First Ever Grow - Orange Sherbet Auto 420FastBuds

1st week: seed sprouts after 2 days in a paper towel inside my socks drawer. Same night it goes into a 25lt fabric pot filled with 20lt of Biobizz Light mix, about 5 cm deep in the center. I gently cover it with soil and then spray and mist on top and on the surrounding area about 80ml of water every 4 hours (or every time I check that it has dried out). First 3 days only water, misting and waiting for a few hours for the surface of the soil to feel a little crusty/dried, then mist again some more. About 300 ml per day. It seems to dry out quick. I hang the light higher and fool around with the intensity/distance for a couple of days. I get desired/acceptable humidity and temp conditions (25 C / 55% +-) using about 50% of light intensity and at about 40 cm above the seedling and leave it at that. Day 4 I serve a 500 ml dose of water with 1 ml Bio Heaven. Day 5 Lots of misting with water on the surface of the soil, mostly a few cm around the seedling. Trying to drive its little roots towards the outer side of the pot. Or at least that's what I'm fantasizing I'm doing. Day 6 I serve a 500 ml dose of water with 1 ml Bio Heaven. Day 7 All is ok.

Week 2: Easter is up, no time to take photos everyday, except for checking up every 6 hours I leave the plant do its thing, as I see no sign of weakness or deficiency in any way. On the contrary, I didn't expect that much speed and vigor. I 'm happy with how things turn out. Later on during the week, I try to think of a diy solution for preparing for LST using plastic woodworking clips. It's not happening. The plant still grows much faster than I expected and gets bushier every day by a significant amount. I am watering about 1 lt every 2,5 days more or less, and then spray around the whole pot another 400 ml of plain water. Humidity starts hitting 60+% and temp goes around 30-32 during the day. I try some LST again, fail again. At least I manage to make some soft adjustments to direct in some way the lower branches towards the outer side, so that more leaf area is exposed to the light. Or that's what I'm hoping. I'm also trying hard not to overwater, and keep my composure. This goes for the accuracy in measuring nutrients too. Trying to avoid the big No-No's. Day 14 I'm happy. Pretty much by how well the plant leads the way. Will think of the LST improvisation some more.

Week 3:

Day 22 Is it already flowering ? ? ? Is this stage pre-flowering or what the heck? Day 23 I do some light defoliation on the bottom part, only to help ventilation, otherwise all leaves look quite healthy and strong. Very rough to the touch. Like sandpaper. Day 24 Some tidying up using garden wire (the one that's covered with that soft green plastic coating) Day 25 I believe they are stretching Day 26 And they stretch some more Day 27 Some more light defoliation here and there to increase light penetration in certain areas. Maybe I am overdoing it. Day 28 Wish I had installed a net so I could keep everything at the same height. Feels like I;m about to get in trouble...

Week 5: I had to defoliate some more, I was having a hard time watering, and it seemed that the upper leaves were blocking some areas. Anyway, I think I overdid it again. I also increased the nutrients, and re-adjusted the light a little bit lower. It seems the plant is getting quite strong. I want it to get as much light as it can. Hope I didn't stress it out too much. I took ofF some of the middle leaves that were too long but now I wanna stick them back on! Second guessing this is killing me. Buds start to develop but they look quite airy so far. Maybe I shouldn;t have messed with it that much. Lots of white pistils, but I don;t see any serious bud development. Very small, popcorny, spaced one from the other (because of too much stretching?) except from the tops. Maybe it's too early? I don't know. Nothing fat so far.

Week 6 : I can see that things are not looking bad, I 'm pretty happy with the road so far. BUT, I am seriously worried that I'm missing something, my ultimate fear being to harvest light, see through, airy popcorn buds. And so far by the looks of it, I 'm closer to that, than iced fat buds. Also intrigued and disappointed that I don't see any signs of trichomes yet. I know I should wait, so I start googling. Seems there's quite some topics on forums related to my worries. People re-assuring fellow virgin-grower that he should wait and be patient. There;s also hints of using strong UVB light during flowering to increase trichomes. I go buy one after 2 days. Goes straight under my LED light and stands at the center of the tent. Closest distance to bud tops about 7-8 cm. I let it work together with the LED, same 18/6 light schedule. I cross fingers.

