Purple OG

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.