Blue Critical - Autoflower experiment

The seedlings sprouted 3 days after I planted them straight into pre-soaked pots. All the seedlings are growing well except for one of the Critical Blue which is a little bit shorter than expected. It looks healthy and is maturing OK so I expect this to stop being an issue after another week or so of growth. No nutrients were given this week as I am using Biobizz all mix which has everything needed. I will begin training next week if the plants manage to develop their fifth nodes. See my complete dairy for a comparison to two ther strains going through the same training experiment.

This was a good week for the plants, with them moving from the seedling stage into vegetative growth. They only required watering once, each receiving 500ml of pH'd water only on day 4 of week 2. The middle blue critical is still shorter than I'd like, however it is growing healthily so this shouldn't cause any problems. Training will most likely begin next week once the plants have developed their 5 nodes. I will be using LST and ScrOG, Topping LST and ScrOG, and mainlining to compare the results and see how viable each technique is for autoflower. For this dairy I'll be using the same strain, Blue critical. I am also repeating the same experiment on some GSC and OG kush to see how the results vary.

Week 3 was a good week for the plants, albeit a bit stressful as I began training all the plants in week 2, day 4. The process of picking the training for the plant was the smallest being LST'd, the middle size being topped and LST'd, and the biggest being mainlined. I have also repeated this to N three other plants found in my other dairy. The photos above were taken 3 days after training, which I did at the same time for all of the plants. They have all recovered well, with the smallest blue on the right looking like it is benefitting from the LST already. The mainlained plant is also surprising healthy and is growing quickly, so I am less worried going forward with autos recovering from stress/damage. Watered the plants twice this week with approx. 1.5L each. The recent watering was today though, so the 1.5L lasts roughly a week at this stage.

Week 4 has been the best week in terms of overall plant growth and training. I also changed the light to the 400W dual spec HPS as the first pistols have begun to show. Flowering has not yet started, but should begin in a week. This week I began bending the stems down to the sides a lot more, and will try to achieve an even canopy before the ScrOG net is added next week. While bending the critical blue mainlined plant, one of its two only stems snapped nearly the whole way through. Sorry for lack of pictures showing the wound but I taped it immediately and splinted it to the fan leaf for support. After about three days it has started to recover in that side, and overall the plant hasn't really been affected by it too much. I am also growing an OG kush using the same mainline process, so it will also be interesting to see if there are any significant differences in yield that might have been due to the stem damage. So far the best looking plants are by far the Topped and LST'd, then the mainlined, and then the LST only.

This was a brilliant week for plant growth, with some side branches over doubling their height. I added the ScrOG net at the beginning of the week and began some more intensive training. The broken mainled blue has fully recovered from last week's damage, and is quickly catching up the my other mainled experiment. The LST only plants I pretty much just continued to bend. The topped & LST'd plants I removed some of the lower bud sites that were not getting any light. I also removed a few awkward fan leaves that could not be tucked away. The addition of the net has helped with this though, as keeping the canopy even is much easier with the support it gives. I also decided not to try any further cuts on the (half) mainlined auto's. My reasoning is that they have developed strong, independent colas already, so cutting for more would not see much gain. The plants had also begun to flower on the night I went to perform the second cut, and my growing experience tells me not to mess with flowering plants too much so here we are. I gave the plants one regular watering of 10L pH'd water, and a 20L nutrient mix using the ratios stated above. All volumes were split equally between the plants. The scrawny looking blue critical has perked up a heck of a lot, but is still the weakest of the 3. The strongest plants by far are the ones that have been topped and LST'd, closely followed by the mainlined ones. LST only is definitely great, but it is clearly lagging behind the other two techniques.

This was another very good week for the plants, with the flowers beginning to swell up and take shape. Some of the lower leaves are starting to yellow, but this is expected. As the light doesn't penetrate as far, the plant will begin to 'consume' those leaves and drop them to redirect energy to the tops. The canopy is fairly even apart from 1 small spot, which does not have any colas at all. This is due to me bending away the GSC that was topped, with the intention of the lower branches stretching up. This happened with all the other plants I did it to, but not this one for some reason. I think it was due to airflow around the budsites so I added an extra fan last week to hopefully improve this. The strongest looking plants by far are still the ones that were Topped with LST, followed by the mainlined, with only LST in last place. I have found that the LST only ones do not have stems as thick as the others, so this may impact yield later. Not much done in the way of training apart from the odd leaf bending or stem tying. The next few weeks will most likely be fairly uneventful, as now we just need to wait for them to flower fully :D

This week was another great week, with not much work being needed in the tent. All I did this week was minor defoliation to remove yellowing leaves on the bottom of the plants not receiving good light. Buds are continuing to swell up nicely, with a roughly even spread in size across the canopy. There is however a slight gap in my canopy which would be avoided for optimal results. The strongest plants are still the same, with Topped and LST in 1st, Mainlined in 2nd, and LST only in last place.

Another steady week of bud development. I haven't really done much with those apart from the occasional removal of yellow leaves and tucking nuisance leaves under the net. The plants are all still growing in line with the previous expectations, with Topping and LST being the biggest, Mainlined next and then LST only in last place. It will be interesting to see the results though. Should only be a few more weeks until harvest, as a large majority of trichomes are already milky.

Another strong week of growth for all the plants, with all three of the blue critical plants really showing their differences in growth depending on the type of training they got. I just fed water this week, and will be giving one more nutrient feed next week before just reverting to pure water until harvest. From looking at them, I'd say they are 1-2 weeks away. A large amount of trichomes have gone cloudy, but there are still a few clear ones. At this point the LST and topped plants seem to be about even with the mainlined blue critical, it will be interesting to see the final numbers at harvest.