Banana Jealousy

This plant was randomly chosen from my "THC Surplus Solution" diary, a group of about 16 plants growing in 16oz cups. We needed a "guinea pig" for a new tent and light, in a new grow room, so we transplanted this one into a 5-gallon fabric pot which will be her final home. We used our standard home-made soil, and mixed in some myco as well as neem and alfalfa meal in the top layer of soil and transplant hole. The new grow room was too hot, and the heat wave we're encountering this week didn't help. I had to return 2 air conditioners and get a whole bunch of other materials I wasn't anticipating. All the while, she was growing in this torturous, and nowhere near consistent environment, as I tweaked things all week. It got too hot at times, and you can see the tell-tale signs of heat stress, with her leaves curling. We've provided her plenty of water and foliar sprays to help combat that, but, this new grow room is not in an ideal location of my house, and it is not easy to cool down. Additionally, the new grow light emits a LOT of heat, even dimmed to 40%. On the last day of the week, which is actually week 2 for her, we gave up on the new lung room, and moved the tent into our existing lung room, after a ton of moving things around and making more duct runs throughout my house. We'll see where this takes us. It's all up to her now to recover from the torture of this heat wave and me trying to tweak her new environment all week.

Week 3 is complete, and already she is looking better and larger after the heat wave from the previous week. We defoliated her first node's leaves, that were a little unhappy from the past heat, to make way for more upward growth. We also noticed some fungus gnats having a field day on top of our beautiful soil, so we drenched it with a watering of B.t. variant israelensis. Either this coming week, or the next, depending on her performance, we will top her.

She really started to branch out laterally and vertically, this week. At the beginning of the week, we topped her apical growth. At the beginning of the week, we also started low-stress training her two thinnest branches low to the trunk, which were the longest. We left the ties like this all week. At the end of the week, we went to readjust the ties, but one branch was pinched unfortunately, and after removing the tie it snapped off under its own weight. So, we decided to chop both sides off at the stem, and continue the process with some of her other branches, being more careful this time.

This week was all about training. Lots of training of the low-stress kind. Pretty much every branch was tied low until there was a lot of tension, and readjusted every couple days when they stiffened and new growth above was long enough to be tied down just as low. Welcome to the bondage jungle everyone. I hope she's into that sort of thing! We also defoliated a bit, to make room for the now lower tops of branches to soak up light for some vertical growth. And finally, day 5 of this week was her last day under an 18/6 photoperiod -- we switched her to 12/12 to begin the flower transition.

It's been a week since flipping her light schedule to begin bloom, but hasn't started to show her true colors yet. She is, however, growing like a beast. I have her tied down pretty well, and I super-cropped her apical stem a week or so ago, and we can see her turning into a very wide and spread out plant. It's pretty nice looking, considering she is growing in a 5-gallon pot, taking up nearly the entire footprint of my 3x3 tent. She also has started to drink a lot of water ever since the light flip, about 64oz per day. I'm excited to see how she looks in the coming days when flowering commences, and look forward to the challenge of maintaining an even canopy with her.

Mid-week, we decided to undo her ties and let her grow apically. This was because she continued to press against all 4 tent walls every day after lots of defoliation each day. I figured it couldn't hurt. It probably wasn't the best idea I've ever had, as now her mid section is not going to receive enough light for a level canopy. But, why not? For science we are trying it out just to see what happens. She grew a lot after releasing her from prison. And she has small little buds forming in places now. I think by some time next week we'll have a fairly interesting looking plant in full bloom. No regrets, only happy mistakes to take notes and learn from.

We only did a very minor defoliation this week as we let her grow vertically after removing the ties. She did stretch quite a bit, from 24 to 32 inches. She also has her flowers pretty well established now, with what appears to be some pinkish purple starting to poke through. She has been drinking about 64-80oz of water per day for the past couple of weeks, which is quite a bit more than I usually expect from a 5-gallon fabric pot plant in a living soil mix by quite a margin...and I always let the soil dry out nearly completely between waterings. We actually went on a camping trip for a day and a half, and didn't water her in that time, on the last couple days of the week, but she didn't seem to mind. I'm pretty impressed with this plant so far.

We're now one month into bloom for this girl, and she is starting to smell sweet. I can't quite place the aroma yet, but it's sweet, is all I can say. Additionally, she's starting to show senescence already, with burgundy/purple starting to poke through in her largest fans as well as some stigmas. She also put on a bit more frost this week, and I would guess she is only about half way, if that, through bloom. I think we'll have a sweet and frosty finish in another 4-6 weeks.

This week was rough. My soil mix this round was not good. We started to see leaves die on the first day of the week and got worse by the 4th day, when I finally took action after getting an idea of what I was dealing with. Our soil had either not enough phosphorus readily available, or other nutrients were antagonizing its uptake. We defoliated a ton, and it hurt her, but she might make it until the end. We then applies some bone meal, basalt, and some other micro nutrients found in our bloom top dressing mix. We top-dressed with it, as well as watered it in as a drench. This remedy happened on day 4. On day 5, she didn't have as much leaf die-off as the previous day, and by day 7 she has been doing much better. Stuff happens, I guess.

The issue was indeed a phosphorus deficiency from what I can tell. A few days after applying a soil drench of the bone meal etc, she stopped deteriorating. That’s not to say she doesn’t look like she’s seen better days, but at least it stopped spreading. She should only have 2 or 3 weeks left.

She's now been flowering for 7 weeks, and her flowers are pretty much in their final form. We're just waiting for them to ripen a bit more, which seems like it'll be another couple of weeks at the going rate. She does sort of smell like a floral banana. Interesting smell. Not very strong smelling, but interesting.

She finally has some red stigmas this week, signalling that she is almost ready. I haven't checked her with my microscope yet, but I will in the coming days. I expect she has about one more week.

The quality of the flower is top-notch. This is one of my best harvests in years, quality-wise. She is incredibly sticky and loaded with trichomes. Her smell is of sour berries, with a bit of that diesel smell. After trimming, and a week of curing so far, we are left with 102g of rock hard dense buds.