioned above. Basically fixed I just need to keep it that way. 2) My blower was way too loud this time. During my last grow of the Liberty Haze, I had the blower buried in a bunch blankets, and that did a much better job at silencing it. Right now I have the blower surrounded with 2” rigid foam, which provided only the slightest of noise reduction. There is a rockwool like substance used for sound proofing insulation that I should try shoving in the foam box my blower is surrounded by. Additionally, I mounted the blower to the ½” ply I’ve separated the two sides of the closet with. I need use rubber grommets that are attaching the shelf I’ve got the blower attached to. 3) I need to get a backup motorcycle lift in-case this one goes out. There is a spot, especially when lowering where it catches. I’m afraid this behavior will prematurely weaken the bearings (regardless if I lubricate or not). If that happened in the middle of a grow I’d be up shit creek. The yields I got this time are just mind blowing to me, especially with the light I was rocking during this grow. I have to say, best economy light ever that I’ve personally experienced! HAPPY / EXPECTED SOUR APPLE AUTO PHENO: Bud: 187g / 6.6oz Trim: 212g / 7.48oz SAD / NOT EXPECTED SOUR DIESEL PHENO: Bud: 176g / 6.21oz Trim: 136g / 4.8oz TOTALS: Bud: 363g / 12.81oz Trim: 348g / 12.28oz *Trim Extract: ~ 30ml FECO *You will notice four lighter green FECO syringes. That was my second extract and I used 5ml MCT oil to loosen it to get it into the syringes easier. I’ll have to dose at ~ 1.3ml to get the equivalent of 1ml.