Fast Buds Auto run

I once grew Fast Buds LSD-25 auto and had 100% germination and they grew extremely fast from day one. By week 3 they were over a foot tall and started flowering. All of these current gorilla autos seem to be growing much slower and had lower germination rates. Time will tell. The 2 Strawberry Banana's were germinated a week after the others since 3 of the Strawberry Gorilla beans didn't germinate. They seem to be growing vigorously though and may catch up in size to the others.

With lower than expected germination and slow growth in the seedlings, this grow had me worried at first. This week however is showing much better progess and just in the last couple of days, there has been an explosion on new growth (especially the Gorilla Cookies) compared to what I was seeing. The Strawberry Banana is actually at 2weeks but the Gorilla Cookies and the Strawberry Gorilla are on week 3 now. Not sure how to correct this on diary? I'm using a super soil mix with 1teaspoon per gallon of the Grow Dots mixed in a 3gal cloth pot. Recharge is used every fourth watering. I wanted to keep it simple where all I needed to do was water them and maybe add nutes if needed.

These autos seem to be hitting their stride now! The only strawberry gorilla to take has some slight leaf curl but has had that from the beginning. Anything to worry about? All others seem to be doing well. I wish now that I had started the pots with more soil. I thought I would leave some room if I needed to do a top dressing during the grow but some of these autos have short stems and the lower leaves are pretty close to the soil level and would get buried if I did do a top dressing. Lesson learned for next time.

These autos are really taking off! I did some defoliating a couple of days ago. I probably could have done more but this is my second time growing autos and I was a little weary of trimming too much. I am chosing not to try LST on them because my first auto run I had stems snap when I tried this technique....never happened with photos. As they grow taller I may add bamboo rods for support. All but the one (tallest) Gorilla Cookies auto in the middle back of picture are very bushy and needed the trim. That biggest GC has great structure, height, and is the first to flower which started last night. The smell is definitely starting to develop on these girls! Can't wait to smell them in full flower!

One of the Gorilla Cookies started flowering a week ahead of the other two. This same early GC has nice spacing of its branches and I only needed to take off 4 fan leaves. Wish I could clone this one! All other autos were very bushy and I did end up defoliating a lot off them last week and they never even showed signs of stress from it. Quite the opposite actually, they flushed out and showed signs of vigorous growth the very next day. They are definatly getting thirstier now too. They are taking almost 2 gallons of water being split between them before I see any run off at the bottom when just a week ago it was half that amount. The smells are definitely getting stronger! Those two Strawberry Banana autos seem to be producing a strong banana smell. When getting close to my grow space you're hit with an unmistakable sweet ripe banana smell! I've had to raise my light twice in the past week from the growth spurt these ladies are going through. Since 5 out of the 6 have not flowered yet, this week was labeled as veg instead of flower even though my GC#1 has been in flower for a week already. 10/12 Moved the other 2 GC to the back since they were taller than the others and now it makes it easier when watering Hard to believe I did some serious defoliating last week! They seemed to have filled right back out in no time! Brewed a compost tea last night with bat guano, earthworm castings, kelp meal, Azomite, and molasses and watered all plants this morning. Gorilla Cookies 1 has been flowering for over a week and a half where the the other 2 GCs are just starting to flower....but they are catching up in height. 👍 10/13 I'm seeing very positive results overnight from the compost tea. All plants have noticable visual growth and vigor. The 2 other GCs are near the same height now as the GC#1 which has been roughly 6 inches taller than the others. I didn't get a picture last night but the other GCs both showed limp tops that had lots of new growth weighing them down. This morning they have righted themselves and are firmly standing tall.

Plants are looking good and now all have begun to flower! The GC1 that is practically 2-3 weeks ahead of all the others is pushing out those white hairs daily and filling out nicely and trying to win the race! 😁 I was hoping to see the little Strawberry Banana 2 get some more height to it like the other one but its flowering at the same time as the other one but is bushy and half the height of the other. Waiting to see if it will push this week and play catch up like the two Gorilla Cookies did to GC1

Lots of growth this past week. The 2 other Gorilla Cookies continued to grow even taller and are over a foot taller with lots of budding going on. The taller of the 2 Strawberry Bananas I think is showing some Cal/Mag deficiency so I added 1tsp per gallon when watering. There is only seven leaves exhibiting this on the plant and no other plants have this and everything has been the same for all plants so curious why this is happening?

I had to go out of town for almost a week so I automated the watering with a small pump on a timer and some ¼ in airline tubing with emitters Which took a little time dialing in before I left! In the Reservoir I added some Fox Farm tiger bloom and big bloom nutes at 300ppm to help feed and address some deficiencies while I was away. That seemed to be working as more green came back into the leaves and I haven't seen any more leaves with the spotting. Now that I'm back I'll be going back to manual watering. First watering this morning I gave some recharge with a tablespoon of molasses. The largest GC is over 40in tall now! Its amazing how much growth you notice when not looking at these plants everyday! The first to flower and smallest of the GC's really is packing on some weight to those buds and bulking up nicely!

I was away for week 9 and the pump I had circulating my water reservoir to feed my plants while away stopped working at some point. This allowed the nutes to settle on the bottom and when the irrigation pump turned on they got hit with a heavy dose. Lots of yellow, crispy curled leaves when I returned! 🤬 I tested the runoff and I was getting 2000ppm. Flushed all with 6.4ph distilled water until all were below 500ppm runoff then allowed a day to dry out before feeding again. Had to leave that next day for a few days again for work so I went with water only in the res. They looked much better this time upon returning. Going to feed through the weekend and then start the flush next week. The trichomes are cloudy with no amber yet on the GC's and they still seem to be bulking up nicely. The smaller Strawberry Banana and Strawberry Gorilla still have a lot or clear trichomes. The big GC in the back left that dropped most of its leaves and looks like thai sticks reaching for the heavens has responded well after flushing to lower the ppms and is sending out a blanket of new white hairs.