Royal Cookies Auto First Grow

Hi Guys, welcome to my first grow! I am going for some Royal Auto Cookies. I have grown in the past but not very well and this time I have invested a bit more in equipment and setup to hopefully get some better results! I germinated with 18 hours in a cup of warm water and then 24 hours wrapped in a paper towel on a heat mat, then planted with the tap roots being around 5-10mm long. All 5 seeds germinated so I decided to bodge a 5th pot together and chuck it in the middle of the tent. Doing a Biosys feed every 5 days for 5 feedings and started on day 3. Started giving daily nutes on day 5. This setting does some weird things calculating the feed amounts so I will put in comments on weekly basis what I am feeding. Currently feed ing Biosys 1g/2L and Vega 1.5ml/2L. At the end of the first week things look to be going well with fast growth in the plants and healthy looking leaves and a good shade of green so all in all pretty stoked and hoping to get a nice batch of cookies at the end! Feel free to leave any feedback, comments or questions happy to take advice on or help others! Follow my insta for daily updates: https://www.instagram.com/rudigrows/

Wow guys what a week we have had! Broken stems and all... So firstly to the basic stuff, the plants seem to be doing very well, I've noticed what looks like potentially low calcium so added some calmag to their feed (day14). Hopefully it will help the girls cope a bit better with the heats and get a bit less canoeing! Either way I am absolutley stoked by how quickly they have grown this week! We started LST the plants on day 13 I didn't want to wait any longer stems getting quite beefy! The plants have absolutly loved this, they made dramatic changes through the day and you can see how incredible some of the growth is from the images! Now the slightly upsetting part! Unfortunately person I am growing with accidently broke one the stems during LST, we tried to repair but after a few other unfortunate events we decided to replant the small girl on day 14 so now she is in the bigger pots. To the benefit of us all though we can see what some roots look like on day 14! Can someone comment what you think of these roots, there alot for day 14 what you would expect? All look healthy to me but not grown properly before and never seen roots mid cycle so not sure what to expect! Going into week 3 though we have 4 healthy girls ready to keep growing like monsters! On the plus now the girls have a bit more space, 5 was a squeeze and a little awkward to move the pots around etc!

The growth on the girls continues to stagger me! We have had a less drastic week this week then last everything gone smoothly! Took the LST off on day 16 to allow the girls to continue growing upwards, already bushy enough and only so much space in my tent, but as you can see from the vid the stems and canopy looking great! So many potential bud sites! Been doing lots of leaf tucking, fortunatly nodes nice and close together so it makes my life simple can optimise the light penetration very easily! The feed has been increased to 1.5ml/l of vega and 0.9ml/l of calmag, doing feed feed water. Girls drinking alot now and giving each around 1.5-2L per sitting every couple of days! Stem diameter just below first node - 16mm Getting around 1.5-2 inch of growth a day currently. The girl that had the transplant is loving life and really filled out her pot showing little signs of being stunted, few slightly crinkly leaves but at the time it was like -3 outside and wasn't ideal situation to be doing transplant in, but no obvious signs of being stunted! The first signs of flowering on day 21 but its very early should be more obvious tomorrow! The good times are about to begin :) These girls are so big now its kind of lucky we broke one and dropped to 4 plants not sure there is room for a 5th in there! Let me know what you think of the progress and drop your estimated yields below see who gets the closest as we go through the grow! Don't forget to follow me on insta guys if you want daily updates! @rudigrows

Well it has been a very quick week it seems and the ladies have grown massively! The tallest girl is at a staggering 25.5"... what happened? My tent is rammed full of fresh lovely smelling growth so I'm not complaining! Overall just been growth growth growth and new pistols popping up all over the place, looks like we should have some nice big juicy colas and few popcorn nugs at the lower canopy! I have been slowly upping the Vega feed now at my peak of 2.2ml/l also giving the girls 1.3ml/l of calmag! The girls are needing watering every day now they just sucking the soil dry and I can't quite meet the ideal 30 hour watering cycle they need due to work etc! Giving 2.5L per girl per feed not sure where it goes! Aiming for around 20% runoff. One more week of vega and then onto the flores around day 32 I reckon but will play by ear and wait for the vertical height to stop. Defintely lucky we broke a plant earlier on, I am thinking now maybe we should of broke 2, oh well we shall go on with the grow! Due to the size of the girls and blocking the light we decided to go ahead and defoliate a little on day 28, 2 of the girls have been defoliated to optimise light penetration. Took 6 fan leaves off one and 4 off another. There is a lot of conflicting views wether to defoliate or not on an autoflower but alot of information is based around weaker genetics so the only way to truely find out is by going ahead and doing it on ours to a few of the girls! There are excellent arguments for both cases and hopefully you can use this diary as a guide to judge for yourself the benefits or not. We noticed a slight issue with our ph meter and signs on a few of the leaves that they had varying ph mix so we recalibrated and flushed through so should be good now, run off is at 6.2 again! Hope you enjoying the progress and don't forget to follow on instagram for daily updates @rudigrows

