VGrow - Do-Si-Dos Automatic by RQS

This soil is old as hell for sure, I also found out its NOT even soil. The product is called Terrazilla, and it's apparently a mostly coco based medium. There's various amendments and trace minerals added to it, but most of those are silica rocks or something (according to this rather extremely helpful Reddit post I found: https://www.reddit.com/r/NZTrees/comments/twjiwj/comment/i3fy5dx/) From what I've read, I can essentially treat this like soil. Especially since I mixed in around 1.5L volumetric of worm castings. Pumice I've also read is just as effective, if not more effective, than using perlite as drainage aid. It's also MUCH cheaper to get over here in a very legal and above-board place called "Canada", NOT the country of New Zealand, in-which the plant is entirely illegal to cultivate. This stuff is expensive, and it's not the grow kit I'm talking about.

First of all I'll preface this by saying that I've been using the wick watering system the base of the VGrow has built into it from about day 12. The reservoir is 6L / 1.9gal. Little lady was doing rather well, though I had wacky heat and humidity issues as it's going into summer. I believe that's what has caused the weird warping and drooping present on the lower leaves. It's mostly guess work from me based on the sheer amount of stuff I've read online and all the DeBacco University youtube videos. This is only my second grow ever, and my first in a system like the VGrow.

Started getting rather bushy very quickly. Those big green fan leaves at the bottom were touching the soil, so I pruned them off to get some more node growth going.

We've caught up to where my pictures came up to date-wise now. It's currently day 22 of the grow, and she's been freaking her shit sideways brother. As you can tell, she's thick as hell. Instantly started fanning outwards and exploding with nodes. Within the next week, I'm hoping to see some more explosive growth directed vertically as those nodes grow up big and strong. Hoping to have around 9-12 colas by flowering judging by the node growth (as if I know what the hell I'm talking about). Very clear VPD issues happening, sitting at around 1.3 which is nuts. Bought an INKBIRD 4L reptile enclosure humidifier/fogger that has a hose attachment and the INKBIRD humidity controller that goes along with it for automating the whole process. Judging by the temperatures inside of the box, and inside of the house, I'm going to have to increase the RH to at least 70% in order for the girl to be in good-growing-shape. Day 24: The insanely cheap and rather surprisingly effective irrigation pump/system I ordered off of Aliexpress for one and a half dollars has been set up. I'm ready to use it whenever I want, that's what I keep telling myself. The truth is that the wicks are working much better than I thought they would, so I'm going to hold off on swapping to the irrigation system until the wicks displease me in some way. Maybe when it gets into flowering it'll want enough water for the irrigation system, but I just put another wick in the bloody thing so I have a feeling it'll be using the wicks the whole grow. Day 28: Thickened herself up once again so I got to installing the net to prepare for some fan leaf trimming in a couple days. Humidifier has been working incredibly well and I've noticed having the appropriate VPD (0.75-1) within the VGrow has really sharpened her up in terms of growing speed.

EXTRA week of veg! From my understanding, especially with autoflowers, it's really good to get another week of veg in if it looks necessary. Felt necessary to me as I didn't want her fully reaching just yet, wanted the canopy to be a bit more even first! Day 29: Trimmed a whole bunch of the girl's fan leaves off, improved the air circulation by quite a lot which is necessary when I'm vegging at such high humidity. Classic new grower attitude too, of course, was totally convinced I'd gone and mutilated her to no end for zero reason. Great mindset to let yourself have LOL. Day 30: The mutilation it turns out was a success, and she's reaching for the sky as we speak (Probably out of fear? These secateurs are sharp as hell). This should be my last week/four days of veg, and I'll be putting her into the transitionary period after then. Currently only using rhizotonic and terra vega as that's all I've got, but I have some Canna Cannazym and Cronk Sticky Bandit on the way. I also purchased the Cronk autoflower nutrient line just to have a play around with. Was shocked to see how cheap it was/that it was even for sale at all over where I'm from. Seems to be a lovely company with a good ethos and good product, so I intend to do my next grow using their nutrient line (with a few cameos from Canna PK 13/14 of course). Day 32: It's the 1st of November which means it's day 32 for the little lass. She's got some stretching to do when she gets into flower fully. I'll have to fill the reservoir next feed with transitionary nutrients, lowering the veg dosage down and adding flowering nutrients to up that EC. The cannazym and sticky bandit are going to do some serious work for her when she's booming, and I'm also needing to grab some calmag as it does look like she's fighting the beginning of some kind of nutrient battle. Those 6 dollar Kmart USB desk fans go crazy right? I need to get another one going in there or find some slightly more modular 4" fans. I'd love to have the D4 fans Vivosun makes for the VGrow but it'd cost about 120 dollars to get it shipped. Good times. I think I'll attempt to make do with the trash heap at my disposal in terms of cheap tech.

