First grow - Orange Gasm

Two weeks post-planting, I’m calling her early veg for no specific reason besides she’s growing well and speeding up. Based on the idea that plants are ready to transplant when their leaves overgrow the rim, I’ll probably transfer to her final 5 gallon pot in the next few days. I plan on using my same grow dots per the manufacturer’s recommendation (about 70 ml per 5 gallons of soil). I’ve been adding recharge on Sundays with watering. I’ve been watering to runoff every two days. Water is pHed to about 6.5 on average. Plant is taking 70-80 ml of water to achieve runoff. Today I increased my light intensity from 4 to 5, which increased the PPFD from about 290 up to 365. I’ll monitor how she reacts and keep an eye on soil moisture as well. Also this week, I am getting a new oscillating fan, which I plan to use to start actually blowing gently (level 1 to start) on the plant more directly. Currently I have the fan stationary and blowing near the plant to attempt to just generate some turbulence without directly wind. I have the pH and humidity under much better control since when I started. The plant has been growing much happier since adding the heating mat. Keeping better detailed notes in a paper grow diary for record keeping and posterity.

She overthrew the cup a day or two after my last update, as determined by the leaves overgrowing the rim of the cup. When I removed the plant from the cup, I saw roots throughout the soil, which is good. Transplanted to a fabric 5 gal pot containing Coast of Maine Stovington Blend mixed with 70 ml of Grow Dots, per manufacturer’s instructions. She looked a little stressed the next day but overall took it well. Turned up the lights to a PPFD of about 430 with lights 18” over canopy. Will turn them up more as she adapts and looks healthy and happy. Planning on topping her in the next few days, as she’s growing in the fifth node of leaves. I will try to save the topper as a clone to keep as a future mother. Temps are higher and more stable by the end of this week as I’ve settled on a heating regime with a space heater and my humidifier. She’s definitely into veg phase. I plan on growing her in veg for 4 weeks total and flipping to flower at that time.

Topped on Sunday, not realizing I’d light stressed her out by turning the light up a level but not paying attention to the height. She’d crept up to 15” or so and the top leaves were starting to discolor. I turned the light down and moved it back up to 18-20 inches and let her recover. Fed recharge on Monday instead of water. Watered plain pHed water again later in the week. She drank a full gallon each time. I’m using the dirt feel and pot weight to determine when to water and I water to runoff. Conditions have been great this week. I’ve gotten it dialed in much better with my heating and humidifier, and been keeping an almost constant temp of 75 during the day with an rH of about 68. She’s been growing fantastic after recovering from the light stress and topping. I’m just tending her for now. If she gets too much taller I’ll put in the trellis net to keep the canopy more level, and I’m going to slowly attempt to increase the light intensity to get the PPFD up without causing more stress as it’s only at 350 or so currently. Slow and steady is the plan. Maybe 25-50 higher every couple days if I can manage it that fine. The plant may have other plans depending on how fast she starts to grow. Let me know if anyone has any advice or spots anything super wrong. The grow dots and recharge are keeping thing simple as advertised.

Plant grew fast and furious this week. Watered with recharge once as normal. She’s drinking 3/4 - 1 gallon every other day. Put the trellis net out over the canopy at 13” over soil. I need to veg another week based on the timing with the grow dots, but don’t want the plant to get too tall for my tent. Tucking leaves and branches under the net as they peek over it. This week I will keep on keeping on. I’ll turn the light up to an intensity of 8 on my stock ac infinity led panel, per manufacturer’s recommendations at this stage of veg. I plan on flipping probably one week from today, if everything keeps going well. I will slowly ramp down my humidity level using my intake fan to acclimate the plant to lower rh in flower.

