Grimm Truffles and Vijackra

October 30th - Day 14 I planted 10 Grimm Truffles and 4 Vijackras in 2" square pots without a presoak on 11-13. They were placed under a dome with a temp range of 74-78 F and where removed 24 hours after germination. Within 24 hours had 1 Truffles and 2 Vijackra germinate. In the next 24 hours I had 5 Truffles and 1 Vijackra germinate. Then the 24 hours after that had 2 Truffles and 1 Vijackra germinate. The remaining 2 Truffles did not germ after an additional 10 days so they where discarded. For germination and for the first 10 days they were placed under HLG propagation lights at about 3" from the tops of the seedlings. After 10 days the seedlings were transplanted into 5" cowpots with the bottom inch filled with straight coco and the remaining volume was filled with seedling mix. At this time inoculated with Big Foot Gold (bacteria) and Big Foot Mycorrhizae. The bacteria was applied direct to roots, the mycorrhizae was top dressed to water it in. I also top dressed a small amount (aprox 1/2 oz volume) of Jobes Organic 4-4-4 to feed the plants until the cowpots get transplanted into grow bags. At this time they were moved from under the HLG propagation lights to being placed under four 4k HLG QB132 pulling 185w total. For about the next week I will leave the cowpots exposed to air but will place them into 6" square to protect the root tips from the light as they grow through the walls of the cowpots. Once covered it will also retain more moisture in the cow pots and help soften up the cowpots for transplanting to their final bags about another week. I have been using cowpots for about 6 years and have found this method allows for stress free transplanting. I used straight water while they were in the 2" pots. Then after moving to the cowpots I am alternating water and a weak solution of CalMag+. At this point I am only having to water every 2-3 days. I am currently using about 1 cup of water per plant and I am letting the sides of the cowpots fully dry in between watering. I do not expect to have to feed them until they have been placed into their grow bags and will be running pure blend pro at that point. The day after transplanting the weather had changed to being much cooler and dryer which made keeping humidity up difficult even with running 2 humidifiers. This caused a significant amount of drooping in the first leaves but over the last 3 days they improved and I am getting noticeable growth again. Starting today I am also getting heavy rain 1"+ a day for the next 10 days out on the forecast so humidity is becoming less of an issue. I went from having a base line on the intake going from 35% to 50% today. December 3rd - Day 17 The change in weather plus adding a humidifier in the adjoining room has helped to get my vpd closer to being on target. I was originally swaying between 0.9 to 1.5 due to my humidifiers not being able to keep up after the lights being on for a few hours. Now I am running between 0.9 to 1.2 , I would like to bump up the lower end but the "smart" humidifiers I have in the room are unable to work with a controller. The "smart" portion of them prevents them from auto starting after having their power cut and clears the last settings. The new humidifier I just purchased is a dumb type with knob which turns it on and adjusts the output and works perfectly fine with an ACI plug. I am going to test it out in the adjoining room for the next week before swapping out one of my one currently in the grow room. If it checks out ok will probably order a second one even though I most likely not need it once I have a canopy transpiring moisture into the air but I had a hard time finding a dumb cool mist humidifier that had a tank that could last 24 hours and was cheap. I decided to go ahead and sleeve the cow pots today because I am getting my first root tip penetrating the bottom of the pot (not the drain hole but through the pot.) I expect by the start of week 3 to have a number of root tips growing through the bottom and starting to come out of the sides. I usually hold off on covering them because the retained moisture greatly weakens the cowpots sidewall rigidity and makes them easy to tear if not handling them with care. I still plan on transplanting to final grow bags in week 4, barring excessive root growth make me do it sooner, because the light they are currently under tends to keep the inter node spacing very tight. Where as the main lights that I have hung up are 3k qb288 v1 and they tend to induce a little stretch even in veg. December 4th - Day 18 Finally removed the top half of the wire shelf that was in the grow room. I left it in place at first because it had all my propagation lights and heat mats setup on it plus I placed the seedlings up top because it tends to be the warmest spot in the room. Now it is much easier to maintain the girls and get better pictures. I previously would have to use a step stool get to the top shelf. For the last few years I have mainly used the room for starting outdoor plants and for making 100s of pepper starts. In just 24 hours from sleeving my cowpots there has been many more roots poking through the walls. The picture from todays is the same container as yesterday. A different pot, no picture, already has 2" long roots coming out of the walls of the cowpot. I originally started using cowpots many year ago for vegetable starts but started using them cannabis because they allow for a near zero stress transplant and rapid root zone growth into the new media. There is a chance of getting mushrooms growing from the cowpots but they are harmless to the plants and if you get lucky you end up with ink caps which produce chitinase which creates a hostile environment for insects. Not that important for an indoor grow but is nice for when moving young plants outdoors by discouraging things like wood louse and ants. December 5th - Day 19 I got most the extra stuff I do not need out of the room now and wiped down everything with hot bleach water. I also brought in my grow bags then realized my plant trays are a tight fit and would be hard to slide around to get to the back side plants. I have used these trays before in the room but it was before I had lined the floor with pond liner. When I had installed the liner I had boxed in the room with pressure treated 2x4s to have something to staple the liner to which narrowed the floor space just enough not to let 3 trays sit side by side. So I am probably going to have to order some slightly smaller ones otherwise I will be cursing myself when it comes time to water. I am going to be placing the Grimm Truffles in the 5 gallon round bags on the floor and then the Vijackra are going to be going into 3 gallon squares on the shelf where my seedling are currently located. The room is roughly 4' x 9' the Grimm Truffles are getting a 4'x5' space and then the Vijackra will end up with 2'x4'. I am currently running the lights to provide about 500 µmol m-2 s- which is giving me DLI of 32.4. The light I am using for veg does not have an adjustment potentiometer hooked up to the driver so I am utilizing canopy to lights distance for setting my target and checking it with an apogee quantum flux meter. I have been working the value up over time from the roughly 200 µmol I get from my propagation setup. I plan to gradually increase this value to 700-800 before I flip over. My goal is to flip on new years although that is subject to change depending on how the plants look. I still have a one maybe two tops and a transplant to do before then.

