Candida CD-1

This is my first grow (medical purposes/personal grow, etc). All three seeds germinated quickly. I planted peat pellets right into 5 gal smart pots of coco coir. This traded the convenience of not transplanting for the inconvenience and waste of watering and nuting a massive empty smart pot. My TDS pen would prove invaluable in later weeks at indicating flushing and heavier daily watering were necessary to prevent salt buildup.

Discovered excess salt buildup. Was not running off. Ppm’s rocketed to 2000. Flushed a bit and brought runoff back to 400-700 range.

Did my first topping once 5-6 nodes established. Topped at 3rd node. One of the 3 was a runt and it was a questionable decision to top it. But I did...

Did my 2nd toppings. Two plants went great. The runt has two stunted growth tips. Going to need to work with half a plant now...

I have been using the coco coir nite schedule from nebula haze/groweedeasy. I started running on Tonino’s GH bade nute schedule after seeing how well his CD-1s were doing.

Constantly adjusting the LST tie downs. Using some metal garden pieces that work really well to pin down the leafs.

Going to flip these into flower. They are under 12 inches. Hoping that stretch would not exceed 30 inches... Also, the runt now has 6-8 functional cola prospects. Glad I ran the weird nebula mainline on it.

Flipped into flower. All is well. Runt looks like it will have 6 healthy and weird mainlined colas. Who knew half a plant could thrive... I’ve also got a 12/12 from seed experiment going with CD-1. A related journal will be kept. These bamboo skewer supports need frequent adjustment. Need to take care not to be too tight.

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These things have exploded. I was banking on at most 2.5x stretch. I don’t think they are done growing. I’m gonna run out of room... I added trellis netting (some junk off amazon) to provide some added support to those stems that want to self-immolate into my lights. I’ll be adjusting this to work a bit snugger. The runt remains much shorter. It’s pretty bushy. The runt - in addition to being a runt- might also be an indica. I can’t tell.

Had to remove my tent when a repair person came in for some broken piping in a cold Canadian winter. Fml. This is the first natural light view of the plants. They are becoming quite large. Too large for my tiny tent, in fact. During this move (a potential) disaster struck. My timer didn’t work right (my fault) and they got 24 hours of light. I put them into 24 hours of darkness and then back to the original 12/12 schedule. Fingers crossed no hermies...

Average stem height of the big ones are 36 inches, but the mishap past week with the lights might have stressed em a bit and caused some stretching. There was also a humidity issue for a few hours, which could be the culprit for the stretching. Two stems are pushing 40 inches. However, there are no signs of light or heat stress, despite the stems getting within inches of the leds. We shall see... I’m also battling a cold Canadian winter where it hit -42 Celsius today. Plants are in a cold basement in an old house. Had to bring out an extra space heater. Can’t get the temp in my tent above 20. Tent is too packed to introduce a stand up heater. Maybe I’ll convince the plants that fall is coming and they need to bud like crazy.

These plants are right on track. They were set back a week, I think, owing to the light timer fiasco in week 11. Blooming quick now. This week, I got my hand sticky on a plant for the first time. The pungent lemon off this strain is incredible. Bud sites in the dense bush are coming along better than I thought they might. Majority of pistils remain straight and white. Fingers crossed they fatten substantially still.

Buds are blooming decently. As this is a first grow, I didn’t appreciate how much defoliation I should have done late veg and early flower. Now I have a lot of popcorn throughout a very bushy base. Nonetheless, each of the eight stems on the two big plants are growing nicely with anywhere from like 6-10 grams a stem (owing to varying apical dominance). Yield wise, I have very little idea what to anticipate. I’ve been checking the trichomes and they seem pretty glassy still. I did see one amber trich and some cloudy trichs. But mostly very glassy. Still 50% white pistils that haven’t bent over that much. I’m thinking the 9 week recommendation might not apply here. Nonetheless, I’m moving to ripen this week and hope to flush the following week. I’ll extend the ripening another week if trichs don’t turn quick enough. The lemon on this one - when I accidentally contact a bud- is incredibly pungent. However, when I open the tent the smell is very subtle.

Pistils are ambering and trichomes are clouding up. Maybe two weeks still... hopefully less.

First week of flushing is complete. Quite a difference in trichomes at the top and mid. Top is mostly cloudy but has less than 5% amber. Mids have half cloudy and half glassy. Probably another week to go. Checking daily for cloudiness and amber. If buds are fattening still my eyes are too imprecise to notice. Just watering and waiting... I (cue the dismay) vaped some fresh bud and it worked well for my health issue. However, since it was still kinda glassy I did feel that elevated heartbeat/racing mind feeling for the first 5 minutes after inhalation. The experience will embolden my patience to wait for adequate cloudiness and ambering.

The bummer news on the harvest was I only achieved 85 grams between two plants (51 and 34 respectively). I also got a coin sized clump of bubble hash from the trim. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but my runt in the corner should have been discarded. It had 5 stems stretching up 20 inches and grew no substantial buds. It was so crowded under its canopy top that i didn’t even realize it wasn’t developing buds all the way down... notice error. Also, in the novice error column, I should have aggressively defoliated. I’m certain my harvest was so insubstantial owing to the lack of light penetration from half way down the stems. I’ll have 4 months worth of meds from this, definitely wanted 6...but I’m jumping into a sea of green asap, so hopefully my 2nd run shows improvements.