Keeping her under the net for a week proved to be a little tricky for a new grower. It took until a few of the nodes got to the net that I got a feel for what I should be doing (even canopy, separate the nodes into their own net holes for spacing). Keeping them at net level felt weird, like I would hurt the plant, but I kept it gentle and she seems just fine. I will stop my rudimentary scrog and let her grow. I did get a second net that I will put up in a few days probably for structural support. Fed her a gallon+ of pHed water every other day, as she was dry to the touch down to my knuckle at that point. I fed her a gallon of recharge one of the days instead. I did some light pruning throughout the week of bottom leaves that were doomed to the darkness and that were starting to look sad from the lack of light. I figure that this will reduce some vectors for illness or pathogens, and only took leaves that were shaded by other leaves so the condition was not going to improve. I am avoiding any heavy defoliating as this is my first grow and want to see a more natural growth (I say despite topping my plant). I got the light at canopy up to 450 PPFD or so. I have noticed the “holes” in my light that came with my kit, and have purchased a replacement for my next grow. I will not change lights during this one, as that feels like it would be an invitation for disaster. I’ve been ramping down the humidity, and removed the humidifier from my tent early in the week. Got humidity down to 55%, and temps got lower too (from losing the humidifier which made heat as a nice bonus), but are hanging at 70-72 daytime as of today. Conditions should be good, based on vpd chart. I’m excited to see her start to flower! She’s getting a little smelly, especially when I prune. Edit 5/2: My first real big noob mistake today. I adjusted my light intensity last night, and in the process I had to turn my light to “on” mode instead of schedule. I forgot to turn it back to schedule mode today, so my plant had no dark cycle today. Some searching online leads me to think she should be ok, especially since the genetics are good, but I will be watching for signs of inter sexing.

Maintaining environment well. Keeping temp and humidity consistently at 72-73 during the day and dropping to 66 at night with the rh remaining at 55% throughout. I have figured out a good timing with my space heater during the day and my dehumidifier during the night. Watering a gallon-gallon and a half every other day. Giving a gallon of recharge once a week still. Water pH always between 6.0 and 6.6 or so. I made a biggish mistake last week. I made an edit on last week's note explaining, but u accidentally left my light on 24 hours one day four days post flip while I was upping the intensity. I figured it out after too much time had passed, so I left the lights on until the next scheduled lights off and have carried on without any further incident. These seeds are from a good breeder so I am hoping I don’t see any negative effects from my boneheaded move. Ah well, it happens, especially on a first run. Lessons learned, and it won’t happen again this run because the light is now maxed out so it is set for the rest of this grow. The plant is growing massive and fast. She grew 4” in the last week, and I am hoping I end up having enough room! Worst case I can always move the carbon filter and inline fan out of the tent but I’d like to avoid that if possible.

Continuing to water 1-1.5 gallons every other day, and giving a gallon of recharge once a week. Pruning lower leaves as they begin to look sad from lack of light. I’ve moved my light up as high as I can without modifying the clasps or the fan at all. If she keeps stretching like she’s been, I’ll have to consider moving stuff around. Lucky for me I am not seeing any light burn on the highest parts yet. Fingers crossed that keeps holding. Speaking of stretch, she’s grown over eight inches in a week. Holy crap! I hope she stops soon and starts flowering up! I’d rather avoid having to dismantle stuff to get the light up. Fortunately she seems to have handled my accident with the light early in flower without incident. My environment has been dialed in much better. I no longer have been running a heater at all, and am running a dehumidifier on continuous operation in my lung room (aka the basement). Things are staying nice and stable, even the humidity overnight is staying constant which is good.

Continued to water every other day, with a meal of recharge once during the week. She finally stopped stretching, just in time. I almost had to make some major adjustments to my light and fan system. As it is, the light is only 8” away from the highest bud. PPFD ranges from 900-1000 across the canopy. She’s a little smelly, but nothing super bad yet. I’ve ended up slowly pruning all of the foliage beneath my first trellis net due to poor growth from the lack of light. I’ll continue to slowly prune my way up the plant as necessary, although I suspect the pace will slow down since the bottom is cleaned out and everything else gets at least a little light. I am intentionally being conservative with my pruning since this is my first grow. I am leaving what I can already tell is going to be some larfy buds, because I’ve never done this and want to see how it all plays out. I’m learning a lot for my next grow!

She’s filling in and flowering strongly. I slowly ended up pruning everything off my branches lower than the first canopy through naturally taking leaves as they started looking shitty rather than doing a massive prune at a set day, and she seems pretty happy throughout! Environment is dialed in so far, and humidity is locked in between 50-51% day and night. Temps are higher throughout the day because it’s warmer in my house. Summer is coming, after all. Continue to water a gallon+ of water every other day, with a recharge meal once a week. pHing the water every watering to between 6-6.4 or so, since my tap water is super alkaline (pH of around 8.5). Grow dots and recharge have made this pretty simple so far in terms of nutes, and my plant is looking good so far. Hopefully things stay dialed in for the rest of flower.

