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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 buds are very nice and the amout of thricomes is simply mindblowing. Smell is awesome as well, I can clearly feel notes of cheese and lower tones of fruits. It's a sweet strain, not too pungent.
This is a very high quality genetic. She started slowly and then she turned into a huge and wonderful lady.
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.
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 😬
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 🤷♂️🏻😂. All grows are learning though and I for one love the challenge!! Good luck on your next grow!!
The_Moz4rt
