Indoor autumn 2022/winter 2023

So, had bad luck with my first attempt to grow hydro last month, so I'm keeping it safe and going soil again. Got 1x Silver Widow, 2x Mataro Blue, 2x Jack Herer and 1x The Church CBD. All the seeds went up very vigorously - I soaked them for 24 hours in water before implanting to soil and all poped up within 48 hours.

Girls are doing well, growing quite quickly. They seem to have some smaller deficiencies, but I suspect it's because of the small containers used and the starting substrate, which has low nutrition. I want to transplant them to some bigger pot ASAP.

Well, another lesson learned. I have transplanted my ladies into their final pot, cca. 15 l. And I gave them a nutrition feed - I learned, that giving such young plants in fresh new soil a feed with EC 1,5 mS/cm is not a good idea... they all got burnt heavily. Luckily I saw it just few hours later so I added a lot of pure (just pH corrected) water. And they seem to recover quite well. Just the lower leaves are burnt. I wanted to defoliate them, so not a big deal. And the growth seems not stunted at all. I plan to do a lot of training next week - topping and LST. Looking forward... ✂️🌱

Time to do some training! 😃 White Widow - just LST and minor defoliation Mataro Blue I and II - topped, after 4 days slight defoliation Jack Herer I - topped Jack Herer II and The Church CBD - FIM I have done some defoliation on the Mataros to expose the branches. JH I seems to be OK even without defoliation. The FIMed ones were left just so, have never done any FIMing before, so I'm curious how this ends up... All plants are looking healthy and strong except the nutrition burns on lower leaves.

Another week another training. At day 32 I made some major defoliation (our guinea pigs were very happy to have some fresh green salad 🐹🌱👌) on all the plants, some LST training on those two FIMed plants (the Church CBD and Jack Herer II) and some mild HST on Jack Herer I. The Silver Widow is growing wide even without any additional LST. 👍 I watered the plants with slightly diluted aquarium water 🐠 (lots of nitrogen and phosphorus...), just pH corrected. I plane to skip to flowering phase in a week or so... So excited!!! 😍

At day 35 I switched to flowering as those plants really started to go full bush... No feeding just epsom salt to supply Mg, which I think my girls lacked.

After next week first preflowers already form. 😍

Next 2 weeks of flowering. I faced nitrogen deficiency, but some feeding seemed to fix it. I slightly defoliated all the plants - just removed some small lower bud sites and few leaves. They are flowering beautifully. Mataros and Widow are a little ahead followed by Church and Jack I, Jack II being the slowest of the bunch. The Widow has already a very sweet smell reminiscent of a fruity bubble gum. Mataros on the other hand are fragrant like some oriental hash, missing the sweetness of the Widow. Church is somewhere inbetween. Jacks have no strong smell yet.

Flowers grow beautifully. I feed quite heavily with this regime: First day watering with soft feed < 1,0 mS, second day heavy feed ~ 2,0 mS, third day watering with aquarium water ~ 1,2 mS, then few days to dry off and again. The grow tent smells just gorgeous.🍭

So, the buds are forming beautifully, getting bigger every day. The smell is getting more mature as well. The Widow is losing the sweetness a little bit, emphasizing earthier notes, still very tasty. 🍭It's also the frostiest of the bunch with big resinous trichomes all around the flowers. On the other hand, Mataros are getting a little sweeter. They're maybe not as extremely frosty as the Widow but the buds are chunkier. Full out indica. The Church looks quite subtle, but seems it will be a good yielder in the end. It's extra frosty second just to the Widow- smaller trichomes, but higher amount. The aroma is very balanced - sweet, earthy, floral and also a little fruity with hints of citruses. Jack Herer II is a week or two slower than the others but is getting better every day and with No. I has the most "classical ganja" smell, lacking any fruity note.

Harvest time is not too far away! 🤩 The plants got last feeding this week. I'm going to flush them next week. They are all healthy and smell just awesome. The Church is a little bit ahead, looks like it will be the first to finish. I love the smell! It's very complex and pleasant. Mataros got some extra volume, seems they will be the best yielders of the bunch. Jacks are also maturing well, flowers get bigger and frostier every day. The smell is begining to show some signs of sweetness, which it lacked before. And the Widow is so incredibly frosty. ❄️😍❄️

As the harvest day aproaches I have flushed the plants with plain water (around 8 l/plant) to ger rid of the excess nutrients. I have intensified the ventilation as the humidity got quite high, sometimes even over 70 % in dark, because of the flushing and also of the unusual humid weather we have here now. To get some mould now would be a disaster! My aim is to be constantly under 55 % RH. Other than that, the plants are doing great as can be seen in the pictures. Silver Widow is sooo frosty and sticky and sweet, you just have to love her. 😍 The Mataros are getting chunkier every day, those will be heavy yielders! The Church CBD is not that chunky, but it's very frosty and has a beautiful scent. 👌 And the Jacks... The Jacks are coming fully to life promising very good yields. All in all I'm looking forward to harvest them next week or so.

