Blazin' Skywalker grows Blue Dream'Matic

1/9/19 - Seed placed in Rapid Rooter and placed in darkness for 36 hours. Rooter is moistened with RO water, but not soaked. Placed in seedling tray with humidity dome. 1/11/19 - no sign of baby Blue yet, but Luna is keeping the nargles at bay 😎 Seedling tray is sitting on a heating pad on my window sill catching winter sun rays. 1/12/19 - Blue broke ground! 1/13/19 - Bouncing baby Blue between the window sill and grow tent. The lights in the tent are California Lightworks 550 Solar System LED with current settings of R39 W49 B99 as recommended by the manufacturer for seedlings. 🌱 1/15/19 - Blue is now stationed in the tent. I have my lights 44" away from the tops of the plants ATM in an attempt to be gentle on the seedlings while they come into their own. I added a humidifier to the tent to temporarily help combat the dry winter air. 1/19/19 - After checking on her roots, little Blue showed me it was time to move into her big girl bed. I added 1/4 recommended dose of UC Roots and Coco Cal to the reservoir. Lights have been adjusted to 41" above the canopy with spectrum settings of R49 W59 B99. I'm going to increase the white strength gradually over the next couple of days to end ultimately at 99.

1/23/19 - Baby blue is taking root and getting herself nestled into her home. I have been keeping the humidifier running to keep the humidity at around 40%. She's a week behind her tent mate, Tangie'matic. The light settings have been increased over the past few days to R49 W99 B99 and I lowered them down to 40" above the canopy. Still higher than the recommended 24"-36"... But I'm determined to get through a grow without light burn issues! 1/27/19 - First feeding today! I used 1/3 recommended strength of recommended dose of the Cultured Solutions line of nutes. 😉 1/29/19 - Based on calcium deficiencies in blue's tent mate, I decided to take precautions and have begin adding more Coco Cal to the reservoir over the past couple of days. So far Blue Dream'matic is showing me nothing but greatness! 💪 She is 10 days younger than her roommate, so I have rare and small opportunities to learn quick lessons, adapt my style, and apply it to Blue and hopefully save her the stress. ✌️❤️🌱 2/2/19 - Just wanted to note that the preventative measures I took to protect Blue Dream'matic from the fate of calcium deficiency that was experienced in her 10 day older tent mate has seemingly worked so far. There are a couple of small spots, but substantially less than her older sister suffered at this point. Her leaves are soft and healthy. 😊

2/4/19- Blue is right at the 5th node. I'm letting a little more growth happen so I have proper room to top without harming the nodes. Her leaves are nice, fat, and healthy! 2/5/19 - Decided to experiment with a FIM last night at midnight 😎 Let's see what happens! ✌️ 2/6/19 - Reservoir Δ Day!

I'm going to go ahead and call this week her "ugly duckling" week. So far I am not loving FIMing. The grow style is so foreign to me, and I'm having a difficult time meshing my grow style with this grow method. That being said, Blue Dream'matic has proven to be a very bushy plant. So after assessing her progress, I decided to dive in for some light defoliation. I took some of the larger lower fan leaves that had been hidden and tucked, but were now hanging down blocking air circulation. I had stopped there but then the plant still looked suffocated. So I went back in and did some more lst to open up her branches and expose some new bud sites. I also hesitantly removed some of the large leaves in the center that were blocking large amounts of bud sites. So yeah, she had a day getting handled and tied down, and she may be looking a little defeated in these pictures, but I think we're going to see some beautiful things from Blue Dream'matic. 💙 So let's get through this ugly duckling phase ✌️❤️🌱

Blue Dream'matic doesn't love FIMing, and quite frankly, neither do I. I just can't vibe with this grow technique. Maybe it's because she's such a bushy plant, but my grow style doesn't mesh well with the grow pattern post FIM. I went and did a bit of defoliation to try to open her up, but I think she needs more. The underbrush is a hot mess. Let's see how she looks when we get through this awkward adolescent phase. ✌️

