Lemon Gelato x Sour Apple [auto|STS|

As this is my first auto and I'm also attempting to regen another plant, I'm also doing my first always-on light cycle. I'm starting in a 3 gallon bucket, will move up to a 5 gallon when she gets to be more thirsty but for now that amount of space isn't needed since the roots aren't even coming out of the net pot yet. Lights at 25%

Slow week, most days were still cold and dry outside, humidifier struggles to keep up. Nutrients bumped up a bit this week.

Seems to be a slow starter, since this has fallen behind in growth compared to another plant which was started one week after this one. Root growth looks good, hoping it's just focused there at the moment.

Finally starting to pick up on growth a bit. Roots are not quite as white as I would like to see during the water and full nutrient change on 4/2. Adjusted calmag up to full dosage. Once another node or two grows out, I will begin LST to keep everything low. The plan is to selectively use STS on this plant for S1 seeds. Due to this and the pollen, flowering will occur either in the tiny tent (far from the current one), or outside, depending on weather. 4/3 did not care for yesterday's water change. Diluted nutrients by half (added more Hydroguard) and balanced PH. 4/4 noticed pest damage on another plant. Everything received a spray of soapy water and a dusting of DE. LST begins today because pistils are already showing. 4/5 looked worse today, regretting doing a full reservoir change as there's early signs of root rot. Roots received a hydrogen peroxide bath, looking much whiter after eight hours. First STS spray, not ideal timing but she's an auto and is showing preflower signs. 4/6 Bouncing back, but the damage is done. It was already a comparatively slow grower, but after this setback I'm left with a flowering runt. Still going to complete the grow and finish the intent of this grow, which is for S1 seeds, though now it's more for the experience than for the seeds themselves.

Not much to write about this runt, just keeping it flat and spraying the nodes with STS every 4-5 days, but nothing interesting to get close-ups of just yet. She is bouncing back after last week, and probably would have been fine in the long term if she weren't an auto, so maybe finishing off for seeds isn't a total waste. I may try to SOG with them sometime as a new experience, and so I can actually taste it (don't consume sprayed plants!).

It's... trying, I guess. It's had a rough life. Giving it a bit more nutrients, still spraying STS every four days. I already mixed the stuff up, let's finish the experiment. Cardstock placed at base just to try and keep the pollen out of the LECA pellets, though it wasn't until I cut it up that I realized that manila was the wrong color choice if I actually wanted to see anything landing on it.

Pollen sacs are becoming quite prominent, but none have produced yet. Switched the apron to a blue one which should be easier to see dropped pollen.

Male flowers are starting to open, with the sepals turning red prior to opening. Plucking the open flowers in the morning and evening, manually pollinating visible stamen. Plucked flowers are set aside to dry and sift.

Cruising along, lots more mature male flowers this week. Developing seeds can be felt. A lot of the leaves are very crispy, and a few of the branches have no female flowers at all. I would say that the amount of STS used on such a small plant was damaging. 2-3 applications would almost certainly be sufficient, but this was my first time and I didn't trust the process.

Not much to say by now. Male flowers have stopped, now we're waiting for seeds. Collected 1.5 grams of pollen over the past few weeks, which I'll never use all of.

You're basically just tuning in to watch a plant slowly die at this point. Seeds are still green, which is more than we can say about most of the leaves.

Seeds are much less green this week, though still more of khaki than the darker brown we want to see. I know this plant looks miserable, and that's because it is! It doesn't matter, it won't be smoked.

This has gone on long enough. Shaking it produced a few finalized seeds so I started trimming everything that didn't have any seeds. Not gonna lie, it's a lot less annoying to do trimming this way than to dedicate an entire evening to it - not that this job was ever going to take a long time. Either way, it ended up as a nice final haircut so she can get chopped with dignity.

This plant was hateful. Root problems in early veg, stunted growth, early flower, botrytis in flower (partially my fault, I really stopped giving a damn since the whole point was a personal experiment to produce seeds. I'd say 20% of them are as dark as I would hope for, the rest being greenish or tannish. I'm shutting the tent down for the summer, but I'll come back with germ rates when I test. Since this thing was so unlucky I might actually grow out a few of them to give it a fair shake. What I learned: - You do not need much STS. I could have used much, MUCH less and ended up with more seeds. Two localized applications is probably enough. - Harvesting pollen is tedious, particularly when you time it to be the same time as pollen season and your sinuses are already displeased - Hydrogen peroxide needs to come in gallons - Don't end up with just one seed of something, else you have to do science experiments to keep it - Get more aggressive with the trimming. I was afraid to do much to an auto since this was my first one and it already had problems, and it led to bud rot. To be fair, this did not happen until well after I already would have harvested a normal grow.