Strawberry Amnesia 63W/100W run 5

This run I'm having 4 different strains and so I'm dedicating a diary to each, in this case DINAFEM's Strawberry Amnesia. The seed was put in water for 24 hours and then planted in soil. After 3 days it broke soil and 1 day later it opened its first pair of true leaves. Water wise the party cup wasn't watered except when the seed was planted, at which time the soil was thoroughly soaked. I'll water with a first dose of cal-max in a day or two. The SETUP ------------ Grow Space. 57 cm * 37 cm * 97 cm (1.87' * 1.21' * 3.18') = 0.2 m³ (7.22 cubic ft) 6 x 6500K 10.5 watts Philips LED Bulbs for veg (63 watts) 3 2700K Solstrips driven at 100 watts Exhaust: Noctua A8 FLX 1 gallon fabric pot

I know it looks sad, but I let it get a little root bound so to give the runt time to catch up. After 2 weeks I transplanted to 1 gallon pots and also topped to the 3d node.

Most of the week has been spent letting the new nodes develop. I also removed the 1st and 2nd node level tops. I intend to only grow 2 tops for this plant, which would make it 4 tops per sq ft.

I can already see the difference in this grow with the increased light distance, the leaves are much bigger. Nothing much else to report, 1 or 2 more days and I'll switch to flowering, which should put the plants at 8 inches.

I was away for a couple of days with my family and so I could not take the usual pictures that signal the end of the week. I changed the lights to the 100 watts strips and increased the light distance to 16 inches, with the increased light distance I have noticed a few thing: (i) the leaves are real big, (ii) There's no purpling of the stems. I also increased the EC to 0.4 (cal-max only); next feeding I will start some grow nutes to power the stretch and maybe some bloom nutes. The only reason this strain is at the same height of the others is because I've been using LST to keep the stretch to the same level of the other plants.

Although it does not look like it, this is the tallest plant in the run, but thanks to liberal use of LST it has remained at the same height as the others. The stem color remains a healthy green, contrary to every other grow where it has turned purple; I blame light distance. Thanks to whoever mentioned about using binder clips with the fabric pots, I do not remember who was it that posted a picture in his grow diary, they worked great for tying down the branches. The LST made the second cola branch into multiple smaller bud sites, not exactly what I wanted, but anyway, we will see how it works. This week I upped the feeding to 1 EC and at the end of the week there are signs of slight PK deficiency at the bottom leaves, so next week, I'll up the feeding once again.

Stretch is slowing down and flowers are starting to form. There is some interveinal rust marks on one top leaf, I'm not worried about it since it has not spread, but I wonder what it is. I've used some supercropping to keep the more stretchy top at the same height than the rest of the canopy

Stretch is almost over, the flowers are starting to take form, although slower than the other strains, not surprising, since this is a sativa. With one cola subjected to supercropping last week, the other one decided to stretch some more, so now both have been super cropped. Even though I upped the feeding to 2.1 EC, there have been moderate signs of nutrient deficiency, in this case magnesium. My biobloom bottle is now empty, so I decided to try a different bloom nutrient and I'll switch from cal mag to epsom salts. We will see this week how it goes with Grotek Solotek Bloom.

Not much to say regarding this girl, it looks great, no deficiency, just a little more LST to keep the height in check. Flowers are taking a little more time to develop, but that is to be expected since this is more sativa than the other plants.

Last week ended with a rather strong feeding of 2.26 EC , but contrary to what happened to the other strains, there were no signs of over feeding, deficiencies or nutrient lockout. At day 40 of flowering I gave the plant plain pH'ed water, since at this point I prefer to let the plant consume the excess nutrients in the last 3 weeks that I expect are left to go. Since this is for the most part a sativa strain, its leaves are thin and so the light can penetrate rather easy. so no training of any kind was needed. You can see in the picture where some weeks ago I used supercropping.

The plant has been receiving only water since day 40, much sooner than what I usually do, but then again, most of the times my harvest are much too green when the time to harvest comes, so this time I decided to start early. This is no flushing mind you, I just started giving the plant plain pH'ed water and letting the plant slowly consume every nutrient in the soil and stored in its foliage. The buds have fattened quite a lot this week. I expect to be done in 1 week, 2 at most. Having less tops per sq ft has allowed the plants to develop big fat colas, which is something I had not been able to accomplish before in my previous grows, currently I have 1 ft long (30 cm) colas which is something I'm really proud of. I don't know on which diary I saw this, but thanks to whoever mentioned using binder clips with fabric pots to do LST.

Sorry for the lone picture, I was planning to harvest at the 56 flowering day mark, but at day 53, I spotted a tiny bit of bud rot in the Atomic and so I took everything down and is currently hanging to dry. I have a ceramic lamp heater (25 watts) to keep the temperatures warm and so prevent RH from rising. Fortunately the loss is minimal, although I'll have to look into a way to heat the grow box during lights out next time I grow regular strains. Once everything is dry, I'll post pictures of the whole buds.

Contrary to what I expected, I got almost 1 gpw on this strain, even though I had to harvest early. I really liked the fabric pots; no root circling whatsoever, none at all. Downsizing from 3 gallons to 1 gallon pots, really helped to keep the plant size in check. Aiming for 4 tops per square feet, finally allowed me to get those big colas everyone else seems to get except me. The less dense canopy also helped keep the moisture in check (somewhat). I do not know if I mentioned this in the diary earlier or not, but binder clips are awesome to use with fabric pots to support twist ties. I got a 25-watt ceramic bulb, which emits pure heat in order to keep the grow box dark, but warm enough to safely dry the hanging buds, it worked like a charm.