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12/21 Seeds were placed into 3 gallon pots filled with 80% canna coco brick and 20% perlite/vermiculite mix. The bricks were rehydrated with 1 gallon of distilled water treated with mosquito bits, and then 1.5 gallons of RO water with calmag added. Cali Octane is on the left and Mandarin Cookies R3 is on the right. Lights set to full 24 hours on at around 140 PAR / 12 DLI.
12/25 The Mandarin Cookies has already popped up. No sign of the Cali Octane yet.
12/26 I got a little concerned about the octane so I went digging to see if it had popped. Sadly this seed had not done anything despite being saturated in coco. The pot has been removed and it looks like this will be a Mandarin Cookies R3 only run. I'm really sad about that as I was looking forward to this strain an awful lot. Tomorrow will be day 1 of veg.
12/27 Day 1 of veg. Even though we only just sprouted, the pot was a little light and I feared that the EC in the coco was already spiking. Sure enough after running a gallon of my seedling water through the pot runoff EC was a scary 2.7. So, 2 gallons of my seedling water later and runoff EC was a much better 1.3.
12/31 Day 5 of veg. Not much to talk about. It’s been a little colder in the tent than I would like, generally around high 60s. Other than that everything is fine.
1/5 Day 10 of veg. I mixed up 2 gallons of my week 2 water mix and flushed out the pot with all of it. Light adjusted to 220 PAR / 14.3 DLI.
1/9 Day 14 of veg. Light adjusted to 235 PAR / 15.2 DLI.
1/17 Day 22 of veg. The pot was getting light and it’s been long enough getting roots started so it’s time to turn on the autopot system. First, I’ll flush the pot with nutrient water to bring runoff down to 1.2 EC, and then I’ll switch on the system.
1/27 Day 32 of veg. I topped her a few days ago and so far all is well. The autopot system is having trouble auto feeding water however, and this is due to the reservoir not being high enough to have gravity get it all there. I’ve been lifting the reservoir by hand once a day to make sure water is getting there and that’s been working for now. I’ll need to engineer a better solution eventually though. Light adjusted to 390 PAR / 25.3 DLI.
2/6 Day 42 of veg. I’ve been continuing with leaf tucking and light LST just to keep everything equal. The light burn seems to be steady, which makes me wonder if it’s light burn at all since I’m much lower than I should be right now, with the light now at 310 PAR / 20 DLI. I’m starting to wonder about this Spider Farmer SF2000, almost every grow I attempt with it has signs of light burn even with staying under usual limits. It’s certainly not a measurement issue with me using an Apogee MQ-610. Oh well, hopefully she works out of it soon.
2/11 Day 2 of flower. The damn autopot wasn’t feeding water at all recently so I switched to hand watering the last day or 2 until I could sort it all out. At this point I think it’s safe to say the yellow tips everywhere are EC related since the pot simply wasn’t staying saturated like it’s supposed to and the root zone EC got out of control. I decided to go pretty extreme and just do a flush from the top which Autopot says to never ever do, but I wasn’t sure how out of whack the EC really was so I said fuck it. Runoff EC was surprisingly low, only coming out at around 1.1 EC which was surprising and honestly raises more questions than it answered. Either way I’m done with these autopots after the current run and will switch to a more conventional automatic top watering system. Light adjusted to 460 Par / 19.9 DLI.
2/19 Day 10 of flower. I’ve continued with using the trellis net, defoliation, and blowing through the lines to unplug them. I’ve already cleaned the lines for the autopot but I keep having issues. This leads me to think it’s a valve that’s probably plugged up. The plant is visibly struggling without a reliable source of water as needed, but at least there’s no signs of PM and growth continues to progress. Light adjusted to 635 PAR / 27.4 DLI.
2/20 Day 11 of flower. I sprayed the whole plant down with Mammoth Canncontrol as a preventative for PM. I figured now is the safest time to add in an extra layer of protection since there is no bud formation happening yet, so no taste or smell issues.
2/22 Day 13 of flower. I finally got around to unhooking the lines for the autopot and gave it all a thorough cleaning. Hopefully now water will flow freely instead of getting plugged up. It also looks like we’re just starting to transition to building buds so that’s nice.
2/24 Day 15 of flower. I keep spreading her out in the net and defoliating as needed. Everything looking good. Light adjusted to 690 PAR / 29.8 DLI.
