Purple OG

Welcome back my friends! Here, I'm going to be testing out Black Sugar from Seedsman. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 PROGRESS UPDATES 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 She popped up without any problems in the light coconut coir. We'll let her roots develop for a few more days and then up-pot her into her final home. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 LINKS 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 🔗 https://www.seedsman.com/us-en/black-sugar-feminised-seeds-smanbls

Day 11 - September 14, 2023 Transplanted her into my brand new soil mix made of: worm castings, perlite, coconut coir, dolomite limestone, humic and fulvic acids, microbial and mycorrhizal innoculants, and various dry amendments to satisfy the first month or so of vegetative growth with a sufficient NPK and trace element balance.

Day 16 - September 19, 2023 She's doing great in her new home. The small leaf damage you see was from about a week ago when she was very tiny. I made the mistake of bringing outdoor plants indoors to dry. We had a caterpillar infestation in the house for a few days, and I found a baby caterpillar hiding under this seedling's first set of leaves. Luckily I spotted that on time.

Day 23 - September 26, 2023 That node she's working on now: I'm gonna cut it off! Day 26 - September 29, 2023 I cut it off! So we're coming up to the end of the first month. Can I get all of your opinion on something? Do you think this new soil mix is doing a good job so far compared to my previous grows?

Day 29 - October 2, 2023 Her new tops are starting to fill in after a couple days of recovery. Two days ago when I topped her, I also applied BT ssp. israelensis to her soil as a drench with her feeding. No more visible gnats. Cool deal. Day 30 - October 3, 2023 She's doing great. Here's a zoomed in view of her new tops. Day 31 - October 4, 2023 I like this plant 😎 Day 32 - October 5, 2023 I tied her new tops down today. We'll let them grow horizontally for a little while, and then...we'll cut them again!

Day 38 - October 11, 2023 I broke one of her new tops during training a couple days ago. I'm going to have to veg out the other side somehow so it's not so lop-sided, because I don't want to tie the whole top down. I think this will turn out to be fine. I was planning to flip her at the end of week 7, which will give her about the same amount of bloom time. Since it's been a couple days since I broke off her branch, I'm going to try something today for the first time indoor. I only did this a few times before outdoor and it helped every time. I don't know if it will work here, but... There's two large fan leaves at the node with the new tops. By defoliating the one on the left (see images), which is the one that still has its top intact, we should discourage growth from that node's branch, giving the lower shoots on the broken side some time to play catch-up. I have no idea if this will work. Also if anyone knows if this is called something, or has any other information or whatever, I'm curious. Day 39 - October 12, 2023 And she filled out pretty nicely overnight. I had to switch branches to tie down to try to even things out now. I decided to change my mind and only let her continue to veg out until the end of this 6th week. We will flip her to flower mode at the start of week 7, moving her from the veg space under 2x150W, to the tent with better ventilation and humidity control, under a 300W LED. I changed my mind because this plant recovered from the accidental main breakage and filled out very quickly, unlike the last plant that I made this mistake on. This plant seems promising so far to me. Day 42 - October 15, 2023 Well that's 6 weeks of veg. Let's flip the light now!

Day 44 - October 17, 2023 She just had her first full night of rest in the new home, the flower tent, and just got a watering. Day 47 - October 20, 2023 Heya, so she got tied down a lot more with several new stakes going into her pot a few days ago. I see her pulling and stretching a bit, and her tops are starting to change color where new growth is appearing, and seems a bit more feathery than a few days ago. She should be ready to fade to black soon, if I happen to get a phenotype with that selected trait. Or at least do something cool. I'll be happy if I just get the sugar part without the black 😎 I'm just chilling and waiting for her to give me the cue to start applying the first part of my usual lollipopping routine.

Day 50 - October 23, 2023 Today we have the first pistils forming. I'm starting to get nervous here. One of my other plants that wasn't even in flower got white mold overnight, when my grow room is 78F/45% RH. I just got done inspecting this beauty for a good 10 minutes and didn't see anything wrong. This plant is basically what it all comes down to, after some mistakes and just bad luck in my current grows. I have high hopes, but I'm paranoid that something is going to go wrong. I noticed that she never stretched much, but she did stretch. It seems to be slowing down. I tied her down pretty good a few days ago, but I think maybe she just might not stretch that much more. I really want her to so I can lollipop her soon, or I won't be able to. If it stays short, I will remove the ties and do a lighter defoliation soon. I'll re-evaluate in a few days. It's sort of hard to believe this plant has 1 top. I did top it once, but I broke one side of it early in training, so it's pretty much as if I never topped it. It is a very short bush because I was expecting a big plant. Well, here's hoping for a big finish :) Day 52 - October 25, 2023 Heya, so today I set up a web cam to keep an eye on my tent. The photos are lower quality, only 1080p instead of 4K, but I will be including some of these full tent views once in a while now. She is obviously the bigger plant in the image. I'm also running a small bed of photos on 12/12 from seed. I haven't made a diary for that yet, but here's a sneak peak. Today I also defoliated about 20% of her underneath the canopy, and I removed all LST stakes and ties. I am now going to let her stretch all she wants, because she has a few feet to work with. I will do some light LST with string as the tops grow out to keep them all at the same level and away from other bud sites. Day 55 - October 28, 2023 So today I found a tiny bit of powdery mildew, or some kind of white mold on her lower leaves. I believe it was spread from a plant I just killed that had stem rot, due to growing in a bad medium. It is nothing alarming yet, but if I don't do something now, my experience with PM tells me it will be too late. I will apply some citrus and neem oil, spread manually all over her stems and stipules, and I will lightly mist with the same solution right before lights out. It's unfortunate and we might not make it through this. I didn't get to taking any closeups in a few days, but here are two shots right before and right after lights out today, with my new webcam setup.

