Wedding Cake - First Grow

Journal Entry: Well no accurate pic this week either I guess, next week has a pic for sure. To recap - I performed a back alley lobotomy on a poor dried out seed capped sprout and she died right there on the folding table. So I now have 2 wedding cakes in the making, 8 days in, and an empty earthbox I filled with soil and prepped. I planted another wedding cake seed, this time I went with the paper towel method and made sure to bury the germinated seed nearly upside down so the hull is removed when it rises above ground. Her older sisters have been getting top watered with jays saponin water. Numbers/names will be assigned when transplanted into the earthboxes (EB's).

Preface: Wow, an actual picture of the week in focus, how great am I? P.s., we'll soon find out I suck at watering as well. PPFD: 250 PPFD calibration information: App - PPFD meter, coupled with a Bluetooth lux meter (available through amazon or AliExpress) recommend in app, and by others, calibrated to my light manufacturer's provided PPFD map. Journal Entry: Back to 3, a full set. Affectionately named #1, #2, and #3, pictured left to right. #2 is the younger plant, I figured the center would have the most light overlap and might give her the best chance at catching up. All are about 18" under the Mammoth Mint White 680w 6 bar, set to ~250 PPFD at the center, as all future PPFD readings will be. Top watered with tap water (never ph tested but I am real time almost at harvest and the water ph never seemed like an issue throughout) and some jays saponin shaken, not stirred. I hate myself.

PPFD: 300 Journal Entry: Lots of stuff this week, #2 is playing catch up nicely while #1 and #3 start to droop. They are all currently being underwatered, or watered well enough for if they had some sort of mulch cover to stop the soil from drying out, which they don't. The saponin makes the water slowly sink into the soil and is deceiving on how little is actually being applied. I hadn't worked with it long enough to familize myself with it. Or gardening in general. I had given .5 gal of water spread amongst the 3 in one watering session, usually daily. Bonus Issue: The drooping hides the fact that the outer 2 have hit the edge of their containers, and the roots are starting to circle. A fact I will realize way too late. Anyways, I ended up deciding it was past due to transplant so I had to do it. When I removed the rootball everything was bone dry.. so I watered each root ball and irritated them. Sprinkled mycos around the transplant area and wet it. Transplanted each plant and messed with that stupid mulch cover to cut holes for the plants. I heavily watered around the transplant area, but the earthbox's (EB's) reservoirs were dry to start.

PPFD: 500 Journal: I think we've recovered well. There was initial transplant shock and then on day 23 things started looking up. I made sure to water far enough away from the plant to hopefully coax the roots out. #3 is taking longer than the others to respond, this is a pattern that repeats through the grow. Confession: I don't remember why or how, but the lights got turned up on day 24 to 750 PPFD until I noticed on day 28 and turned them back down to 500. EB reservoir first filled on day 24. Water level in reservoir did not start to visiblly lower until day 30. Some tip burn noted.

PPFD: 500 Journal: Fully recovered, looks like it; stunted, most definitely. Tip burn attributed to the 3.0 blend being a little hot or burning off the mustard still. My EB watering cycle is simple - using a phone endoscope check to see if the EB reservoir is dry > if dry - then fill to overflow > if not dry - do nothing. The nutrients are a guess for timing, but I always followed the recommendations. I know I did 4 feeding cycles but not which weeks, just that there was 2 in veg and 2 in flower. That being said, the only things I ever put in my soil were BoS Big 6, Jaysplant sap, Buildaflower topdress, BuildaBloom, worm castings, a compost extract (same worm castings whipped with warm water and organic molasses) and Xtreme Mycos.

PPFD: 500 Journal: Back on track, at least it feels like it. I am filling the EB every couple of days, added some Buildaflower and worm compost. Sorry sets in about air flow. Osc. Fans are bought and aimed around the tent for turbulent airflow. These are the good days kid, it's smooth sailing for a while. And I end up taking it for granted, and paying for it. But positive vibes for now, green and luscious.

PPFD: 500 Journal: I am not sure when I topped but I know I did it at the same time for all 3, so it might've been in the 5th nodes for #1 & #3, and the 4th node for #2. Defoiliating day! I put it off for as long as I could, and probably lost a few pounds in water weight sweating. These things are WEEDS, they need to be defoiliated to keep under control. To anyone nervous about it, just go for and start cutting. I put a scrog net up. If it suddenly disappears in the rest of the photos just don't ask about it, alright? Thanks. No but I was like, this is weird and crappy since it stretches so I removed it. Which I am fully regretting right now.