3/1 Day 21 of flower. Not much of a stretch for this girl, in fact I’m a little concerned she stopped a little while ago and I defoliated a bit much anticipating more stretch. Not really a bad thing though since everything is spaced out very nicely with plenty of air flowing all around her. Also lets me raise the light a bit more and turn up the dimmer for a more even PPFD across the canopy. She looks notably more healthy and perky now since I finally replaced the plugged up water line. Honestly despite all earlier issues I had with this grow, everything is looking fantastic right now. Light adjusted to 725 PAR / 31.3 DLI.
3/4 Day 24 of flower. The smells are really coming through now and it’s amazing. There’s a lot of citrus and an almost creamy smell to her right now, but there’s something else in there that just makes it heavenly. We’re only just starting to develop buds so to have this kind of a terp profile this early is awesome. I have loads of hope for this one.
3/9 Day 29 of flower. Everything looks great in the tent. I did switch to a new mid flower recipe today so we’ll see how that goes. Light adjusted to 760 PAR / 32.8 DLI.
3/13 Day 33 of flower. I removed the trellis net since at this point it seems more in the way than anything. She didn’t stretch much so there’s not a huge need to keep things under control here. Some reds and purples are starting to show through and the terps just keep on coming. I can tell already this is gonna be the strongest smelling plant I’ve ever grown. With the light now at 100% power, which is about 780 PAR / 33.7 DLI, we’re now on autopilot.
3/18 Day 38 from flip. Nothing to talk about really other than growth continues. I haven’t needed to change a thing for 5 days now and I likely won’t need to do anything other than keeping up with the reservoir for the remainder of the grow.
3/24 Day 44 from flip. The autopot continues to give me trouble with plugging up, even after cleaning the main line. I suppose the problem is in the small stretch of line after the shutoff valve that connects to the pot. That’s the only part I haven’t cleaned yet. Growth is otherwise perfectly fine, not much to talk to about.
3/31 Day 51 from flip. I’ve noticed a big uptick in general frostiness over the past week. Coupled with the even louder terps she’s throwing off, I think it’s safe to say she’s gonna be special. The only negatives so far are she didn’t stretch as much as I anticipated, and these aren’t the biggest buds I’ve ever grown. In the end I’m sure the yield will likely be on the low side, but she just drips quality all around. Density is also way up there to go along with the frost and the terps. It’s hard to really nail what the smell can be compared to, with my best guess being something like exotic spices with a splash of citrus, with cookies somewhere in the background. Really awesome. A trichome check shows mostly clear with some cloudy, so we still have a little way to go.
4/7 Day 58 from flip. I haven’t noticed any additional growth this past week. She’s kind of just staying put right where she is. I did kind of expect to see some size increases, but she just wants to stay little. Oh well, not much I can do about that. I have seen some pistil hairs changing color and the fade is increasing on some leaves, so I went ahead and switched over to a gradual flush with .8 EC water. I’ll bring the EC down to .6 next time and by then we’ll see where we are.
4/16 Day 67 from flip. The smell has really evolved into a wonderful orange citrus scent that is just absolutely mouthwatering. I cannot wait to chop this one down. Unfortunately, that may have to be soon as I just now started to notice the onset of some PM. It’s very early and shouldn’t impact anything, but she may get chopped shortly just to make sure. Trichomes are pretty even mix of cloudy and clear, with some occasional amber showing.
Even with the herm and seed issue, grinding a bud up and smoking it is still actually pretty good. She's a daytime smoke, very functional. The potency is OK, nothing to knock your socks off but perfectly acceptable for any strain. Obviously this is not the best representation of this strain, but considering my circumstances I'm still pretty impressed. The taste is exactly like you'd think, a sharp orange citrus flavor to start with a pleasing cookie flavor on exhale. I'll need to come back to this one as I see loads of potential here, it just wasn't meant to be on this grow in particular.
Well now I know why the buds weren't getting much bigger. Unbeknownst to me there were multiple pollen sacks all over the plant that had formed and popped open at one point. She went herm, and Christ Almighty did she go for it. Every bud is littered with slightly underdeveloped seeds. What a massive let down considering how pretty and how crazy the terps were. I'll be moving away from autopots permanently now, I've had so many herms from them that I will never consider them again. On to DTW.
Dmars
