Overall nothing much happened this week, plants growing normally and haven’t ran into any challenges.
Plants have become very bushy though, I’m expecting it to go into the preflowering stage soon.
Days 37 & 40, removed a lot of the lower leaves to give better airflow and focus the overall growth to the top of the plants
Hey there friend. Congratulations on getting into growing cannabis! looking at your diary, Would you be alright with me offering some pointers? Even though autoflowers do not need a change in light cycle to flower, They are still cannabis plants which photosynthesize & store energy during the day cycle & do the majority of their growth during lights off. Id recommend 20/4 minimum. So cannabis plants LOVE heat and humidity. It is the buds that hate it. In veg we want to take advantage of this fact to help our plants grow along much quicker and more vigorously. In veg we can look for temps of 79-84 MAX with lights on & no more than 9 degrees less with lights off. If we allow for too much temperature swing between lights on and lights off while the plant is still growing vertically up to day 20 of flower, We will cause the plant to stretch ALOT which we do not want. So in veg & early flower, Keeping our temperature gaps nice and close between lights on and off is key. Utilizing humidity in our rooms during veg will also help out a lot with more rapid growth but we must introduce it properly. In our rooms we have our temperature and humidity set-points, But when we combine those 2 it forms a third set-point which is the most important & that is called VPD, Vapor pressure deficit.
I strongly recommend every new grower or old grower who has not learned it yet, To study and understand it & implement it into your room, Logging your numbers daily.
https://cerescann.com/importance-of-measuring-vpd/
For soil, We generally want to go for a PH of 6.1.
This website does a GREAT job of illustrating it with a nice graph & very good detailed explanation for soil.
https://autoflowerseedshop.com/cannabis-ph-chart-guide/
As we briefly touched on before, During veg & early flower we want our temperature gap's nice and tight to avoid stretch. Why exactly our plants stretch in response to this is a genetic trigger being activated by the environmental stress essentially telling the plant the end of the season is closer than it really is. In veg & early flower the plant is still in its first stage of development which is to grow up wide and tall so when it produces seed, It can cast them out nicely. Remember, Whether we are growing our plants for seed or bud their genetic responses do not change as they gh sidedo not know any different. Once the plant has finished that first stage of growth by weeks 4-6 of flower with most strains, It is by day 20 of flower. Autoflowers you have to watch for it, But once the plant has finished this goal its new mission is to focus 100% on producing nice big flower clusters & to get very sticky so it can attract pollen to it successfully.
So once that vertical growth is finished, We actually now want to begin to expose our plants to larger temperature swings between lights on and lights off. This will help activate that genetic response and allow us to draw out the most potential from the strain utilizing the plants genetic triggers to environmental stresses at the right times. We can also take this a step further with doing light deprivation in the last 2 weeks using less light to simulate cloud cover. Very cold feed temps on the last flush is very good too. If you do not have them already, Get yourself a good PAR meter & thermal laser temp gun to monitor your plant top temperatures & optimize how much light your plants are getting. We are currently in the middle of producing a very comprehensive tutorial series for everybody to learn from & understand how to grow the highest level craft cannabis all on their own. If this interests you please check out our youtube and subscribe. The first 2 episodes are out the next one is coming in a few days. If you should ever have any questions or need any help, Please feel free to follow my profile and shoot me a DM. I will gladly help you with the pull down & make sure you get the best quality harvest possible as it is the most important step of the entire process. Our third episode just went up & covers a lot of important stuff when you are just getting started growing! Check it out our youtube is linked off our main growdiaries profile.
Good luck my friend!