Mephisto's Wedding and Sour Stomper

12/10 Day 1 is here. Removed the humidity domes and turned on the humidifier. The humidifier seems to be a bit erratic with turning off and on, hopefully it’s at least usable as the RH in my room right now is mid 20s. We’ll see. 12/11 Humidifier was empty when I got home, monitor read 56% RH inside the tent. At least nothing too bad happened. Moved the humidifier inside the tent instead of blowing in through the vent. Readjusted light intensity to 200 PAR / 14.4 DLI. 12/13 Temps have been fairly cool, typically high 60s during day and low to mid 60s at night. RH is typically about 60%. I’ll experiment with a space heater soon. 12/14 Space heater has arrived. It definitely fixes my temperature issue, but now I have an RH issue. Also I’ve noticed that the wedding cake is growing faster than the stomper. I moved the environment probe over to the right and sure enough the RH was way lower over there since I had the vent opened. The whole pot is a lot lighter too. Closed the side vent so now only the back vent is open. Misted the top layer of both to help boost the RH a bit 12/15 The space heater combined with the new humidifier, as well as closing the side vent on the tent, has made a noticeable difference. The sour stomper is back on track and the wedding looks great. Daytime conditions are now low to mid 70s and RH between 50-60%. 12/16 I discovered that this humidifier when set to warm mist can actually keep the tent warm enough all by itself. One less thing to worry about now. Both seedlings look great.

12/18 I switched up the positions in the tent so Sour Stomper is now left and the Wedding is now right. Adjusted light to 220 PAR / 15.8 DLI. Environment has been solid since installing the new humidifier. 12/20 Added ½ tsp of recharge to my bubbling tap water and got the pH to 6.7. Only let it bubble for about 10 minutes before taking a small cup and adding in several cups worth of it. Not gonna measure out water for now as it feels a little unnecessary. 12/22 Gave them a small misting/watering. Upped the light to 250 PAR / 18 DLI 12/23 New exhaust system from Spider Farmer was installed. I still need to tweak the settings a bit to dial it in but it should be a solid upgrade for environment. Adjusted light to 290 PAR / 20.9 DLI

12/24 Pots were getting very light so I figured I’d give them a good watering. Each probably got around a ¼ gallon of 6.5 pH tap water 12/25 Both look super happy and show plenty of visible growth. I added a little water, probably about ¼ gal (pH 6.8) to the bottom trays of each to get some bottom watering in. All water was sucked up in a matter of minutes. Pots are probably around a medium weight right now, don’t think I need to go any further until they dry out a bit again. Light adjusted to 325 PAR / 23.4 DLI 12/27 Went ahead and did the first feeding today. Gaia Green takes about 2 weeks to become available to the plant, which means it will kick in around week 4-5. Bottom watered both with about another ¼ gallon of tap water, pH 6.7. Sprayed the top layer pretty well. Next big watering I’ll use recharge to make sure I have the microbes working still. 12/28 Light adjusted to 350 PAR / 25.2 DLI

1/1 Pots were getting light so I mixed up some recharge water for both. Ended up being around ¼ gallon up top with another ¼ gallon bottom watered. Sour stomper was beginning to show some stretch while the Wedding is staying a bit more squat. To keep them even I did LST on SS and only leaf tucking on the wedding. Light adjusted to 410 PAR / 29.5 DLI 1/4 Pots were getting light again. Both took about ¾ gallons of water, top and bottom. Keeping up with leaf tucking but for now have not done any additional LST. 1/5 Lots of growth since yesterday. Did more LST on the Stomper and did a lot of leaf tucking on the Wedding. Maybe just the first signs of light stress, some light tips on some leaves and a few twisted leaves on both plants. Raised the light height a good bit, new reading of 380 PAR / 27.4 DLI

