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 Β°C, she absolutely loved it...
Hey friend, Great looking work for your first grow you should be very proud! Would you be alright with me offering some general advice based off the info in your diary? Maybe you already know some of this but I am just going to cover some basics just in case.
So cannabis plants love heat and humidity. The buds hate it, In veg we like to get more vigorous faster growth by keeping our temperature ranges between 79-84 MAX with lights on & we want no more than 9 degrees less with lights off. When we are in veg and early flower, If we allow for too large of temperature swings between lights on and off we can encourage our plants to stretch a lot which we do not want. That is why in veg and early flower it is important we keep those temperature gaps tight.
You're humidity looks fairly good for the most part, But if you have not done so yet check out vapor pressure deficit and how it relates to cannabis, I recommend all growers to learn this and get used to using a VPD chart and logging their rooms numbers daily.
https://cerescann.com/importance-of-measuring-vpd/
Once we get later into flower, In photoperiods by weeks 4-6 of flower they have stopped their vertical growth. With autoflowers we need to watch for it by eye, But once this happens our plant's response to temperature swings has changed. Now we want to begin to open up our temperature gaps to beyond 10 degrees less with lights off and a bit more each week. This will now trigger a response in our plants to send extra energy into the budding process and resin production. Temperature is vital to how our buds develop, Too hot of rooms we get big airy buds without much cake, Too cold of rooms we get really dense caked buds but smaller sized. We want size and density so with lights on we want around 77-80 MAX with lights on.
If you have not done so yet, Get yourself a PAR meter and a thermal laser temp gun like the fluke 64 MAX for better reading your plant's needs and growing to them. These pieces of equipment also help us dial in our light to plant distance optimally. If you ever have any questions please feel free to ask I am always willing to help out. Check out my profile & give me a follow that is all I ask :) I am also currently producing a youtube tutorial series for all levels of growers to utilize. If that interests you hop over and subscribe to my channel it is linked off my grow diaries.
@The_Moz4rt, It is no bother my friend. As long as you follow my grow diaries profile & subscribe to my youtube to support my company I will always be willing to help out.
To answer your questions but first off, When we are dialing in our VPD we use our atmospheric temperature as we are optimizing the environment so thermostat temps are what we want to use for that. Leaf temps are important when we are measuring our plant top temps to make sure we are not creating any micro climate with aggressively close light placement.
Now to your questions :
1. We are currently working on a grow guide & even better a tutorial series for youtube to cover all aspects of growing for all levels of growers. Please make sure to hop over and subscribe itll be coming out by end of April. Until then, just ask me anything you need as I would not recommend anything out there in terms of good guides. All of them have some form of miss information or half truths.
2. Yes, Lets start tapering those down slowly so that by weeks 4-6 we got a good avg around 77-79 MAX and then we can start dropping those lights off temps to allow for more than 10 degrees less with lights off to signal the plant to send that extra energy into the budding process and resin production. Essentially at this stage the plants finished growing, It is done its mission of getting up vertical so that when it creates seeds it can cast them out far and wide. Now its mission is to form nice big flower clusters to produce seed in and to get covered in resin to successfully allow pollen to stick to it. These are the genetic responses in the plant we want to be triggering at the right times to bring out these desired traits. At the end of the day this is a plant that wants to insure its reproduction whether we are growing it for seed or not, It does not know any different.
Other good ways to do this are to simulate the ending of the season and cloud cover with light deprivation either dialing them down or backing them off. Really cold feed temps on the last week is great as well.
3. YES YES YES, You got some nice bud development going on there. We will get some nice nugs off of that, For sure.
We want to make sure we are giving our plants enough water to produce a good yield. Cannabis plants need to be able to consume 3 gallons in 24hrs to produce 1 dry pound of cannabis. This can be 1 plant, 10 plants whatever. But it will take that much water consumption to produce 1 dry pound. 2 dry pounds 6 gallons and so on, So we want to make sure in flower to not let our plants dry out too much no more than 50% and do not overwater them. But we need to allow them to be able to drink up as much water as they need to do their thing.
I hope this is a start to helping you out friend! Take care & keep up the great work.
@LegacyMarketFarm, Hello man. Your suggestions are super welcome, golden and absolutely appreciated! I'm indeed pretty proud of it so far, even though I know perfection and experience take time. I've read about VPD and tried to stick to it as much as I could but most of the time I was probably off due to not knowing the real leaf surface temperature but just guessing it. Only thing I can say is I noticed the plant was not transpiring properly with temperatures below 80.5 F - above that I could finally see her leaves "praying".
I don't grow to sell, and to be honest I even smoke really a little. Might sound weird but I felt I wanted to take care of somemething that wasn't an inanimate object nor a person, so a plant was an awesome compromise which is turning out to be a pretty deep passion.
As you can guess already, my first set up is quite basic but I've spent 500+ dollars already and I can't upgrade it right now. Could have been cheaper but when a noob goes to a grow shop you know what happens. While I won't be able to have such a significant drop in temperatures during late flower, I'll try to do my best anyway as well as buying those items you mentioned in a near future.
My studies on growing come from deep researches on internet (many times controversial) and Hydro store guys who are not always fair (trying to sell is their purpouse after all). So if I can, I'll ask you a few questions:
1) Do you have or can you link me any good material to study deeper details on growing?
2) Should I lower the lights-on temperatures already?
3) Do you think these flowers will touch each other to form fatter colas based on pictures?
I could ask tons of questions, but don't want to bother you so fast π¬
Thanks in advance.
@VanCplGrows, Hi guys. I love your diaries and thanks for jumping in! Reading about your grow of this strain on FastBuds' blog was the really first thing I did.
I've sent you a private message. hope I don't bother you.
Nice looking grow bro!!! Filled out nicely. A lot better than my first one π€·ββοΈπ»π. All grows are learning though and I for one love the challenge!! Good luck on your next grow!!