Barney's Farm Run

Things are progressing well. Plants are about 7cm tall and continuing to put out new leaves. Waiting until 3 nodes to begin training. Will be flowering 2 or 3 in my 2x4 tent; more likely 2. This grow I will be using the AutoPot system for a more hands off watering style. I'm pretty stoked about it from what I have read and heard. Right now I am watering them by hand once every 4 or 5 days, trying to keep ppms around 400. Had to add a humidifier this week because its so dry here. This is a problem I'm actually excited to have. Lowering humidity has always been an expensive hassle for me. Now all I have to do is throw in this 1 gal mister in the tent and BOOM problem solved. Excited for the first grow in our new house!!

All plants were topped this week. This grow has been a little bit of a challenge getting back in the groove after a year off. Had a serious pH issue at the beginning of the week. pH pen I bought was reading 5.8-6 and when I tested it against the traditional kit, that came out to less than 4. Luckily I noticed a few brown spots on the leaves and corrected the issue quickly. Been a day off on my timing to water them which is causing some issues. Going to have to veg for 6 weeks instead of 5 like I wanted but its all good. Hopefully things get more stable over the next few weeks and they can really take off. Going to transplant them into their final pots tonight!

This week all plants were transferred into their final container and tent. I will be hand watering in the autopots for first 10-14 days. Hopefully turning the system on this coming Sunday. This week I fixed all the issues i was having the past few weeks. Temp has been great, pH problem is fixed, humidity is good, and I think they are really finding their stride. I have ,y HLG 340 at 50% power right now. Hoping to turn it up a little every few days and be at full power by week 1 of flower. I also moved one of the plants outside. It wasn't doing as well as the other three, but not bad enough to scrap. Put it outside to for shits and gigs, we will see what happens. The node spacing on all of these plants is incredibly tight and the stems are getting thick. Very exciting to watch the find their groove over the next week or so. Plan is to veg for 5 weeks total right now or when they reach 32cm. I have been wondering why their growth seems a bit slow and I think I have made a few errors. Because of this I think I am may have to let them veg for 6 weeks, we will see. Error Notes: 1. Letting coco dry completely in solo cups. 2. Low humidity before tent was moved to basement. Humidity was around 45% most of the time. 3. Too much stress too quickly. I topped the plants on June 16, the immediately transplanted on June 19. Not enough recovery time. NTS don't do that again. 4. pH issue for the first week.

This was a HUGE week! The girls have found their groove and are finally growing rapidly. They have doubled in size and there are now many tops to each plant. Runoff ppm was brought under control by watering to 75% runoff at 650ppm. This week I also increased the concentration of Mega Crop Part A, their flowering nutrient. I also had to LST them a little because I am worried that in the 6 days I am gone they will get to close to the light if they keep growing at the pace they are at. I finally turned on my autopot system. I am very excited about it, first time not hand watering. The plants are taking up water well. The ppm in the res is around 780 and the pH is sitting nicely around 5.5. I did have a small leak in the end cap of the system. It is making me quite worried as I am going away for the next 6 days. Going to lay some towels down in the tent and hope that helps. Can't wait to come back Sunday and hopefully see some explosive growth in the tent. Will flip to flower on Monday of next week!

This was another big week. Automatic watering system worked better than I could have hoped. Plants drank about 6 gallons in 6 days, doubled in size, and are extremely green and healthy. Sunday 7/7 I flipped them into flower. I also lollipopped them leaving only 3 nodes per branch and added SCROG net. These plants are responding well to everything. Hopefully they start their stretch around Wednesday or Thursday this week and we will be in business.