1/7 True to Mephisto’s description the Wedding has an almost perfectly even canopy by only leaf tucking so far. Very impressed with how low maintenance the Wedding has been. Just starting to see the beginning of buds forming so we’re officially in flower now. Growth looks good, but SS is showing some burnt tips on the top leaves for sure now. I can’t be sure if this is from before the last adjustment or if it’s new but since my last plants all turned yellow and crispy, I’m gonna go conservative here and lower the light again to 350 PAR / 25.2 DLI. I'm also starting to wonder if my PAR meter is giving me lower numbers than I'm actually putting out. Would connect the dots on why I've been struggling. 1/8 Checking in on them later in the day showed plenty of good growth, though it’s about time to water again. I’ll put that off until tomorrow. SS had a praying look to the top leaves and that’s happening after lowering my light intensity twice over the past 3 days. Obviously I was blasting them with too much light. Other than that though I redid LST on SS and even did a little bit of LST to the Wedding. I was going to let that one go with just leaf tucking but it is getting pretty bushy. I also cleaned up the bottom leaves from both, really just the single bladed leaves and a couple small ones that weren’t getting light, nothing too crazy. 1/9 Watered today with dechlorinated tap water, pH 6.9, and with some silica mixed in. Each got about ¾ of a gallon, about half a gallon from up top and about a quarter gallon bottom watered. 1/10 The plants are starting to stretch, so I readjusted the light higher again to get a new setting of 360 PAR / 26 DLI. Redid LST on the SS 1/11 SS is starting to really stretch more than the Wedding. Mephisto has them both listed at very similar sizes though, so I’m assuming the Wedding just needs a little bit more time to catch up (they also state the Wedding is a little slower paced, so maybe that makes sense). I can’t really LST the SS down any more to make them even, so I improvised a riser for the Wedding to get them to an even canopy. This lead to a new light setting of 370 PAR / 26.6 DLI. 1/12 Both pots were extremely dry, which was kind of shocking. Either way both got a little over ¾ of a gallon of Recharge water, pH 6.9. I’m sticking with mostly watering from the top (due to top dressing in the dry organic nutes), but also giving a good shot to the bottom of the pot and letting it absorb in through the fabric. 1/13 Both seemed to love the recharge watering from yesterday. Obvious stretch and more bud development. Redid LST and did a round of defoliation to both. Light readings at the canopy are 400 PAR / 28.8 DLI

1/14 It’s getting colder at night and last night I noticed my temps in the middle of the night dropped to about 62. Fortunately I have a space heater and plugged that in until morning when the lights came back on, but I’m going to start slowly transitioning to a 24 hour light schedule to combat that. For now I have upped it to 21/3 which gives a new DLI of 30.2. I had some leftover silica water from another grow so each got a small shot, maybe ¼ gallon each. I also did more LST and defoliation. 1/15 Pretty sure I’m still seeing signs of light stress. Pretty wild, considering I’ve been lowering the light intensity far below what I thought would be ideal. I adjusted the light again now to 380 PAR / 28.7 DLI. At this point I’m convinced that my PAR meter is just wildly wrong. I’ll still use it to ballpark what’s going on, but I have to assume what numbers I’m getting are much lower than they really are. 1/16 The stretch has finally kicked in for the Wedding. SS is still stretching too, and it still looks like there’s some signs of light stress going on. I lowered the dimmer on the light by a smidge hoping that this finally keeps things ok. Very odd to be continuously lowering the light intensity in flower instead of increasing it. Both got a good amount of recharge water today. 1/17 Amazingly the SS was already almost dry and needed more water. The wedding was drying up as well but not as bad. Decided to do a small top dressing of 2 Tbsp seabird guano and about 2 tsp of bat guano. Figured that’d act as sort of a bloom booster. SS got around a gallon of water and about ¾ gallon for Wedding. Readjusted my light to a 20/4 light schedule and 415 PAR / 29.88 DLI. I’ll need to have the space heater on at night regardless so no point doing anything crazy with the schedule. 1/18 Big defoliation day. Both are now much airier and have less larf sites. The Sour Stomper just keeps stretching. With my light up as far as I can get it it’s still only about 16 inches away from canopy height. Both have a decent amount of water in them so I’ll probably look to water again tomorrow. 1/20 Watered both today with silica water, pH about 6.8. Also top dressed in 4 Tbsp of just Gaia Green Power Bloom. That should take them until chop down day. Still getting faint signs of light burn which at this point is just mind blowing. The SF2000 is as high up as I can get it without doing some mods and is at about 65% on the dimmer. I lowered it down to 60% and I assume that’s where it will stay. Clearly my PAR meter is junk or there’s some other reason why I can’t increase the light intensity to where it should be.