Note: Apologies upfront, no photos for days 52-78, or weeks 8, 9, & 10. Flipped to flower on day 62, setting daylight hours to 12/12. PPFD was brought up to 750 from 500 over 2 days. They will be fed the Buildaflower with BuildaBloom and worm compost cover during stretch. No defoliating was done, to reduce risk of stunting anymore than I already have. Next photos will be end of week 11 or day 78...or day 17F, which is the first defoliationg since flip.

PPFD: 750 Journal: It's a jungle. I should have left the scrog, or manifolded. I think I attempted to start defoliating 3 different times and couldn't do it. We'll get to it next week, surely it won't matter.. Pretty exciting though, gotta admit. I'm still cruising at this point, being a little lazy which is going to bite me.

PPFD: Slowly brought up to 900 over a week. Defoiliating was needed bad. Unfortunately with the way I set up my grow room, I can't access the back half off the tent unless it is crawling underneath the canopy. Complaints aside, I think this is when I realized that I might just love gardening in general. Seeing the change from nearly killing them to these overgrown beauties is awe inspiring. I must apologize in advance for the terrible treatment these will receive in the coming weeks.

PPFD: 900 (no immediate issues shown) Journal: This might be the last easy week, issues will become apparent soon. Until then, only 2 pics for this week, apparently I was too busy staring at them with my own eyes.

Disclaimer: I f'ed up so bad. Personal issues didn't help, but I didn't pinpoint the cause of issue fast enough. I think it was two fold, actually. Light intensity too high and the lower canopy fan blowing too hard and pointing too low, drying out the mulch layer and locking out the nutrients. Causing some ugly lockout symptoms along with some crispy curly leaves thanks to my light setting. PPFD: 900 (yeah, should've been obvious, but life got in the way, I post my shame for all to see) Journal: Just sending it I guess. Lights cranked, tent is hot as balls, got the exhaust and the fans humming. I am still riding that easy feeling and not noticing the obvious problems. I am trimming fan leaves here and there but I also leave them on for far too long. I think the reason I ignored it was because I wasn't sure if it was just color in the leaves changing vs an actual symptom. Watering and dry cycle has been normal if not having one longer dry down cycle (hint hint) in there somewhere. Anyways, unbeknownst to me, my mulch layer is a crust layer at this moment.

PPFD: 900 (yeah, that's right, I still haven't turned it down yet, huge mistake) Journal: I was pretty hands off here, as can be seen by the state of the poor plants. At this point I was panicking trying to think about what changed since I noticed the symptoms. It wasn't until Day 58F I turned down the light intensity to 750. Daytime was shifted from 12 > 11 hours. I saw the spots on the leaves and straight up ignored them to deal with personal stuff. If I had simply looked up what was going on I could have started to solve it immediately.

Note: I wanted to note that I am aware that the PPFD measurement I take is not actually precise, but it is accurate to the set point that I set it to based on the mfg's PPFD map. That being said I am fully aware it is an app that uses approximate calculations based my input of what type of light source it is. Also of note, the grow details may not be fully accurate as of Aug. 6th, but I intend to go back and edit to correct them. I just wanted to get pictures and journal entries up first. PPFD: 750 (finally) Journal: This week documents what I did to stop the decline of the plant's health and to make some kind of recovery. Figures 1-8 show the plants before solutions were attempted. Figures 9 and up are taken after troubleshooting methods, detailed below, were applied. Troubleshooting Methods: Light intensity was reduced because well, the crispy curled leaves were yelling to do so. It worked. This light is intense, the diodes are new to the market, and I pushed to the literal recommended max on my first grow. Not surprising for me, but still .. why do I do this? My first attempt at fixing what I thought was lockout was to make a quick compost extract, using warm tap water (yes I know chlorine can kill the life in the tea but my RO system needs cleaning so I made do as is), organic molasses, and worm compost. I made a diy stir stick with a plastic hanger and grabbed my drill and a bucket. I poured the extract (sifting out the solids first) over each of the earthboxes. The next day I didn't see any drastic improvement so I just called the BuildaSoil helpline. A nice gentleman picked up and was super helpful, after listening to all the details recommended flushing with water at this late stage (week 8 of flower). I loaded up the cheapo big box store brand sprayer with some jays saponin and pumped up the pressure, taking the first nozzle off so there were jets. I wanted to break up the crust that had formed. Obviously the fan was pointed higher and power was lowered as well. I sprayed down #3 first since it was the worst. I saw improvement within 4 hours and so I repeated the flushing for the other 2 plants. The containers were flushed lightly over a couple of days and the stoppage of decline was instantly noticable, but permant damage has been done. Bonus Issue: My anxiety over and removal of the scrog net has come to rear it's head, 2/3rds of #1 has tipped towards to front of the tent. Just flopped over. So this week sucked. Lots of issues that should have been avoidable completely but I got lazy and ignored some thing's I shouldn't have. See Figure 2 for the leaning tower of ganja.

