Blewitberry Auto

This is my first real grow, discounting a slightly successful attempt at White Widow in an Aerogarden. I almost threw that one out, but stuck what little there was in a ziploc to cure for a few months. Looked like trim room floor sweepings, but when smoked actually feels really nice for maybe a half hour. AC Infinity self-watering trays AC Infinity Cloudforge T3 Fox Farm Ocean Forest Great White Mycorrhyzae General Hydroponics Cal/Mag ILGM Flowertime (just a little at the end) Water: mostly distilled, with some supplemental filtered Austin tap water Germination: under wet paper towel in a ziploc Sprouted in plastic cup, transplanted to 5gal Soil prepared by adding a thin layer of soil, sprinkling with GrowDots, repeating, up to about 5" from the top of the bag. Made a large depression in soil and filled with unamended Ocean Forest and the seedling. This grow started off rocky, got much better, then kinda went off the rails (possibly, haven't harvested yet). First seed germinated great, transplanted with no problems, but suddenly stopped growing after a couple of days. Thus I learned about those little gnats buzzing around my soil bag. I fought them with diluted peroxide for a while, but gave up on that and ordered nematodes. Gnats solved, but the seedling was gone from just below the surface. Germinated the second of my three seeds, and all went well until flower, when the big fan leaves got very rusty very quickly. Seemed clearly to be Ca deficiency, so I added some CalMag and mycorrhyzae to help get it into the plant. There was some improvement, but I was still worried, so I added some filtered tap water. Our water is pretty alkaline from the tap, but it has plenty of minerals. I top-watered a liter of the filtered tap to raise the pH a little (no way to test the soil pH, and my Vivosun pH stick seems to be borked, so I didn't bother trying to make a tea to test) because I suspected that the combo of 7.0 distilled water plus the nutes might be dropping it too low for efficient ingestion. After this, the new sugar leaves coming in were looking good, and the spread of the rust seemed to stop. During this fear of losing all my leaves, I added the second light at about 50% power, shining up from the floor. I figured I'd squeeze what energy out of them I could before they fell off, and I watched Dr. Bugbee's talk with Scotty Grows saying that if you keep them cool, watered, and fed you can't really give them too much light, as long as they are not right up against the light where the IR will burn them, so I've left the second light in place. A couple of days ago, I started seeing rust on sugar leaves, so I gave it some more CalMag and filtered tap water. Crossing fingers. As of this writing, I think I'm at the end of week 8. The leaves are looking ragged, but the buds look pretty decent.

Haven't screwed it up yet.

Still looking great and making me feel like I have some idea of what I'm doing. I should have moved the light down long before now, but I spaced out and probably missed some early growth.

Still no signs of trouble. This is easy. (dum dum dum)

Ruh roh, Raggie. This is when the nutes problems began.

Well, somebody had to post an ugly grow on here. Now someone else who screws up a bulletproof strain using high quality gear won't feel like the only idiot.

I've trimmed off the fan leaves that were in worst shape. They seemed more useful as disease entry points than as photosynthetic engines. As bad as the foliage looks, the buds continue to fatten up and get stickier. I may yet fail into success. 21-Sep update: Applied new firmware version to the TR69 controller. It separates control of exhaust and clip-on fans, allowing me to use the new dynamic wind speed on the clip-on while triggering the exhaust fan on VPD at 1.50. Now instead of having the exhaust fan howling full blast all the time, and the humidifier going through a lot of water to maintain VPD, the whole system mostly whispers along with less need to water the plant and the humidifier.

Leaves continue to wither, but I think I've passed the halfway point between white and red pistils, so I might be finished by the weekend. Buds continue to fatten and frost

The plant continues to show signs of what I believe is a calcium deficiency, despite repeated addition of CalMag over the weeks. It may be that the plant suffered some root damage from early calcium deficiency, which combined with my too late increase in light during early veg (presumably stunting early root system development), put the plant in a perpetual shortage of calcium. When I panicked when the first sudden and extensive leaf damage appeared, I cranked up the light, fearing that I might be losing my leaves soon and hoping to generate as much energy as possible while I could. This overdriving of a plant that was already stressed has probably turned a small problem into a big one. The problem was probably further compounded by my using distilled water out of fear of high alkalinity and general mineral content of my tap water. I saw an interview with Scotty, who said that GrowDots are basically calibrated to work with calmag-buffered coco coir, so he doesn't include those nutes in the GrowDots. 'Lil sprout is receiving filtered tap water. We'll see how that works out. I was hoping to harvest this weekend, but there are still hardly any amber trichomes, and at least 1/3 of the pistils are still very white. Buds are firm and fairly chunky. They have decent coverage of trichomes, but they're not frosty clickbait. Re-reading some of the cannabis disease literature, slow flower development is one of the signs of low calcium, so I added some CalMag and water again today. Part of the desire to harvest is wanting to get this semi-failure behind me and free up the tent for the baby WW I've sprouted, but part of it is because I'm worried that the poor health may mean that quality is dropping, rather than increasing.

Well, Dutch Passion Auto Blueberry is clearly only *mostly* idiot proof. That said, despite some very unhealthy leaves, there is a decent amount of flower. It felt more like putting down a sick pet than harvesting, though. I forgot to weigh everything before hanging it up to dry, but I pulled the big one out and weighed it at 68g wet, but fully trimmed. I'm guessing maybe 350g for the whole bunch, but it's a wild guess. Some of the buds are much less dense. Bud weight going into cure: 129g, ~4.6oz. I slightly underestimated my jar requirement, which is a good problem to have. Now if only it turns out to be more smokable than it has any right to be, like the first WW. Lessons: * Maybe don't try to use distilled water. My little WW sprout is getting filtered tap water instead. Local tap water is very hard, so I'm less likely to be short on minerals, and Scotty swears that the microbes will deal with the pH. * Next grow after the WW might be in buffered coco coir, like the Grow Dots are meant to be used. * Remember to increase light intensity sooner and to a greater degree than I did this time. I suspect I stunted the root system development, which was later exacerbated by a calcium deficiency. * The new controller firmware allows the main exhaust and the clip-on fan to operate independently, and it includes a random breeze setting on the clip-on. * After getting the humidifier and setting up a VPD-based config, I was able to maintain a much more consistent tent environment while running the fans more quietly and efficiently. 23-Oct Epilogue I don't entirely understand it, but even after just 3 weeks of cure so far, it's pretty good bud. I'm pulling my test nugs from the dregs jar. It was the last one I filled, so it got the ones I was least enthusiastic about. The nugs (at least these dregs) are pretty fluffy, and they never looked properly frosted, but they are quite sticky, more so than just about any commercial weed I've had. I smoked some this weekend, and I surprised myself when I realized I was disappointed when I finished the test nug and had to go back to my commercial Bubba Kush. I still feel some harshness in the throat, but no more so than some of the cheaper commercial batches I've smoked. The bigger surprise was how much I felt that first bong rip this weekend. I have pretty high tolerance, so it's unusual to have that "whoa!" feeling. I failed into success.