1/22 After some conversations I think I’ve determined the source of my issues. Using primarily coco for organics I guess has some drawbacks and it’s possible that’s why each grow has similar problems around this time. Only thing I can think of to do is top dress in some worm castings mixed in with some more Coco Loco to top off the pots, and then tomorrow I’ll water in the compost tea that I just set up to brew. After that I’ll be doing recharge in almost every watering. Going to try maxing out the microbe content for each pot as much as possible. Along with this I’ll be steadily raising the light intensity to where it should be. Current light setting is 490 PAR / 35.2 DLI. 1/23 Top dressed in about 2 cups of Coco Loco and 1 cup of worm castings to both. Since my coco medium isn’t doing a great job of handling organics I’ll just have to turbo charge the microbe level as much as I can. Both also got a compost tea that I started brewing yesterday. Readjusted the light to 600 PAR / 43.2 DLI. I wanted to go gradual but I’m also curious if they will take that hard step up in light. 1/24 Everything looks really good. I have a good feeling so long as I keep up with recharge and water from here on out it should be fine. 1/25 Both got a full watering with recharge. 1/26 Buds getting fatter and frostier. Looks good.

1/28 Everything looking great still. 1/29 Pots were light come evening time again so both got water. Tonight was also probably the first time I noticed when opening the tent I was immediately hit with a wave of sour grape smell. Also the Wedding is getting noticeably chunky. Both are on the right track. 1/31 Both got recharge water tonight. Also I adjusted the light to max power and max height, which brings it up to about 750 PAR / 54 DLI. This is definitely up there, but let’s see if they can take it. 2/2 Both were watered in the morning. Feels like the grow is on autopilot now and I’m just watering until chop.

2/4 The furnace shit the bed in the middle of the night. By the time I noticed all my tents were at 52 degrees F and lord knows how long they were like that. I got the space heater up and running and quickly got the temps back to where they needed to be, but I’m not sure how much this will hurt them. 2/5 Both got recharge water. The fade is setting in pretty well for the Stomper now, so that’s getting close. I know the Wedding is supposed to take a little longer but they are a matched pair that will also dry together. It’s unfortunate I probably won’t get to the real end of that one’s life cycle but it still looks great and should be great weed regardless. 2/7 Both were light and got water. 2/8 Pots were medium light, but since I needed to water the other plants anyways they got topped off

2/9 No need for water today. Both keep bulking up, looking great 2/10 Watered both today. Starting to wonder if I really gain much more by waiting longer or if I should just chop em down. If I do chop it’ll likely be tomorrow as that’s the most convenient time to do it. We’ll see. 2/11 Chop down day. The fade was getting more aggressive and honestly I haven’t had any smoke in over a month now. Hopefully next run I’ll have more time to get to the very last day. The tent was cleaned up after taking the plants out, light removed, humidifier added, and environment settings changed. It should get nice and chilly in the tent at night but mid day I’m looking at about 65 degrees and 55% RH

I came into this grow with high expectations. My last Sour Stomper got chopped early due to issues, but the effect from it was probably the best day smoke I ever had. Extreme euphoria, plenty of giggles, and energy enough to do things around the house. This time around the effect is slightly different, less of the extreme euphoria and more of a typical 50/50 "yeah, I'm baked" feeling. The potency is certainly there, and the flavor even before a proper cure is exactly what I expected with the sour grape. I am a little sad this particular seed produced a more generic effect as opposed to the super uniqueness of the last one, but this being only my second grow of this strain I can't say for certain which is more representative of the strain. I'll likely try it again soon. Final yield from this one plant was 2.7 ounces.

TBD