Sweet Deep Grapefruit

New 10 gal bucket with single 4" net pot. Water chiller connected to a pump into a water res that turns on by an inkbird, and a pump loop from water res to a wort chiller coil in the bucket. 2 airstones always running, and a water pump in the bucket during the first couple weeks to drip water to the net to help speed up rooting. I germinated from seed in a wet paper towel inside a ziplock, under a bowl, with a warming pad at 75f. The taproot was quick and grew to 3/4" by the time I had everything ready to go. I used General Hydroponics trio, NPK RAW silica, GH CaliMagic with near zero PPM RO water. In later growth stages I add NPK RAW Omina, Full up, and Kelp. I also use Hydroguard and GH PH Down (Up rarely).

Good growth. Started with too high of an EC and she didn’t like it. Started to develop some burn.

Root growth was good, first topping and quick overnight recovery and the end of the week. Had some nutrient burn and ph issues (a little over 7 for a while) because I wasn't paying close enough attention to her.

Post-topping recovery and growth. Good root growth. Day 23 I re-oriented her and foiled the new bucket lid. The towels were temporary and annoying. Switched to aggressive veg feed.

Going well. Turned sideways as she got wider. Second topping late in the week.

Busy week, didn't snap as many photos. Still progressing well. Last week of veg.

Did the 3rd and final topping early this week. I mainlined her and gave her a nice uniform spread... for now at least. She recovered quickly with new growth, all relatively healthy-looking.

This was the start of a busy period for me and I began neglecting her at the start of this week. She drank way faster than I expected after the flip and by the time I got back to her on day 53, the bucket was bone dry and her roots weren't looking good. I contemplated tossing her and starting over, but I figured let's see how she recovers if I just give her some nutrient water and time.

The recovery week. She cannibalized herself while she regrew some tiny root shoots out of the main roots. She was looking really ugly by Day 60, but she was on the path to recovery.

Just letting her grow this week. She seems to be recovering well, stretching and filling out a bit. New roots are progressing.

She's been stretching way too much, but flowers have started. Might have had the light not set high enough.

She's gotten too close to the light. Had to starting bending branches. I rolled the stems between my fingers to break the fibers slightly and folded the branches down.

She's looking really good and smelling really nice. There's a sweet fruity smell, and a soapy smell on the finger after touching her buds and stems. She's got a bit of tip burn. I think I had the light set too low in veg. When I adjusted the light to the very top of the tent, I cranked up the drivers for the spider farmer. I'm not a fan of the way I have to tweak this generation of Spider Farmer. I wish I had a dimmer knob and I wish I could relocate the drivers outside of the tent. They generate a lot of heat and it's hard to keep the tent cool at the canopy when it's cranked up, even with the exhaust on full, and a low pressure AC being forced in at the bottom. I used an apogee mq-500 sensor to measure the ppfd at the tallest cola in the middle of the light and it was over 2200. Whoops. She was just soaking it up though.

Her buds have gotten too heavy for a lot of her more spindly branches and the branches I bent. I added some support to some branches to keep them upright. I've been lollipopping the lower stuff off, but still a good amount of popcorn/larf to take off. I hate this tent's lack of access to the back. She's filled up the whole 4x3 tent and I can't get to the back area to do a good defoliation and help out the heavier branches. Day 95 while checking the light penetration and looking for dark areas that need a defoliation, I took a cool bugs eye shot of the forest of trees. I let her stretch too much.

Her buds are starting to fatten up. Most of the sweet fruit smell is covered up by a slightly gassy dank smell. She's really soapy smelling when I touch the stems or sugar. Day 105 when I lifted the lid to check water level, with her weight, her net pot went past the lip on the lid. I had to push her back up through. I don't have a good solution for this at the moment. Maybe some metal cross beams for stability. I've had to string up several of her bent branches since they've gotten so heavy they fall onto lower buds. Humidity has been tough in the tent. I defoliated gradually a bit every day to try to reduce the humidity. I moved the lung room humidifier into the tent draining into a 5gal bucket. I added an ac infinity fan, set to oscillate, up top for more air movement through the canopy. I also moved the small non-oscillating fan down below to send cool air up through the canopy. All this got the humidity under control.

Flowers are really starting to look nice. Lots of new calyx growth. Still clearing out lower stuff. Continually managing the branches so they fill the canopy and aren't being shaded too much. I won't be growing again without a scrog net. Starting to wonder about light stress with the new round of calyxes and what seems to be foxtailing starting. She got too heavy for the lid and I didn't devise a workaround in time. She finally fell through and I decided to just leave her be on her roots. I knew I'd be chopping soon, so I didn't want to risk doing any damage and she seemed to be ok. I was hoping to chop this week, but the trichs are still looking really clear. I'm surprised at how little amber and cloudy there is at the moment. I've read that some sativa-leaning strains can be very slow or possibly never really amber up. I'm going to give her another week, and chop.

Pretty sure she's foxtailing and it's not part of her normal genetics. That worried me a bit. I noticed the dehumidifier had a fairly bright light, and it’s exhaust fan was blowing warmer air directly up at a few buds and leaves. They got a bit of windburn, nothing too bad. I added some tape over the lights and taped a makeshift cardboard air redirector on top. I've got humidity dropped down to 40-45 range now. Last day of the week I did a fresh pH’d RO water and flora kleen for a final flush.

I didn’t want to risk the foxtailing getting worse, so I did the 2nd of 2 days of GH Flora Kleen and pH'd RO water flush and then chopped. I was very concerned with the dry and cure conditions this grow, as I’ve had issues in the past that resulted in hay. The lung/drying room has a portable AC blowing the coldest it can do all the time, which gets the room to 61f. It’s fairly well sealed up and blacked out. There are a couple of fans blowing air towards walls away from the bud. There was great airflow and little wind movement in the hanging bud. A couple of nights I had arranged the fans so there was a tiny bit of movement in the branches, but decided it didn’t seem even and wasn’t worth the risk, so I reverted to the previous configuration. I cut her branches off near the manifold and hung them up high in the dry room. Drying conditions were about 61f and 60% RH for most of the dry. I strung up a couple of SensorPush sensors and my Inkbird humidity sensor into the middle of the buds to keep track. I also left out a bunch of little Amazon sensors that I throw in jars for storage, as an experiment. They have terrible individual accuracy but are useful in aggregate. During the first couple days of drying the humidity went up significantly. I replaced my humidifier with a new large-sized Govee unit and that made a big difference. I dried them for 7 days before I started trimming. It took me 3-4 days of trimming to get done. A lot of work. I should have been more aggressive with the lollipopping. I didn’t take a wet weight, and the way I trimmed and split up the bud between tops, middles, lowers/smalls, and popcorn/larf (plus the fact that I’ve been smoking it 😜) made it so it’s going to be some work to properly dry weigh it. But weighing the grove bags, and taring and weighing mason jars, I’m estimating it at just over a pound yield (~17oz). Will follow up. In conclusion, I am more than happy with this grow iteration and her yield, and I'm more than impressed by Nature and this plant's ability to survive, revive, and flourish with numerous significant stressors during its life. Every grow I learn, revise, acquire more or better equipment, and it's getting more dialed in. I'm going to be looking into adding more sophisticated controllers, and perhaps constant pH monitoring. That's an area I still need to get better at. I fight with pH meters, their storage and calibration and I'm getting to the point where I'm going to shell out for a Bluelab guardian in hope of making it less frustrating. Need to go through my photos still and add more. Coming soon.