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I'm doing an organic soil grow using Purple Cow Organics for the substrate. For germination and seedling phase, I'm using their Seed Starter mix. Once they are ready to focus on vegetative growth, I will transplant them into 5 gallon fabric AutoPots using Purple Cow's Indicanja soil. This is a "water only" soil that I will be attempting to use without feeding much additional nutrients, except for Bloom City Cal-Mag, since I will be using RO water.
My tent has CO2 enrichment, so I will be using ~25% higher DLI levels starting at week 2 or 3 than are typical for photoperiod grows. I will adjust as necessary based on how the plants react.
#2 and #3 emerged from soil after 2 days (August 22). #1 and 4 took two extra days to be fully emerged with open cotyledons (August 24). During germination, I had VPD set to 0.5 kPa. PPFD was 200 and DLI was around 13, with an 18 hour light cycle. CO2 levels are between 1000-1400 ppm.
I included a video showing and explaining my AutoPot and AirDome setup and my general plans for this first grow.
The seedlings have just reached 2 weeks of age. I gradually increased VPD from 0.6 to 1.1, and they started with a DLI of 13.3 (200 PPFD). By the end of the week, #4 showed some stretching, so I increased the DLI to 20 (300 PPFD). As a result of the VPD increase, I saw quite a bit of leaf curling at 1.1 kPa, so I've backed it down to 0.8.
I went 9 days between waterings to see how they’d handle it, which caused mild drought stress. The soil had been very wet initially, so I let it dry out completely before giving 400 ml of distilled water with 1.3 ml/gal Cal-Mag, split between the four plants. They showed minor leaf scorching due to the drought and a test run where I accidentally left supplemental UV lights on too long, but no serious effects.
Two sets of 30W supplemental UV lighting (Spider Farmer SUPP-UV30 x2) are running for one minute every hour while the main light is running. I plan to gradually increase this to 5 minutes per hour (max of 90 minutes a day) once there's more vegetative mass.
Transplanting into final 5-gallon AutoPots is planned for next week.
I have moved to a 24 hour light schedule. I wanted to keep my DLI around 20, so I lowered PPFD to ~230.
I transplanted all but the runt, because I was too busy this week to deal with everything. Still top watering for now, because I want the roots to get lower first before using the autopots.
Curling from poor airflow and heat stress. Underwatering. Activated the autopot system finally, as the roots have had time to reach lower in the pots. Feeding microbes and microbe food (Purple Cow LiquiLife and BioActive).
Big defoliation. VPD and airflow issues fixed. Introduced Lotus synthetic nutrient line to the autopot reservoir. Indicanja soil + microbe accelerators not keeping up with CO2 enriched, high DLI (and I learned organic is just not my thing).
EC: 2.46
DLI: 50
PPFD: 580
Veg growth in full swing. I decided in the middle of this veg week 5 that I should have flipped already. So I did it on the night of September 28. I'm calling September 29 the beginning of Week 1 flower. Which brings us to October 6 for these photos (end of week 1 flower). Using the Lotus Week 1 flower schedule now in the reservoir. I also lowered the DLI to 25.
terpasaurus
![First grow - [Durban Thai x Jack Herer] x C99](https://bucket.growdiaries.com/static/report/photo/260603/a357df5fbd82b10550d9d6b1f8d8125e_150.webp)