!/4 retarded

First Grow, Growing this single white cookies plant next to a super silver haze plant. The veg wattages increases as the plant get bigger but never exuded 400w Flower was about 250-300 above the plant

Small girl coming, looks good but it much smaller then the Super Silver haze we started at the same time. Start to give some light root Nutes.

Growing well, but seems to have a bit or retarded'ness in some of the leaves. Not sure what that is about if it's something we are causing or if it's just a fault in the specific seed.

She's growing so fast, it's impressive to see how fast these plants can grow. However she is being left in the dark by the Super Silver Haze (Sativa) for size comparison. Since this is an Indica dominant strain I guess that makes sense. We still have some "retard" going on with some of the leaves.

Did some defoliating early in the week and then topped her for the first of many to mainline her out. She is a busy girl, not sure why as we have see a couple other diaries on here of the WC with them being leggy.

She lost an couple inches with the topping and mainline. She's doing well, likes to be bushy. We are defoliating her a lot, looking at these picture I think probably too much. We are trying to get the tip to grow as much as possible to stretch her out. She just seems to want to grow little bits all over the place and be bush and we want the energy to go into growth not bush. We still see the odd retarded leaf.

Moved her into her forever pot (16 gallon) and an actual tent (just bought for the grow) and wired her for water. Busy building and setting up stuff as this is our first grow. Tried a couple different light combinations, The big light is a Meizhi "600w" (actual 270w with veg and bloom on, 200w with just the veg on) the smaller ones are Meizhi "300w" (135w with veg and bloom on, 100w veg only on). We are running these because we had them with plans to build new bigger lights (Quantum LED) for when they are in flower.

Much shorter and bushy then our other grow of SSH right next to it. We are trying to stretch her long so we can get 16 main nodes off the stock.

Grow is going good, 9 Weeks is starting to feel long, kind of just want to flip to flower but we are resisting and going to let her grow out more nodes.

The big bushy pictures are of us coming back, then we defoliated her to get her back down in the mainline and to get them to stretch. With the girl this stretched out we are having to put lights on each end of the lollypop's. Ok so we were away on a trip and the last update pictures were at week 9 was day 1 of week 9, We went away and this is now 12 days later, day 6 of week 10. There is big growth because it's been 12 days. This was a good test of systems automated watering system..... The automatic watering worked'ish. There were some issues, in that everything got under watered... badly. The WC faired ok as she had more residual moisture in the soil to draw from. We definitely need to work on our water to time on calibration. There has been no Nut's that were given the whole time we were away. We just fed water with the automatic watering system.

Getting tired of waiting for her to stretch out. Was hoping to get her to fill a 2'x4' space but with how bushy she wants to be that's taking forever. So I decided to top here and go to 4 nodes out and hopefully we will have enough room for all the nodes in the end.

Finally got up a proper dehumidifier. We were using a portable air conditioner with a dehumidifier mode on it, but it wasn't doing a great job and was soaking up a ton of electricity. We were between 60-70%RH. The new dehumidifier can finally drop the humidity below 50%, it floats between 35-50%RH now in the room and between 50-60% in the tent. We still have an issue with airflow in the room but we are working on coming up with a plan to fix that including a dual hose AC so we can stop the single hose AC from drawing in so much air.

We notices spots coming in on the leaves, we didn't have a good explanation for it so we did a runoff and found the PH down in the 4's. So we did a complete flush and go the PH up. With that we finally pulled the trigger and are going to buy a PPM meter. New dehumidifier is working like a champ and bringing down the RH. We also made a new DIY light using Samsung Q series 2' LED strips. We did it with a mix of 3000k and 3500k strips (10 total). The driver is adjustable from about 20w to 240w, we are keeping it at about 200w for now. There will be some more of these being built in the next couple weeks, this is the first attempt at a DIY light.

Anyone following this diary as I post them I'd behind on my postings, by 8'ish weeks, that's why they come fast. I'm actually in week 6 of flower right now. So you can now see above why I named this post !/4 retarded, because 1/4 of the plant has retarded leaves. We refer to it as the retarded quadrant. Not sure why it doesn't seem to be a nutes thing, and we have had this little bit of retard in the plant ever since it was a little seedling. It's funny how it's just localized itself to the 1 quadrant. Grow is otherwise going well. We got our 2nd DIY grow light built (made a bigger one) now and it's in the tent. It's nice, it gives us better coverage and more photons per watt. Should be 2.5 time more photons per watt then the blurples we were using to veg. The light wattage for Veg to Flower isn't going up, but the light is changing and the Flower/Late Veg light should be putting out 2.5 times more photon's so it's a big increase for flower.

Last week of Veg, next week going to flower. I was away most of this week so the plant was on autopilot. The pictures are actually from the last day of W14 because I didn't have any from w15. The retarded quadrant looks like it's here to stay.

