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Germination using the paper towel method preceded by a 14-18 hours soak period.
Once germinated, the plate was put in the oven with only the light active and a slight opening of the oven door which produces a 25°C temperature.
An aluminium tent was put on the plate to shield the paper from the oven light which would also allow the air to circulate.
Once the root is about 1/2 inch, I transplanted into a cup pot with Promix HP misted with bottled water.
Concerns:
For the germination, I had a decent environment in the oven and also the grow tent. I had good temperature (25-26 with light on, 20-22 light off) but horrible humidity. I tried to mist some water often and add some water buckets to evaporate but it isn't enough. RH% is around 40-50 with some dips to 25-30. I'll have to get a humidifier, at least for the germination period when the plant doesn't perspire much.
Timeline:
18/02/2023: Put the seed in the glass of water
18/02/2023: Seed cracked open with visible root starting to peek out 14 hours later at which point it was transferred to moist paper towels on a plate.
20/02/2023: Taproot visibly exiting the shell.
21/02/2023: Taproot is now long enough to be planted. Moistened my Promix HP and put it in a small cup into which I planted the taproot/seed. Light is raised all the way up to provide some light and heat.
22/02/2023: I have started preparing the Promix HP 7gal pot by watering it lightly which will also act as a humidifier.
23/02/2023: Main stem is out of soil, the cotyledon should follow within the next few hours.
24/02/2023: Cotyledon came out in the past 24h and is now straight and aiming its leaves at the light.
25/02 - 03/03
Nothing big happened. The roots and leaves are growing nicely.
I had some humidity problems early on as I could not keep the RH% high enough even if I misted water constantly. RH% would vary between 40-60% during the day and would drop to 30% at night.
I added a humidifier on the 26th which made it much easier to keep the RH% around the 50-60% range.
For watering, I used only tap water that had been left to evaporate its chlorine content.
I soaked the bottom of the grow cup for about 5 seconds so it would absorb water but not be drenched (no water leaking after pulling it out). I did this the first two times to ensure my peat moss would hold water. I also misted the top soil and leaves several times a day when it started to look dry.
First two sets of leaves are well underway. The roots are well established as I can see them poking out from the bottom of the cup. The cardboard cup fits in the pot elevator so I hope it will keep the roots safe and secure for a few more days.
Next week, I will start easing some nutrients in the water to bolster the growth as well as harden the plant for the transplant which will happen much earlier than I thought.
I have started feeding nutrients on 04/03.
I am using the GH FloraSeries Performance Pack which, from what I understand, is being phased out and they do not provide the feed charts for it anymore. After contacting GH, they told me to use the 10-part feed chart while skipping the stuff I do not have. The only product that is not on there is the FloraBlend which I have found in an older feed chart. I will be merging the FloraBlend from that older chart to the current 10-part feed chart (light) and see how that goes.
For the first feed, I am using the seedling regiment @ 10% strength that I gradually increased to 50%.
Nutrients above is the average for the week.
Issues:
My inline fan is not powerful enough to work with the carbon filter. I've removed the filter for now as it's not necessary but I will have to look into getting a centrifugal fan or find a way to reduce the static pressure to increase the exhaust airflow.
Had some leaf wilting and yellowing issues. At first, I thought it was overwatering but I saw no improvements after letting the soil dry up almost fully. I now believe I may have been under feeding and/or the pot is too small for the roots. By increasing nutrients to 50%, I saw huge improvements within 24h.
Next week: I will gradually increase nutrients to fit week 2 schedule. I will also have to transplant as the roots are really starting to poke out of the holes.
I had to transplant this week as the initial pot wasn't doing it anymore. Unfortunately, the cardboard pot did not work as intended (it was supposed to break down) and worst, it made transplanting almost fatal for the plant. The soil would stick to the pot no matter what I did so everything sort of disintegrated when I cut the cardboard off. The plant was NOT happy, but thankfully, it did recover.
I was also way too slow at increasing dosage for nutrients and I saw some major color changes. I moved to week 2 of the feeding schedule at 100% strength. First feeding I went easy not to overwhelm the freshly transplanted plant (is that even a thing?) by pouring 50% of the previous schedule and 50% of the new schedule. On the last day of this week, I will feed it again with runoff.