The roots on the girls all started coming out the top of all the pots, not just a few but loads like cobweb of them! We placed pebbles around the top of the pots to prevent the roots reaching direct light. As the girls have been getting so big now we decided it was time to put a scrog net on them to help maximise the light penetration through the canopy and to also support the buds as they pack on weight. We swapped the feed to Flores on day 31 as the girls had slowed in vertical height growth at around 29", but did spurt a little more so maybe swapped to flores a tad early. The smallest girl, we call girl blue, is now the tallest at a staggering 35". Giving the girls 3.8ml/l of flores this week then start dropping it down. Couple more of the girls had a slight trim over the week here and there sticking to our gun and making sure one has zero defoliation, she seems to be developing the fastest so future grows I won't be trimming at all, but onwards with the experiment, the results will be in the bud weight of each plant which we will list seperately so you all know! Slight yellowing on one of the plants not to sure what this is but possibly water was a bit cool or under water as thought could go to 2 days per but the soil was really dry so gone back to daily. Or could just be the above mentioned swapping to flowering nutes to early. Buds developing lovely will be some juicy colas I reckon!

Hey everyone :) Another fabulous week in the tent from the girls, they are really developing, and still shooting up in height, who knew! Think they have actually stopped now havent seen any vertical growth in last 48 hours except for side colas, girl blue is now a staggering 44"...WTF?! We have got the hangers pulled all they way up if there is anymore growth then I will have to hook the light directly to the rail to gain a couple of inches, but I think we're safe now! The girls have loved the scrog net shooting up in all directions, the canopy is a little uneven mainly because I put the net in so late and was just intended for support now I can't bend the stems in the slightest to try and pull them down a bit. Over the last week have been defoliating quite a bit on 3 of the girls, and left the one back right untouched so have something to compare to, its really hard which method is better at this stage as the virgin girl is about a week ahead due to no stress! Mainly been defoliating as the tent so packed just to ensure air flowing around and through the plants still! As the girls have gotten so big decided to up the lighting to ensure they flower as much as possible as it would be a shame to have this much success and not enough power for the plants to fully develop, we are now running the 600w bulb on overboost at 660w. Swapped on day 38. The girls have shown a slight bit of heat stress and canoeing leaves, think the heat now under control, but I am not to worried at this stage as my main focus is producing great buds. Up to about 3L per girl per feed now and the flores strength has been dropped to 3.2ml this week. Slowly staggering the flores out now for the rest of the grow before the final flush weeks to ensure as little nutrient taste as possible. I think the light tips to the leaves is a phospherous or nitrogen deficeincy with the rate the girls are flowering, generally happy though and not to concerned. A number of the burnt spots and leaves especially on the plant back right was from earlier issues in the grow but she's not been defoliated at all so all her war wounds are on show! Let me know your thoughts and comments on this week guys and happy toking! :)

Well not alot to report this week guys. The gals have been responding well to the 600w, the vertical height has stopped and we are just making some fat juicy buds. All the colas are really starting to develop. The very first few pistols are turning orange. Guessing we have around 3 weeks to go. The microscope is out and ready but trichomes still all glass like. Working on getting a camera with a good zoom hopefully I get one in time if not will be able to upload trichome pictures in future grows. Have been keeping the feeds at 2.7ml this week and will be 2.2ml next week until the flush period. I will upload the complete feed schedule I have done with these plants on the harvest week upload. Can see the leaves showing signs of deficiencies still but guess this is good at this stage and makes sense with the tapering off of nutes. Noticed the cool air was condensing on the intake tube and that is the reason our back right plant has a few burnt leaves etc, drops of water have been dropping on it and frying the leaf under the light. When you rub the flowers and smell your fingers get a lovely minty/chocolaty sweet kind of smell, its absolutely incredible and makes me want to smoke these juicy buds even more no... but good things come to those who wait they say! Enjoy the pics and as always feel free to give your comments and recommendations below, this is my first grow so mistakes have and will be made.

