Second grow, Critical Mass indoor

Good luck and enjoy your grow!

Hey there my friend, first off CONGRATULATIONS on getting into growing this wonderful herb. It is very therapeutic growing the plant its self & I think you will enjoy it a lot! I try to offer this generalized advice to all new growers to help them off to a good start, So I hope you won't mind if I extend that same offer to you now as well. Critical mass auto sounds like a great strain to start out with. I have never grown just pure critical mass, But I have worked with strains that do have it in their genetics. They have always been great plants. Very hardy & good yielders. Anyways lets now get to some advice! 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 grower who has not learned it yet, To study and understand it & implement it into your room, Logging your numbers daily. Whether you are a new grower or an experienced grower this is something we all want to adapt into our rooms for certain. 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 do 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. When we are in flower temperature will really play a big role how our buds form up, If our rooms are too cold below 75 they will form very small buds but very very dense. If we grow our buds out at temperature over 80 degrees we get bigger buds, But they can develop airy and foxtail which we do not get much weight from. Also higher temps will defuse the resin glands over time destroying them. 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. When we do the pull down, We never want to trim the plant wet or break it down at all. We want to hang it hole in a environment set to 45-50 degrees at 60% humidity for up to 16 days. This allows the plant to break down any potential left over starches or sugars or nutrients within it during this time the plant will produce even more resin & terpenes, This is where you get the true craft cannabis finish. I will gladly answer any questions you may have & regularly assist many growers on here to achieve great harvests on their first grows. I look forward to helping you out as well :) Please feel free to reach out to me anytime. Welcome to the grow diaries community!

Beautiful grow! I was debating whether to try growing an auto….you’ve convinced me.

Nice