Flipped the girls to Flower. It's been 10 days since the last picture so that's why it's such a big difference to week 15 pictures. All the new DIY lights are done and I have good coverage from edge to edge. Added ForaNova Bloom into the nutes this week.

2nd Week of flowering, she is bushing up well. I keep hearing about the first 3 weeks of flower stretch, doing my best to try and manage that stretch to widen out the girl so the bud have better airflow around the buds as they develop. Don't really know what to expect for stretch as this is my first grow but for lots of people it seems significant. I'll have to implement a scrog if it stretches a lot, but up until now this girl has been very short and bushy.

Added Liquid KoolBloom and Diamond Nectar to the mix for flowering. As my SO put it, this is the week of Thanos.... 1/2 must go to make life better for those who live. Went through and cut out lower buds that aren't getting any light and are small/covered inside the cannopy. Hopefully this will force more growth into the main colas. Looking back a few weeks I wish I would have done some more defoliation back here on week 3 of flowering.... that 20/20 thing and all... note to self for future me to listen to

Flowers are starting to develope nicely. They seem very short and dense, we were expecting more stretch in the flower stage but the girl seems to be happy being more bushy and from what we've read this seems to be a good thing!?! The frosty'ness is starting to come in and it's exciting to see. We are a little worried about airflow, mold, and bud rot as the buds are so dense and tightly packed. We've added a couple more fans to the tent. We now have 3 8" fans that oscillate (2 above and 2 below canopy) and 1 static fan below canopy in the tent corner of the white cookies blowing air to the underside.

BTW we add CaliMagic to our grows because mostly use our dehumidifier run off water that has 002 ppm or rain water, and when we do use tap water our tap water is under 025ppm so we need to add it. Wow the tent is very very stinky, with the carbon filters and neg pressure it's nice and clean until we unzip the tent and then it smacks you in the face like a hobo skunk! Our SSH buds are bigger then these white cookie buds at this stage. Has us scratching our heads a little as CKS says the white cookies are suppose to harvest 1 week earlier then the SSH. The retarded quadrant is still retarded. The buds look fine but the leaves in the quadrant just can't get right. We'll be keeping the bud seperate so that if there is any issues we will have it segrigated. Also would like to know if it smokes different in some way to the rest of the plant.

Finally have this diary up to date. Did some defoliation, she needed it. Now the cola's will have more air flow between them and hopefully we can avoid the dreaded mold and mildew. The flowering lights got turned down part of week 20 & 21 by about 25% due to the air flow issues we were having. They got turned back up a bit now but not all the way, still 15% low to what we were before. We installed a new A/C to help manage the air flow and the humidity levels better. It seems to be working better but there still are some kinks to be worked out. The air flow out is better and the humidity dropped in the tent, before the room was in the mid 40's RH but we discovered the tent was still in the 60's. This was because we didn't have enought airflow throught he tent and the old A/C prevented us from having better flow. We have better flow but the new A/C doesn't seem to be too happy. Would have liked to put in a split A/C system and that would have been the perfect solution but we don't have the budget for that right now.

She's plumping up. We are starting to cut back the nutes now as per the GH schedule. The new A/C popped the breaker on the room, so we had to turn the lights down again. We are working on a 12/2 wire run on a new outlet just for the A/C, connect that to a 20A breaker and it would be fine. The problem is when the room gets warm, the A/C, grow lights, tent fans, room fan, and exhaust fan all share the same breaker and it's popping the breaker if the A/C runs too hard for too long. Turning the lights down 150W gives enough play room that the A/C won't pop the breaker when it works hard. But the real answer is a new outlet with it's own breaker just for the A/C so we can keep the lights up where we want them. The trials of a 1st grown in a new setup.... Went away for the weekend and left the girls alone for 3 days. They dried out a little too much, have a few buds with some crispy leaves on them. Hopefully the damage will can be minimized now that they have water again. Not sure if I should cut the dry buds or leave them and they will come back.

Shit went sideways…. I got bud rot inside the buds. It was noticed on the last day of the last week, 14 cola’s were taken that first day and since then I’ve had another 7 go in the last week. I went through the cola’s and molested them hard trying to find any during the first couple days, but either it’s continuing to spread of I’m just not good at spotting it when it’s a small amount. The bud rot was usually just on the top 1/3 of the buds on the cola’s and the first few cuts I was taking the entire cola off. I’d then process it and keep and dry the lower buds that didn’t have any mold or rot on them. Some of that’s now dried and we’ve tried it but it’s harsh and not very nice. I’ll probably try and make some butter with it. So far I have about 2 oz dried, but tossed around 3 times that amount. I wish I could say that the rot/mold has stopped but I can’t, I took 2 more cola’s off yesterday. Now I’m usually taking the top ½ of the cola off and leaving the bottom half to ripen. The harvest looked promising but then turned so quickly to a shit show. I’ve increased the temp in the room and turned the dehumidifier to constantly on. The humidity is in the low 40’s and the temp warmer at night now around 20C. We’ve always had 3-4 fans running and lots of air movement, that wasn’t our issue, some of the most effected buds were the ones right in front of the fan getting the most air flow. A big part of me just wants to kill all the plants and start over, but I don’t have anything that’s ready to go into that space so I guess I’ll put on my underoos and pretend I can handle the situation. Hopefully I can get some of this plant to the finish line, but I’m worried I’m just going to be slowly dissecting it limb by limb. Had 45 cola’s remaining 28’ish (some were cut in ½)

