Smoothie by fastbuds

My oh my, what a difference a week and a dimmed down light can make! I expected to have to have it covered for longer period than I actually did as well. I don’t know what there is to say really, you can see I have repotted into the Autopot XL so it is probably the smallest Autopot XL grow there is! I was super careful to actually cut the paper pot it was in away as I didn’t want the auto to think that was the bottom of the pot and start flowering. I simply prepped what it was going into and wetted it and ripped it off then buried it - it was a little leggy from the windowsill action so I sorted that. Somehow the dimmer that was broken is no longer broken so that’s cool - its on about a third of the total of what’s it can put out atm. Honestly, I thought this plant was going to die before! It still might but it looks a fuck load better now than it did! I am going to have to start mixing up some hydrocrop notes as it’s what I have on hand. I’ve always had great results with it before so why not. I am back in touch with FastBuds and they have sent me some more seeds so hopefully next run I’ll be doing something a bit newer as they seem to always be pushing that THC value! So far, so good - now to have a look at other smoothie auto diaries too see what stresses she can handle in terms of training. Edit: it’s been a couple of days since my last update but I needed to add a small reservoir for the Autopot XL to run from so I nominated a 5l plastic jug. Only after drilling the hole for the Autopot filter and plug I realised I needed to get to the inside of it so I cut away the section that was the lid so I can still use the handle and it has structural integrity. Everything seems to have gone swimmingly but the jury is still out on whether a 5l bottle will be enough for 1 plant - I can’t remember how thirsty the smoothie one was from before. It’s a resilient plant though - it recovered so quickly from germing on the windowsill. The tent is pretty sketchy because i had to cut down the poles to make it fit the space and so the skin is a bit saggy. Still, she seems to be thriving - the light is on about 50% (75w) and before I connected up the ‘res’ today I was just spraying a very small amount of water that had mammoth p added to it after it had been PH’d to 5.5 ish. I did intend to go with grow dots but unfortunately they have taken too long to come now - its in its final pot and im not messing around with slow release now we are coming into veg, they would surely be behind schedule. I have been using the trusty Hydrosol by Hydrocrop - its cheap as chips and has a cannabis specific feed chart that has never let me down. I was using GHE before and this is like 10x cheaper and i get the same results. Once you have worked out your concentration and diluted the powder into bottles it is very similar to any other rip off, cannabis specific bottle feeds, only you get enough powder to make 5 bottles worth of each so it works out super cheap, you dont need to mess around with silica, it literally has everything the plant needs so no PK boost either, you simply adjust the ratio of bottle A to bottle B and it boosts the PK and lowers the N. It also has enough calcium and magnesium - although they do sell a cal mag but they specify it is specifically for buffering coco - fair enough. I’ve never had any luck doing that and my plants always die using that bricked coco that I have buffered myself but that’s just me - my mushrooms love it though and I dont have to do shit to it either!

Totally forgot you can’t have clear reservoirs! Cut down the original AP one so it kind of fits lol. Enough to make it work at least and not go green like over the past week. It was thrown and replaced with fresh PH’d, nutrientededed water. Should really add a pump of some sort but we’ll c how she goes…. Plant just been fimmed…it’s grown so much over the past week I want to get the destructive training in early. I’ll just do LST after this grows out. On the whole so far so great!

I can’t believe it’s only been three weeks, these autos are madness as always. I have topped, LST’d (to the max) and hopefully I shall see a growth explode. Started using some ecothrive biosys for microbes…

Just been continuing to tie down any growth spurts and trying to keep the heat down while keeping humidity up. That’s one thing I like about autopots or just having a res in your tent - it really pushes the humidity up and so I can remove the humidifier after the first couple weeks of seedling stage. I guess it helps they are more hardy than photos with regards to ‘hardening off’. I conceded and I ordered a portable AC unit - mainly for my own comfort for the summer but also for the plants and particularly for being able to fully control the dry. It has a built in dehumidifier and has a smart app. It should be good, I intend to plug it into the thermostat and then plug the extraction fan (that is currently plugged into the thermostat) into the humidistat so it just dumps air from the tent every so often.

She is definitely starting to get hairy and stretch now, although it’s hard to capture the pistols on camera at this stage. It is tempting to just keep tying it down but I’m not going to anymore - i have plenty of virtical space but it’s sideways space that I’m struggling with. In fact, I have had to bodge a little by adding one of the usb pc fans wedged in the door. The tent is so tightly fitted inside the cupboard, that It was having issues getting air intake so given they are autos and don’t mind a bit of light at night, I figured it’s okay. It’s surely better to have decent air flow throughout the tent and have a bit of a light leak, than not.

