Drunken Glory of ‘22

I have the girls in a tent overnight and in early morning then later in the afternoon when the sun is low, they go back inside for the night. A couple sooper stretchy ones…

So far the weather has been ok, I haven’t had to bring them in during the days. All the seedlings are showing a positive outlook!

Morning of day 14- tops look dry but it’s just the very surface. They took a little longer than I wanted to dry out. The weather has been cold windy and rainy, not much sun lately, and we are still about a month away from our potential last frost date. Farmer’s Almanac says last frost date is May 30th or something crazy, even though the days are normally rather warm by now. I haven’t fed as of Day 14 because they are not dry enough, there is plenty of amendments in the pot, especially towards the bottom, except I will still spoon feed a little bit. I just rehydrated the tops as they were really dry at least 1-2 inches of the tops were dry, but the bottoms are still plenty wet, so with clean water in a spray bottle, I just lightly rehydrated the top a lil, so I might be feeding tomorrow for day 15, but I don’t know yet. Keeping the tent around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and only about 25-30% RH. This helps me compensate for the lack of heat provided by the LEDs and help the plants adapt to a higher water demand. I haven’t seen the low humidity effect the seedlings, intact all the plants that grow outside in the hot bone dry climate LOVE IT! They were praising all last year. So to help keep me away from damping issues and to better prepare the little ones for the outdoors, I’m trying to match a hot and dry environment in the tent. With VPD levels way up in the red, I have yet to experience a negative impact. I have damped off enough plants in my life, it’s a lot harder for me in 60-70%RH to water the plants and get them to dry out fast enough in the tent with cold LEDs.

I absolutely love to watch them grow! Especially that moment they hit their first growth spurt. I started with RO water that is remineralized for drinking purposes. The ppm is only 18! My tap is 156! So considering they don’t need much water, I’ve been stealing some of our drinking water. The RO water starts at pH of 7. After I add the nutrients, ppm of 249 @ pH of 5.8 while soil is still sweet @ pH of 7 I think my days are off as a new week begins on the last day of the previous week. I am going to leave that for consistency. 04/21 - Noticing some possible nutrient issues with the Fruity Pebbles for several days now. Going to see what she needs. Up front I’m thinking maybe just a super small amount of Amino Acids with a little Epsom Salt. Maybe she is struggling to access the nitrates from the neem cake. IF it’s a issues with nitrogen. We will see. Maybe she would benefit from some extra calcium?… Any ideas are greatly appreciated. Day 22 and I am noticing how these girls have been burning up a lot of potassium lately, dealing with the wind and sun 💨 ☀️, getting pushed around all day. I plant to top dress with some Kelp Meal pretty soon. Day 24 -> 4/22/22- a quote from the weather on today’s red flag warning and dust storm warning. “ HAZARD...Less than a quarter mile visibility with damaging wind in excess of 60 mph. SOURCE...Satellite imagery. IMPACT...Dangerous life-threatening travel.” I’m keeping the girls inside today. Day 26, I was planning to check the runoff on some of these girls, especially the fruity pebbles, however I messed that up as I also top dressed WAY too much of the seaweed bliss. So I flushed with plain RO water at pH of 7 until there was only slight coloration in the runoff. I didn’t check the runoff as a lot has changed with all that flushing. So next watering/feeding I will make sure I check the runoff on multiple plants. So the seaweed bliss with its 17 on potassium, seems to be the most likely culprit for why there is a bronze-ish color on the inside of the new growth. Hopefully a foliar feed of Epsom salts can correct the problem. Inside tent, lights on LOW. Noticing similar pattern in all of them to a degree, most noticeable in the fruity pebbles.

