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Popped some new beans last week and these are the results so far... I haven't started with nutes yet. I'm going to add some microbial additives next week to help develop the root zone. I plan to top one of these and leave the other two alone to compare the results. I still have 5 more of these beans so it will be good data to have. My basic plan is to do a couple autoflower runs during the winter and spring months before switching back to photoperiod plants.
Cruising along here in early veg. It is so dry this time a year that my humidifier is struggling to keep moisture in the air. I've got it stabilized between 55-65% RH. Before I purchased the humidifier the environment was between 35-40%. As you can compare the 2 sets of photos taken 3 days apart the plants increased in size by about 50%. The next node should have 5 point fan leaves. I had some stretching issues so I lowered the lights this week from 18" above the canopy to 12". Next week I'll start to add some microbes to the feed.
Plants are starting to increase in size but growth is remaining slow. I believe this is because of the environment. I've 3 tents in one room, all with different needs. I've got one finishing up with late flowering, the other is being used to dry and this one is being used for veg. I'm going to move these into the tent that is drying by the next weekend. Started to feed them some microbial nutes as well to develop the root zone.
This week we topped two girls and then moved all 3 into the flowering tent. On day 23 we stopped using the 216w T5 lighting and started to use the 315w Cmh lighting. For this run I will start out with the light closer to the canopy and raise it as time goes by or as needed. I also plan on using an 18/6 lighting schedule. Once flowering starts I'll switch to Advanced Nutrients but I'll use 1/4 strength.
The plants are filling out very nice. One thing to note is that there is no way these will be done in 3 more weeks. All of the plants showed pre flowers at the start of the week and have transitioned to bloom. I'll be switching the nutes over to bloom feeding next week.
I switched over to Advanced Nutrients this week. I'll be using this lineup throughout the rest of the grow cycle. I'm using 1/4 of the recommended dosages for feeding. Flower sites are starting to form and the plants are stretching to various heights. The untopped plant is the tallest at 35". The other 2 are at 24". The tall plant is forcing me to raise my light higher.
I switched over from Bud Ignitor to Big Bud this week. Flowers are starting to develop nicely. I hit them with a foliar spray right before the last 3 photos. Judging by the size and development of the flowers I still have 4-6 weeks left.
Starting to notice a nice berry scent coming from the purple pheno. The other 2 phenos grown aren't purple and have a more subtle scent that is hard to put my finger on at the moment. I still have a lot of white pistils growing so I'd put these right into mid-flowering. Got a 1-3 more weeks of growth before flushing. Two of the phenos are starting to get frosty while the 3rd lags behind.
The berry terpenes are starting to become stronger. I noticed that the fan leaves on a couple of these phenos are starting to fade. The purple pheno's leaves are fading to purple which is kinda cool. I checked the trichomes and I'm seeing mostly cloudy with a few amber here and there. I decided to wait on flushing for now since I still have a lot of yellow pistils but it won't be long.
Started feeding 2 of the 3 plants with my pre-flush mixture. I basically cut out the nitrogen but keep adding nutes that don't impact NPK. The following 2 weeks will only have water and flush. The 3rd plant is a week behind and will be fed accordingly.
On day 76 I removed 2 of the plants from the tent and placed them in darkness.The 2 that were removed were fed only Florakleen this week. I'll let them sit there until tomorrow (day 78) at which point I'll chop them down. The other plant is still flushing and has a week or so to go before harvest.
I started to flush pheno #3. Pheno's 1 & 2 continue to dry. I'm getting some nice foxtail growth on pheno 3. Still waiting on her to fade a bit more. I checked the trikes and they were still milky....
This girl could have been harvested today and be pretty decent. I'm going to let her sit in the tent for 3 more days and then start the harvest process. I'm seeing 15-20% amber trichomes. The other two phenos will be ready for trim, weighing and jarring tomorrow.
I'm going to break this down into different categories to come up with the final rating which will be an average of the category scores with fractions rounded to the nearest whole number.
Bud Density: 5
Trimming: 9
Speed: 6
Scent: 9
Flavor: 6
Effects: 8
Bud Density is very important. Unfortunately, all three of the phenos I grew came up short in this category. They sure look nice in the pictures, but the nugs were fluffy and light on weight. Bud density leads to bag appeal so the final product isn't all that pretty.
Trimming is personally important to me. I refer to it as "Trim jail". It bugs me to have a plant that requires a lot of labor to clean up during harvest. All three of these phenos were easy to trim. In addition, they didn't have much foliation which required less maintenance on my part during the grow.
Speed is a factor that is very important to me. I try my best to maximize harvests using efficiency and planning practices. The strain is advertised as being done in roughly 8 weeks or 56 days. Two of the phenos took 78 days whereas the last one took 96 days. Had these taken only 56 days I would be 14 days away from an additional harvest.
After visually inspecting I took a big sniff of the dried, cured buds. They have a very pleasant aroma. I've smelled this same aroma on other purple strains. It is a mix between berry and floral with a hint of gas.
I ground up a couple of nugs and packed a king size cone. I still can't really detect any noticeable flavor. It's pretty bland and earthy. It's neither bad or good in my opinion.
The effects are felt within a few minutes after the first toke. It leaves you feeling calm and relaxed. At the same time it does not make you sleepy. I wouldn't recommend it if you have a task that needs a lot of focus. It definitely makes my mind drift away into daydreams. Perfect for a sunny afternoon when you have nothing to do.
Final thoughts: I topped 2 of these plants. One of them had the largest yield at 47.4 grams. The other two phenos were 57 grams combined.
I've harvested over 40 autoflowers by now so I thought this one was pretty easy for me. A very low maintenance grow. I had to deal with very low humidity early on during the winter months. I invested in a couple of programmable humidifiers to put in each flower tent to ameliorate the issue. I appreciate all of the nice comments for those who stopped by. Peace!