Legalisation Celebration!!!

The first week has passed, and it has been uneventful, as the first week mostly is. I have only moved her out onto the windowsill in the mornings and taken her back in at night. Rinse and repeat. I decided to name her, as a proper celebration plant should really have a name. As we now have a more open society here in Germany, it seemed fitting to give her the name April. The name is originally derived from the Latin aperire, "to open," referring to the opening of flowers. She also started life in the month of April. A fitting name, indeed :)

April looks great, but the weather in April isn't. It's been cold and rainy in the last week, so April has been hanging out in my big tent with the Blue Gelato clones. One of the clones turned into a runt, meaning there's just enough space to squeeze April in under the light. I wasn't planning on using any fancy lights on her, but since the weather sucks and I had the space, it felt silly not to do it. Her stay will be brief, though, as the weather will improve in the coming week. I didn't do much with her this week besides adding a thick layer of lava rocks as mulch, and giving her some compost tea and sprouted seed tea as I had extra from feeding the clones. I suspect I need to start feeding her soon since she is in a small pot without much soil. Her leaves are slowly becoming light green, indicating that she is running low on nitrogen. I'm not doing any fancy feeding, but instead, I'm going to use an organic nutrient that I bought a while ago for my regular houseplants.

This past week has been another week with cold and cloudy weather so April had to stay inside this week as well. However, when I flipped to 12/12, I had to evict April from the clone tent, which was getting crowded anyway. Instead, I MacGyver'ed a temporary grow box – using an old Amazon box, aluminum foil, some glue, a small USB fan, and a couple of SANSI 15W E27 grow lights. They're small but provide a powerful punch for a small plant at such a short distance. I measured a DLI of over 55, which is nuts considering using only 30W of light. To help April cope with such intense light, I installed three Blumat Classic water dispensers in her small pot. Now, she can drink as much as she wants. They will also be handy to take care of her when I travel, as I have a few upcoming trips in the next few months.

I'm posting this week a day early as I'm heading out of town tomorrow for a few days. April is doing great. We have finally had some sun, so I have had her outside on the windowsill, soaking up the sun during the days, while I have had her in my ghetto grow box at night. I started feeding her this week. I'm using regular nutrients that I normally use for our houseplants. First, I put four dry nutrient tabs into her pot, which should provide her with slow-release nutrients for the next two months. Second, I'm feeding her a liquid nutrient now and then, only a little each time, so as not to drown her, as the soil is always moist due to the Blumats in her pot. Finally, veg is over, as she is now starting to flower.

It was an uneventful week with terrible weather. It was cold and rainy, so April stayed inside most of the time. I didn't intend to keep her inside under a light as much as I have, but what to do when the weather sucks... Sure, I realize it's my own fault for starting so early, but I wanted to drop the seed into the soil at midnight when we went legal, so it is what it is. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about how April looks. In fact, I'm pretty stoked about how well she looks, considering the small pot she is in. I might have to get creative with her feeding. It has worked well so far, but there are a couple of light-colored leaves down low on her, and another few leaves have faint interveinal chlorosis. She is well into flower and is already starting to smell—pretty fast, considering this is her first week of flowering.

We had another week of terrible weather, so April got to stay inside for a few days. She has also started to show signs of deficiencies. Hardly surprising, considering the small amount of soil. I'm only feeding her a liquid organic fertilizer meant for tomatoes and vegetables, which should work fine. However, the problem is that the blumats keep the soil moist, making it difficult to top-water. I have now disconnected the blumats so I can feed her more. Let's hope I can restore some color to her leaves. I have never grown in small containers so I'm just winging it as I go, lol.

There isn't much to report. The most exciting thing that happened this last week was that a few leaves turned yellow and fell off. Yay... I'm feeding her an organic liquid nutrient made for tomatoes. It has additional potassium, which I hope works like a bloom booster. Sorta. It's exciting to grow completely differently, using low-tech and basic nutrients. I spoiled her today, though. I brewed up compost tea (worm castings, insect frass, kelp, rock dust, basalt, biochar, molasses, and LAB) for my clones and my veggie garden, and April got her fair share as well.

There's absolutely nothing to report, except that I can smell her down the street :)

It's been another uneventful week. At this point, it's only a waiting game. A week? Two? We'll see when the trichomes are ripe.

Another week has passed, and we are really close now as I'm starting to see more amber. I'm out of town for a few days (going to Mary Jane in Berlin, YAY!), so I'll leave her be until then and chop her once I'm back home.

Touchdown! I'm heading out of the country for a few days, so I wanted to chop before I left. Yesterday was the day, and I started by removing fan leaves only to discover that she had aphids. Ugh. Not a terrible infestation but still. So, I removed all fan leaves and used my sprayer to wash the buds with pure water. That knocked off all visible bugs, but I'm certain a few are left in some buds. No big deal. The grow is done, and the bugs should leave as they run out of food. A benefit is that the buds are washed clean from other stuff that flies around outdoors. I didn't want to chop her with soaking-wet buds, so I left her for another day to dry out in the sun, and then cut her today. She is now hanging to dry in my drying tent, where I use an Inkbird controller to keep a constant 60% humidity for the next couple of weeks. Now we wait.

I left her to dry for ten days. The temperatures were too hot, which is another reason I usually have a grow break over the summer. But no matter. This grow was all about the grow itself and less about the actual harvest. It was a celebration of our legalization by growing outside my window for everyone to see. I live in a VERY touristy area in a house that is almost 600 years old, so naturally, we have a lot of people taking pictures of our house every day. Pictures that included a weed plant :D It was a breeze to trim her, although I threw away a couple of nugs that still had some bugs. The yield was modest at 17,6 grams, but still more than expected considering the growing conditions. Overall, I'm well pleased with how this small and straightforward grow went and will do a similar grow next summer.