Day 29- I topped all of them except the little ones plus a Love Drunk and the Fruity Pebbles. I also removed the lower branches from the bottom three nodes. I didn’t feed today, instead it was plain RO water, their feed will be later in the week. My phone cut out in the video as it ran out of juice. But the discoloration inside the new growth has been outgrown, even though it is once again appearing in the next set of leaves. I really hope she hangs in there! Morning Glory stands 6” tall. The rest are approx. 5” tall and the littles about half that. Day 31- As I suspected, the whopper dose of potassium from that seaweed bliss is showing itself potentially. The not Fruity Pebbles that already has been looking off, was pushed to far with the potassium. I believe the excess of potassium to be causing a manganese deficiency. Not the magnesium found in Epsom Salt, but the other more uncommon one. I read up, did some quick research, and this is my most likely conclusion as the fruity pebbles is exhibiting almost textbook description of manganese deficiency. The cause being too much potassium. To my fortune, I found manganese from the fox farm Bushdoctor!! Also, I will add Botanicare Fulvex at half strength. Mainly to help absorption and include some Mg to help mitigate all the potassium. Fingers crossed! Tonight I will foliar feed the rest, that way they can stay out in the sun for now.

Day 38, Mexican Haze (x1) is 7” tall Morning Glory is 8” tall The remaining closely average 6” in height. Amazing dark green leaves 🌳💕🌳 Day 42, Second feed, sometimes they dry out fast and I just give them plain water before a feed on the next watering.

Day 44- I need to back off on the water nutes, I am forgetting the soil is strong enough. I will flush with plain water next time. Maybe I should do a plain water foliar feed? I’m still learning. But I think those B vitamins are keeping their metabolism high! Then I feel the need to spoon feed. After giving them much needed calcium, I start adding other things. Those Epsom Salts plus the amino acids on a plant with high metabolism receiving more B1, all while having lots of amended neem cake in the media, is going to be processing a sh*t load of nitrogen! Back to plain water. Another idea, maybe I will flush a little bit, and feed just CalMag. Day 48 I realized I haven’t gotten any pictures in for this week! Not that big of a mistake compared to the one I just corrected! The video is taken when they are back inside for the night as it a cold windy night, and they could use more light. I am not talking because I am sick and can’t talk to well. But it’s just quickly showing how they look after the whole ordeal I am about to mention. So I woke up this morning, and noticed all of the plants were showing subtle signs of a deficiency. Different deficiencies too! Some are going on the calcium deficiency, others potassium, some manganese even maybe a few others to be honest. Sometimes I could only see signs in the old leaves, and other times I would see signs in new leaves. Either way “most” of them were looking pretty good. But something about all this variability with different plants was oddly unsettling to me. I figured I had better stick the soil pH meter in there and make sure it’s not a pH issue. And to my horror, pH of barely 4.5!! More like 4.20! But honestly it was that low!!!! A miracle these plants haven’t locked out yet! But how did this happen? Yes it is all coming together for me. Every water I have been giving feed-water. I have been watering with a little runoff, but not enough runoff to manage what I was putting in! I’ve been “feed-watering” a lot more than usual because the pots are tiny and it’s super hot and mega dry during the days. Like 75-80 degrees (F) and 10-25% relative humidity lately. So no wonder they are drying out fast. All those salts left behind from last feed. So they built up, apparently pretty high. I didn’t think I was feeding too much, especially because I would get a descent amount to drain out the bottoms every time. Either way, I fed too heavy and flushed too little! So I brought out the foxfarm SLEDGEHAMMER!!!!! Did a quick flush, flushed with plain water to get the sledgehammer out, then a recheck on the soil pH meter. Comes out 6.8! So I gave feed-water at ph of 7 afterwords. They were dry enough before all of this, I conveniently avoided damping issues. Now they will dry out and receive plain pH 7 RO water on next watering. I still have lots of doubt as if I have any clue what I am doing! But so far so good. I try to support the microbes as much as possible, i definitely could use their support. And it might be because of the microbes, CalMag and fulvic acid, that has prevented lockout. But yeah the fact the pH in the soil was corrected with a flush, gives me a peace of mind. The other three from “The Hondo Titan” diary had high levels of sulfur to lime, the flush did not fix, so I repotted them in new soil with pH 7. Also those hydroton expanded clay pebbles become rich with acidic salts, because the water leaves and all the nutes and minerals are captured and stored with the pebbles. Good in small levels. But if the pot dries out every day, those pebbles will eventually make the pH meter smack the end suggesting less than pH of 3.5!!!!!!!! But no pebbles were used on these girls thankfully!!

