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Since my last grow was cut short due to a bad case of the herms, I figured I'd go back to some autos for a quicker grow. I've done every light schedule there is to try with autos and haven't noticed much of a difference, so for now I'll be leaving them under 24 hours of light. The idea going into this is to hopefully top all 4 to leave 4 nodes each for 8 tops per plant. 8x4 is 32, so 32 total tops which should absolutely fill my tent with zero small branches. Of course with these being autos I may not have the time to get there for topping, so we'll play it by ear. There's a lot of shared genetics going on here with CDLC and Double Grape being the parents of Pinot Noir, and Sour Stomper being a parent of both Double Grape and Forum Stomper. I've grown the Sour Stomper before so I'm excited to see how all these genetics combine with each other.
9/13 Forum Stomper has just begun to poke up through the coco. No signs of the others yet.
9/14 Day 1. All 4 are now popped up and getting some light. I’ll leave them be for a couple days before I mix up a low strength nute mix and give the first feeding.
9/18 Day 5. No issues over the last few days, just typical seedling growth. I did do the first feeding today with a half strength version of my veg nutrients at .9 EC and 6.0 pH. Each got a half gallon.
9/22 Day 9. I decided to change the light schedule to 22/2 and set it to 150 PAR / 12 DLI. Each were also hand watered with a gallon of my full strength veg recipe.
9/24 Day 11. Lights adjusted to 170 PAR / 13.5 DLI. I did the plumbing work for the autopots today and discovered I’m missing a top hat grommet. Good thing I discovered this early and I have time to order one. I don’t plan on turning on the autopots for about another week so there’s time.
9/28 Day 15. Got my grommet in the mail today and got the full system hooked up. They’ve been progressing well so I decided to go ahead and turn on the autpots. Everything filled up with no leaks and looks good.
10/1 Day 18. The primary fan I was using for wind died at some point over the night. Fortunately I have some spares and got them installed. Everything looks great still, although the Forum Stomper is very leggy looking. Strange, but fine. I readjusted the light schedule to 20/4 at about 200 PAR / 14.4 DLI. I know I keep switching the light schedule, but the conflict of “just give autos all the light” and “they need a rest” is a tough one for me to balance. I think ultimately I feel more comfortable knowing they get some downtime, so I’ll leave things be at 20/4 for now.
10/3 Day 20. Turned the light up to 240 PAR / 17.3 DLI.
10/5 Day 22. They seemed to love the increase in light. Growth has been really nice and I hope to top them soon. I decided to trim the bottom most node off each as it seemed we had some issues down there with the Double Grape and Forum Stomper. In fact now that we’re starting to add some size you can see the character of each:
The Creme De La Chem has always looked happy and shows zero signs of anything at all bugging it. Tight internode spacing and super happy, thick indica leaves. Absolutely the most hardy looking of them all.
The Forum Stomper is also a nice standout. It has some longer spacing and is the tallest. The bottom most node was weak and thin looking, clearly lagging behind the upper nodes so it was chopped.
The Pinot Noir looks great. More of a middle ground with node spacing but happy, praying leaves all around.
The Double Grape is the obvious runt and/or sickly looking one. It’s still growing fine, but its leaves have been droopy and sad for most of the grow and it seems to have some mutations that hurt it. The bottom node never really formed correctly but the rest appear ok.
10/6 Day 23. The CDLC and Pinot Noir were ready for a topping so I did both of them. The other 2 need just another day or so before they are ready. I wanted to do them all at the same time but with these being autos I know time is of the essence so the sooner the better.
10/7 Day 24. I didn’t mind the high humidity in my area for the first 2 weeks as that worked out for the seedlings, but the past week has been a bit much. They’ve essentially been living at .5 to .7 VPD for the past week, and I think the small signs of nutrient deficiency are the result of that. So, to fix it I finally broke down and bought a good quality dehumidifier. Early results are very good, but I’ll need some time to find the right settings. As it stands now, I seem to able to maintain about 1.2-1.3 VPD which is a bit high, but I suppose that’s better than being as low as I was. Honestly this was one of the last pieces I needed to 100% dial in my environment, so I expect no more issues of any kind. It’s probably the first time I can say that I’ve finally tested, measured, and adjusted every part of the entire process for complete control and consistency. I hope this leads to good results.
10/8 Day 25. All 4 have now been topped.
10/12 Day 29. The past few days have been a rollercoaster of VPD levels. My new dehumidifier works exceptionally well at making the air dry but is exceptionally bad at maintaining a certain level. Even with it’s auto on/off it’s absolutely all over the place on when it thinks it needs to be on. As a result, I have been ping ponging back and forth from around .7 VPD to 1.4 VPD, almost at random. Obviously, the plants don’t look very happy with clear nutrient deficiencies on all of them that I can attribute to the VPD being mostly too low. While we haven’t really started flowering yet, I know that’s right around the corner so I’m going to hope that the natural environment improves more so I can just leave the dehumidifier off. I’m thinking consistency might be better than whatever it is I’ve been doing.
