First Grow! Ethos, Purple City, Mephisto

Day 23: Plants are growing in their new pots, and still seem healthy despite being runts. There’s a bit of curling on some leaf edges that I’m thinking could be an early sign of an issue. But I haven’t seen enough cannabis plants growing in my life to have a good sense of normal. Day 24: I just noticed that the stems have finally started getting thicker and more flexible, and losing their red tint. I can bend ‘em around without feeling they’re about to snap! They’ve been rigid toothpicks for most of the grow, so this is a nice development. Day 25: After switching to the big pots, I’m totally lost when it comes to watering. An inch below the surface, the soil didn’t seem bone-dry, but also not wet or even damp. Just… regular old cool and semi-humid soil. Is that dry enough to water? No idea. So I gave them each about 30oz of water in a wide circle around the base. Is that enough, or should I be soaking these until I get some runoff? We’ll see what happens. I also did some research on appropriate lighting levels at each stage of development to verify that I'm on target. And I am!... more or less. Photone's blog (https://growlightmeter.com/autoflowering-cannabis-lighting/) says that in the 4th week of veg, DLI should be around 30–38. I measured at about 40, so I decreased the intensity just slightly to get back into that range. Of course I know the timing of "weeks" is just approximate, especially given how I stunted these guys early on, but at least this will give me a baseline to work from in the future. Day 26: Growth seems to be speeding up, tonight for the first time I noticed an obvious size increase compared to the morning. Hooray! But on a less positive note, I was rotating the pots and accidentally dropped the Purple City from a few inches up—not a massive drop, but enough to jostle the soil and the plant quite a bit. Hopefully it won't be an issue. Day 28: Last day of week #4 and I’m happy with the progress so far! This morning the plants greeted me with a big hello. Or maybe I interrupted their sunrise yoga session. Either way, they were showing off a nice posture and significant visible growth since yesterday. It seems like it might soon be time to begin LST, but I'm not sure it's necessary yet—all of the plants’ internodal spacing is extremely tight, and there's no prominent top to bend out of the way. I'll probably give it a few days and then reevaluate.