Use the force

Four weeks in and I was too busy celebrating the fact that they weren’t dead that I didn’t compute they were not the healthy darker green that all these monster bud growers achieve on here. I had planted the babies surrounded firstly by potting compost (in a big open box that mostly consisted of Coir and perlite) so they’d have a little feed at their own pace. But was also quite consumed with monitoring my grow box more so than my plant. I was enjoying getting the lighting, insulation, home made carbon filter, etc. all doing the business and so busy tinkering and congratulating myself that I didn’t think too deeply about my starving babies. If Social Services got involved, I’d definitely be a parent subjected to a child safeguarding order.

With my last disaster attempted grow I clipped the top once a few leaves showed up and it produced 5 grams of hay at the end so I decided to avoid topping and just bend as she goes. My box is one of those wham bam 92 Litre 59.5 x 40 x 52cm jobbies, so not topping was no small decision. There were so many ‘me made’ problems with my last attempt that I thought it best to try and avoid fighting with the plant as much as possible. Decapitating an auto flower seems a bit fighty so I left it. I also started with decent amounts of nutrients but had not bought all the biobizz range. I also didn’t realise that coir ‘steals’ a lot of the early nutrients and I had not ‘fed’ the coir or given it that sort of flush with cal/mag, etc. that people say on some of these sites. (In the picture you can see I added a layer of perlite to the top for a Christmas snow effect. I noticed a few wee flies and read about the egg laying and root killing monsters they create so read somewhere that a layer of such stuff might help. Possibly bullshit but I’m a perlite rich kinda guy these days).

Who would have thought it (everyone in the world except me). Four days after a decent feed of the recommended amounts of biobizz nutrients and they both start to grow at a pace that’s a bit closer to all the uncrowned diary stories I read to date. Still looking a bit pale but growing. I think at this stage I might have bought biobizz cal/mag and started using. Cal/mag wasn’t on the online feeding chart so I thought all it’s nutrient needs were being fully served by the patchy collection of biobizz products I bought originally (I stupidly thought the ‘trial pack’ had sufficient nutrients to see a grow through and then the other four or five bottles were unnecessary upselling arrangements)

So does this look like it’s started the flowering stage? Little hairy bits with not much substance at all. I was delighted to see them regardless.

So this is pushing into week 8 and catastrophic humidity reading all of a sudden. I have one of those temp and humidity devices hooked up to my phone via an app (I also have the plug/timer on an app so I’m very modern and down with technology don’t you know). My box temp and humidity was always around mid 20s in degrees C and humidity in and around 40 so I got complacent and stopped monitoring apart from when watering every couple of days. I didn’t compute that mature heavy breathing plant equals lots more moisture. Thought I solved the problem when I emptied the box and found a pool of stagnant water under the reflective floor. (P.S. forgot to refer to the nuts and bolts in last photo. I was using heavy wee bolts on string to gently weight down branches as they started to head north. Not much clearance in my box so was doing my LST daily).

In addition to making super soil, I’ve been looking at YouTube videos of brewing up your own organic nutrients. Korean Natural Farming methods look great and are quite enjoyable to make. Not as cheap as i initially though (shit tonne of vodka and brown sugar required) but it’s good fun. I’ve not started using the nutrients yet but when my biobizz runs out then it’s show me what you’ve got Korea. In addition to being good fun making the components, fermenting garlic, turmeric, liquorice, cinnamon and angelic root is unsurprisingly a tiny bit smelly. For a garage grow, that’s a fantastic way of addressing weed smell related paranoia. You’ll look like a serious alcoholic lugging full and empty vodka bottles around but better that then a arrestable old stoner spending a suspicious amount of time in the garage.

Coming along nicely and the green is a much darker shade. Buds are starting to look like they are forming. I think the pictures of early buds look a lot better than the reality. Even with zooming into photos, they do the limited size/thickness buds too much justice. I will remind myself of this fact when I’m looking at everyone’s pictures and awash with envy. You big bud bastards. My humidity problems have endured. I’ve bought a load of humidity control things. I also have a load of calcium chloride myself (as was going to use it to ‘wash’ charcoal and turn it into active carbon) & thinking of making a home made dehumidifier. It’s come down to a consistent 60 which I know is too high. It might be a race between cola development and mould development. Hope not but my previous disasters mean that I dare not hope.

So I gave the two babies a big old feed the night before and hard to tell with the lighting in this photo but I thought that they looked great in the AM and then by PM there were a load of yellow tips. Now from reading the whole internet and consulting with friends, I’m certain that the cause of these yellow tips is either too many nutrients or not enough or too much water or not enough. As too many nutrients is the main problem that results in death, I did a big flush with clean rain water last night. I measured the PH of that juice at 5.5. I’ve no idea what’s happening so I’m now going to just avoid nutrients for a couple of days and then start them again. It might just be the natural course of things as the buds concentrate on becoming adults? Also Mr Orange has no yellow bits and he already plays second fiddle to the larger mr Skywalker. So ignore my last post about hope, I’m choosing to be professional boxer level optimistic. I’m going to create the greatest smoke the world has ever seen.

