Purplematic CBD

Well, it's been 4 days and they outgrew my tiny-ass humidity dome, so I transplanted their peat cubes to their final home -- my 45gal raised bed. The image captions speak for themselves but: - I mowed the cover-crop lawn - Dug a couple fairly deep transplant holes - Added mycorrhizae/bacteria to the bottom of the holes - Filled holes with my base mix - Wet with RO water and made smaller hole for peat cubes - Added some mycorrhizae/bacteria to smaller holes - Dropped in both peat cubes/seedlings - Covered up with more base mix - Wet with more RO water - Mulched whole bed with a generous layer of pea gravel I then dialed in my DLI to 13, and VPD to 0.45. Now we see what happens!

Day 11: We had some slow growth since the beginning, mostly due to a VPD mistake, which also dried up some of her previous top leaves. No, this is not a cal-mag issue, as a lot of people are quick to judge. We actually have plenty of dolomite lime in our soil, and magnesium in our water supply. This was just from a couple of too arid days. She'll recover, and for a few days has seen an increase in growth performance, now that we have some more leaf surface area to work with. Day 12: I made a LAB serum and performed a drench and foliar spray of the bed today. It's a first time making LABs, and we had a lot of cheese. We'll see how it goes. I preserved about a gallon of it split between being refrigerated and stored with molasses.

She's doing quite better now, and the pictures you see today are after giving her a drought for 3 days to get the roots stretching, and then right before taking the pictures, I watered her with a mycorrhizal fungi solution to strengthen that process. We're trying a new myco solution that includes some other amendments such as biochar, EWC, and more. I look forward to seeing the progress she makes by next weekend. On the last day of week 3, she is now pre-flowering -- we now see multiple stigmas!

We are at the end of week 4, and she really started exploding this week as you can tell. We still don't have any visible flowers, but she is in a deep 45-gallon "pot", so she can take all the time she needs. 2 days before the end of the week, we lowered the ScrOG net we built for this grow, just a few inches above the raised bed (which is not filled fully, so we have about 6-8 inches of room for her). The day after I positioned the net, she grew a few inches overnight, and I started by bending her apical stem over into the net, to give her lateral branches light. It turns out, she has very wide leaves that were shadowing her lateral branching. I tried training her for a day with garden wire, but it wasn't working out very well, so the net was installed low. In the two days since installing it, we have seen her apex grow several inches, and her lateral branching as well, so we may possibly be starting the stretch. We will continue to weave it into the net and see what it brings us. This is the very first time we are utilizing a net, and it seems to be working well so far to give her under-canopy the much needed light from her dense foliage above. If need be, we may dig up and transplant the runt next to her. That is documented in my VCDC diary. It's kind of hard to believe that both plants are exactly the same age, as we sowed them and they sprouted on the same days. I have only been feeding her RO water this week. Tomorrow, we may top-dress with some bloom-enhancing inputs I will concoct. What exactly, I'm not sure yet. I have several recipes and inputs, and I sort of play it by ear and experiment a lot. One thing is for certain: we never use anything marketed for cannabis, or ready-made solutions or salts. We make everything ourselves from raw ingredients, and preferably plant, mineral, and microbial derived. I expect we will see flowers forming by the end of next week, but we'll see.

Wow, what a week. She stretched a whole foot this week, from 8in to 20in, and that's even with me bending her main to a 90 degree angle through the ScrOG net. I trained her a bit too late, due to her small bushy size...I did not want to defoliate her so early, and she had very large fan leaves all clustered together. As a result, we don't have such an even canopy with her apical stem dominating the tent. Oh well, I'm sure she'll turn out super fine! This week was a lot of LST training into the net, and quite a bit of defoliation of under-growth. She definitely responded well to that. I'm happy 😁 And...she is finally starting to flower as of late last night before lights out. We had lots of preflower stigmas for a couple weeks, but I'm finally calling it -- we're flowering! This is by far the longest autoflower I've veged before, especially considering that I adjusted the diary weeks to match actual weeks, which actually makes her look younger than she really is -- in actuality, she is closer to 6 weeks old. I attribute her extra vegetative growth time to growing organically in a large raised bed, instead of the usual small 3-5gal pots I normally do autoflowers in. She just might turn out to be my largest indoor harvest ever! Also of note, is she has been stinking my tent up for 2 weeks now, with this week really exaggerating those smells. Nothing definitive yet, but still stinks like good weed!

Week 6 is complete. She stretched an additional 8 inches, from a starting height of 8 inches before the stretch, putting her up to 28 inches. As such, we have raised the light, a little too late I think, as she is getting yellow from the top down. No signs of tip burn, however. I'm not sure if she is undergoing light or heat stress (my heater is on top of my light facing down), so we also gave her some magnesium in the form of an epsom salt drench. I also think I have not been watering her enough, so I made sure to give her a good downpour today. So this leaf yellowing that is forming from the top downward, could be due to a number of reasons, and I'm trying to tackle them all at once here. Growing in a large raised bed for the first time has been a learning experience to say the least, but I am still happy with the results so far. We also did some light defoliation early this week of some bottom leaves not receiving enough light. Let's see if she looks any better at the end of the second week of bloom in the next diary update. Until then...