10/16 Day 33. They’ve all made a huge recovery from the issues I had going on. On top of the VPD going nuts all over the place the last week, I also discovered my pH was drifting more than I thought. So all 4 had a pretty rough patch there, probably at the worst possible time right before flowering. Even with the good recovery, I fear now I probably missed out on a good bit of growth from all 4 and wonder if I’ll really be filling my tent like I thought I would. I suppose 4 small plants isn’t the worst problem to have so long as I keep it smooth sailing from here. I’m still learning how to best grow with these autopots and I’ll take this as a lesson for the future.
10/20 Day 37. All look happy. Only real issue to complain about is the size difference between them. I has hoping to drop the net and even them all out but with the Forum Stomper and Pinot Noir towering over the Double Grape and CDLC I’ll probably just let them grow naturally without further training.
10/26 Day 43. Pretty big haircut day for all 4. There was maybe just the very beginnings of some powdery mildew way down low and I did really need to clean up the bottoms so that was done. The Forum Stomper and Pinot Noir are right on track with great growth. The Double Grape has been off the entire grow, staying squat and always looking sad. The leaves on it are very often deformed with a heavy case of “ducks foot”. I’ll chalk that one up as a strange genetic defect. The CDLC is also staying pretty squat with almost no real growth happening for awhile now. I did notice the valve in the autopot for the CDLC seems broken, keeping the water level at all times maxed out as opposed to the normal up and down. I’ll order a new valve but at this point I think whatever damage has been done is done.
11/2 Day 50. Starting to see some signs of light burn on the Forum Stomper. As the tallest one in the tent I was actually expecting that, since I have no choice but to crank the lights as hard as she will allow to help out all the smaller ones. I’ve thought about this, and since my lights aren’t anywhere near maxed out I think I’ll switch to an 18/6 light schedule to help the Forum Stomper get some additional downtime and will readjust the dimmer to get around 40 DLI to the highest point on the canopy. This brings my dimmer to just above 50% power.
11/4 Day 52. The Pinot Noir is quickly becoming the stand out of the group. It’s starting to pack on weight and resin at a really remarkable rate, vastly outpacing all the others. Even a quick reposition of a branch and a leaf left my hands feeling like glue was on them. The Double Grape is plodding along painfully but making progress. The Forum Stomper definitely got burned a bit by the lights so needs to make a recovery still. The CDLC is an odd one. No issues with it during it’s whole life so far and it’s always looked happy but strangely it’s by far the slowest growing, almost as if it’s permanently stunted. This is the autopot that seems to be malfunctioning so I suppose I can blame that as the likely culprit. This grow is shaping up to be a bit of a mixed bag overall, but if the Pinot keeps going on like this I’ll still be very happy.
11/10 Day 58. I’m not sure what the issue is with the Forum Stomper. It’s been 8 days since I switched to 18/6 and set the DLI to about 40. There’s no way that amount of light should burn a plant, and yet it looks quite terrible. I don’t have any other variables at play since all 4 are hooked up to the same reservoir, using the same coco mix, using the same autopots. So the current status for each is Forum Stomper is allergic to light and looks bad, the Double Grape is progressing fine but has some odd genetic deformities, the CDLC is horribly stunted and small but looks healthy, and the Pinot Noir just loving life looking 100% fire. Oh well, onwards we go.
11/14 Day 62. Back when my humidity levels got a little out of control, powdery mildew had formed at the very bottoms of the plants. Even though I have the RH well in check now and I’ve increased the airflow this stuff just keeps on spreading. It hasn’t affected any buds yet but at the pace it’s spreading it won’t be long. I’m going to hope that one more week of growth with increased airflow and even less humidity will slow it down enough to where maybe I’m at least close to finishing because I don’t think I can give them much more time.
11/22 Day 70. The Forum Stomper barely has any good leaves left, the Double Grape is a mutant with odd growth, the CDLC is barely doing anything, and the Pinot Noir has lots of mildew. Even with a dry environment and loads of wind the mildew has been uncontrollable. Sad because at least the Pinot was doing very well. Anyways, it’s time to end this run and chop em all down. I look forward to starting fresh without all the issues I had with this run.
@Dmars, I always tell myself when I find that perfect strain, like it could be my Newport cigarette, I will buy a tent and house a mother plant. But I just haven’t found it yet. I keep taking clones and growing new strains in the meantime 🤣😂🤣
@FrontRowAG_BrianG, Two tents, a 3x3 and a 3x2, along with outdoor have kept me busy. But now that outdoor is almost done and both of my tents are newly occupied I can finally start to settle down a bit. It has been a whirlwind these past few months lol. But also I think I'd rather have a large room like you have to work in. I'd imagine it makes each run a little more special, and if you wanna relax for a week after harvest/drying you have that. I'm seemingly always tied up in something. Not complaining though, it is nice to always have something to go check on.
Dmars
