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I followed some FastBuds' suggestions to germinate my seeds: 12h in a glass of tap water, 24h in paper towel and once the root was out I placed them into the rockwool cubes.
Seedling were kept in an enviroment at about 26 °C. Happy to see both germinated. Amazed to see something alive woken up by myself.
Everything went good this week, I was just trying to keep temperature and humidity steady and fighting the newbie's impatience.
I simply top feed them with tap water and Root Stimulator. Trying to figure out the right watering "rythm".
I knew I was gonna keep only one seed as I only have a signle bucket.
I figured the ladies needed more nutrients but I didn't wait for rockwool to dry out before watering properly again...
Wind burn (twisting leaves) and overwatering (droopy) definitely hurt them as shown in the first two leaves but fortunately one of the plant looked less affected than the other.
The water in the bucket is composed by 85% distilled water and 15% tap with a final EC of 0.1 mS/cm.
I added Silica in the reservior, then I reached 0.3 adding CalMag and up to 0.4 with Hydro A+B. I tried to go full dose with the root stimulator, it's organic and didn't change the EC.
Wasn't easy to find the right amount of nutes, but the plant looked definitely liked it and got a healthier colour.
It's bucket time!
At the end of the previous week I noticed two stems turning purple.
I'm confident the plant was over exposed to light and took me sooo long to figure that out!
I brought the EC to 0.3 with CalMag and up to 0.6 with Hydro A and B. I also lowered the led light and put it at 60% to keep a nicer temperature.
I was very happy to see those roots taking off and started some Low Stress Training. Spent some hours studying how to do it properly and turned out to be pretty easy.
Watching her bent wasn't great, but she reacted very well and quickly even though it's too early to imagine her final shape.
Temperature rised to 27 °C, she absolutely loved it...
Week was going great till day 26 when I saw those brown roots. It was a clear sign of root rot starting to spread...
I'm confident was due to high water temperature (hitting 24-25 °C once a day) and poor aeration through the air pump, in combination with the new Sensizym addition. Enzymes work very well with bacteria, but if bad bacteria take over the beneficials...this can happen.
From now on I decided to run a sterile rez and to add few ml of a 0.05% Hypochlorus acid solution to kill anything alive without damaging the roots.
I removed the Root Stimulator (organic) and tried to keep the situation under control. EC was upped to 0.8 and to 1 at the end of the week.
Plant is reacting well to LST. I hope the stress didn't trigger the root rot.
Maybe the roots produced some hormones due to stress who highlight the weakness to the bad bacteria.
Glad I spent time studying before starting this adventure, but sometimes I of course still find myself in front of something I didn't expect or never read about.
Fortunately the plant recovered from the previous week issue with roots, I added another air pump to feel safer.
I feel the Calcium/Magnesium deficiency was more likely triggered by a bad connection between roots and plant, since I think I'm giving her enough already (0.5 EC of CalMag only - 1ml/l).
I could only wait and be patient to check if the new growth was going to show deficiency again or no more.
Fortunately she's very strong...come on, after all the love I give her! 😆
When she looked healthy again, I tried some light defoliation and continued to LST bending other branches.
As a first time grower, I obviously have to take into account some mistakes and problems.
At the end of the week, those calcium deficiency spots were still worrying me (so much patience huh..) so I gave her a foliar feed with a light Ca-Mg solution as soos as the light turned off. Not sure if it helped her but it didn't hurt her either, so all good.
It seems the efforts are paying off so far. Fingers crossed!
The efforts payed off so far. Fingers crossed!
We've got few pistils!!
Finally preflowering has started I guess. Plant is looking good so far.
She's drinking about a litre of water per day and asking for more nutrients. EC was dropping by 0.1 each day so I kept giving her more food.
When I tried 1.75 EC I had some very early symptoms of excess of N (tips pointing down), so I stepped back to 1.65
Plant is gonna need a different feeding schedule soon, and as Atami has only organic boosters for flowering,
I bought some Canna Flora A/B and PK 13/14. Have to wait to see some real flowers though before using them.
I really like the shape she developed this week.
I've started this week with a heavier defoliation. Not sure it's worth it but I want to try it anyway, might as well make experience.
I want to take a break from defoliation though, she's still my first plant so I really don't want to overstress or damage her.
Pistils are getting bigger and I can't wait to see the bud! Watching carefully the flowers development as I've never seen that before.
Hoping in some final stretch.
End of the week: she stretched almost 10 cm in four days. I love this plant.