After getting the transplant and nutes in properly, the plant really started getting better and growing fast again.
I did notice some color changes such as dark orange on the new growth followed by some light greens on the leaf veins. The orange patch seemed to recover on its own for now and the light green doesn't look too concerning. I'll see how it progress so I'll keep an eye on it.
Light color hasn't changed much. I think it's my dumbass that kept misting the leaves when the light was on... So I stopped doing that.
I waited for some slight drooping before feeding (21/03) which was 3-4 days since last feeding. The plant is clearly drinking more as I had to feed again on the 23rd and 25th.
Overall good progress, the 4th pair of leaves are well underway and the 5th pair started to appear.
Transplant to final pot should occur early next week and I should be able to top shortly after that.
Transplanted on the 26th before lights out. It went much smoother than the first time as I had a non porous container this time around and setup my 7 gal pot properly beforehand.
There was, however, an incident... While I was off washing my tools, I left the tent opened a tiny bit and my cat went in and ate some leaves. It took a bite off the tip of the 3rd leaf, ate a full side blade off of the 4th leaf and ate the main and side blade off of the 5th leaf. I hope the plant and cat will be ok. Since damage to the 3rd and 4th leaf pair is minimal, I may just top the 5th pair if it is not doing terribly well.
27/03: Everything looks ok, the plant perked up and is doing great. I'll keep last week's nutrient ratios for now but severely increase the amount of water given as it seems to be drying so much faster (probably due to the major increase pot size).
28/03: Noticed some yellowing on the top leaves, figured that I did not raise the light enough after changing pots. Raised the light back to 30 inches. I also watered with pH'd water only as I had not done that yet. I also used this opportunity to find how much water is needed to obtain runoff to limit mineral buildup in the future. Found that I get ~10% runoff at 3.5L when watering slightly beyond the leaves leaving a 1-2 inch ring of unwatered soil. When I water the whole pot, I should need ~1 gal for my 7 gal pot to obtain that amount of runoff (did that test with only soil a while back).
01/04: Plant is doing amazingly well considering it's still running off of water only. Pot seems to have lightened up a bit and may be able to feed at light off or tomorrow at light on.
Started the week by feeding with last week schedule.
The smell started to become a problem which forced me to prioritize my exhaust filter problem. Managed to clean the pre-filter and fix the high static pressure areas and the exhaust air filter is now working nicely.
The next day, I topped above the 7th node as light was starting to be too strong. I still have some room to raise the light but not much.
Over the next few days, I will be stretching the new stems horizontally by pushing it for now and adding a net later. I will also need to defoliate the lower levels that don't get any light.
Edit: After consideration, the yellow tips I was getting near the top was probably due to underfeeding and not light burn.
I had some yellow spots starting to appear in batches as well as a few dark brown spots after raising my lamp thinking it was due to light burns. After some research, it was most probably due to nutrient deficiency (most probably potassium deficiency). I moved my feeding schedule to the late veg quantities and that seemed to have stopped these issues from spreading. After a few days, they seemed to have receded as well.
I had to defoliate the lower level leaves again as more of them stopped growing and stayed in the shade.
I originally wanted to top twice, but seeing the secondary branches growing, I doubt I'll have the space for that 2nd top to go anywhere. I'll start ScrOG and see if that is necessary. For now, I'm only doing simple LST to spread the nodes.
Light from the picture will change on the 12th as I lowered the light a bit more now that I know the discoloration was not due to light burn.
This week, I will install the ScrOG net and start spreading the nodes around which will probably mean that this is my last veg week due to space restrictions.
At the end of last week, I did a final water only feed and the plant seemed to immediately show signs of nutrient deficiency. I will stop doing the feed/feed/water regiment and only feed with decent runoff to help with the salts buildup.
Changed to fisheye camera mode and ditched the glasses I used as lense as it was getting increasingly difficult to get the whole plant in the shot.
Switched to 12/12 light schedule on 23/04.