I think I switched to the ‘flowering’ nute schedule about a week early at the sight of the very first preflower resulting in last weeks pics lookin a little N starved. Iv been shutting off the valve on the autopot once a week to water in recharge - next time I’ll put the res outside the tent tho! Duh! They look a lot better this week as I added a little more of solution A which is the nitrates etc. Can def see where they are stretching now for sure. Edit; added two days after the other posts - I have noticed that the plant is showing signs of nutrient deficiency - N in particular is showing, I noticed it just due to the very lime green colour but also I have just been scouting and the one biggest fan leaf that’s been there from the start (rather than me picking it off during training) is yellow and just doesn’t look good. I have boosted the amount of nutrient solution slightly, hopefully I can quickly get her under control because now is probably THE worst time for a nutrient issue - just as she’s going into flowering. As I said last post, I think I got a bit gung-ho when I saw the first few pistols and forgot that the sort of ‘pre-flower’ stage takes a week or so. I am also emptying the res every week, measuring how much solution is left, then adding the difference needed for the new week to add it back in to the res. It just stops me throwing it and wasting both water and nutrients. I must admit she looks happier after the Ecothrive Biosys watering I did the other day. Man, I wish I had just waited for my grow dots to come rather than using the hydrosol - ACCTUALLY NO TO BE FAIR, IF IM WISHING THEN ID SAY I WISH MY TDS METER DIDNT BREAK! IM GONNA GET ANOTHER N0W!

I always find it hard to say how much water they are taking because the whole auto pot thing. It would be more useful to maybe have an option to be able to change the unit because it would be way easier for me to say how much water has been put in the res during the week - sometimes even that’s hard to remember for me! Aaaaanyway, things are going fine in the grow - I turned down the light just a tiny bit as the pistols were showing signs of having too much light and they were just looking a little bleached out, so I turned down the light to around 80-90% as well as I think I raised it a little bit also. It’s much harder keeping everything stable in such a small space when I am used to having a room to use but oh well, it is what it is - I am really lucky / stupid to be doing this one, however, I also went into the grow knowing I may have to kill her at any moment - dependant upon visits etc. I know photo growers always say there is no difference in speed between autos and photos but there is a couple of weeks in it most of the time - at the very least. I tried it, my last proper grow I selected all fairly fast flowering photos (not those photos that have been bred with autos to make them quick but just generally fast flowering plants) and it still took longer than my longest auto has taken and it annoyingly Hermes so had to turn into hash coz it was super annoying.) but that’s all in the past now… So I haven’t had to resort to using my AC yet but I did get a 1/4 of the price knocked off because it doesn’t work with the app properly and that’s basically what it was sold on! Don’t go to klarstein, people! She’s def been stretching for sure but I remember this being a really squat plant anyway and I have also trained it in a bit of an odd manner so that it grew outwards with a flatter canopy - I wouldn’t top in future. I don’t really know why I did - maybe because I always have (for the most part) but I think she’d have grown taller and had bigger side branching if I hadn’t but having said that it is pretty much impossible to tell! Unless you do an A/B test - which I obviously don’t have room for! In the next week I am hoping to see her get really hairy and hoping to have to attach a carbon filter - as that would mean she’s happy and I’m going to get some dank. With regards to expected harvest - I genuinely have no idea. She averages at around 2.5z/plant going on the info put into grow diaries and that it about what I got last time - I don’t think I ever weighed it tbh coz I grew it just to turn into rosin. Having said that, it is a totally different set up and the first time I am using this light, so I’m not sure of the capabilities of what is probably a 120-140w light - now I have dimmed it down. I mean, I guess if she was starved for light I wouldn’t have had to turn it down so I’m confident it can produce sticky buds. I will also turn it up to full power in the last couple weeks. She’s meant to be a 10 week or 70 day strain - and I hope that is true because I am going on holiday in early July so I can’t have her going on and on and on. She will have to be cut when she will have to be cut - and maybe hung whilst I am away with the ability to control the environment over Wi-Fi (and probably a camera). Iv just looked at dates and actually she can go on for 13 weeks and so it is all good - she should still be drying by the time I go there and should be ready for me when I get back - I’ll be doing a dry trim as I always do just because it slows down the drying process even more - although actually to be fair the main reason I used to do that was I didn’t have seperate climate control for drying and couldn’t use the tent as was on a perpetual grow. This time I’ll be able to set it tov 60%/60f and hopefully keep it there for a full couple of weeks. Obviously I get rid of big the fan leaves and also chop it into smaller branches but other than that I prefer to do it all dry - saves your choppers for one thing!