Another BIG week for the gals. They got lollipopped on Monday and it took them about 5 days to fill back out and start stretching vertically again. Saturday-Monday they seems to explode overnight, had to adjust the scrog net and do additional LST to keep the canopy as level as possible. PE#1 is not as tall as the others and with this system I can't really stand her up on anything. Hope that she catches up this week. I discovered some purple petioles, and a little spreading to stems on each plant and read that it's likely due to a mag deficiency. I added CalMag to the res. Also noticed the water temp is a little warm at 26-27C but I am not going to spend the money to get a chiller and pay for that electricity, so we will see what happens. Doesn't seem to be too big of an issue right now. To counter this a little I turned on the autopot air domes. Hoping that the extra oxygen will do them well since the warm water is likely low in DO. This week the light was lowered to 45cm above canopy. Reading back through old grows it appears between 37.5-45.5 is the sweet spot for this light. I also started checking the pH and the ppm's of each tray and noticed that the pH rises slightly from tank to tray. Tank is at 5.5 and trays are 5.8-6. Something to keep an eye on later. Tonight I will clean the tank with soap, peroxide and water and plan to snag some hydroguard this week at the store. I added Bud explosion to the nute recipe this week and will begin to decrease Part B Nutrients slowly over the course of the next two weeks. They are still a little shorter than I would like, but the good news is there is literally no more room to scrog so its all vertical growth from here on out. Hoping that they have a good stretch this week. if they could be between 65-70 cm by the end of flower week two I would be very pleased. All other conditions in the tent have been great.

BIG stretch week for the gals. Started the week with an average canopy height of ~50cm and ended at almost 70cm! Tallest plant is the ME with a few branches at ~75cm and shortest is PE#1 at ~63cm. I started Bud explosion at 1/4 strength this week and will move up to 1/2 strength now that week 3 is here. Also, veg nutrients (part B) will be dialed back slowly over the next two weeks. Will drop down to 1.25g next watering then .75g the following and will be down to just .25g by the middle of week 4. This week I also added some beneficial enzymes to keep the lines clean and roots free of algae and fungus. We will see how that goes. On the final day of this week they got their final large defoliation. This should give them a full week to recover before they start to the bulking process week 4. This was likely the heaviest defoliation I have ever done. Hoping to expose all bud sites to the light. After exploring my PPFD scores, anything within about ~60cm of the light should receive between 500-700 PPFD depending on if they are towards the center or outside. I think that most of the buds are within ~50cm of the light so we will see.

This was a BIG stretch week for the gals. I had lollipopped them thinking they would stretch to about 30 inches, or just over double where they started. They blew past that and didn't stop until about 35 inches. Even though the structure sucks, I think that I am doing a good job defoliating and keeping light on bud points. The top colas are ~15 inches from the light (~1300PPFD) and the lower bud points are ~22 inches away (~750 PPFD). We will have to see how the buds develop. Next round I'm definitely shooting for a more even canopy, but this is my first time growing sativa hybrids so its a learning curve. I noticed the very beginning of nute burn this week on a few leaf tips so I dialed the nutrients back. PPM sitting around 800 now. I had heard that you need to go lighter when its a constant feed like this. Earlier in the week PPM got pushed all the way to 975 and I think that was just too much. Somewhere between 800-900 is going to end up being the sweet spot. Might push it over 900 again towards week 6 or 7. Had some roots make their was into the tray this week. Not sure how that happened considering I have autopots copper sheet down, but it was so white and perfect that I was actually pleased to see it haha. They got what will likely be one of their last Dr. Zymes treatments on Thursday. Might try to get one more in this week while its still really dry here.

This was a big week. The plants were moved into the lab for the first time, YAY! Structure is still shit for this grow, definitely going to end up with a fair amount of larf. Trying to defoliate as much as possible. Phased out Part B nutrients and will be increasing the Bud Explosion again this week. Towards the end of this week I will be adding bud hardener mendocino avalanche. My res tank has some green slime in it so I need to clean it out when this tank runs dry. I have been adding the enzymes every other week at 3/4 recommended strength. The low temp at night has been dropping significantly which has me slightly concerned because RH in the canopy rises to around 60% at that point. Not horrible, but not great. Moving the plants was rough, so I am extra worried about mold this grow. There was also work being done in my basement so lots of dust and grime. Just keeping my fingers crossed. Will be starting more seedlings soon for the next round.

