Zkittlez Autoflower

August 16, 2023 Day 99 This should be the last week for this grow. Both ladies are almost ready to go. Just a few more days to get some amber trichomes. Neither will be watered for the rest of the grow I think. Zkittlez One may need a reservoir refill tomorrow, but that should be the last one. Zkittlez One is coming along quite nicely. Pistils are almost all orange now. I did notice a couple budlets at the top of some of the colas, but nothing to worry about. She seems to have packed on more trichomes as well. I think she's about as dense as she is going to get. I haven't seen any swelling in a couple of days, so she must be right there. Almost. Zkittlez Two is hanging out waiting for the other one to finish up. Her reservoir is about half full and her moisture content level is around 55%. Based on her feeding habits, I'd say this is the last watering she will have for the rest of the grow. I still have 2 other plants taking up space and need light. So the timing needs to be right. Grow System Environment: Temp: 74.0° RH: 65.2% VPD: 0.98 kPa August 17, 2023 I was planning on taking some trichome shots, but I don't have a camera or macro lens good enough to get anything of quality, so we are just going to see the plants themselves until harvest. I may try for a while to get some trichome pics, but I doubt they will be any good. Zkittlez One just emptied her reservoir. So she will be getting a refill today. Half a gallon I think. And work from there. She's looking great! Nearly all her pistils are orange and I'm seeing a few more amber trichomes. She smells wonderful and I'm sure will taste just as good. Her buds are super frosty and are so thick they make the buds look almost white. She is getting a little bit more purple hues, but I don't think she will do anymore. Oh well. Zkittlez Two is basically perfectly ready for harvest. I may have to harvest her early and somehow make a space to dry her. She also emptied her reservoir today and I'll do a half gallon refill today as well. Her buds are definitely still spreading out a bit, but also seem to be swelling a tiny bit more. All of her pistils are orange now. So it's just a matter of the other plants in the tent finishing up. Grow System Environment: Temp: 73.8° RH: 63.2% VPD: 1.03 kPa August 18, 2023 Zkittlez One is nearly ready for harvest. I added the last half gallon into the reservoir today and pulled a bunch more leaves. I'm only taking the ones that pop off with ease. I didn't make much progress though. She is very leafy. I'll just keep going until harvest. Hopefully by then, I'll have removed enough foliage for a comfortable dry. I plan on hanging her whole. I like to weigh wet, estimate dry and then compare the end result. That way I can start to see how much a plant may yield before harvest. Trichomes are almost all cloudy now. And he has a few amber trichomes. I could harvest tomorrow, but I still have 2 other plants that aren't quite ready yet. Zkittlez Two is done. Just done. I really want to harvest her now, but I don't have a drying space at the moment. She needs no water yet. Or at all for that matter. I don't have to remove any leaves as she is very leafless. Her sugar leaves are pretty big so I'll be dry trimming those. Other than that, she has a few fan leaves on the bottom of the plant and that's about it. She has plenty of amber trichomes. Not tons, but definitely enough to call her harvestable. Grow System Environment: Temp: 74.3° RH: 64.6% VPD: 1.01 kPa August 19, 2023 Zkittlez One is nearly there. I pulled more leaves today. A nice big handful. It's starting to pay off as well. There are now big gaps in the canopy. Branches are leaning, air is flowing. Everything looks great. No watering anymore. So, depending on how much foliage I can comfortably remove, I might be harvesting in a day or 2. As long as the defoliation clears out enough to let the plant hang in a compact manner, I should be able to put both this lady and her sister plant in the 2x2 tent to dry. At least for the time being until the 2 other plants in the tent are harvested. Then I'll move the Zkittlez plants to the big tent to finish up drying. I may leave the Zkittlez Two in the small tent and dry the other 2 plants in the main tent with Zkittlez One. Actually, depending on what I can pull off, I might be able to let this lady grow a bit longer and harvest Zkittlez Two. She can then go in the drying tent and the one in the tent currently can be moved back to the big tent. However, I'm not sure what kind of shock that will cause the plant. 