Summer Grow :-)

DISCLAIMER : None of the below is advice or an invitation to grow or consume marijuana ! Hello to all! I'm here basically to get some advice as I go along with my first grow. So basically, I chose to grow autos for my first time because of the yields, size, and speed. That's because I'm not trying to get commercial, reforest my town, or enter into a multi-year commitment. Just trying to get some personal medicine at a decent speed. I've never grown before, so I settled on: 1. a small grow room 2. 2x40L fabric bags to experiment with and keep the roots cool in the summer 3. Off the shelf topsoil, which seems rich, dark, yet only includes bio fertiliser of which (approx.) 25% Perlite because my soil doesn't have any and might be too rich 4. Rhizotonic solution to activate the seeds (I don't know how old they are!) 5. Some Bio Vega, as little as possible, mostly just to normalise the Ph as I don't trust the water where I am 6. 24h lights and an aircon in case it gets too hot this summer 7. FastBuds strains that should have similar size and harvest periods This Week One will all be about the set up, germinating, and launch - stay tuned, shoot me your Qs, and most definitely give me advice and suggest corrective actions if you've got any! Update : the more I get closer to my set up the more i realize I need this or that including : large trays to collect water from the runoffs, a selection of fertilisers, a shit ton of dirt, extra fans, an AC because it's gonna get hot, extra exhaust ducts, clips, string, those little balls to keep the soil cool, and some other stuff like magnifyiers and several other tools. Basically this is costing a small fortune for a hobby and I'm just glad I can afford it - but to the newbies out there: plan ahead and plan better than i did! Lesson learned : Buy local ! I got my stuff online - huge mistake : no advice, no quality check, so many pieces missing. Buy local - your local horticulture folks will be able to orient you, and tbh you re not saving any cash or time if you consider the time and money you'll lose fixing the thing. Buy local! Update : soaked the seeds in Rhizotonic solution, in under 2 hours a few of seeds started showing signs of being ready to start germinating, which surprised me. I ws gonna soak them for 8 hours, but I got nervous and layed them into my jiffies which I also soaked in the Rhizotonic solution. Their in their tent now, in the dark, getting ready to sprout.

Update 7/4 : Happy 4th of July to all ayous ! UPDATE 7/4 : Just potted in soil + 25% Perlite. Temp is hot and hope that this little slut survives until i get her more fans ! Will do PHs, ECs and PPMs in a day or so. PH of the Rhiz solution that I've been splashing for two weeks is 7.5 Cant get my room the right temp ! any ideas? Last day : Look at her go !

Week 2 for the GSCs in their 10 G pot. Still with the AC on, unfortunately but i got a big fan on the way so i hope i'll be able to maintain my 600W full time. Added CO2, but my tent's open and my exhaust is on, so lets see if it works. will try to do a daily update on these ladies. Spraying the foliage of all these ladies with my magic rhiz juice so their legs spread out nice and long. watered her with almost a gal over two days, she's alright with water now for a while i guess. watered again with plain tap water on day 4 : little gorilla is thirsty doo. watered again on day 5! Been shaking my CO2 twice daily, seems almost spent, will replenish it start of next week. So fr so good this gorilla is a g !

So what you don't know is I lost my nan recently, used to be besties with her, and chill almost everyday. She was all about nature, plants, and growing. (Not weed obviously!) Anyway she didn't always have an easy life, but she really made something here on earth and brought joy to her community. I think she would really like the idea that I dedicate this grow to her. She was tough as a gorilla ! This one's for you nanna !

Start of week 3 she grew a lot almost 6/7 cm . scary ! hope this gorilla starts to really branch out ! Day 4 : branching out, loads of new branches almost overnight ! Hairy arm pits means loads of potential bud spots ! Less trykes on er than the rest, same for her smaller sisses... i'm not worried doe. This one made a bunch of branches this week, she started off with one or two now she's got like 12 or more. Not bad for a week's worth !

Ok, so i leave my baby girls side for like a couple hours and my light blows ! Obviously ! What i learned : if your hid is basically flickering, that means iss close to dyen ! i thought it was my macgiveren on the balast, but it's the bulb actually ! live and learn ! I asked a question on my 5 Gals got some good answers in there - check it out. so I put my bedside lamp in there to go into emergency mode. Almost 48h later i got my replacement in. Added some rhiz to the mix because they say it helps with stress. Hope i haven't stressed out my babies. if they hermie imma lose it. They look like they all recovered, but this my 10GAL GG is my slowest one . Imma voodoo on a gorrilla end of the week to increase her yield. of course it will work. stay chuned! OK so the 10 GAL GG just exploded, it's the tent leader practically overnight, has maybe 4x the branches of any other.