Minor disaster has struck this week to this first timer grower. Mid week, what I suspect is a nutrient/calcium deficiency made itself present in the appearance of small pinhole burns and leaf tip browning on the top fan and sugar leaves along the topmost buds on the canopy. Especially those closest to the light. Lower leaves and buds all appear fine so far. Buds themselves don’t appear to have any nute burn that I can see. Fingers crossed. I noticed that the ph on my last few watering had been varying the pH between 5.9 - 6.6 and a few stops in between so I don’t think it’s a pH issue. Especially with what I’ve read and learned about using microbes and their effects on nutrient availability. As a response, I purchased and have been feeding twice so far 1 teaspoon per gallon (about 1 ml/l for metric folks) with watering, keeping the pH at 6.4-6.6. Fed recharge still once this week. I turned down the light a little (level 9 from 10 on my ac Infinity light) immediately upon seeing the first burns to help the plant slow down. I’ll continue to supplement cal mag provably through harvest, or at least to fade, as I’ve read it’s hard to overdue it with the dosage I’m giving at this stage. As to what happened to cause this, I’ve come to the following hypothesis. I’m using grow dots and recharge with ph appropriate water so the cal mag levels should be fine for most phenos, as I have the newest formulation of the dots with more cal mag. I found a post from 2023 from jmaystro over at the dude grows forums mentioning they had observed a pheno or two of orange gasm that were especially calcium hungry, so I suspect that I have grown this or a similar pheno as well. It was reassuring to find the post at any rate because it makes me really suspect the deficiency rather that something else. I successfully grow a couple cuts from this plant before I flipped her, and I think I’ll just grow them out for more bud instead of keeping a mother around since it sounds like there are easier phenos of orange gasm to find. I still have six seeds from Rasta Jeff so I’ll just find a new mom next time! And frankly this plant has grown amazingly for my first run so I can’t blame the nutrition. It’s just one of those things with growing that I’ll be better ready for next time. This plant is still growing great and I’m excited to sample the product once she’s done! Whenever I work on pruning or tucking leaves, my hands smell like orange zest afterwards. Since my method of consumption is dry herb vaping and I’m looking to press some rosin, this should be pretty tasty end product as long as I can keep her happy until the end.

I’ve been adding 1 teaspoon per gallon of cal mag to every watering this week. I also fed Recharge one day as normal and added cal mag then as well. I’ve been keeping the ph of waterings between 6.3-6.6 this week to encourage calcium uptake. It’s probably anecdotal and/or normal development but the buds seem to be growing a ton this week. I’m leaving the lower canopy leaves that are getting spotty or droopy as the plant gets closer to senescence. They’ll eventually fade out as “fall” advances. I’ve decided to leave the light intensity at level 9 (out of 10) for the rest of the grow since the top leaves were damaged and I don’t want to add more stress at this point. Buds look pretty darn good still and are fattening up nicely so the plan seems good so far. Let me know if this is too cautious and I should crank ‘em back up.

The calcium deficiency has been addressed and she’s as happy as ever. Getting pretty smelly. Strong orange rind terps. I’m pretty stoked about how she’s looking at this point and can’t wait to vape some of this flower. I figure I’ve got a few weeks before harvest still. I bought a loupe to check out trichome ripeness but haven’t messed around with picture taking at all with it yet so no pics today. I actually see cloudy and amber trikes on the older sugar leaves (which ripen sooner than buds) so I have a frame of reference as to what to look for color wise. Bud trikes are all clear still so I will wait. I’m guessing she’s got a few weeks at least still but I’ll keep my eye on her to be sure. I’m pretty excited for this grow to finish up and to get started on the next being able to correct all my first timer mistakes! I’ve continued to feed her cal mag (1 tsp/gal) every watering and recharge once a week. I’ll probably stop that soon because she’s getting closer to the end.

