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Today is the beginning of a special project: the FSTS and Solfire Gardens grow off challenge. I'm doing 2 seeds of Solfire's new FX3 strain in my 3x2 tent, and this time I'm just going straight into the 3 gallon autopots for germination. No paper towels, no shot glass, just straight into the coco. I figure this might speed up the time until I can turn on the autopot system, and the faster I can get things automated the easier my life is.
The 3 gallon pots were prepped a few days ago and naturally the coco was bone dry. To prep everything for germination each pot got 1 gallon of RO water with a small amount of calmag, GH micro, and GH Rapid Start at a pH of 6.1.
9/13 Day 8. The one on the right has been falling over a lot the past few days. I redid the wires to keep it upright a few times now, but it keeps finding ways of falling. Pretty sure I have it rigged up 100% now. While both are on track, I did finally discover why my runoff EC was always high and it’s because of the gypsum I have been adding to the coco. After adding perlite, vermiculite, and the gypsum to the coco back when I prepped the pots, runoff EC was 2.4. I rinsed it down to 1.2 for germination, but last night I watered until runoff and it had climbed back up to 1.7. Since I can’t take the gypsum out and this is a grow competition where I can’t just restart the grow, it seems I have no choice but to battle high EC for the duration. I’ll keep watering until runoff for as long as I can before switching to autopots to try to combat the constantly rising EC.
9/18 Day 13. I gave each a flush using plain tap water, and the initial runoff EC was fortunately only 1.5. I flushed until I got 1.3 EC runoff for each, and then mixed up two gallons of my veg nutrients. Each then got 1 gallon of veg nutrients at 1.2 EC and 6.1 pH. Hopefully everything is fine now, and in a few days I’ll turn on the autopot system.
9/22 Day 17. The autopot system is now turned on. No more flushing so hopefully I got the grow medium in the best place possible for the duration of the grow.
9/25 Day 20. I topped the one on the left down to 3 nodes. I’ll do the same on the right once it gets just a little taller. The idea now is 3 nodes for 6 tops per plant, and then I’ll top those all for 24 total tops. All side branches will be culled and I’ll have an even, top filled canopy.
9/26 Day 21. The one on the right is now topped.
9/28 Day 23. There’s a little discoloration around the edges of some leaves, my guess from flushing with tap water and then going right back to nutrient water. Growth has been great so no concerns there.
10/3 Day 28. All branches on the left are now topped. The one on the right needs another day or 2 before it’ll be ready for that.
10/10 Day 35. Did the switch to 12/12. Tomorrow will be day 1 of flower. I did unfortunately find a couple pollen sacks growing off the one on the right. I’ll keep a close eye for now and rip them off but if it becomes prevalent it’ll just have to get thrown out sadly.
10/16 Day 41. The past few days have consisted of some defoliation and guiding branches into the trellis net. The light was adjusted to 600 PAR / 25.9 DLI. So far no more signs of herming which is great.
10/25 Day 15 of flower. I found more signs of herming on the one on the right. I really, really don’t want to throw it in the garbage and I think I ripped all the balls off so again, I’ll let it be for now. Other than that though everything is great. Growth could not be more perfect.
10/31 Day 21. Buds are coming in nicely now and right off the bat I can see some purple coming through. I keep on finding pollen sacks on the one on the right and I keep ripping them off.
11/2 Day 23 of flower. Gave them both a good round of defoliation yesterday and I think I'm all done doing any more until harvest. I keep checking for balls on the one on the right and so far have been able to rip each one off as it forms, so no concerns yet over the herm.
11/8 Day 29 of flower. Both look super happy and are packing on mass. Lots of purple beginning to show through, I’m sure I’ll have a really colorful fade.
11/14 Day 35 of flower. Both are bulking up nicely and getting frosty. No more signs of herm for a little bit now which is good. I was having a persistent fungus gnat issue so I added a layer of perlite and vermiculite on top and added a new fan for the lower area.
11/26 Day 47 of flower. Growth has been tremendous the past 2 weeks. I couldn’t be more happy with the quality of the grow, especially since I was worried with the herm on the right. No signs of pollination and I haven’t seen any more pollen sacks in weeks. The only remaining issue is the reoccurring theme of powdery mildew. It hasn’t been spreading much but it is still there. So far though I have no concerns with it affecting the grow, it’s only on a few fan leaves here and there.
11/28 Day 49 of flower. Poking around a bit more today I found a lot more powdery mildew than I expected to see. I decided to take some drastic action and defoliated every affected leaf I could find which really opened up some light penetration. Whether this was a good idea or not I’m not sure, but the buds all seem free from mildew so I’ll see how growth continues for now.
12/1 Day 52 of flower. So far the massive defoliation I did the other day has helped stop the spread of much more PM. I see a couple small spots here and there still but I can’t really chop more off. The buds are all still clear though so I’m just gonna hope to make it to about 60 days of flower before chop. Trichomes currently are predominately cloudy with some clear mixed in, so another week will go a long way.
12/3 Day 54 of flower. The bulky pheno continues to add mass and has separated itself as the more impressive of the 2. Trichomes are still a mix of cloudy and clear so we’ll keep on going.
This strain just screams strawberry fire. The grow was going great until the powdery mildew took hold in the tent. I tried cutting off affected leaves, but I could not stop it. I ended up chopping them down a bit early because of it, and of course the overall quality will suffer. But even with the early chop this is a very promising strain. The terps are amazing, reeking of strawberry. The density was way up there, and the colors were perfect. One of them did herm on me, but after ripping off all balls I could find for a couple weeks I didn't find any more and the grow carried on as expected. All in all this is a wicked strain, but I'd recommend it only for more experienced growers who can really keep the environment dialed in and can handle herms when it happens.
Dmars