Riding out the rest of this grow to see what I can learn. I am having an exceedingly difficult time trying to open up this plant for proper air circulation. The stunting that took place with this plant is really working against all my usual tricks. I went ahead and removed (as best I could) some of the growth that was getting minimal light and air flow, but this poor plant just looks like a lump of sadness. There just isn't enough growth in the branches for me to be able to train the way I like to. Lessons learned. ✌️

Blue is really super stunted, but I'm following this grow up until the end because it has been massively solid in the learning department, and after all, learning is part of what got me into growing in the first place 😉 I went in and did a massive defoliation, hacking away at bud sites that were buried beneath the thick brush of my plant. When I was finished, blue looked even more sad and mangled than before I had started. A couple days later and she's just about starting to forgive me.

In spite of the fact that I am dealing with a stunted plant, she's actually not doing so poorly in the grand scheme of things. I have taken away so much knowledge from this grow and I am sincerely grateful that this plant has stuck it out with me, regardless of the wrenches I throw in her gears. The buds are starting to fatten up, but they are loose and fluffy and costed in trichomes.

Well, I may not have the highest yield with this poor stunted plant, but the buds she is giving me have actually grown in pretty dense and are covered in beautiful trichomes. She's also pushing through a bit of environmental stress as I'm struggling with learning to balance the environment of the new grow spot in the basement. It may end up that I can't make this grow space work during winter months in New England. The temperatures fluctuate too much, I moved them too early. Live and learn. ✌️

Coming up on the finish line here. Blue continues to surprise me with her resilience throughout my experimental FIMing project. She absolutely endured a stunt from the FIM, and she is a VERY bushy plant. This made my first FIM experience a challenge, however, experiencing the grow pattern made me realize that FIMing just isn't my bag, baby. Her buds are super short, fat, and sticky so I'm not sure what kind of yield she'll give me, but her trichomes are fat, healthy, and beautiful so I am looking forward to experiencing her smoke.

Blue is finishing up nicely. Her buds are deceivingly large beneath the bushyness of her brush. I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing what her bud will look like after she's nice and trimmed.

Time for the flush! She's in the sweet spot so I gave her a fresh reservoir with just RO water and now a day later I'm putting her in darkness for the next 36-48 hours. Despite the stunted beginnings, I am both surprised and in awe of her fat, healthy, trichome covered buds! Her buds almost look like velvet. I'll snag better photos on harvest day.

Blue had a solid start right out of the gate. She grew nice thick, full leaves and was happy as a clam cake.... Until I decided to FIM 🤦‍♀️. I had originally planned on topping her like her tent mate, but someone suggested a FIM, I had never done it before, so I thought, "Why not?!" Well Blue didn't seem to like it all that much, and as she began to grow out I did a poor job of opening her up enough to get proper sub-canopy circulation. I think this was mostly due to a combination of me not knowing what to expect from a FIM in regards to its grow pattern and not having a clear vision of my end game from the start, and the fact that Blue Dream'matic seems to just be a generally "bushy" plant and my natural grow style didn't adapt quickly enough to due her justice. Looking back now, I should have done a better job at doing a bit more defoliation than I did - but I found myself holding back once I had realized the stress I caused the plant from the FIM. That was a mistake. Over the rest of her grow she took a nice turn for the better. I went through and stripped some of the lower buds and opened up her underbrush as best as I could. She ended up giving me some nice fat trichome covered buds in return. I cut her down and hung her in my climate controlled closet holding 69.8°F and 55%RH. Six days later she was jarred up. Blue Dream'matic gave me 85g/3.0oz of quality bud plus an additional 1.9oz of popcorn bud. A day after being in jars I noticed the humidity in the jars was 79%, so I put the buds into some brown paper bags overnight, and this morning I let them get some more air. The buds being so large are sneakily holding more moisture than I had realized. I'll update with my strain review once she's done curing. ✌️000