Morning Glory - 13” Tall Ackbar OG (topped) - 12” Ackbar OG (apical) - 9” Love Drunk (topped) - 11” Love Drunk (apical) - 13.5” Love Drunk (runt) - 8.5” Mexican Haze (Healthy) - 11.25” Mexican Haze (sick) - 13.5” Fruity Pebbles RIP @ 12” The fruity pebbles was looking off when she was just a little seedling. For a number of consecutive reasons, I fell behind not 1, but 3 weeks! So to recap: I discovered why the soil pH kept dropping, as well as this size dynamic with the plant size vs. pot size. Clearly I NEEDED to get out of those little baby starter solo cups! So 2.3L pots it is! This time I added an appropriate proportion of lime. I can’t underestimate the importance of having sufficient levels of lime! Yeah another issue that will be resolved soon is my camera. Then I can take videos again! So I took only 4 pictures. Pictures of the 4 “best” in my opinion. I will get them all up soon enough. But yeah, hopefully there will be no more pH issues!!! Fingers crossed!

New week, so far the feed was recently a pinch of seaweed bliss with some fulvex, to assist with the heat. New feed will be posted soon. I am re-entering the Fruity Pebbles!! She never died, and in fact, I’d looking pretty good considering!!!!! Super cool

I know they look rough. It’s just because I didn’t want to feed them too much in those little pots, now they are getting established into bigger pots with a lot more food!

I am feeding with tps one and CalMag oac one time, then it’s back to regular tap water (well water) that comes at 8.5 pH with 156ppm of tds. The feed was approx a pH of 6.5. More importantly is the consistent soil pH which appears fixed at 6.8 I know it’s lazy! However…. I have noticed doing this to reveal to me that the soil pH is very stubborn and not easily changed by the pH of the water alone. Stuff in the water can definitely have an impact. But still, most feed waters I use don’t change the soil ph. I do make sure the pH is within a healthy range for soil, something between 6 and 7 I figure is ideal. I’ve found if there is enough lime in the mix, and as long as I don’t over feed soluble nutes, then the soil pH appears stable and fixed. With enough lime in the mix, I can ultimately arrest the soil pH at 7. It’s really cool. I thought adding too much lime would give me something potentially alkaline, and maybe it will. But I’ve added lots of lime before and still haven’t gotten past 7 pH. Maybe I didn’t add enough to go further? Nevertheless I’m not interested in going past 7. I haven’t seen any issues with the speed of growth watering with 8.5 tap water, surprisingly. As I’ve said the soil pH would read 6.8 before and immediately after watering with the 8.5 tap. So….. I’m thinking the stability of the soil pH is a positive indication that the microbes are not being subjected to pH shifts, or at least nothing substantial. I mean, at the end of the day when things are looking good, I feel like I must have something right.

Training methods include the several weeks I missed. As of this week no training. Morning Glory- 35.5” Tall Mexican Haze (in-ground)-40” Tall Mexican Haze- 33” Tall Love Drunk- 25” Tall Ackbar OG- 26.5” Tall Crazy Glue- 38” Tall The nutrients used are from a once a week ordeal. Normally it’s just tap water. I still need to update the info on the other two Love Drunks as well as the Fruity Pebbles.

Well some information needs to be updated! But in the mean time I’ll leave this here to indicate false heights, temps and nutes are entered, basically copied from last upload. Anyways my dumbass didn’t have all my branches supported properly. So probably back on the night of 140 we had a violent wind storm. I got back on day 142 to make repairs and wash off the plants.