4) FastBuds / Lemon Pie Auto / MicroGrow

Please refer to my first three diaries for more technical details about how I grow, including my feed schedule, LST/ScrOG strategy, etc. It's all the same always, basically. Flowering lamp was brought in on Day 42. If you know my general growing strategy by now, you know this means I wanted a smallish plant this time. I want to take a few weeks off in the summer after this grow from growing so that I don't have to run my AC into the ground, running it all day. Also, it's been a long but fun and rewarding year of growing. Need a break. So a small plant of a strain I had never grown before seemed fine to me. I had been wondering if a small plants gave me higher quality buds, anyway, so I wanted to test that. We'll see. And most importantly, if installing on Day 42 as opposed to say Day 35 like my prior grow led to a small plant, than the theory blue/red spectrum management was a way to control plant size would seem a pretty viable one by now - considering that this strain is supposed to be a slightly larger strain than all the others I've grown so far. So that's what went into the Day 42 installation decision. I think by looking at the pictures and videos above, you'll see this went as planned. Plant doing well. She had a bout with light burn, or LED-light-induced-deficiency, depending on which theory you believe. 😂 It looked like septoria. But it wasn't. It never turned brown, never saw spores, and it stopped spreading. It stopped progressing when I raised the lamp from 12 inches (a test I was doing) to about 14 inches, so I then figured it was light burn. This had me watching MIGRO videos on YouTube out of curiosity, since they seemed to be well-versed in "lamp logic." Daily Light Integral. Interesting concept. Made me wonder if a 95W can REALLY drive a good quality monster-grow? Just not enough PPFD? My logic goes like this: Sure, you can flood the plant with red spectrum light in the beginning of the stretch - a time when, from what I've recently read, the DLI requirements are relatively low, and get a plant with long branches and stacked buds. But a few weeks later when DLI needs rise, if the plant had a mouth, it would say, "Excuse me, sir, but what's with this baby lamp?" So weeks later, when she reaches "maturity" she has some airy buds. Yeah, that last grow gave me, like, 40% airy buds, despite the yield. Makes sense. I mean, if PPFD is on the lower end of acceptable when it hits the canopy, the light that reaches, say, 10 inches lower is prolly unacceptable. So you end up with beautifully dense buds up top, but less dense further down the branch. The buds from my second grow were still the best of all. And my second grow was a shorter plant. I'm thinking, because she was a smaller plant, her DLI requirements were lower, so her ability to fill out was better (and faster). And since the colas were shorter, light penetration was good enough. Know what I mean? Easier to blow a birthday balloon than a hot air balloon. Right? Larger size requires more energy? Maybe. Dunno. Makes me wonder. So I might be sticking to this size plant from now on. Let's see how this one goes. But I'm encouraged by her chunky buds and frostiness, so far, and I think she won't be harvested until Day 98. I want to go long with this one. See what I find out. Running 20 hour schedule at this stage because I found a "Target DLI" curve at DeBacco University, and when I ran DLI calculations for my lamp, I figured that 20 hours were appropriate at this time. Have a great grow day! Check out my YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtLdjlvS0mK9Pu3pkumUu-w