Into pre-flower she goes! Bit of a chaotic series of weeks coming up for me, spent less time on documentation and more time of being a mad scientist with little regard for pictures. I have however, taken quite a few so I am sorting through them by date. This week is when I corrected the height of the net/raised it a little to accommodate more for the main kola. As you can see that main kola was far too sturdy for me to bend it back under the canopy, so I've let it stay upright nice and proud. Just wait till you see what it turns into in the coming weeks! I also introduced more additives to the schedule as I purchased them depending on what I needed.

As you can see I had a little trouble with overwatering! I took the fabric pot off of the wick system it was using and placed it onto a towel for two days. The towel wicked the excess water out of the pot very well, and as you can see she bounced right back! Was partially concerned about her resilience considering the autoflower genetics, but it really wasn't anything drastic at all. Probably about the same level of temporary wilt a photo would get from that induced stress, as a benefit, not a single sign of herming. SOMETHING INTERESTING ABOUT PK 13-14: I have learned through this interesting piece of text on a UK growshop/hydro site that you can actually use PK 13-14 from the moment you flip to flower at a rate of 0.33ml/L and see even better results than ONLY using it when Canna directs you to in the schedule. Here's a link to that page: https://www.onestopgrowshop.co.uk/products/canna-pk-13-14 Here's the text from the page in-case you don't want to click the link: "After much testing, we at the One Stop Grow Shop found that Canna PK 13/14 can also be used by a method known as “trickling”. Add Canna PK 13/14 at a rate of 0.33ml/Litre as soon as budding begins (usually around week 2 or 3 of flowering cycle) and continue using it at this rate until it is time for the final flush. By supplementing it in this way, your plants will benefit by having access to the key blooming ingredients in Canna PK 13/14 over a longer period of time leading to heavier blooms of higher quality. OSGS Hot Tip: Use PK 13/14 as Canna recommends but also use at 0.33ml/Litre from when budding begins up to the start of your flush" I also applied a foliar application of Athena Stack once within this week, just to help it bounce back from the training and cope with the light intensity going up with flowering being introduced!

Only picture I have of this week, had more concern with the notebook I had just grabbed for documentation. Was workshopping ideas for breeding in limited space etc. Most of my notes are just on mixing order and EC goals, soil/medium moisture levels and all that jazz. As you can see she's gone pretty hard into flowering! The gap between the pictures could actually be greater than 5 days, but according to my phone they were taken on the 24th of November while the previous one was taken on the 19th, so five days.

All caught up now! Attached is some shots with less effort put into them, then a couple shots of her main kola sparkling with trichome frost. Oh baby, she stacked muuuch harder than I remember earlier on this week. Just absolutely packing on the resin all throughout her nodes. Not just the main kola, but the lower ones too. Very pleased! Quite happy with the flash-adjusted shots of the main kola too, you can see she's just icing herself out like it's a full-time job, which I suppose it is for her at this stage of flower. Still has a relative smell of skunk, but has developed a really lovely and strong citrus note/lemon peel that overrides that skunk hit. Gas notes on the end sort of highlight the sting of the lemon terps. Gorgeous phenotype/s for sure.