December 7th - Day 21 Right before lights out "yesterday" I went ahead and topped them, they had rapid growth during the last 24 hour period and decided it would be a good time. I expect them to stall a bit from the topping but do not think it is going to be a very long period based upon the u[tick in growth. Once lights came back on went ahead and gave the girls their first feeding of grow. I went light at about half strength and will step it up to normal over a couple waterings. December 10th - Day 24 Ordered and received a new Bluelab PH meter, the drops work fine for the solution but my run off is still a little dark from humics in inoculate making an accurate reading hard. Yesterday I did run straight water through the pots and today fed with 12ml/gal Grow and 2.5 ml/gal CalMag @ about 500 ppm. I reversed the plant order because the right side of tray is slightly warmer and causes the pots to dry slightly faster nd additionally the Vijackras are a little bit slower in their uptake of water. I gave the Truffles about 350 ml and about 250 ml Vijackras. Their has been resumed growth and may be able to start training them around the start of week 4. The roots have already fill ed out coco layer in the bottom and beginning to penetrate the side walls so I could transplant them now if I wished. I am trying to hold off though until I have my primary branches laid out, once I transplant they will have to go under 3ks which will encourage greater internode spacing compared to the light they are currently under. I have run the same lights and pot size up to 10 weeks in the past when I have had too but watering frequency goes up to multiple times a day otherwise I lose more of the root tips penetrating the cow pots. As or right now I am looking at transplanting sometime in week 4 or by week 5 at latest. This should allow me to keep my projected timeline of flipping around new years or slightly after.

December 14th - Day 28 Two days ago I flushed with distilled water @ 700ml, then today fed with 4ml/gal Calmag and 15nl/gal PBP Grow. The above pictures were taken before feeding due to me waiting tell the pots were a little bit dryer later in the light cycle. The Grimm Truffles are noticeably bigger then the Vijackras and have much greater root penetration through the cowpots. I will probably transplant soon. December 16th -Day 30 Transplanted everything at the start of the cycle into their final pots. Yesterday I presoaked with a solution of 5ml/gal Calmag and mid cycle tonight will give them a feed solution. I will wait 2 days for the roots to take hold before starting to train the plants. I still need to swap out my veg light with a 3k setup with a bit more power but that will probably happen tomorrow.