Week 5 went smoothly with not all that much to report. Veg nutrients are completely done and I added some Mendecino Avalanche into the mix now that the buds are beginning to develop. I believe that the to pineapple express plants are about 1 week behind the mimosa evo, which is interesting. The ME is listed as a 65+ day while the PEs are 55-65. Wondering if I got a more indica dominant pheno of the ME or maybe when I mixed the seeds up I got it wrong, we will have to wait and see. Humidity in the tent has been getting a little high, around 62% at times. For the most part it is still between 58-60 most of the day lights out, but just to be extra safe I added a third oscillating fan to really move air around. This was the first time that I have ever defoliated this aggressively. That being said, I have never really seen the buds develop in this way. To me they seem small for week 6, but I am not sure. Hopefully things start to fatten up over the next few weeks. Excited to see how it all plays out. Going to start the germination process for the next round today. 8/13: Discovered nutrient burn tonight. You can't say there is ever perfect timing for nutrient burn, but I was right at the end of my current res and had to clean it anyway. So I cleaned and changed the res with new 11 gallons of new water at ~700PPM

I was out of town this week visiting friends and came back to a bulked out tent. Couldn't ask for much better! There was some yellowing of the leaves on the two pineapple express plants so I did add some veg nutrients back into the res last night, but other than that things look great. The Mimosa Evo is progressing very well. PE#2 is doing great as well. PE#1 is significantly behind the others. This was expected as it was the smallest of the bunch to start. Hopefully she finds her legs here pretty soon. After lowering the PPM last week the nute burn is under control. There has been no progression of browning from the tips and I believe they are in the clear. Lesson learned is that with autopots, its likely not advantageous at all to exceed 850PPM and I might even try to keep it around 800PPM on the next round. All and All though this round is going very well. With the new structure after moving there is going to be a lot of larf, but nothing I can do about that now. Just have to ride it out and see what happens. I will update with pictures of individuals nugs tonight.

Nothing much to report this week. Buds are fattening up VERY nicely and I am getting extremely impatient haha. Added some bud sweetener to the mix but other than that nothing has changed. Going to take a look at the trichomes tomorrow and see when I should begin my flush. Thinking that I will be chopping around mid-week next week but we will see what the trichs say.

Welp we are getting down to the wire now. Trichomes are officially 100% milky with a few ambers scattered here and there. Going to let them go one more week before the chop. Reduced PPM this week from 780 to 600. Last water jug I added last night came out at 525. Will back down to around 250 by Wednesday and then flush them there until I chop them on Sunday. Hoping for around 10-20% amber trichomes by then. The star of the show is certainly going to be the mimosa evo. The nugs on that plant are HUGE! Looking at the two pineapple express plants you wouldn't even know they were the same strain. The phenos I got are very different and strange comparing them to past pineapple express plants that I have grown. PE#2 should still be a pretty heavy producer though. PE#1 has struggled since the beginning but in the past week or so has packed on a fair amount of weight. VERY excited to see what the final dry weight is for this tent. Fingers crossed we have at least 6 ounces in there!

HARVEST DAY! Plants spent 63 days in flower trichomes were between 85-90% milky and 10-15% amber depending on plant. Overall I am very happy with the final product. First time using Autopots and they were AMAZING! such an easy system, didn't have any problems. Left them along for up to 6 days at a time with absolutely no issues. DIdn't so a straight water flush but did reduce PPMs down to 300. I think next time I will do a pure water flush, but even at 300 I still got a pretty good fade. After looking at them closer I think that I got the strains wrong. I believe its actually 2 Mimosa Evo and 1 Pineapple express. PE#2 and ME look far more similar than than PE#1. I will keep the names for here, but fix everything when I post the dry wieght. Total Wet Weights: PE#1: 760g PE#2: 1,368g ME: 1,106g Total = 3,030g

Overall I got 11.15 ounces of dried flower from these two plants, and amazing haul. I think that if I hadn't had to move the tent and mess with the structure I would have gotten even more.

All dried and cured this plant produced about 2.6 ounces of good flower. Not the best haul, but for all the troubles it had I am still pretty stoked. Will definitely be trying again with this strain and every other Barney's Farm strain I can get my hands on.