Everything was locked back down this week, watered every other day with 1 tsp/gal cal mag and one feeding with Recharge (2.5 g/gal) too. Canopy’s improved a ton with the extra cal mag. PH has stayed on point, 6.0-6.4 every time. Buds are getting super fat. I posted comparison shots of one big cola from day 51 to today (day 57), and the ripening is easy to see. I’ve been scoping trichomes with a loupe mostly for practice and safe to say all the trikes are still clear on the buds. They’ve got some time left still before harvest, I think. The lower buds are getting more dark pistils but they’re still pretty immature. With just the one plant, I’ll need to be patient with my harvest time.

Chopped day 64 of flower. Wrote up notes the day of harvest but couldn’t post them at the time due to technical issues with grow diaries. Pasted notes here: Was keeping my options open for harvest, and scoping the trikes today and seeing 10% amber and the rest cloudy sealed it for me. Decided to chop her down tonight and go for a nice long slow dry over the next two weeks. I am drying in my tent, so l needed to remove the light and an oscillating fan to make space. Unhooked the nets and moved the plant out of the tent for a full defoliating. It was validating to see her in normal light, the fade was way more obvious than under the grow lights. All fan leaves without trikes were removed. I then removed the top net so it would be out of the way, but left the first net as it was way too intertwined to removed off the whole plant. In hindsight the top net was unnecessary and just got in the way. I probably won't use a second net next time and will be more aggressive with the SCROG. My wonderful wife assisted me with getting the first chop done. She was even a good sport with the house stinking pretty bad! I've sealed up the tent and set the fan to vent only once the RH goes above 61%, and then will shut off entirely. One fan was left on in the bottom blowing gently into a wall to keep the air moving around. I'm following the method provided by the Build a Soil tutorials on tent drying with whole plants. I did not weigh the final wet mass, as it's not super relevant to my end goals. I will definitely be weighing the final dry product after trimming in two weeks. Smoke review: Dry temps ranged up to 74, but were always in the 70s throughout the dry period. Drying humidity was kept consistently between 59-62% throughout the dry. Kept the plant hung for 10 days, and pulled them after testing a few nugs for rH levels. Smell was super potent during and immediately after harvest, but around day three or four of the dry it because suddenly replaced with grass/hay smell, which is from the chlorophyll being degraded and is okay. Smell remained grassy until the end of dry. I initially was relying on the stem test (bending stems and waiting for the snap), but thought it seemed a little unreliable and found stuff online agreeing with my opinion (which let’s be honest is not hard online, but I think the point stands) so I followed recommendations to buck some nugs from various stems through the drying plant into a small jar with a hygrometer, and seal it up for a few hours. If the rH is in the mid 60s or higher, keep drying, otherwise start curing. My humidity was at 57-59, so I immediately stripped all of the buds off the stems, and placed them into grove bags with hygrometers. I kept a decent head space in each bag to avoid overfilling and to allow the buds to be shaken around. The buds are super sticky. I did a relatively through dry cure two weeks after harvest, and a few days after beginning the cure. I cured a couple days early because I did not have time for a full trim when the buds were done drying. Buds in grove bags are curing in the grow tent still as it stays nice and cool, dark, and dry. I ended up with about an ounce of good, top cola buds, maybe half an ounce of mids, and the rest of the flower was lower grade buds that were pretty loose and larfy. I have taste tested and of course smelled a lot of the final buds, and am conflicted. I can’t tell if I am nose blind to the citrus terps, or if they evaporated off at some point during late grow or the dry. Or maybe they’ll come back after more cure. The buds have some lingering grassy smell still currently but it’s lessened as they cure. I don’t notice orange or orange rind, but I will be letting the flower cure more before making my final conclusion. I’ve tasted some flower with my dry herb vape (my usual method of consumption), and smoked a little with my glass chillum just for completeness sake. Flavor wasn’t bad or grassy by any means, but I didn’t get any orange yet. Bud is potent AF, though, and hits like a train with both the dry herb vape as well as when smoked. I’ve tried pressing a few eights of larf and gotten okay results, but I am a total notice to pressing so I’m just glad I got anything to work. Rosin was again pretty potent. I’m thrilled with the outcome of my first grow, all things considered. I had a much bigger yield than I expected, and have more quality herb to toke on than I’ll need once I get the next grow going. Plenty of lessons were learned, and I’m excited to start again!