Winter/Spring 2023

3/1/23: sterilized soil last night and let it cool overnight. Planted 6 peat pellets (5 double grape and 1 strawberry nuggets) today and officially pulled the plug on the one strawberry nuggets that was not growing and hadn’t showed any change for several days. Water only, at least another two weeks. No water needed now as plugs are hydrated and soil is still moist from sterilization. 3/4: first water since planting the peat pellets. Gave each plant a half gallon of water @ pH 6.6 3/5: increased dimmers on SF2000 & SF4000 from 40% to 60% 3/6: set-up my CO2 generator, which is a citric acid-baking soda reactive chamber. No way to measure ppm or flow, but set needle valve so it is releasing 5-10 bubbles/second. 3/7: watered all plants with a little less than half gallon of water for each @ pH 6.5

3/8: conditions are prime now with addition of CO2 boost. I expect to see some serious growth this week. 3/11: just at 10 days from when I planted the sprouts. Increased the dimmer intensity on the 2000 & 4000 watt lights from 60% to 80% and gave each plant about 1/3 of a gallon of water @ pH 6.5. 3/12: with dimmer increased to 80% the temps started creeping up to 77F, which is about the limit of where I like to go. That also means temperature will be a parameter I need to control for, but it is every cycle. So, I added a second humidifier and an oscillating fan to the intake. Then, I took some time to dial in the speeds of the exhaust and intake fans. My tent has one 6” AC infinity Cloudline S6 exhaust (490CFM) with a speed controller and no carbon filter (for right now); one 4” vivosun fan (190CFM) with a speed controller and carbon filter as an active intake; and one passive intake with just a carbon filter and no fan. Dialing in the fan speed ratio will ensure that there is a good transfer of air in and out of the tent- not too much negative pressure and not too much positive pressure. Learned this last cycle when I upgraded my setup and wrongly assume “more power” for everything is best- which isn’t the case. I do this by trial and error- set temp and humidity controllers to desired setting (75F and 70% RH); plug intake and exhaust fans into cooling plug of temp controller; set fan speeds; seal up tent; watch a few exhaust cycles and time how fast the measured temperature decreases when the exhaust cycle kicks on using a stopwatch on my phone or a data logger; adjust fan speeds and repeat until I find the combination that has the fastest temperature decrease. Once I have the fan settings optimized and I know the frequency needed to maintain the temperature where I want it, I unplug the intake and exhaust fans from the temperature controller and plug them into a short interval timer set slightly faster than what I think I need. For example, I watched a few cycles and the fans were going 4min off 7min off to keep the temp at 75F and humidity at 70%. So, I set short interval timer to 4min30s on and 6min30s off. 3/13: first feeding at about half dose of what is recommended by Advanced nutrients.

3/21: week 4 began. Seeing very first stages of flower. So, bumping the feeding dose up a little bit this week. Training was done in week 3 but continues.

3/28: start of week 5. Lowered humidity following the VPD chart and based on ambient temperature, which is around 75 degrees. Light intensity was also adjusted to 100% (dimmer off) on SF4000 and SF2000. All girls are thirsty as the stretch continues. Gave each plant a half gallon of water @ pH 6.4 74F. 3/29: bumped the feeding dose a little for MGB and supplements, and also added Big Bud to the line-up now that the second week of flower has started. Continuing with LSTing and light pruning/trimming only where necessary. 3/30: feed, light trim, training. 3/31: water, light trim, training. The Feed-feed-water-feed-feed-water cycle will continue from now until flush. Each plant is receiving 0.33-0.50gal/day of feed or water, but that should slow down a little once the stretch stops. Next week (Week 6) I’ll bump MGB up to 7.5mL/gal while keeping supplements at 7ml/gal until the flush, which I expect to be another 5-6 weeks followed by a 7-10 day flush. Since I’m running autoflowers I will stay at ~50% of max dose for MGB shown in the Advanced Nutrients feeding calculator, which is ~15.5mL/gal during flower.

4/4: start of week 6. Bumped MGB to 8mL/gal and kept supplements at 7mL/gal. Will monitor to see if they look hungry or show signs of being over fed. Continuing with feed-feed-water-feed-feed-water cycle, LSTing, and light trimming as needed.

4/11: start of week 7. Feed-feed-water-feed-feed-water cycle continues with same dose of nutes (8 mL/gal) and supplements (7 mL/gal). Keeping up with the LSTing and trimming as best as possible. I find 6 plants in 3gal pots to be a good balance- sizable yields (return), reasonable nutrient volumes (cost), and it doesn’t require too much of my time to take care of plants (investment). Steady as she goes for another 30-50 days and then they’ll be ready to chop. For the last 10-15 days I’ll stop using nutrients and only feed with water and Flawless Finish.

