Pineapple Chamber

Welcome to my diary, and thanks for joining me on wherever this may lead! Now let me admit that I am writing this as the grow is well underway, and so I think you may be as surprised as I was to see how rapidly things progress. This is my first attempt at growing this many plants at once, and I began by constructing the space they are to call home. The space is 1.2m wide by 2.4m long, and 1.6m tall. This gives about 4.2 cubic metres of space inside. I constructed a simple frame of 45x45cm batten and clad it with mdf board, then lined the interior with panda film as humidity and custom wood are not the greatest combination. I taped over the board joins from the outside of the box to somewhat seal the interior from the outside. Inside I placed an oscillating fan which will circulate air, as well as 2x600W lights each with a digital ballast, offering the feature to run the lights at 200W or 400W, so I intend to graduate up in intensity as the plants grow. I also have an extraction fan with carbon filter pulling air out. While they are small I have it running in periods of 15min on/off. For the first few weeks, I can fit all 8 plants underneath the singular light running at 200W. They receive a small amount of vegetative nutrient. And as for the strain, Pineapple Express! The variety that i have the most experience growing, and the best overall satisfaction with whenever it falls into my hands. Beautiful taste, and as a grower, a happy plant with a nice structure.

This week was problem free and uneventful. I took the opportunity to remove some dominant nodes early on and hopefully begin a nice multi cola structure on each plant.

In week three, they recovered from their topping and the new shoots can be seen to have sprung up and taken their places. They have now been spaced a bit farther apart and cover the light footprint from one light nicely, hopefully in. few weeks time they will be big enough to fire up light #2.

The plants are now a month old, and looking just about ready to be repotted. Each has a decent structure and are similarly sized as each other, so far so good.

Week 5 came and with it brought repotting. I purchased an Autopot system with reservoir and placed four of the girls into the 20L containers it came with. Their water tank is a 50L reservoir with an air stone and pump inside. They are all in a 50/50 coco perlite blend. This week I also started up the other light and spaced the plants out as you can see, they are beginning to get thirstier and growth is becoming exponential. Can you spot what is wrong with this picture? I couldn't - but in a week something came to light! Let me know if you figured it out before I tell you 😅

In Week 6 I purchased a second reservoir system, and chucked the other four plants in the pots. The week that half the plants spent in this system and half did not really made a difference in size which really never was caught up on. I guess it's a testament to its efficiency! The thing that i did wrong last week was this, if you were keen enough to spot it - My reservoir being inside the room created a perfect breeding ground for bacteria inside it, and when i wiped my finger around the inside I found it to be coated with a layer of slime similar to soap scum. I rearranged and set these two suckers up outside the chamber feeding through the wall in a small hole, and the problem ceased before it became a big deal. Lucky I got under that control, wasn't too keen to find out what would happen next! Exponential growth continues this week, and you can see that even over the course of these photos which were taken at the beginning and end of the week the amount of growth going on is significant. And it's just the beginning.... 😏

I had a busy week and came to properly check on these girls towards the end of it, and BAM! I did not expect to see them looking like this. I had never seen this sort of rapid expansion in a grow of mine before, and I can only really credit the autopot system with this success as everything else has been the same as times before. Lights were turned up to 400W each so they are bathing under 800W total, and are drinking crazy amounts of water, going through 20 Litres a day between them all. I switched them to flowering because if this rate continues, there won't be any room left soon!

One week under 12/12 and they've shot up massively. I prune bags of leaves from them every other day to make sure the top of nodes receive direct light, and thin the undercarriage to maintain good airflow. I lollipopped heavily when it became evident which growths would turn out to be insignificant, and have to raise the lights often. At this stage they've almost maxxed out in vertical space and all I can hope is that they don't stretch much further...

Stretch continues. Vertical growth even closer to max, and plants are packed out horizontally within the space too. Still heavily defoliating, which is becoming more necessary to maintain air circulation to the far extremities of the space. Temperature is under control with the extraction fan running 24/7 and moisture is only an issue where leaves are in contact with one another, which I keep to a minimum through trimming. Nodes are beginning to stack up and at this stage it will be a big relief to see pistils becoming more prominent. One thing I couldn't have imagined is how fast this process is occurring and how much time goes in to keeping these plants under control. When left alone for two days they will have fully bushed out again after their last trimming. Shopping bags after shopping bag of leaves are coming off them and it barely seems to make a difference. I am really grateful to have spent a few years on small closet grows to know what to expect, however, I was lulled into feeling i knew this plant better than I do. This is because I've only grown pineapple under LEDs, and the amount they are stretching under HPS lighting is something I did not associate with this strain's structure. This is something to keep in mind for any of you out there - and here I was planning on vegging for three months! 😂

Another week has elapsed, and I still am uncertain if these plants have begun to flower or not. They grow about 5cm a day, and every third day I've had to begin cutting off dominant nodes as they encroach on the lights too much, only to find more taking their place shortly after! They have drunk two bottles of nutrients since switching the lights to 12/12 and are definitely the thirstiest plants i've grown. Have a look for yourself at the structure and let me know if you think flowering could be around the corner 😩