Start of week 12 and it has been eventful. Small box and two heavy breathers means the humidity was up at 80%. Realise now I just need to take all out and dry off each day (an actual puddle in the bottom each day). That plus an electric dehumidifier seems to have got humidity down to a consistent 50% with 27c heat. (Excess water and lots of electricity- what could go wrong). Noticed one bud leaning against the damp wall started to show signs of mould or bud rot (could you look at the photo and tell me?). I chopped out the offending bit and then practiced wet trimming for the first time with the head of the bud that was far enough away from the bud rot or mould that I’m going to smoke it next week to see if it’s at all strong. I know it won’t taste great but as the saying goes curiosity and mouldy old buds killed the cat. The Skywalker is focused on at the start of the video and then to the right is the slightly less developed orange auto. If anyone can give me advice then it would be appreciated. Thanks to budfella last week for helping me realise that nutrient rich water every time is not the way to go.

I accidentally gave the babies a drink mixed with a shot of dehumidifier chemicals. I mean, there’s stiff learning curves being a first time grower but that is just thick as pig shit territory. It only dawned on me the next day and I rapidly flushed. Think the orange bud is looking a little healthier, but they are both hanging in there. Chemicalicious.

Day 97 and the grow box is battling to stay at 16 degrees as the garage drops to -2 degrees. I made my first ever compost tea for a batch of homemade super soil that I’m feeding. I gave the girls a drink of that yesterday, although stopped with the biobizz nutrients a few days ago. Will stick to water and slowly flushing from now on. It’s finally started to smell a wee bit like weed but it’s not noticeable in amongst all my fermenting jars of the various homemade KNF nutrients. I’d highly recommend getting into making your own KNF nutrients….lots of good fun. I started making Fish Amino Acid tonight so the whole garage is looking a bit like I rented storage space to Jeffrey Dahmer. In the video, the first plant on screen is the Skywalker and the smaller one is the. Orange bud. Both have not grown much in last few days (16 degrees or end of life territory?). I’m looking out for the clear to milky but I can’t really tell with my shitty magnifying glass. I’m fed up smoking ‘session weed’ and got Skywalker on the go in the hope I can tap into that 26% thc they boast about. So don’t want to chop it too early. The second I see one amber trichome, auld Luke is getting the chop. May then leave the orange bud for a bit longer to see if less competition causes it to bulk a bit.

Another week under the belt and I’m not sure how much longer to leave these two. Starting to smell a bit more like weed but still waiting on the clear to opaque transition. All I want for Christmas….

I’m still unsure about the difference between clear and milky but with them being a few weeks over, starting to look like they’ve seen better days and with me heading off for a few days over the Christmas period, I decided to chop. Did the skywalker chop the day before yesterday and quickly noticed that humidity problems will continue to haunt me in these home made grow boxes of mine. It got to 98% in the ‘dry room’ yesterday. Now I have both Luke and the Orange bud hanging in the one box since last night. I have a small humidifier and extractor fan on the case now so hopefully that plus neglecting them almost completely from the 27-31st will involve me returning to a couple of decent bushes instead of two lumps of blue cheese looking tragedies. Mr Skywalker weights just over 4 ounces whilst wet and I bloody forgot to weigh the orange bud last night but guessing half that (with quite a bit of bushy waste to chop away on the orange….it lived in Luke’s shadow throughout). That’s about it for now. I’ll do one more post - probably to detail my next fuck up knowing how things have progressed so far. If I get through this freezing cold (3-5 degrees) drying period then I’ll dare to dream about getting my hands on a decent smoke. Be nice not to have to buy from the local dealer…..although his stuff always smells and is a lot stronger than any home grown I’ve tasted so far…..delicious spray on chemicals.

Chopped and hung for a week before dry trimming. The skywalker was 4.6oz whilst wet and then 2.6oz just before I dry trimmed. I bought a trimming scissors but abandoned it in favour of a small curved at the end nail scissors. That did the job nicely. After a couple of days in jars with regular burping the humidity stayed up at 80% (even with the humidity control pack) so they are back in the box (heard if the weed goes over 50% humidity then it means I’ve started curing too soon and they should come back out????). Not sure the cold weather and humidity creeping into the early 70s is going to work well for drying, but fingers crossed. I’ve just germinated another skywalker haze tonight and will see how my homemade super soil and KNF nutrients compare in weight and taste to this current grow. Oh the orange bud had a few decent buds but not much. Learned the term ‘larfy’ when looking into what to do with those under-developed ones. Next time I’ll be braver about trimming those low down larfy looking bastards as they appear later on in the grow. Two plants in the homemade box was a little too much so will stick to one from now on. I’ll do one more post with the final scores on the doors once all dry and tested. Also I’ve the trim and larfy ends in the freezer. Going to see if I can make a wee bit of hash. Also going to buy hair straighteners to bust up a few buds and see what comes out.