First Barney's Growing Experience

gellrin_greenthumb Started off after sprouting most seeds in damp paper cloth / zip lock bag method. moved them into jiffy peat tablets, placed in coconut fibre pots and filled sides with additional potting soil. moved from 50W to 1000w lamp to ensure enough light is present for my plants. At the end of the week it seemed as if the medium was retaining too much moisture, yet plants seemed to take nicely to the new light despite the initial extra heat generated.

gellrin_greenthumb Early in the week several plants started drooping their leaves, most notably the Critical Kush so I decided to transplant them to new pots and a better soil mixture. Ran out of aggregate after 2 pots -.-' so I made due with small stones I use for bonsai. This makes the pots really heavy, but still provide s decent drainage. I've since got myself Perlite and will likely transfer them as soon as reasonably possible, as I don't want to disturb the roots too much this early on. The other medium I used was expanded clay aggregate I had handy.

gellrin_greenthumb 25 Aug - I checked the roots after having transplanted the girls to their new pots a couple of days ago to come to the conclusion they liked their new pots so much their roots are already sticking out the bottom... After learning about over watering last week, I find myself with a new challenge. Prevent my plants becoming root bound ! I've already transplanted Peyote Cookies #2 to a new and larger pot, but I feel I should invest in some proper potting as I underestimated their explosive root growth!

gellrin_greenthumb Started my first attempt at LST and tied some of them down. However I feel growing them in a "spiral" might be more effective to keep them low. As of this week the bottom leaves on most of them started to look "bleached", turning towards yellow in colour. The top colas on all of them look as if they have burnt tips, Pineapple Express Auto and Peyote Cookies #2 are starting to get spotty leaves as if drying out. Moisture level has been good, so I fear my grow lamp seems too powerful / close to the plants. Considering switching from 24h light schedule to 18/6 or even less PH also feels a tad high on most of them (6.7 - 7), so looking for simple ways to make the soil more acidic

gellrin_greenthumb Not much of a update for this week due to work/travel Performed a pH fix to make soil pH slightly more acidic as I felt 7.0-6.8 fluctuation was too alkaline and caused nutrient issues for the roots. they seemed to respond well to this and had decent grow, especially the autoflowers.

gellrin_greenthumb Last week I did a mild PH correction which the plants seemed to respond well too. Sadly as I was gone for a couple of days for work, my ventilation system decided to shut down on me leading the temperature in the enclosed space to ramp up to 35°C when looking at the logs... so there's some certain heat damage there. to make matters worse when preparing the water solution with mild PH correction (soil was still at 7.0 - 6.9) I accidentally messed up and used double the amount I normally use which I only found out after I watered... my plants did not respond well to this as several leaves curled upwards during the night, however not on all plants. So today I ended up taking them out of the enclosure to flush them, leave them standing on the window board for a while to remove the excessive light / heat stress as they recover from the excess acidity in the last watering.

gellrin_greenthumb Getting back on track after repotting my plants into new pots, after they finally arrived. Wasn't able to upkeep my diary due to lack of time but hopefully I can resume as normal and continue the grow. After the last mistake where I damaged my plants with overly applying PH corrector most of them seemed to have recovered slowly and are settling into their new homes. I sadly had to say goodbye to my Peyote Critical as this little one never recovered from the acid shock.