This week was pretty rough for all of my gardens, indoor and outdoor. We had a heat wave in the triple digits (Fahrenheit) all week, with humidity over 90% outdoors. Keeping my indoor lung rooms under control, and thus internal tent temperatures, was difficult, to say the least. There were times when my tents were 90F or slightly higher, with an average of about 86F the whole week. Some tents (and even outdoor plants) did not like that at all. This indoor plant didn't like it the most. We have some more yellowing from the heat, but I think she'll turn out fine in the end. This week she really stinks hardcore. My tent is smelling amazing right now. Like citrus. Lots of citrus.

Week 8 is complete and we're close to about half way through blooming. Early in the week, we started to see her stigmas turn from white to a reddish color. We also see some of her inflorescence starting to increase in mass. While she does have a yellowing, it is mostly caused from the heat wave of the previous week, I think. It's okay with me, as she is still growing healthily, and the tent smells incredible -- very much a citrus aroma throughout my grow room when I open the tent. This is one of the most pungent strains I've grown indoor out of many -- definitely in the top three, smell-wise. We are starting to see some leaves turning red, a sign of senescence already. I look forward to chopping her in about 3-4 weeks. Despite her yellowish looks, I'm really happy with this one so far!

We have a month of bloom in the history books for this beautiful and aromatic cultivar. Mid-week, we defoliated about 10-15% of her fan leaves, after I noticed she was respiring an incredible amount at night-time, and I had a pretty big scare with the humidity readings a couple hours after the light went out. I corrected it by transferring some cool, dry air from my large dehumidifier in my lung room, directly to her intake vent with some ducting, as well as increased the heat a bit that night. The next day, we did the defoliation, and removed the quick fixes (the direct ducting and the warmer night temperature). She has been doing great since then.

Well week 5 of bloom is complete, and this week brought a few challenges. Humidity in my area has been through the roof, close to 100%. My heavy-duty equipment was struggling to bring my tent to acceptable late flowering levels, sometimes reaching over 60% RH, especially at night when the plant was respirating more. Additionally, her pale yellow color, and leathery leaves didn't excite me too much. If you remember, we had a severe heat wave a couple of weeks ago, which contributed to that. But also, since I messed up the ScrOG training, and regrettably decided not to super-crop her, a fair share of the leaf problems were due to light stress as well, as I didn't want to sacrifice lower colas, so I let it go. My biggest mistake this grow, was not paying attention to her the one day she decided to stretch nearly a foot, and was unable to be weaved into the net the next day without being snapped in half. My second biggest mistake is NOT snapping it in half, and letting it repair itself. I wouldn't have had nearly as much bleaching of leaves I think. This week, and I'm assuming because nearly all chlorophyll was depleted from her fan leaves, I didn't notice much of any change from last week. Her buds seemed to be about the same mass, and the stigmas still had the same ratio of red to white coloration. I suspected she was dead, or dying, or just...done. Not all genetics will transform all of their stigmas from white, and not all genetics will have their trichomes turn amber. So, I did a few things to confirm that suspicion. First, I looked at her trichomes on various buds closely with a microscope. They were almost all cloudy, with very very few amber. That told me that she was at an acceptable level of ripeness, even if she could have went longer, assuming she was still alive. Next, I removed the pea gravel mulch I was using in the raised bed, so I could get a closer look at the soil she was growing in, and more specifically, her roots. The soil, although moist a few inches deep, was not at the level I expected, and I think I have not been watering her enough. I don't think I'll be using a gravel mulch again. On the plus side, it did help prevent fungus gnats, as there was zero the whole grow, apart from an early week when I placed some solo cups to germinate on top of the bed, but after removing them, the fungus gnats disappeared with them. Also while inspecting the soil, I carefully dug down to inspect some of her primary roots. They were actually dry, despite the surrounding soil being moist. This could explain why she wasn't drinking much if any for the better part of the week. So, given her dry foliage, dry roots, and ripe-enough trichomes, I decided it was time to harvest her, earlier than expected. Let's also not forget that I was frightened this week with some high humidity scares, so growing longer, and possibly for no reason if she was dead or barely alive, was not in the cards. I've dealt with my fair share of bud rot before, and I would rather try what I have of her now, than to wait the extra week or so for her to be fully ripe. So, that is what I did, on the last day of the week -- I chopped her down, cut off some larger fan leaves, and hung her upside down. This, of course, was after removing the raised bed. It took me a while to empty about 45 gallons of soil so I could move it, but in doing so, I noticed a lot of beneficial critters, and nothing bad. Such critters included small centipedes, which feed on other insects, and soil mites which eat dead organic matter. I set the tent to dry at around 72F and 55 RH. And now we wait for about a week before trimming. One thing is for sure -- I am very proud of this grow, despite all these flaws. She smells incredible -- like pure citrus emanating throughout my house. This is a very strong-smelling plant. As a bonus, I've included a time-lapse video of the entire grow from start to finish in the last media above. Check it out and let me know what you think. I'll be back for the harvest week for the dry weight in about a week or so, after we're done drying and trimming.

After curing: Well these 6 jars have been curing for nearly 3 weeks. We have a little more than 5oz (145g) off of a single autoflower. The flavor is absolutely amazing -- pure citrus, with a floral undertone. The terps fill my entire room up with yumminess when I open a jar. There wasn't really any larf while trimming. All of the buds are pretty nice looking. It's fluffy, but most type III chemovars are. That doesn't mean it isn't the absolute best tasting weed, and the best indoor harvest I ever had off of 1 plant, though. RQS did an awesome job with this variety. Even with the torture it went through growing in triple digit temperatures, with yellowing all over, her buds DO NOT DISAPPOINT. 10/10, will DEFINITELY grow this one again!