So start of week 6 is tough : clearly the PH of my water rose due to rhiz, led to an almost overnight browning of the leaves. haven't flushed yet as this mostly affected non-bud leaves and branches. basically i got nervous, but it's gonna be fine right? right? please tell me it's gonna be fine. anyway my gorilla grew quite a lot, showing no signs of letting up, will revert to a lighter nute regimen and will be PHing my water from now on. Use Rhiz the right way folks ! Alright well this week's not over yet and it's already a trip ! over watered nute locked out, waited to water again, and switched to a 18/6 schedule... we're no longer on 24/7 people ! sorry i failed you ! I think for new growers and even not hyper precise growers the 24/7 schedule is simply too unforgiving ! Live and learn, and grow ! Figured out my EC meter was broken, fixed the values with the real values.... Day 7 - looks like this baby is fully recovered mo or less - pray for my yield !

just tryna follow their cycle at this point. This plant is impressive, she's got maybe ten to fifteen times the budspots as the GSC, and way more than that compared to the kt. I might prune some small flower spots that aren't getting light but idk. definitely the healthiest of the bunch she got a custom feed once on day 3 mag sulfur, acids, and dassit. 🚀

This week is goin well so far, this gorilla glue is an absolute monster at over 1.2 M . Explossive growth ongoing, some slight nute burn on some of the upper growths. It has almost 100 flower growthses it's clearly gonna be a yielder as long as i :donnut: dunnut over do it on the nutes. strong looken root system sticken out from under the ground. Prayen for yield.

Hey guys. Week 10, Week 9 of grow, I feel like I'm driving a fighter jet with a go cart steering wheel. This gorilla is a f-en monsta : check the height - i kid you not. I'm surprised, the secondary bud spots are coming into their own real quick, getting fatter everyday. Will try to get some more pics up later this week. I'm just trying to keep this baby happy i'm guessing there's over a month left which is a bit more than i bargained for but c'mon it's gonna be a yielder so i'm not complainen.

hey everyone week 10 since seed, just trying to follow her cycle, she's got a few feeds ahead of her still, those monster branches are getten fatter daily, that's it so far, will update before next week. Just getten fatter and fatter, loads of minor buds spots i don like so will definitely be removen those next time who knows might get some tasty trimm. fed her once with bloom nutes, acid, mag sulfur and dassit 🚀

Well my 10 Gal gorilla is oerforming well got loads of fattenen up to do yet but still looken good, getten fat everyday, foxtailen avidly in all the right places, still she's a monster, just tryen to follow her cycle. She got a feed this week prolly will giver one nex weeek too . she 's a lot more thirsty now too maybe a whole twelve hours faster almost drinken that water... i don t really like how the mollasses does in my soil, but oh well gorilla is killen it i'm not complainene.i basically started to kinda clip her tips here and there remove deadish looken fan leaves and all that, but she didn't really like that at all, saw some un wanted progression of cal lock out... oh well, guess i wont be choppen off leaves at random again next grow. This week she's just getten fatter daily, really puffen up, all the little buds look healthy... cant really shake the thought i should have clipped those little popcerns were i had the chance?

Well into week 12 and I just trying to follow her cycle at this point, very nice getting fatter every day. Her outer colas were getting kinda spread so i tied some upwards towards the main like hawkbo did let's see ! probably going to see how this goes first but will be doing all the outer colas to some extent. Trying to get them fat. she's got loads and loads of flower nodes which is i guess what you trade in some time for : i'm thrilled so far. I guess she has a fair few feeds in her still ! you tell me ! She's way behind her 5 gals at this point, but oh my gosh she's a looker haha hope I can keep up 🚀 getten thirsty now, four waterens this week ! 🚀

Week 13 the queen of the tent is just fillen out didn't nee water until day 3. if the 5 gals are anythento go by she's still got at least two week's of feeden before the 3 week flush - maybe she'll properly blow up maybe not. keepen an eye on it. . Starten to smell now as well... prayen for yield 🚀Well, looks like the lowers are really starten to put on weight now, trykes are like 80 or 60 cluody, can't really tell, but BigDaddyK told me it's about time so the flush is on starten tonight on their watering, bring this to two waterens this week already 🙏 prayen for yield lessee 🚀 Kinda turned them a bit inside the grow room, so yall goen to get a different angel 👻on your pics first week of flush is did and done 🚀