December 22 Day 36 I held off on feeding for a couple days then cut off my 1st node branches for clones on the Grimm Truffles. The Vijackra is a much slower growing plant in comparison so will probably have to wait a little longer before I pull cuts from them. My primary branching is in place now and will let them grow for a few days then defoliate the base structure. December 23 Day 37 Defoilated all my plants, considering removing one of the Grimm Truffles out and using it for a large outdoor plant.

December 28th Day 42 - The Grimm Truffles are really starting to take off. I am waiting on some new trays to reorganize things a bit before before I flip. They are supposed to get here the end of next week which would place me in week 7 of veg. I also had to get out the dehumidifier my RH was spiking at lights out dropping my vpd a little too low. I am currently watering every other day and collectively putting about 6-7 gallons of water in the room after vacuuming out all the water from the trays. December 30th Day 44 - I got my new stakes today and went ahead and defoliated again. Ended up removing almost a 5 gallon bucket of material.

January 4th Day 49 - Mid cycle last night moved everything about got the wire shelf out of there. I had left it in there at first to have a place to set my domes but the cuttings and domes will be moving out soon. The Grimm Truffle clones are bouncing back from leaving them uncovered by accident one day and I currently have Vijackra cuts in the dome. I am not going to be doing any more major defoliation in veg and will probably only do another light on once I am around 2 weeks into flower. I will be flipping soon either when the majority of the plants are up to the stakes (about 15" above crown) or at the hard date of the 11th which would be the start of week 8. I am looking forward to them getting some legs on them once they flip because they are bushy little monsters right now.

January 09 Day 1 Flower Time to see this take off. Did a minor thinning of the center leaves to allow for better air flow going to let them stretch out some before doing a major cleanup.

January 16th Day 8 Another week down should be getting close to my first flower showing. January 19th Day 11 The first flowers are starting to show up.

January 23rd Day 15 Flower You can not really tell but removed a 5 gallon buckets worth of leaves yesterday, Grimm Truffles responds to defoliation very well. They also can take some really high light levels and I am at 2.2 EC every watering but probably can go higher. The tallest girl was 16" (from soil) tall at flip and is now 37". The truffles look like they will get to arround 4' and the Vijackras will probably be a little over 3'. January 24th Day 16 Flower My fastest growing Grimm Truffle, #4 , has grown a little too fast and has pushed up into the 1200+ ppfd region of the lights which was a little more then it could take. I caught it before any real damage could happen and have moved the plant up to the front corner so I could raise up that single light and give it a break. I also have some plans for that plant given it's accelerated growth rate compared to the others so I will be leaving it out of the pictures for about the next 2 weeks.

January 30th Day 22 Flower Start of week 4 flower, the stretch should be winding down over this week. I have done my part getting them to this point, now it is on them to fill in.

February 9th Day 32 I had family stuff come up so have not had much time in the room, actually missed a watering and they dried back a little bit more then I would like but they popped right back up. The smell in the last day has really started to kick up a notch in the last day, there is many different notes in the room earth, hash, gas, licorice, pepper, pineapple, skunk, and rotten meat. Most of this is coming from the Truffles, the Vijackra are still very tame in the smell department.

February 13th Day 35 Flower Silica has been removed from the mix and bloom has been bumped up 5ml/gal. One of my girls in the corner is a little bit more faded then the rest so she got a weak veg solution a couple hours after main feeding.

February 20th Day 42 Starting to see the first bit of color show up, once I cut feeding this should really start to pop out. I plan on given them a couple for feedings then cut it back to using some pure blend tea a couple times.

March 5th Day 56 Flower It is nearing the end, they have been on straight water for this last week. I was hoping they would fade a little bit more and they may get a little further along in the last couple days. On my next batch I will probably cut feeding a few days earlier.