Quick note: I am not sure if chop day is supposed to go into a "flower" week or the harvest, but I put it in flower because while they are chopped, I have not "harvested" anything for myself and the tent is still being occupied by this grow. And I like pictures, so you probably do too. Actually, I wonder who even reads these massive walls of texts all the way through besides myself. It's a journal though, so here I go writin' again. PPFD: "Up a smidge from last week, but only for the last day" Journal: I tend to panic and just make decisions. So I was starting to panic and think they were starting to reveg or herm from all the stress I've put them through (plus Wedding Cake likes to herm, right?). So I shut the lights off one hour earlier on Day 68F, and started 1 hour later the next day. I also up'd the light intensity a smidge, defoiliated most of the fan leaves, and didn't water them (don't ask why, I know I had some justification for doing all of that but I can't remember what it was, just being honest). I checked throughout the next day and decided it was time. I chopped halfway through the plant's day (Day 69F /Day 130). They were hung aside and the tent was cleaned. Fans were turned down and positioned facing the ceiling and over the humidifier. Excess fan leaves were removed, in addition to spreading the branches and fixing some criss-crossing, before hanging the plants back in the tent. Changeover took 1 hour, plants outside of tent for half of that. Environment in lung room was 66F / 50%Rh. I am slightly worried about the amount of airflow in the center of each plant, a few short branches had some smaller fan leaves dwarfed by the buds that I didn't want to disturb. I stuck the ACInfinity sensor above the foliage of #2. Rh is set to 60% and being held in the the range of 60-62%. The humidifier dial is set to the middle, controlled by the ACInfinity controller. The humidifier does have to cycle on to keep at the 60%, but branches still bend. Exhaust set to always be on at a low setting and exhaust when at/above 62% or 67F. I am able to achieve 66F-69F (19C - 20.5C). Normally sitting around 67F +/-1F. Not sure what else to do, portable AC isn't feasible long-term, as this is peak heat here and My lung room is typically around 62F. Initially I had cleaned and pulled the earthboxes out, replacing the covers with new ones. But the tent was losing humidity super quick so I put them back in to help buffer the humidity. If the humidifier starts to become hard to keep up I can always add water to them as well. Bonus: I was going to start another grow with 2 free seeds I got from a pack, and was pretty excited about them too. They were supposed to be Opium autoflower seeds. Well one (#1) seed looked rough, and after 4 days only cracked and spit out the browned sprout, without its cotyledons. No worries though, I just had room to run one anyways and was going to bonzai the other one if they both made it, or donate it to a friend. The other seed (#2) popped and rose out of the soil. Besides having a seed cap I gently helped free, #2 was standing up and starting to open its cotyledons. One morning, 30 minutes after checking them, I checked in on them again. I was expecting to see #2's cotyledons opening towards the light. (I suppose I should note they were popped in a glass of water and planted directly into soil.) Nope. An insect chewed the cotyledons almost all the way down to the stem. I want you to know, dear reader, that I found the assailant (I knew it had literally just happened so it was close, Still in the earthbox, unable to climb out). I became justice incarnate, driven by righteous fury, I delivered a heavy sentence unto the perpetuator and smote their ruin for all to see (smashed it into the sticky strap and put the super efficient bug trap back to do its job catching bugs, which it didn't really do well to begin with..). Anyways, I let the mauled sprout stand tall, maybe she survives... who knows, I still have the wedding cake clone from this grow that should definitely be dead. Guess we are doing a Humboldt phenohunt pack next, check out my other diary to follow the Nutter Budder x Pistachio Journey live-ish (I can at least confirm they all popped and were NOT devoured by a tiny asshole), the diary page should be up soon.

Intro: Well they were harvested, woo! 14 Day dry at 67.5F/55% Rh. Stems snap/crack but dont completely break apart. I plan to burp and monitor the smell of the jars at least twice a day for the first week and then reduce as the weeks on on. I may need to separate some of the jars up even. I didn't get a fresh wet weight, and I didn't weight the whole plants since they were dried as a whole plant. I cut the trunks and flipped them upside, cleaned up any extra foliage and hung them back in the tent. I checked daily, making sure nothing was going wrong. Day 14 the big branches were snapping like they should so I set up the station and started trimming. Final harvest weight incoming, but I think I am alright with this yield, for all that happened with these plants.