I forgot to add this on Monday but that’s when the photos were taken. All is okay just sucks going from a big grow to micro haha Also it’s hard for me to say how much they are actually drinking - I put ten litres of fertigation solution in on Monday and just checked and it had basically run out. So another ten litres were added. I think this is gonna run about a week over so iv continued the Pk boost for another week. Then I’ll move on to week 9’s nutrient contents that’s on the chart

To be honest I have pretty much just left it for a couple of days and when I came back - firstly she had gone through 10l of fertigation solution in like 2 days - its kind of crazy. The feed chart said to slightly increase the N in bottle A. For the past two weeks it has been at a ratio that is equivalent to putting in a PK boost, so I can understand why I now need to add an extra bit of bottle A to take me out of PK boost land. Honestly she is looking WAY better now, than she has so far - I forgot the joy of autos and how you can take photographs of them with a flash in the dark period. Something you can only do with autos and it looks SICK. It makes it look white with trichs - reminds me of old school white widow in the fact it’s so white. It isn’t all the photos I have taken like that but you will notice which ones have been taken with a flash for sure. To be honest, my mind has started to go to the next plant. I can’t decide between purple lemonade (I just LOVE that plant) r the newer apricot that I have kindly been given by fall fast buds. Also thanks to Mars hydro as they gave me this light to test - I didn’t think I’d ever use it to flower but I am and it seems to be going okay. Next time I am going to put the res on the convenient shelf just above the tent and then have the tube coming down through the side of the out take fan. That way I basically double my grow space and hopefully double the harvest. I’m in a situation where I’m not really allowed to grow but the chances of anyone wanting to look in that cupboard is minimal and I would have like a months notice anyway. The biggest give away for me; is the fact that the zip to the tent is really loud as well as the fans. They are really quite loud and if I was to upgrade, it would be to a quieter out take fan (cough…AC INFINITY….Cough). Anyway, I am just waiting to see her fill out and for the pistols to turn, which should happen over the following week or two and then I will start reducing nutrition to about 1/3 of the dose - instead of a ‘flush’ with pure water. The water is not going to grab any of the ions so in my opinion, flushing is a waste of time and your just starving your plant right at the end when it needs some nutrition..

So I defoliated quite a lot today because we have been having a heat wave and humidity is high so I wanted good air flow. I roughly halved the nute mix today and will probably just keep it at that now tbh. She looks healthy - not too long to go now! Update: The heatwave is pretty savage, although I have a portable AC which helps a bit - I should have gotten a bigger model really but oh well, it works for the purposes of keeping my plant cool so thats fine. I dig out my USB digital microscope (dam those things are hard to use!!) and uploaded a few of the shots. Please excuse the terrible quality - the point is you can see some of the trichs turning so I don't think she is that far off now.

I actually started giving it watered down 1/2 strength ish nutes a week ago now. I just got back from being away for two days and at this stage, with these plants, two days can make a big difference! Anyways Plans for next plant are grow dots. It’s an interesting idea as well as the fact all I’ll need to do is a weekly biosys watering from top with the mammoth microbes mammoth p. I do actually think it may have worked quite well. We will see, if this harvest is anything like the last we will know it’s most likely due to the microbes for P coz I’m using smaller amounts of everything else and the space is tiiiiiiny! Who knows, unless I did an a/b test which I can’t atm! Next time other than that and the tank going on the shelf above the tent so I have double the space. I think I landed on purple lemonade…..

First grow in a really small space since iv sort of known what I’m doing! I def learned NOT to put the res in the (small) tent - taking up half the space when there is a shelf on top of the grow space! Ifigure as long as I route the electrics somewhere seperate I’ll be okay because the leak would come from the tray at the bottom- I know, iv done it with a full res before! Ha I’ll be back for a smoke report… the wet weight is after 1 night of drying at around 23c/ 60-70RH. I can’t really do much about the temp. I can’t run my AC full time atm, it’s just not practical atm. She grew great, even though it’s been really hot - we’ve had an unprecedented heat wave for the UK literally at the last couple of weeks of flower. UPDATE - It would be the case we have a heatwave the one week when I needed to harvest because I was going on holiday. If I hadn’t been going abroad, I would have checked the weather and harvested now while it’s cooler - she could have gone for another week or two anyway. Hopefully the next one (purple lemonade) will make use of the space iv cleared from there. All in all, I like this strain and have grown it twice now. I think I got way more g/watt in this grow though. Fruity flavours but mainly just some dank smelling buds - I really like the way it grunge and smells once it’s ground. INCREDIBLE after iv been used to higher % medical cannabis which is always most likely photo’s - particularly for med not rec as they can clone so easy. I will def stop feeding earlier next time, just so I get a better fade - it plays see,s too soon with auto! Oh wait, I just realised I’m using grow dots for the next 1 so doesn’t really matter. I have a feeling the next one will be a big plant - I’m not going to top it, I’m going to LST to the fullest ability and probably scrog tbh.