Hey everyone! It’s been another fabulous week of the girls fattening up getting ready for the ever looming harvest time! The colas are huge and glistening like a glitter ball! The back right girl has been on flush since day 51, 2 more went on flush on day 53, and the final girl front right went on flush today, day 56! Over the week I gave 3 girls a really heavy defoliation taking the majority of fan leaves off to allow good airflow and try fattening up those lower buds. It’s still impossible to tell if I prefer defoliation or not but we are getting close to harvest so should have a definitive answer to that soon! The back right girl has had absolutely no defoliation or trimming through her life cycle. I still regularly think back to when we broke one of the girls and transplanted, the cannabis gods were on our side warning us 4 girls will be huge, we were very lucky or would be seriously short of space as of now. As the girls are going to be harvested at slightly different times to ensure each are at their optimum, I have had to construct a dry box. How I built my smell free DIY dry box: Take a large cardboard box, cut an extraction hole in the top at one end and mount some ducting and seal the gap around the edge. Cut a flap in the opposite end at the bottom which will be the passive intake and promoting a draft through the hanging buds. Poke some holes in each end of the box using a screwdriver and thread some thin rope or string through the box tying the ends together once finished to give you sturdy locations to hang some pegs from. Finally I attached an extra bit of card on one of the flaps at the top; this overlaps the slight gap in the top between the flaps that could allow light to enter. Once completed I put the ducting into one of the lower intakes of the tent; the negative pressure in the tent then uses the air in the dry box as a passive intake creating a smell free area to dry your cannabis outside of your grow tent. This also keeps a slight breeze flowing through the box to ensure even drying. Happy toking guys and hope you enjoy the pics and vids, thought it was getting hard to tell how big these girls were in pics anymore so the vids help a lot, and I was lazy this week! :P

Well another epic this week. The girls are looking very tasty indeed now! I have now harvested one plant on day 57. It was a tad early for her but she started looking pretty bad for some reason. Potentially started the flush on her a little early or could have been root rot. Either way the plant was chopped to ensure buds were saved. She weighed a cracking 550g wet, and dry was about 100g. This was the girl that was completely untouched, no defoliation etc complete virgin ;). Unfortunately the RH was high I ordered a dehumidifier but they sent me a faulty one and by time had a new one was too late some mould was starting to occur on the girls in a few places. I was over cautious and slung around 25g of buds that were near the mould just to ensure it didn’t spread to the rest of the plant. I also sped the drying up and placed in brown paper bags for last 2 days to suck the remaining moisture off after a full trim and inspection. The girls took a total of 5 days to dry and are now curing. They were a bit “hay” like in smell and taste but this was probably because of all the problems listed above. She is starting to smell much better after a couple of days of curing though so my faith is restored that the remainder of the buds may be quite good still! The last 3 girls have been going lovely, and starting to bring in some purple colours to the sugar leaves which are quite nice, all the trichomes are nice and cloudy and just starting to go amber. I will be harvesting on day 66 as this will allow me a good period of time to trim them fully into reasonable size buds and dry in my hanging net in the tent to ensure no mould problems again. For the last 3 days I have been flushing with 30L of water to ensure they are completely free of nutrients as again think this maybe another factor on the not so nice smelling/tasting buds from the first girl. I will give 2 days to fully dry the soil out bone dry before I cut them down. Happy I took her down early as it’s allowed me to ensure I have 3 good plants left and the remainder of the grow/dry/cure should go smoothly as know what I am doing now.

The grow was a complete success I am so happy and have some great quality product at the end of it. First things first the important bits the weights of each plant and what was done differently on each during the grow, plant colours can be determined by looking at the colour of the pipecleaner hooked over side throughout the grow. Pink - Wet = 548g | Dry = 106g Pink didn't have any defoliation or trimming throughout the grow, she was the untouched girl, looked the biggest at the begining but the other girls overtook in flowering in a big big way! She looked like she got root rot close to the end of the grow potentially, her leaves turned on me very quickly and I harvested her early, she wasn't quite as dry as I liked and during drying more mould occurred on some of the buds, I was left with a good 85g after being very fussy and wipping lots of buds out to protect the rest of the harvest. You can tell she was harvested a little early as doesn't taste as good or smell as good as the rest. Her buds in the jar are more compact as been curing for a week on the rest. Orange - Wet = 416g | Dry = 120g A little bit trimming/defoliation. Stripped of fan leaves on last week for flush. Blue - Wet = 466g | Dry = 121g She was smaller at the start, and I flushed too early as she had a late growth spurt and became massive, think she also developed a late root rot but caught it before any harm was caused to the buds but the leaves are a bit yellow as you can see from the final trimmed product! Also potentially so tall she may of been a bit close to the light and got a little hot. Yellow - Wet = 508g | Dry = 132g The abosolute star of the grow! We grew her originally as a backup in a spare container that is awful for growing, we ended up needing her and transplanted her in the early weeks when we broke one of the other girls. She had a good trim/defoliation throughout grow to ensure she was getting good light coverage. So from this grow I have learnt alot and will be taking the information to try and create a perfect grow next time! My plans are to use perlite to help prevent root rot in the later stages and increase air flow through the soil mix. I will also use a 9cm pot to start the grils off and transplant when they have grown out of them. I will place the scrog net in the tent early on so can use it to train the girls, probably around week 2/3. And I will do a light trim late veg and last couple weeks of flower will get a heavy defoliation. Keeps your eyes open for my pineapple express growing coming soon! For the complete feed schedule you can download the PDF here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hgKhzGtTXeCi22WJqQ_QQcUvilWRjq86