Well, harvest time is here!!! I have prepared the Mataros and Silver Widow for harvest, leaving the Jacks and Church to flower a week more. I found out both the Qkwin lights have some malfunction - they seem dimmed even when on full power. 🤦‍♂️ Don't know when this malfunction happened and why, so cannot tell how this affects the harvest. Hopefully not much. Other than that the plants are in good shape. Especially Jack I seems very promising - buds take on volume and the trichoms produce very high amount of resin. Jack II is a little bit more airy, still seems fully OK. The Church probably got affected by the malfunction worst, so the buds, especially the lower ones aren't that chunky. Nonetheless, the scent of this plant is just great. Strong, balanced, complex and very very pleasant. To the harvest, drying and curing regime: All plants to be harvested are firstly put in darkness for at least 36 hours. After this I defoliate most of the leaves without trichomes, leaving those with at least some trichomes on. Then I chop it down and hang it upside down in a slightly ventilated room (or tent) with a 45 - 50 % RH and temperature 18 - 25 °C for roughly 4-5 days. I like to dry the plants very slowly to get the best taste. So I don't dry it out fully, the stems don't break under stress yet. I put it in some jars then, opening it few times a day. I also check it for mould issues. After I get stable RH in the jars round 60 - 64 % I open them just once a day just to change the air. I do it like this for a month or two. Then I leave it another 4 months and open it every few days to check if everything is OK. Granted, you have to taste it every here and then. 😉 And after these few months of drying/curing there will be some premium buds. This slow drying might be tedious but I found out the taste gets top class this way and is well worth it. Edit: So the lights malfunction was really easy to fix. I just disconnected the dimmer potentiometer and it suddenly started to shine full power. Well, too late for 2/3 of the plants. But I'm satisfied with the results nonetheless. Also, the drying takes longer, than stated. I wasn't able to maintain ideal temperature in the drying room (just 13-15 °C, but still humidity under 50 %), so it takes nearly twice the time. Will have some harvest reports coming soon.

This Silver Widow was a delight to grow. It had a very wide statute. I used just simple LST of the main stem, the side branches were growing so wide there was no need to tie them down. I liked that feature a lot! The buds formed nice long colas. They weren't that chunky compared to e.g. the Mataros, but they were absolutely covered in big resinous trichomes. Also thanks to that looser structure it was resistant against mould. The best thing considering the cultivation of this plant was the trimming after the harvest. That was really just a breeze. It was all so heavily covered in resin, that only the fan leaves and a few of the larger leaves neded to be removed. This also resulted in a quite high outcome: 36 g premium dry buds with very little waste.

Nice robust indica. It has very chunky buds. Had some mould issues at the end of flowering because of that. It was my fault, I couldn't keep the low humidity. But other plants handled it without problem...

This plant was quite subtle compared to the other plants, but also very vigorous all the time. Very forgiving to noob mistakes. She would definitely benefit from more defoliation. The lower parts were overly bushy and buds there very airy. Yet very frosty. It seems it was affected the most by the lights dimmer malfunction. Trichoms are a little bit smaller than those of the Silver Widow but more dense and the plant was quite covered in resin. Tried FIMing on her my first time (along with Jack Herer II), and with LST this plant formed dense even canopy. It would deserve more space and more LST to maximalise the outcome. Trimming of this plant was mediocre. Defenitely not as simple as the Silver Widow and also as the Mataros. The best thing about this plant was the smell. Since it started flowering the smell was very refined, kinda incence-like, yet sweet, but not too much, with touches of cream. Very complex and pleasant. Balanced first class smell.

The two plants were different phenos - one smaller (and maybe a little slower) and one larger. But both had very similar smell. Woody herbal. Not as sharp as JH from Green House Seeds (which I prefer a bit). It was airy at first, which helped to withstand the increase of humidity, so no mould issues. Then gaining volume and frostyness towards the end of the flowering period. It was a PITA to trim after harvest, a lot of small leaves without trichomes, especially in the lower parts. On the other hand, very resinous buds beneath them. Stronger defoliation during growth would probably help. It could use more nutrients, mainly nitrogen, as it really gained a lot of volume in the final stage after the flushing. Strong plants.