So second week of flush and I bumped up to 20/4 on the great advice of my mentors the mighty muddy buggy and Big daddy K yeah man I'm excited, i see no ambers still on day 4, but all the trykes are cloudy. Unfortunately this lady's started to foxtail, not sure if i'm given her a third week of flush or not yet - you tell me ! Anyway this lady is doing well, oily, sticky, piney, starten to smeel just a little bit more. Any advice welcome ! 🚀

Gorilla came down three days and ten hours ago, had the whole grow room to spare so she was hung whole upside down after just a bit of trimming for the main fan leaves that sort of thing. First day 24°C 60% humidity, second day 26-28°C 50% humidity, third day 25.5 °C 35% humidity. I had the exhaust and the fan going which gave this very nice light indirect breeze on these ladies. Really amazing smell that i had not really noticed until D-day, pistachios and christmas pine. Thought i was golden until i realised they were drying faster than i wanted. Ended up with 65/70% humidity which made these buds kinda airy in a way. Also the way the gorilla grows there were loads of tiny stems everywhere was a killer trying to get them out, ended up mincen some of the buds somewhat. Gorilla glue is absolutely a great auto to run. In ten gal it was tripple the size of my stunted one. 370 wet, hopefully something close to 100 dry - let's see I'll update in a couple of weeks. The gorilla grows bushy quickly, by week 3 it was noticeably more bushy than the rest. Kinda took an extra week to really start flowering then it stretched 20-50 cm a week for four weeks. In all it's close to 1.5 meters in height, loads of colas, maybe twice or three times as many as the GSC. Next time i'm gonna prune the flower nodes further down the cola. The buds themselves are quite thin, but rock solid much harder than any other strain i've grown so far - but this is my first time growen so take that with a grain of salt. The buds are covered in frost, trykes all over, oily oily oily, if you touch the buds your hands smells great for a few hours. Fun ! The trykes started appearing quite early and took a while's longer than the rest to get ripe - like truly ripe. So there were absolutely no ambers, maybe i saw one or two, but basically no ambers - this lady got cut down at the height of potency The grow tent. Once you dial it in it becomes your best friend, but if you're having trouble getting it stable it can become your worst nightmare. I made every mistake in the book. First off i set it up without really testing it with the lights on when using it as a germination room. Worked like a charmed until i turned it on. Took me weeks to figure it out. In the end running the AC the whole time through all of summer until it's very last day. 600W HPS through summer is not something i'm gonna be doing again. With my wing reflector there was nothing i could do except keep the lamps high, led to a lot of stretching. Cool tube is the only way to go. The HPS started flickering half way through veg and it died while I was away. I ended up going through 5 of those small fans until i realized & got a box fan. Once I accidently had it pointing straight at them for 8 hours or more a couple of times on max.… So i got a white 150W fan from china i also got Silent TT 123 W fan and hooked it onto the cool tube. Great fan, huge, black, strong, and with temperature control. I call him big dick cop killer because he's black and beats the heat. get it? Had two 90° bends outflowing for the exhaust and the heat just wasn't getting dissipated quick enough. Both of them together I could rest my hand on the cool tube with ease. i was able to test out temps and lux at various points in the grow room and figured i could have up to 4 degrees difference between the base and the top of the plant, still got it pretty stable. I had differences in lux from several 100 to several 1000 different places in the tent, probably because I was hanging the filter, the fan and the cooltube all crooked by then, but at that point my grow was a slow moving trainwreck. I had everything I needed to dial in my lamp to plant distance too, but couldn’t. I went bio which was nice, but i think I should try synthtetics or a mix next time. The soil spawned some flies which were easy to get rid of. Then when i tried measuring the EC of the soil, i'm afraisd that the soil particulates kind of skew results. Thought the soil could buff out anything really but rhizotonic had the better of me before i could get my PH strips in.... not that it matters but I broke my PH meter pretty quickly anyway. Live and learn ! Watering itself I think is something you should pay attention to, you don’t want to be pouring it out and getting your soil compacted from the water. Seedlings are a different thing, not too much water, don’t keep the medium too wet, maybe watering with precision is something that could be done. Using the liquid ferts was quite tedious, and I have doubts about using all bio in general, using liquid