I also rised the EC to 1.7. Still waiting before switching to Canna Flora nutrients.
She's beautiful and bushy, I definitely need to slow down with those little frequent defoliations tho. Don't want to stunt her growth, especially now.
This week's started with another defoliation 😬
Flowers are slowly forming and she's gaining about 3 cm in height every day. Glad the little stretch I hoped for is happening.
Leaves are hitting the tent sides but I've heard it's not a big issue.
Day 53: she barely grew 1 cm this night. I'm switching to bloom nutrients now (CANNA Aqua Flores), gotta give her food for those flowers.
Day 56: the stretch is not finished at all, I guess it was just the beginning.
The day after I switched nutrients I noticed dark purple spots on a couple of leaves and I still have no idea of what that is (toxicity, deficiency, fungus...?).
The spots turned into necrosis and the EC was pretty high. Decided to step back a little and lower the EC again.
It might be a P-K def., but more likely a nute burn instead. Those spots didn't spread luckily, so I'm trying to keep her healthy and looking forward to see those little buds fattening.
Hopefully they won't become pop corn buds.
Fingers crosssed and patience!
The plant kept stretching during this week. I'm a little bit worried as I don't see the flowers touching each other to form nice colas, but she's healthy so I can't complain, it's my first grow after all. Just hoping in fatter buds and not many popcorns.
She's drinking a lot of water in these days and the EC was higher when checking it before the daily refill. Don't know why she's eating less, but I lowered it to 1.6 again. I give her what she wants.
Keeping an eye on her development and trying to figure out when to add the P-K booster.
No particular problems this week, everything is going ok.
I gave her another (hopefully not too heavy) defoliation at day 59 so i guess I'm not going to touch her again till harvest.
This week wasn't a walk in the park. Upon a further look, I nodiced signs of overfeeding and maybe light stress.
I made a sort of flush but few purple spots popped up, that was driving me nuts.
I was pretty scared and couldn't figure out what was happening.
After a couple of days, I had to calm down and focus on not let the burn/deficiency (or whatever) to spread but stop it right away.
Fortunately no more spots, still signed leaves but all seems steady now.
EC, temperatures and humidity are lower this week.
Had to change them to avoid more problems and this is actually the environment she should like during flower after all.
She's finally drinking a good nutrients-water ratio daily again.
I guess it's going to be time for a little PK boost soon, I won't go heavhy...she suffered and don't want to kill her of course.
Flowers are slowly getting fatter and smell is increasing as well. Getting closer to the end, so... patience!
Don't want to make a mess right now after so many efforts.
Let's wait and hope for the best
This week has started with a nutrient excess confirmation.
I added PK 13/14 between the prevoius and this week at 1/3 strenght to avoid excessive burn but the EC kept rising anyway. I lowered the EC day by day till 1.2 mS/cm and now she's drinking and eating everything properly and also looking more healthy than the previus week, so it all came back under control.
I've already cut the PK and I'm waiting to receive a microscope tomorrow so I will have a detailed knowledge of the thricome status.
I'm really looking forward to harvest her and I feel she's very close to the end.
Buds are looking great, maybe next time I will cut some bottom branches in late vegetative as she probably shared/spread the energy to all flowering sites hence not making nice big dominant colas.
I definitely doubt I'll reach 4 oz but I'm very happy anyway, great experience so far.
She's almost ready! She could definitely go another week or so but I don't want too many amber thricomes, roughly 10-15% amber at the moment.
There are still some white new pistils but I'm not that experienced to harvest based on that, so I'll stick to thricomes.
The smell is very good, sweet hence not too pungent. I'll have to take super care of her during drying and curing to preserve the flavour.
Not really chuncky, but it's all experience in the bag. I'm going to give her 36-48h of darkness and then chop her down.
She also took 12 weeks (hopefully worth it), but I would like to try a photoperiodic one next time.
Never say never, let's wait for harvest and a proper dry first. Then I'll judge.
Quite happy though.
The grow cycle was a big experience for me. Had a couple of hard times trying to keep everything perfect and of course few mistakes have been made. I'm very very happy of the final result though and I'm glad I shared it here with many expert growers to hear tips from.
I gave her 36 hours of darkness before harvest and flushed it with really low ppm's level only 3 days before chop as the roots were directly exposed to the nutrient solution.
She took a little bit longer than expected but it was surely worth it. I absolutely didn't expect such a big harvest, 210 damn grams of dried and trimmed buds, what a happy surprise.