🤔🤔🤔 Zkittlez Two got her final half gallon in the reservoir today. No more watering for her. She has a pretty moist container, so I think she will dry out in a couple of days, unless I harvest before then. I don't think I'm going to run the 48 hour dark period. Not with this lady. She is already done and covered in trichomes. Maybe I'll try to switch them around tomorrow and put her in the small tent for a dark period... If I even do that. Honestly, I think I should have harvested her yesterday or today, but I'm still going to wait as much as I can. All plants harvested at the exact same time would be ideal. I started the wet trim process on her. As she is basically ready, I started with the rest of the fan leaves and some of the bigger sugar leaves. The rest I'm going to leave so the foxtails have something to keep them in place. I worked the bottom section and 2 of the branches. Tomorrow, I'll do the other 2 branches and then the top. So I could harvest tomorrow or in 2 days based on what I'm doing now. I read that IF you dona pre harvest defoliation, you should wait a couple of days before harvest anyway to let her bounce back and make that last ditch effort. I don't think I have time for all of that. Maybe if I do a 48 hour dark period, I can let her recover during that stage. Grow System Environment: Temp: 74.0° RH: 62.4% VPD: 1.06 kPa August 20, 2023 Zkittlez One is done. She has to be. It's been over 100 days and nearly 10 weeks of flowering. Not many amber trichomes, it almost all cloudy. I think this is the peak time to harvest. I'm giving myself a 3 day window. No longer watered. She is still drinking quite a bit though. Like she is still going. Maybe she is. Either way, all signs point to harvest. Soil moisture is steadily declining which is perfect. She is currently at 48% moisture level. I'll keep an eye on the decline for science. It should be only a couple of days before she starts drying out. She is super heavy too. So now that the tie downs are off, the tops are leaning pretty hard. A couple of them are well at 45°. The tallest cola, which is an auxiliary branch, is pulling the entire main branch over. The interesting part is that they're all leaning in the same direction. So as I have been plucking leaves recently, I've been paying more attention to the lowest part of the canopy. Lots of popcorn and underdeveloped buds. Some are pretty decent sized though. I wonder if they will tighten up during the drying and curing stage. Everything else is nice and dense and they go pretty deep as well. Maybe about 10" deep? Maybe a little more? The whole plant is 35" tall. And the entire area covered in buds big and small is about 28" deep roughly. We shall see when she is all harvested, dried and trimmed up. I don't have a way of making concentrates, so I try to smoke the popcorn first to get it out of the way. All the trim gets stored in 1 gallon ziploc bags for now. Then I dry sift when the bag gets full. Lots and lots of kief. Maybe I'll try the same with the really larfy stuff. The stuff that can't be trimmed. Maybe I'll get more kief. Plus it's way easier to store kief instead of gallons of trimmings. I may take to using my grinder too. The screen is super fine and I only get the best kief from it. Kannastor is the brand. So I may use that after the dry sift to get the very last bit of kief and then toss the grindings. It's a lot of work, but it may be worth it in the end. I decided to measure the actual canopy depth. It is an average of 17" deep. With a range of 12" to 23" deep. I also discovered the leaning is the container and not just the tops. The whole plant is top heavy and is pulling at the container. The lighter it gets, the more lean there is. So I anchored a branch down to keep her as upright as possible. Zkittlez Two is perfectly ready. Almost all of the trichomes are cloudy now. Around 90% cloudy. I'm still trying to figure out if I can fit both of these plants in the 2x2 dry tent. This one can fit just about anywhere, but Zkittlez One will be a major issue in the 2x2 I think. The other 2 plants in the tents are days away from harvest. The smaller one may need an extra week. But if I can hold out harvesting at least until the 3 that are ready, I can put the small one in the 2x2 for the rest of the grow and allow the other plants to dry in the 3x3. No water needed at all for the rest of the grow. She has a little bit left in the reservoir and her container is still pretty moist. I definitely should have left out the last half gallon of water from the other day. Oh well. She will be fine anyway. As for her buds and the abundance of foxtails, I might dissect them and separate the buds from the foxtails. Depending on what the actual bud structure looks like, of course. If the buds are as dense as I believe they are, these foxtails can go into the trim for a dry sift. So the kief collected will be really potent. Not to mention the grinder kief as well. I could do that instead. Grind up all the foxtails, catch all the kief and then smoke it I guess. Or toss it. But I'd think to smoke it. No waste for me. At least no bud waste. Lol. Grow System Environment: Temp: 72.6° RH: 62.5% VPD: 1.00 kPa August 21, 2023 Zkittlez One is leaning even more now. I really think she's ready. Maybe a couple more days for some amber trichomes. She's at 37% moisture content now. So I expect her medium to be dried out tomorrow or the next day. I hope that helps with her trichome maturation. I plan on harvesting in the next few days. I'd prefer to harvest today, but