Soil Test: Epsilon F1 & Royal Gorilla

D22. New week and the girls are looking better by each passing day. They have finally started drinking enough to register on the blumat tensiometer, but no need to water them yet. ------------------------------ D25. Yesterday, I watered with SF Nematodes against fungus gnats, since the Epsilon lady has got an infestation. I noticed them a few days ago, but wanted the soil to dry out a bit more before adding more water. I also treated the LSD girl in my other tent, since the pots in both tent are filled with soil from the same batch. Finally, I added another couple of yellow sticky traps just to deal with the adults, as the nematodes only attack the fungus gnat larvae and eggs. This is my biggest infestation in years, so I suspect that I will need to do a second round with nemos in a couple of weeks. There are more gnats on the sticky traps right now, than what I have had in total in my last 3-4 grows. lol Today, I decided it was time to start training the plants. First, I removed a few necrotic leaves: the first set of true leaves on both plants, and one more leaf from the Gorilla girl, that was on the underside. I bent over both plants with low stress training (LST) by using plant wire and binder clips. Finally, I foliar sprayed the girls with fulvic acid, bokashi juice, and a drop of horticultural soap as surfactant. ------------------------------ D28. We're at the end of the fourth and final week of vegetation, as the Epsilon lady is starting to show her flowers and the Gorilla girl is almost there as well. Both plants look so much better, especially the Gorilla girl. Sure, there are still necrotic spot on her lower leaves (I suspect a potassium toxicity in the soil) but otherwise she looks phenomenal. Huge difference to the LSD girl in my other tent, even though they have the same soil. The fungus gnats are driving me nuts. I have never had an infestation this bad, although I have to admit it's my own fault for waiting too long to add nematodes to the soil. It's next to impossible to completely avoid fungus gnats when you grow in living soil. New compost/castings almost always comes with some gnats. Usually, I'm pro-active and add nemos from the start, which works great – in my latest grows I usually had less than 10 gnats during an entire grow. However, this time I wet the soil too much from the start, so had to wait for the pots to dry out before being able to water in the nemos. This gave the gnats the opportunity to go nuts. Oh well, they should decrease soon now after the application of nemos, and I added a few more sticky traps to deal with the adults. Still annoying, though. ------------------------------