Dr. Grinspoon by TOTEM

WARNING: this will be a long read 😉 I think week 9 tells you many things about the trends of your grow. Especially with sativas, because you notice, for example, if there’s a salt buildup going on. This is my case. When I think about my last scrog with Silver Haze, I can’t forget the big overfeeding I had toward the end of flowering. My fault, because I used full strenght nutes! This time I tried to improve, and forced myself to give 1/2 strenght nutes (except once in the entire cycle), alternating one time water+nutes and one time just water. LET’S DO SOME BRAINSTORMING! Everything Is good now, but I feel I need to discuss my thoughts about those deficiencies I had last week. I think I had 3 main problems altogether: 1. When I transplanted the princess in her 20L pot, I run out of Bio Terra Plus, so I topped the pot with coco coir, and added that mixture of bat guano, algae and neem flour on the surface of it. In the middle of flowering, when I had that big overwatering, I noticed that I couldn’t see when the soil below the coco was dry or wet, so I decided to remove that coco layer (together with bat guano and other supplements). At that point I felt like I had to recover that bat guano+algae+neem flour layer, and added 50% of what I put on day 1 of flowering (since I was exactly in the middle). Well, very bad move, because this bat guano dosage has been really too much for this landrace Sativa. 2. Two weeks ago I felt like some silica could help her reacting better to very dry conditions since, after the overwatering, I started waiting for some droopy leaves before watering again. But I gave the wrong dosage: 1ml/L instead of 0.1ml/L. That’s 10 times more than the right dosage!!! Silica, other than making plants stronger, improves and increases the absorption of nutrients from mediums, so just think about the possible damage! 3. Five CO2 bags, together with higher temperature (29-31C) and higher RH (50-60%), that made her metabolism accelerate and suck more nutrients, faster. So, summing everything up: - Too much P (phosphorus) given from bat guano (and some from normal nutrients).... PLUS.... - Too much Si (silica), which increased nutrients absorption.... PLUS.... - Increased metabolism from CO2, higher temperature and higher RH.... GIVES............ P TOXICITY!!!! Nice one Totem 😂!!!!! You can see this by looking at those curled down leaves, plus some burned tips on the photos. (Some weeks ago I noticed some yellow tips, and even wrote something about it here. Well, that was the first sign of overfeeding. I spotted it, but didn’t do anything to fix it 😆! This P toxicity, together with high amounts of silica (which increased PH level too), made PH go up, and eventually caused some other nutrients to lockout. Between day 106 and 107, before I reacted with a corrected PH 6.5 watering, all the upper leaves started showing some yellow/light brown spots on them (just on the side facing at the lights). I looked at every page I found on Google, but I haven’t been able to find the exact reason that caused these spots. To me, it seems like a Ca (calcium) deficiency, maybe because of some lockout, but definitely not a real deficiency. Just a lockout. Calcium deficiency usually shows these spots on both sides of leaves, not only one. The other possible cause could be wind burn, which causes these yellow/brown spots, even if it’s definitely not the case here. And to be clear, I got red veins on some of those curled leaves, which I think have been there since the time of overwatering. As you can see, I did some mistakes altogether, which are now hard to recognize, separate and analyze singularly. I’ll tell you this: I’ll grow Dr. Grinspoon again, next time with more awareness and an even lighter feeding schedule (with no silica, less bat guano, and maybe no CO2, at least in flower). 🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲 And to sum up what happened day by day, here are the facts: Day 106: Noticed yellow/brown spots on upper leaves. Day 107: More spots on leaves! Watered with 6L of tap water with corrected PH (6.5). Runoff: PH 6.8, 835 ppm (remember this value, and compare it with the one before the big flush of day 110). Day 109: Took some photos! I LOVE THIS STRANGE PHENO. Finally bigger and fatter colas! It finally seems like the one you see on stock photos, but it’s slightly different. Foxtails are there, and are taking their shape very slowly. Love the little gems you can see on flower shoots. Wow! Last photo shows you the yellow/light brown spots on the leaves. Day 110: No new yellow spots, but leaves below are still very curled down, as you can see. Decided to flush with 26L of flush of PH 6.5 tap water (~23C, 150ppm). But before, I removed ALL the bat guano, algae and neem flour there was on the surface. After the first 2L, runoff PPMs were 2000 (????), with PH 7.1. After the 26th liter, runoff PPMs were 580, and PH 6.8. Day 111: Upper leaves (the ones with spots) are praying to the sky. They look very happy. Leaves below are still very curled down and a bit curled outwards too, but they’re not showing any other deficiency. It’s strange because, even if at the moment I’m not having overwatering problems, I still can’t classify these symptoms. PS: Sorry if I take so long to reply to comments, but I don’t have much free time in this period! :-(