my dry tent is still occupied for the moment. Plus, I'm not entirely sure this one will fit in the dry tent anyway. She's so big. Zkittlez Two is just hanging out waiting for everyone to finish up. She's still working on the reservoir and is still pretty moist in the container. Around 57% soil saturation. Her buds are smelling great and I think she has hit her max weight. I also believe she can keep going for a few more days comfortably. There's around 10% amber trichomes now. A few clusters here and there. Her leaves are still quite green. I feel like the living soil on top of the Advanced Nutrients I was using, the nutrient saturation is pretty high. So I think I over did it, but only in the extra nitrogen. Everything else worked great, but it's still keeping the plant very much alive. No fade at all. She is totally defoliated and ready for a wet trim. If I even bother wet trimming at all. I don't think I need to. It's mostly leaves that are really deep in the buds and the large sugar leaves. Which honestly, I'm not sure if they are sugar leaves. They grow off the stem and not out of the flower. I guess they should fall off after drying. Update: I decided to remove the wicks and empty the reservoir for the rest of the grow. She has plenty of moisture in the soil for at least the next couple days. In which I plan on harvesting. She has gone long enough and I do t want to miss the window. Grow System Environment: Temp: 74.1° RH: 62.7% VPD: 1.05 kPa August 22, 2023 Zkittlez One is ready for harvest. I'm going to have to maneuver some things around and attempt to fit this monster in the 2x2 grow tent. I'll be harvesting tomorrow I think. I'm going to check on her trichomes later today, but I don't think she's going to get many amber in the end anyway. Her water content is now at 26%. A bit lower than I expected. I was expecting still in the 30s. Oh well. Another reason to harvest tomorrow. Her colas are all so very heavy. The whole plant sways with one branch moved. The air flow doesn't move them either. Not as much as it used to anyway. I took out a few bottom leaves today. Now that I'm thinking about it, I really should have removed those first and cleaned it up completely. That would have driven the energy up to the main canopy for even better colas. As it stands, those lower parts are definitely larfy and popcorny. It'll take a bit to trim those, if I even bother. I guess it depends on what they look and feel like after drying. On a final note for the week and the last day of this plant, I learned a lot about the importance of consistent lighting. I've also learned to try to keep the light distance at the same height for all plants. Raise them if needed. I've also learned that light stress may be the cause of some of my issues like the 3 finger fan leaves. I also think I learned that the Living soil I use really doesn't need extra nitrogen. Or, well would need much less than what I administered. Finally, I learned that autoflower seeds do best when they go from plug to soup with no roots showing. Kinda like direct to substrate. I'll most certainly be implementing this information for my next grow. Zkittlez Two has some more amber trichomes. She smells amazing and is getting harvested tomorrow as well. She is still fairly moist around the lower part of the container, but I expect her to dry out quickly, now that her wicking system is disconnected and reservoir emptied. Her buds are super hard and dense, even if she's covered in foxtails. The best part, is the whole plant is like that from top colas to bottom buds. They are smaller, yes, but not small themselves. Happily, there is very little leaf matter left on her. Mostly just the oversized sugar leaves... Or 1 finger fan leaves and barely any sugar leaves? 🤔 A final note for the last day of this grow. I learned what foxtailing looks like and how genetic mutations can sometimes cause them. I've also learned that it's more common in sativa's. This strain does much better with training than being left alone. At least between the 2 I grew in this diary, this one had no training and only defoliation. She didn't have many leaves in the first place and ended up being much smaller than I had hoped for, but the colas are absolutely massive. So with next to no foliage left, she should be a good yield for her size. So I like to estimate how much I should yield based on wet weight. My math shows for the last 4 plants I've grown, my average weight retention is 15.3% from whole plant to jar. The math is as such: 1oz dry/ 0.153= 6.5oz wet So for every 1 oz of dry jarred bud would require 6.5 oz of wet plant. For example: to get 8 oz of finished product, I would need a plant that weighs 3.27 lbs. Of course that's an average. To be conservative, I'd work with 12.5% instead of 15.3% All in all, this was a wonderful grow. Very educational. And a monster plant to boot. I can't wait to see what the yield of these ladies ends up being. I'll keep the diary going until 14 days of curing. Grow System Environment: Temp: 73.7° RH: 60.8% VPD: 1.09 kPa