Week 7 : Halellujah! I am finally unstressed! I don't know if it's the UVB lamp I added or it would anyway go that route by itself, but trichomes are here! And I can already see that by just using the zoom in my mobile's camera (nothing fancy as you can see by the photos posted so far). I will order a jeweller's loop so I can better inspect what's going on, but the truth is there's lots of trich popping out. I 'm pretty sure the lamp accelerates and multiplies the effect, as the change was dramatic in the past 3-4 days. Also, all tops that are closer to the UVB are literally starting to frost from the amount of trichome. I mean it's visible by naked eye. So, the UVB will stay there indefinitely. NOW, the next issue that arises is temperature inside the tent. I would love to have the recommended 19@night,25@day but this seems out of the question. Temps outside in Greece start hittin' 39-42oC in the day and around 30@night so it;s impossible to keep up. I bought 2 extra mini usb fans that are stuck blowing from the outside to the in (through the side net entrance) I raised the LED as high as it will go, and thinking about decreasing the intensity a notch more. The UVB lamp doesn't add that much heat, but 1-2 degrees definitely, and right now it matters a lot, as I 'm in the reds. On the other hand, the UVB will not move from there, period. Will have to think about it... The temps I get now inside the tent are ~28@night and ~32@day. I want to lower them as much as I can. Any suggestions anyone? P.S. : I also got so much excited, I started using filters for the close-up photos, and a Temu mobile camera lens magnifier (40x) just in case I could capture any trich photos. Well,leave a comment if you may, I know most of them aren't as focused as they should, but I promise I'll do better next week.

Week 8: Well, this week begins with a good feeling..I can finally see trich developing fast Also buds are fattening up quite a bit, and I feel relieved. I now fully understand why "patience" is key. Well aware there's still more way to go, nevertheless feels like I haven't f*ed up so far, and that's good. I am now dreaming of fat buds. I have started watering more frequently, as temps rise and the soil dries up quite faster. I also have reduced by half the amount of bio-grow and replaced it with extra ml in bio-bloom and top-max. I re-upped the light intensity, tidied up the inside of the tent, readjusted the fans, and I can now maintain a steady 29 C both day and night. Ideally would love to drop to 25 C but mind you, today 6/13/24 we had 43 C outside. It's hell. 29 C is just fine. Day 54: I 'm ok with what I have for now. Just ordered a mini a/c unit to go inside the tent (maybe for my next grow if it doesn't get here on time). I start seeing a few totally yellowed-out leaves that fall in my hand as soon as I pull them lightly. I can also see some in the lowest part of the plant which I didn't "clean-up" that I'm almost certain that are the ones that get spilled-at by me feeding the plant. All surrounding leaves look pretty good, no signs of yellowing other than some burnt tips. I have to admit I've been aware of this, but I supposed it is ok just a little bit, maybe overfeeding or overwatering or god knows what, but now the burn, covers more area than just the tip. The plant seems fine and thirsty. Day 56: Quite more yellowed leaves, I pull them all off, they all fall as soon as I touch them. The rest seems pretty good still. Any guesses what I 'm doing wrong here? Is this normal? Buds, though not totally thick, are quite hard and super-sticky. The smell on my fingers when I press them softly is an amazing fruity orange-tangerine kind of smell with a very pleasant funkiness to it. Amazingly there is very little smell coming out of the tent and only when I fiddle with the branches and the garden-wire ties. I have a carbon filter installed and I was hoping I wouldn't have issues with the smell but this is way better than I imagined. Let's go for the last few weeks, spirits are up again.

Week 9: well, it looks like this is the beginning of the final phase. Buds are formed in what I suspect is their final size, I 'm quite happy with their size, looks like 3-4 colas are about 30-35 cm long and quite thick. Most exciting part is that fruity smell and the insane stickiness that is oozing from the inside of the buds. And then some more yellow leaves...