Day 59 - November 1, 2023 Hey all. Unfortunately, this plant is a goner. We have a lot of white mold on her leaves from an infection with another plant a week ago. It just keeps getting worse, and I can also see it starting on all my other plants. The mold source was 1 of 10 plants in my garden that had bad soil with too much water. It gave that plant root rot. The root rot progressed into the stem to make stem rot. During LST, a branch broke. That means millions of spores were released and dispersed by all of my fans etc across my grow room. It has been a losing battle since then. So I'm not starting anymore plants. I am letting these plants go, but I don't expect to harvest them. They are being grown solely to be part of a test of mine, which I am pretty excited about, actually. I purchased a bunch of sensors and automation controllers. I'm currently in the process of automating the environment and devices in my grow room, with the end goal being able to dial in VPD, DLI, temperature, and humidity to an acceptable threshold within predefined target values I set for the weeks of growth for the plants. I have a long way to go, as so far I have only been working on this tent with Black Sugar and a small bed. I am able to monitor the temperature, humidity and VPD remotely in real time, as well as switch on and off the grow light, heater, air conditioner, dehumidifier, and humidifier. Each of temperature, relative humidity, and vapor pressure deficit are displayed as 5 separate numbers: a value for each of the 4 sensors in the tent, plus an average of the 4 together. I'm also able to view history trends and view past dates and times as a chart. It is all coming along nicely, but there is so much more work to be done. Currently, I'm in the process of complaining to VIVOSUN. They made the humidifier I just purchased, and I would have expected a lot more common sense in the design, from a manufacturer that is known for grow equipment. This unit cannot be turned off with automation. If you unplug it and plug it back in, it will be on, but will not function until you press the power button AT LEAST. You then need to also reprogram it with the desired humidity, mist temperature, etc etc every single time it loses power. Additionally, its internal humidistat is completely wrong, and its sensor is right in the path of the mist it emits. Pretty dumb. It either stays on all the time, or it doesn't turn on at all. I'll keep updating this diary with photos of Black Sugar, but not to harvest -- just to have transpiration in my enclosed tent. This diary will now mostly be about my automation hacks, and bringing my environment to be less work for me, which never worked to begin with given all the mold I've had in the last year. I DECIDED I WILL NOT BE FLOWERING ANOTHER PLANT UNTIL I HAVE MY ENVIRONMENT AUTOMATED. This year's outdoor harvest gives me the buffer I need to have that down time. Day 60 - November 2, 2023 Well, I think I gave up too quickly. I let mold beat me too many times. I'm not going to let Black Sugar go down without a big fight. I scrubbed her today. I first scrubbed the top and underside of all of her leaves and stems rigorously and carefully for a good while with a concoction I threw together containing a few different ingredients I have used separately before. Sort of a shock and awe start to this battle. I used: 1/2 liter water 100mL hydrogen peroxide a couple heaping tablespoons of baking soda 10mL organic lemon juice 2mL neem oil concentrate First I defoliated. A lot. Like half of her. All those visibly moldy leaves are gone, plus anything large, in the bunch, or on the underside. Simply gone. Probably one of the largest post-bloom defoliations I've even done this late, but it had to be done. She has a lot more foliage to work with, so I think she'll be fine as far as plant structural integrity. Anyway, I scrubbed and I scrubbed. It took me a while, and then I did the same for all of her neighbors. Later, I am scrubbing all pots and the inside of the tent with the same solution. The only downside so far that I see, is the leaves LOOK like they have more powdery mildew, but they don't. The baking soda and lemon juice, when dried, always looks like the plants got in a fight with a bag of flour. That will go away with time or with a separate rinse, which I will do, but they will have to deal with the slight discoloration affecting their ability to photosynthesize optimally, because I will be doing 2 more washes, for the next 2 days, followed by a rinse on the 3rd day. This, in combination with my work in progress to automate the environment of my garden with hardware controllers and computer programming, should help me fight the mold pretty good. If I lose, it will still have been a good try, and a fun experiment. If I win, well.... It looks like we're dealing with a black phenotype here. She's starting to turn a maroon color already. I'll get some close ups of that soon. Not much in this update, just spore chores lol.

Day 68 - November 10, 2023 Unfortunately, she is practically dead. Unlike the other 4 plants in the bed next to her, she did not take too well to being cleansed, and was burned badly from the weak citrus solution. Her buds are brown, and her leaves are yellow with necrosis. Edit: Yes, she's dead. See the video proof. She doesn't respond to the light anymore at all. It's all cool though. It was worth it because now my flower tent and grow room's temperature and humidity are automated and under control. This round here is all about monitoring my environment conditions, and we're doing really well with those numbers now. We'll let her go, even though she is not going to produce much. I want to simulate a tent of transpiring plants to make sure the numbers stay good. I guess we can just sit back and watch the other 4 plants. I don't have a diary for them, so I guess we can switch this one over to highlight those. There are 3 Purple O.G. from HUBA Seed Bank, as well as an unknown growing next to one of them. The unknown plant was because I sowed a few seeds before these, and none germinated. I waited 3 weeks and sowed the Purple O.G.'s...and then 3 weeks later one of the originals came up after I already removed the plant labels. I don't even remember which breeder it was, haha. The bed started flowering 3 days ago, with all 4 plants showing pistils on the same day, the start of week 5. They are all growing under 12/12 from seed. Day 69 - November 12, 2023 These things are starting to get eaten by mites. Nothing alarming, just some small holes in lower large fan leaves. This happens when it gets cold out in my house. I have to spray them today. I left a video of this week's time-lapse.