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Took less than 12 hours for seed to pop and tap root to start growing. Planted in 50/50 mix of Fox Farm Happy frog and Ocean Forest amended with worm castings and Mycos.
Sprout broke surface two days later on the 24th. Room temp range was 78 to 84 degrees F. Humidity range was around 70%.
Top dressed with Gaia Green 4-4-4 and 2-8-4 as well as some worm castings and a bit more mycos. Just a reminder, this grow is already compeleted, so any helpful comments, though appreciated, are too late to be truely helpful.
Had an Issue with having the lights too close. Plant was showing signs of heat stress even though temps were low, brought the lights up about six inches and resolved the issue.
Growing happy and so photogenic that i decided to play with the filters on my phone and get cool pictures...one of which is still currently my desktop background. She was really happy, so i decided to push back her feeding by a week...to this day, still not sure why i thought that was a good idea...
Fed her a week late, as stated in previous entry. By the end of the week she was showing deficiencies. Fed her 1 tablespoon per gallon of 2-8-4. and half a tablespoon per gallon of 4-4-4. I also fed 2 tablespoons of glacial rock dust to her 10 gallon pot in hopes of covering any micro nutrients... I would live to regret that.
What I thought to be nutrient deficiencies continued to wreak havoc on the plant. I assumed that it was because I waited a week to feed her and, since I was using slow release organic nutrients, I had waited to long and she was out of food before the amendments I top dressed her with had time to be available.
Day after day, I watch as her beautiful leaves are scarred with nutrient deficiencies. I beat myself up over how she looks, wishing that I would have fed her the date I had scheduled. However, though her leaves were being scarred, her buds were developing and growing more and more frosty. Her flowers were beautiful despite her leaves being mangled. Its stunning how a plant under such distress could still manage to put out such beautiful, dense buds. Truly a testament to the breeder 420Fastbuds.
Her leaves had finally finished with the deficiencies and her true fade had started. Her buds were plumping up nice and fat. Super frosty and super smelly. She had finally started to have a smell of fresh picked strawberries with a gassy undertone. Though scarred, she was in my eyes at least....beautiful.
Unfortunately, I did not take a whole lot more pictures on this week. I was still pretty bummed on how bad her leaves were looking and had shifted my attention on a new grow....which was having the same issues that this one did with the leaves getting wrecked by deficiencies. Turns out, through process of elimination and some redneck science.... My plants were experiencing nutrient lockout do to alkaline soil. I did not have a soil pH pen, so I had to test with baking soda and vinegar. If you're ever stuck without a pH pen and you need to test your soil, take a bit of soil and put it in a glass. Next take some distilled vinegar and pour it on your soil sample and if you hear sizzling....your soil is alkaline. If you hear nothing its acidic. You can do the same with baking soda, but you will need to dampen the soil sample with a bit of distilled water, then sprinkle some baking soda and listen.
So...if you're growing with Gaia Green and you decide to use the glacial rock dust for micro nutrients, you're going to need to adjust your soil pH. It definitely pushed my soil to the alkaline side of the spectrum. Other than that issue, this was a BEAST of a strain. She never got really tall, in fact, I may even say she was a runt pheno.... but OMG the harvest! This tiny little plant put out over 151 grams dry weight of total flower! 77 grams was jar-able, gorgeous and dense, buds that reeked of strawberries and gas. There was an additional 74 grams of loose frosty popcorn buds. Had I not gotten the nute lockout and not been afraid to defoliate her, I could have easily gotten even more jar-able flower. Absolutely impressed with this strain. The smoke is amazing, the high is outstanding. Its everything its hyped up to be on 420Fastbuds website. 10/10 WILL be growing again!
To sum things up, I will definitely be growing Strawberry Gorilla auto again very soon. Im a huge fan of the effects of the flower and it'll need to become a staple in my garden. I do wish that they would release a Fast Flower photoperiod version of the strain....that would be amazing.
Great journal! Your alkaline "baking soda" test proved extremely useful and just helped me determine the issues with my girls! Keep up the good work, will definitely be following along 👽
@jwh_hero, Thanks man! This is grow that just finished a couple weeks ago. Gonna be back posting entries for the next week or so to have the whole grow on here. It gets bad...but the ending.... ;)
Grandmas_Boy