fertilisers regularly in soil, and following the labels. Thing is you shouldn’t really need much of these ferts in soil anyway, yet still got cal mag deficiencies so you tell me! Well there's a fair few things i wouldn't do again, like grow in the heat of summer with a 600W HPS and the AC on. I fumbled around before I had my dimmable ballast, and stressed out the seedlings which is a no no. Once I got the ballast I lowered then raised the intensity from 250 to 600 in three weeks light stressing my poor babies even more. It never occurred to me to plan out a grow, next time i'll definitely plan it out and make sure I'm kitted out a bit better going in. Same for the grow room, avoid bends in the piping, set the thing up a run it before i throw the plants in there, wont hang my filter above that high, and keep the fan on the ground maybe. Grow room wise I’m kitted out, got everything I need, but next time will install some 70 micron mesh in all my intakes just in case. Also never growing without cal mag again even in soil ! I'll probably do straight drops into forever homes directly too, no sense faffing about like the @silverback_guerilla 😂. It's not all bad news though, loads of things i would do again. I would even grow in soil again, especially now i have a bunch of soil ferts from america (thanks @mrs_larimar !!!). I wouldn't mind using the 600W HPS again, worked well enough ! most importantly i will be using TNB CO2 again because it makes a clear difference even if i don't have any of my own grows to compare it to. Another critical thing i did which i'll be using again is the chelation agents, i'm going to want to stay more on top of those and might even use as foliar spray on XXLs between weeks 3 and 4 veg. I ended up spraying rhiz second to third week, will definitely add some cal mag in the foliar spray. Mag sulfur supplement is going in next time too, if you put a lot of light, you need a lot of magnesium, so that's happening again for sure. I’ve been looking at predator insects pretty seriously, ladybugs are a must clearly, but I might throw in some other ones too just to be sure. It's a lot about what you do when you're not growing , learning about it, meeting great folks (see the comments for all my thanks), and enjoying watching a plant grow slowly. I learned so much about a plant that’s been a part of my life since I was eleven, I think I was 15 when I first thought it was silly not to grow, fifteen years later I can’t believe how long it took me to try it out ! Getting a crash course in horticulture, using a tent, and generally learning about the bio-dynamic world that surrounds us was really rewarding. Just got some cool ferts in the mail all the way from America, so thanks to growgreentrees.com and growcaps might try them side by side. Expecting some cool testers soon too so thanks to @pharmaz my boy past the bridge ! I’ll pop those right in FTB5, Auto Zkits, and something else I don’t know yet  cream cookies or lsd35? I really wanted to get out of the dirt with some coco or DWCs but oh well another soil grow can’t hurt ! A big thank you to @mrs_Larimar GD and the folks at trim bag for the gear ! I’ve already got a spinning blade thing, so let’s see how this compares , but at least now I’ve got cool scissors to do all that trimming – bless ! Just wanted to say thanks for holding my hand to a few folks @mrs_larimar of course, thank you so much and looking forward to some fun times on gd; my main man @mudbug great hanging out with you growmie ; @pharmaz and @silverback_guerilla; new friends like @bigdaddyk @valhallasgarden and @slimsativa; My ghost brother @beans, check out his one leaf GONNA MAKE IT GONNA BEAST IT ; Everyone who stopped by to help me @B4RNS of course, @farmerbrett too, @hawkbo, @tryhard, @tonino, @tazard @mad_scientist @spinnergrow, @poleeg1986 – he’s an amazing European canna porno director check out his gorillas my good lord save me; special thanks to all the Growvengers, and the @dudegrowsweed ; @wheetobeme, @experimentgreen, @weedeep, @chi_town_white_boy @chillum_mafia and even @mulch – play your part man bless ! Thanks to Nico @fast_buds for some cool testers, my favorite hat and some fun times on GD ! A final recap of everything I learned (see for yourself in the diary) : never buy a kit, buy local, buy direct, less is more, go big on fans, keep refills around, always add CalMag CO2 and chelation agents, no bends in the pipes, cover your intakes with micro mesh, nail the first couple weeks of flower and it’s smooth sailing, always protect your eyes ! Just one last thing though: have to say it’s pretty great having access to all the best horticuralists from around the world. Shout outs to all my North American and South American grower friends, @russiangrower and all the east European growers, my Scandinavian friends, Spanish and German growers, and African and Japanese growers, I don’t understand everything you’re saying all the time but I like your style ! You won’t know until you grow ! Dassit 🚀000000