Bud rot issues are continuing, but slowing down. We are getting a day or two between taking buds and haven’t taken on in a few days. We have more new growth on the buds and that’s encouraging that it’s living and trying to fight it’s way past the rot issues. I think with all the trimming and handling I have stunted the plant maybe??? We are coming to the end of week 9 and according to CKS it’s a 9 week flower. We used the microscope on the buds and found a little over 50% milky and the rest clear with no amber yet. I’m waiting until we have mostly cloudy and some amber and then I’ll start the flush… sound right? Run off is still high though she’s not eating much. I’m only feeding to 0.9ec. Keeping the temps higher and humidity lower, trying to adjust the ventilation flow for the room to optimize it to be steady but it’s difficult with the low night temperatures. I’m considering moving this to a night time lights on so that the light heat can help combat the cold nights so the heater has to work less.

Continuing to have to take a couple cola’s or parts of cola’s every day or two. I’ve been feeding a low solution of 450-500 ppm (0.9-1.0 EC) for a week now and I have just started the flush, going to run the flush for a week and then pull the girls. The girls preformed amazing and made huge dense cola’s I could only dream of. Unfortunately the rot got in and it’s been taking the girls down ever since. I went into this grow telling myself to have reasonable expectations and that there would be mistakes and problems and I just needed to roll with them and learn. Lots of learning has been had, and as they say “experience is expensive”.

The grow really comes down to 2 words….. Learning Experience The breakdown is like this. Early cut to remove bud rot – some colas had clean buds and I ended up keeping just over 2oz (about 60g) Actual harvest – 520g wet and 103g dried, I trimmed the dried bud really close and tossed some away because it was questionable with rot. Total Dry Weight = 60g early 103g final harvest = 163g (5.8 oz) of white cookies. The 4x4 tent total dry weight of the White Cookies and Super Silver Haze was over 5 oz early harvest and over 12 oz final harvest. Total early and final harvest was almost 18 oz. Even with all the bud rot and problems this has exceeded my expectations. The early harvest bud isn't very nice to smoke but has made GREAT edibles. This was my first grow of MJ and my first time trying to grow inside and with bottled nutes. It’s been a lot of work making the room… setting it up, heating, cooling, lighting, humidity, and airflow. Like everyone I had grand ideas how awesome this grow could be. But I tried to keep myself grounded and kept telling myself that I needed to be realistic for a first grow and that if I achieve 8 oz total from the tent (all the plants White Cookies and Super Silver Haze) it would be good successful for a first grow. I knew there would be mistakes, issues, and problems that I’d have to face as almost everyone does during their first grow. In the end I had to toss away over ½ the plant due to bud rot. All of the big large colas were affected, the smaller thinner ones were the ones less affected and made it to the end. In the 4x4 tent I had 4 fan, three 8” oscillating and 1 static 6” fan. I had a 6” venting fan pulling from the top, A/C, heat at night, and a 70 pint dehumidifier. But one of the big problems was the grow room didn’t have enough power from the breaker panel and on the hot days the A/C would trip the circuit breaker. This would cause the heat and humidity to spike, the tent fans to turn off, and everything to go into the very bad extremes. This is most likely what started/caused the bud rot. Because it was a lack of power that was causing the issue it wasn’t a quick or easy fix. You can’t just put a larger breaker in because the wire run can’t handle the increased power, it’d burn down the room. Adding to the issue was that the breaker panel was full so adding another breaker wasn’t an easy option. A new breaker panel would need to be installed first and then new power lines run to the room. The project to upgrade the electrical capacity of the room ended up taking over a month. But that time was the critical flower month as power draw wasn't such an issue during vegging when we had smaller lights and better weather. I'm not going to lie, I felt very down and frustrated with this grow at points. It took a long time, I had many many issues, and the bud rot was like getting kicked in the gut over and over again as I had to continually trow away big fat colas every day or two. I was close to throwing in the towel several times on this grow but I persevered and have been rewarded in the end. DON"T GIVE UP!!! KEEP ON GROWING.... They say experience is expensive and they aren’t wrong. This first grow has been expensive in every way…. time, money, stress, frustration, yield, etc, etc…00