4/18: start of week 8. More of the same. Feed-feed-water-feed-feed-water continues. A few double traps appear to be a little farther than the others. Probably 2-3 weeks left before the flush for the ones that are far along and perhaps another 3-4 weeks for the others that are a little farther behind.

4/25: start of week 9 and the plants are 57 days from sprout. Feed-feed-water-feed-feed-water continues. They are really chunking up and putting on weight, and the photos from each week show it. Light pruning, only as needed, and also hand pulling yellow fan leaves that can be easily removed. Still working to train bendable branches to open up the center of plant. Probably 30-40 days left based on past experience, but I’ll start checking trichomes with my scope at the end of week 9, which should be about 65 days from sprout. 4/28: fan leaves are fading to yellow. Manually plucking fan leaves that have yellowed and can be easily removed with fingers. Dropped humidity a little (set at 58%) and increased exhaust time cycle to keep tent cool. Planning on discontinuing Big Bud around the end of Week 9 but I will continue feeding with other base nutes/supplements for another week or two before starting a two week flush that alternates between water only and Flawless Finish + water.

May 1: start of week 10. Should be the final week of feeding before flush for 4/6 with 2 needing perhaps an additional week. May 4: switched to water only for all 8 plants. May 7: fed 4/6 Flawless Finish to start the formal flushing process, which should go for a total of ~10 days and daily waterings will alternate between water and Flawless Finish. Gave the remaining 2 water and will wait a few more days to add Flawless Finish to those in order to try and keep some nutes available.

5/9: start of week 12. 4/6 are coming down, probably this weekend. Continuing to alternate between Flawless Finish and Water for the the 4 that are ready. Still giving only water to the 2 that have a little longer to go to keep more nutes available.

5/15- Harvested the 4 Double Grape that were ready. I cut the entire plant at the base of the main stalk, removed the large fan leaves, and hung them upside down in my drying tent, which is a Vivosun 36”x36”x72” grow tent. My drying tent has an active 4”, 190cfm exhaust fan and a 4” passive intake with carbon. I use a humidity controller for the exhaust fan and set it at 62% RH. I throttled down the exhaust fan a little bit using a speed controller to try and avoid large swings in the RH. 5/20- dropped humidity controller to 60.5%. I will continue to drop humidity by 1% per day for the next five days until the controller reaches 55%. I will not go below 55% on the controller and will keep it there until the humidity in the tent stops rising above 55%. I may not make it down to 55%RH before the RH in the tent stops exceeding the setting on the controller, but 55% RH is the lowest I will go. Once the plants no longer release enough moisture to drive the humidity in the tent up and above the setting on the controller and they start to “snap” and not just bend when flexed, I will clip the individual branches, and do another rough trim to remove any remaining leaves. Branches will hang another 1-2 days or until they all “snap”. Once they “snap”, I will do the final cleanup of the buds, remove them from the branch, and put them in glass jars for curing. My curing process typically involves two weeks of “burping” and “turning” jars to allow airflow and prevent any mold. Each jar also gets a Boveda pack (either 62%RH or 58%RH). I lay the jars on their side and rotate them; open the lid for 20-30 min while leaving the jars on their side; put the lid back on and rotate the jar a few more times while still on its side; and then stand it up. The “burping” period is only 20-30min per day for two weeks, and after that the jars will remain sealed. My personal preference is to wait another 30-60 days before starting to enjoy the harvest to get this really good flavors and smoke. I always make sure my previous harvest is large enough to cover me while I wait for the next grow to finish, which is usually about 100 days long (germ-veg-flower-drying) plus the additional month or two (30-60 days) for curing. 5/23: clipped branches off two of the four plants I harvested. The branches on the other two were still bending and not snapping, so they aren’t quite ready. For the two that I clipped I did another round of cleanup on the buds before hanging the branches back in the tent, mostly removing smaller fan leaves I couldn’t access when the plant was whole. I will do one more round of cleanup on the buds once they are done drying and ready to start the curing process, which will be in 1-2 days. 5/26-5/27: trimmed branches into final nugs and put on a bin for storage/curing along with two, 62%RH Boveda bags. Totals for the four double grape plants were 138g, 130g, 92g, 120g. The last double grape took an extra week and a half to finish up, and has been chopped and trimmed. The last plant yielded another 140g of double grape, which brings the grand total >600g from 5 plants.

5/16- 1 double grape and 1 strawberry nuggets left in the flower tent. Fan leaves are just starting to yellow on both plants, so thinking another week or so. To be safe I’m maintaining them with water only so that I can immediately start the flush with Flawless Finish once they frost up a bit more and finish. 5/18- first dose of Flawless Finish for the two remaining plants. Hoping to harvest these two in another 7 days or so.

Strawberry Nuggets looks and smells delicious- the definition of bag candy- but the plant is always very short and difficult to train and the yields are smaller than most plants I grow. That said, the nugs are super dense, and they smell and look amazing.