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After my last failed auto grow in which the Pinot was the clear early standout, I felt I needed to revisit it to see what this strain really has. She'll be all by herself in the 3x2 so no overcrowding issues this time.
7/23 Seed placed in wet paper towel. I got the tent cleaned up and filled a 3 gallon airpot with my coco/perlite/gypsum/wollastonite mixture. I used the leftover res water from the failed Blueberry Muffin to flush out the pot, and then I mixed up 1 gallon of my seedling water and flushed again with that. Runoff EC was brought down from 2.0 to 1.2 which is perfectly acceptable to me. Now we wait for the seed.
7/25 The seed popped so it went straight into the 3 gallon airpot. The light was adjusted to an 18/6 schedule, which is where it will stay for the duration of the grow.
7/27 We have a little seedling now, so today is day 1 of veg. The light is set for about 12 DLI and the humidifier was put in, maintaining about 76F and 62% RH.
7/31 Day 5 of veg. No surprises, growth is good.
8/5 Day 10 of veg. I added in some marble chips to the top layer to help disperse the water from the hydro halo, and also as a fungus gnat preventative. The res was cleaned out and my new veg formula was added. I want to go back to the dry Jack’s nutes and see if with some fine tuning I can get it to work as well as the GH formula.
8/11 Day 16 of veg. Growth has been explosive. Light adjusted to 275 PAR / 17.8 DLI.
8/14 Day 19 of veg. Light adjusted to 295 PAR / 19.1 DLI.
8/15 Day 20 of veg. She was firmly at 6 nodes established so I figured it was now or never on topping. I went for it and now she’s topped. If my timing is good she should have at least a few days or a week before flower kicks in so I think it will be fine.
8/19 Day 24 of veg. She looks really good after the topping with a fairly even canopy. I just today am finally seeing the very first white pistil hairs starting to shoot out, so as for the topping I think I timed it well. For the moment I don’t see any need for further training, everything looks great as is. Light adjusted to 340 PAR / 22 DLI.
8/23 Day 28. Light adjusted to 435 PAR / 28.2 DLI. I switched back to the reliable GH nutes since the Jack’s was giving me some weird colors in the leaves, as well as the plant looking droopy overall. Runoff EC was getting high at around 1.8 so I made sure to run water through it a couple times until runoff was 1.3. Runoff pH is also a little low, sitting at 5.5.
8/31 Day 36. Big defoliation day after getting the trellis net out finally. Light adjusted to 540 PAR / 35 DLI.
9/3 Day 39. Another round of defoliation and spreading out with the trellis today. Stretch should be about done now so this will be much closer to the final shape of her. The light is around 600 PAR / 38.9 DLI. This should be a very safe number and I’ll leave it here for now.
9/7 Day 43. Runoff was creeping up again so I did a few small waterings throughout the day to flush it out a bit. I’ll need to water more often than I currently am. Light at the highest point reaches 700 PAR, but the majority of the canopy is more around 650 PAR / 42.1 DLI. That’s the highest I’ll go for the remainder of the grow.
9/9 Day 45. I’m still getting a little bit of stretch which is surprising, but also very welcome seeing as how there is still room in the tent. I redid the trellis and did a little bit more defoliation just to clear out some of the more obstructive new growth. Runoff EC is now perfectly in control, although oddly the runoff pH refuses to go any higher than 5.5. I won’t worry about “fixing” runoff pH though, I’ll just keep chugging along feeding at around 6.2 pH.
9/16 Day 52. I’m surprised I’m still getting a little stretch and new growth. I did a little more defoliation and adjusted the light back to a suitable max to adjust for that.
9/25 Day 61. There hasn’t been any more stretch since the last update. She’s now on to adding mass, and while everything looks good I will say this is progressing a bit slower than I anticipated. Mephisto claims a cycle time of 70 days, but here at 61 I can easily see her going 3-4 weeks more. No big deal there, just not how I expected it based off their info. I have caught a few fungus gnats in the sticky traps lately too, and while that’s very frustrating it doesn’t seem like there’s too many of them. Airflow is as good as I can get it so it is what it is.
9/28 Day 64. We’re finally bulking up real nice now. The frostiness has kicked into high gear, every leaf feels like glue, and just unzipping the tent fills my room with the most wonderful smell of grapes and gas. If there’s any negative at all to talk about it’s that I do keep finding more fungus gnats. Only a few here and there, very far away from a full infestation but still very aggravating. I think going forward I should switch back to fabric pots. These airpots strike me as something like a 20-story hotel for fungus gnats; everyone gets their own room with a balcony with access to the growing medium. But in spite of that everything with the grow is great right now, this should be some really great stuff.
10/4 Day 70. This is the proposed amount of time from Mephisto that this strain needs to mature, but eyeing her up I’d say she still wants 1-2 weeks more. I’m going to start blending in my ripen nute mix into the reservoir, which by itself is .8 EC, but after mixing in brought the res down to 1.0 EC. I’ll feed for a couple days with this, then blend in more until the res hits .8 EC. This will act as my “flush”, and hopefully in a week or so she’ll be about ready. I also lowered the lights down to about 610 PAR at the highest point, but about 575 PAR for the majority of the canopy.
10/11 Day 77. Leaves are starting to yellow now and some lower branches are starting to fall over due to weight. A look at trichomes all around the plant shows mostly cloudy with some clear and a little amber. I think it’s worth running at least another week, maybe two. No point jumping the gun when this grow has been really great. The fungus gnats persist, but only in very small numbers. I can live with that.
10/15 Day 81. With chop day approaching, I figured this is a good time to try something new. I went in trimmed off most of the fan leaves to allow some more light to reach down to the lower buds. I want to see if I can add some color to those buds that are usually pale when compared to the top buds. I’ll let it go for a few days and see what it all looks like.
10/18 Day 84. Everything looks good still, but I am a little confused as to why this late in the grow I’m not getting more fade or colors. I’ve been feeding with a reduced EC “ripen” mix for 2 weeks now and everything still looks normal and growth keeps chugging along. I can keep it rolling I suppose, but I figured by now I’d be chopping down. Not exactly a bad thing, but I would have changed up how I timed everything if I knew it would go on this long.
10/20 Day 86. Not really sure when to chop right now. I was hoping for a nice fade with some reds and purples but maybe it just won’t happen. Everything looks and smells great though.
10/24 Day 90. Finally getting some more leaf fade to go along with the trichs getting more cloudy. There’s still some clear trichomes in the mix so I’ll keep going a few more days, but at least I’m finally getting some signs she’s close.
10/27 Day 93. Chop down day will be tomorrow. She looks as good as I think she’ll get with most trichomes now cloudy. It’s also a full 23 days after the projected finish time and I’m ready to move on to the next grow.
Dmars