Hopefully I can use the vertical height that the ScrOG bought me to compensate for plant stretching as the plant has mostly spread to the whole net area already. There is still some space left in the net, but there is little hope to keep it horizontal until the stretch period ends.
Noticed a bit of nutrient burn symptoms over the past few feedings, so I reduced the ppm for my first flower feed (switched from GH's medium to light schedule).
Nothing big for this week other than keeping light distance in check, making sure to defoliate big leaves that prevent lower branches from getting light.
Had some issues giving enough water to ensure proper runoff to clean salt buildup but I think I have the quantity down for next week (should be around 2.5 gal per feed).
Next week: Big defoliation to remove most of the fan leaves and expose the bud sites to light/air.
On first feed of the week, I will be doing massive defoliation to give all bud sites some access to light and air. This will coincide with this week's first watering on 08/05 (probably).
Other than that, I hope we are done with the stretch as I only have 4 inches left to raise the lamp. At this point, if the stretch still goes on I will leave them closer than 18-20 inches and see what happens. Not like I can do much anyway.
09/05
After letting the soil dry a bit too much, the plant was stressed after watering (clawing up/heat stress). I did the defoliation on the following day when the plant looked better and the results look great.
I had to raise the lamp to the highest point I can without obstructing the lamp's exhaust. I have 20 inches with the majority of the canopy, but the extra tall branches are at 16.5 inches from the light. The space between these branches & lamp doesn't seem to cause issues.
Other than that, nothing really out of the ordinary this week. I simply kept feeding the mid-bloom formula while keeping an eye out for fan leaves that grow too large.
Same as week 12 where I keep feeding as per formula and removing big fan leaves that occupy a bit too much space and prevent light from penetrating.
I had some slight humidity problems this week (it was raining and humid) but nothing too dramatic. I managed to keep it below 50% RH most of the time.
This week was rough with our second heat wave (thanks climate change!). I had to keep the tent opened as the AC and air circulation wasn't good enough.
So I was on cat surveillance duty to avoid another CATastrophe! >_<
I think I managed to keep it under 26C at the top of the canopy for most of the heat wave which isn't ideal, but not overly dramatic. The plant doesn't seem to show any signs of heat stress, so I must be doing something right.
Figured the top down pictures won't change much from now on, so I selected a bud to take a close-up picture until the end. Trying to keep the same angle, but without a fixed point it'll be really hard.
Nothing big to note this week. We had cooler weather which helped a lot. The weight of the buds is starting to show when comparing the start/end overall picture.
I'm not entirely sure how I'll keep the branches from collapsing under their own weight. For now they seem to hold themselves with the walls of the tent. The leaves keep the bud from being on the walls and the airflow seems adequate so I shouldn't have mold problems.
The slight browning on the tip of the leaves is pretty much widespread at this point, so I moved to the next week on the feeding chart. Since I don't have most of the nutrients included in the 10 part schedule, I moved to the 3 part schedule. This is the last documented week before the 'flush' which I will only do on the final 2-3 days.
I expect to keep feeding for 2-3 weeks still, as the pistils are still quite white. I also noticed some brown patches in the middle of a few (2-4) leaves. I'm deciding to ignore this unless it spreads to more leaves.
I'll try to get a lens to get some trichome pictures for next week.
Hot and humid temps for this week, so more cat sitting while the tent is open to allow extra airflow. The smell is somehow less intense compared to 2 weeks ago. Not sure what this means, hopefully nothing bad (or I just got used to it XD).
Pistils are about 50-60% amber while trichomes are mostly cloudy with the rare amber (like 1 or 2 per bud). I think the estimate of 1-2 extra weeks until harvest still holds.
Good first experience overall. I did not expect the growth spur of early flower to be this intense, I only had 1-2 inch of space above the light which was a bit concerning. Combined with the early heat waves we had and the longer flower period, I had lots of issues with temperature as I got closer to harvest.
Next time, I will start growing from August until end of December so that I don't have the same issues later in the grow. I will also try to do a better job at training the plant to keep it low and also probably cut a lot more branches to reduce the number of very small colas.
l0rcas
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