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I use build-a-soil take and bake with their cover crop and a straw mulch. This is a new strain for me, it's a freebie but I'm still pretty excited about it. I mostly grow autos, but this is brand new soil, and I knew it was a possibility that the soil might be a little hot at first and possibly stunt the veg cycle of an auto. I'm planning on giving this girl all the time she needs and letting her get pretty big to put the new soil through it's paces and really get the life inside of it rocking.
Starting first week of Veg. Should be interesting with it being the first run in this soil. Holding off any nutrients until i see any signs that it might be slowing down. With large amounts of soil, it's important to remind myself that the growth this week is happening mostly underground, and that because this plant won't become rootbound in this amount of soil. So, the transition from growing initial roots to building building leaf structure will be delayed. Can't wait to start seeing that new growth! It should be explosive when it happens. Added 1 cup of crushed malted barley and rye on day 7. Those solid nutrients should start to become available in about 1-2 weeks during the main part of veg. I love adding malted grain because it comes with the bacteria to break itself down built right in!
Seeing explosive growth from the cover crop now, just going to make sure that it does not cover my girl from the light any, but otherwise I'm just going to let it go. As veg stage goes on and I need to train it, I will chop it back from the airspace that I want to train into. Started to just barely get the third set of true leaves on day one of this week. I will start to foliar spray with EM-5 toward the end of the week. Did some LST on Day 5. There's some before/after of that. I chopped some cover crop and bent her towards the center of the tent. Side note: the clover smells amazing when cut, lemony and spicy.
Did a lot of chopping on Day 1. I gave a buzz cut to all of the cover crop and dropped it to feed back into the system. Also I fed 2 big handfuls of crushed malted barley around the whole bed, and sprinkled just a little bit of homemade worm castings around the base. I also topped her on day 1.
Day 2 my central heat quit working so it's very cold and dry in the basement. The tent is struggling to keep both the heat and humidity up while having to pump on so much dry air with the heater, the humidifier can't keep up. I'm maintaining the VPD and the temp has dropped to about 75 so it should only be a couple of days this way. The leaves were also looking a little dusty so I did a foliar spray with EM5.
Some really light defoliation on Day 5 taking off the early fan leaves. Also my heat was fixed late day 4, so we are back to original temps/humidity.
On to week 4. I have 6 main branches developing and I'm gonna be happy with that, no more topping. Going to be be training those towards the canter of the tent as soon as I can.
Going into week 5, really focusing on training and going to slowly adjust the light schedule and temp/humidity towards flowering stage. Fed with some homemade castings on Day 1.
Did some Defoliation and started to top dress with BAS Buildaflower on Day 3. Day 4, I moved more of the bud clips up the stems to direct them further towards the Center of the tent.
So, Day 1, the plant is not into flowering yet, I was slowly ramping down the hours of light last week, but she's getting to where i need to just go to 12-12 or she's gonna get too big. Added another handful of Buildaflower on Day one, and hit it with some rootwise to help break it down.
Day 2 i defoliated a decent amount of leaves that were covering new growth. There are before and after pictures. I try not to cut off too much at one time.
Day 3, Gave it a good foliar spray to wash her off before we see flowers.
Day 7, I did a bigger Defoliation on some of the bigger fan leaves on top covering other branches and trimmed some of the smaller, sad branches on the bottom, that didn't really have a chance to get to the edge of the canopy. Also, i did about a half of a dose of Buildasoil Craft Blend, and about 2 handfuls of malted barley and put about half around our girl and the other half sprinkled around the bed.
You probably notice some new plants in some of the wide shots, I've got some herbs growing that are good companion plants for cannabis: Basil, Cilantro, Lemon Balm and Catnip.
I've got snow peas in the back corners for nitrogen. and I've got Marigolds, Borage, and Dill to naturally keep pests away.
Day 1, did a pretty big defoliation, but, I'm going to go without defoliating for a while now to let the plant relax and hopefully start flowering.
Day 3, did a feeding/watering. Craft blend throughout the tent, Build-a-flower only on our girl.
Day 5, Saw very small pistils for the first time, so this is officially Day 1 of flowering. Was very critical of which branches need to go and which had a chance to get a share of the light. Right around the plant was pretty dry so watered about a gallon midday, and I'll check again this evening before the light shuts off.
Week 3 of 12-12, Day 1 of this week is Day 3 of seeing pistils.
Fed with 2 small handfuls of Build-a-flower and Same amount of craft blend. Trying to get her to really start stretching to determine which side branches I want to try and keep.
Not nearly as much stretch as I anticipated so far.
Day 1 of this week is day 10 of seeing the first signs of flowering.
Did another feeding of about 1/2 cup of Build-a-flower. Instead of craft blend, I put about 1/4 cup of my own malted wheat/rye/corn mix for variety. I know that malted wheat and rye in particular have lots of beneficial bacteria on them naturally. Everything in the tent looks great except for the 2 plants on the left right in point blank range of the fan.
Day 1 of this week is Day 17 since we first saw pistils. On Day 17 I did my weekly top dress of build-a-flower and craft blend.
After the Defoliation on Day 14, the top leaves really responded nicely and the buds are starting to stack and really getting some frosty sugar leaves.
Day 20 did some very minor defoliation, will probably be the last I do until fading starts. All of the leaves are getting very sticky at this point. Getting some awesome frost on almost all of the leaves. Even some decent frost on the buds further down the branches. Very happy so far.
This week starts on day 24 of flower.
I've decided to be all done Adding nutrients for this round. The feedings are available to the plant for nutrients about 2 weeks after you put them in, and they break down gradually after that. this should fit my timeline about right. I'll still be chopping and dropping plenty of cover crop as we go along, and that should be enough.
Day 1 of this week is day 31 of flower. According to Seedsman, we should be in the final 4 weeks (maybe slightly more) so I've lowered the humidity and the temperature. No fading yet but both the buds and the leaves are getting incredibly frosty! The smell is starting to get stronger, but nowhere near to what we should see in a couple of weeks. However the all of the odors are starting to come together when in the earlier stages we would only get one at a time. But the Strawberry and lemon and skunk are all coming through.
Day 37 I have some of my companion flowers finally starting to bloom. The borage is really spreading it's leaves way more than I anticipated. That said, it's tolerating me cutting back it's leaves really well and still wanting to flower. it's defiantly giving me ideas to attempt an earthbox effect where instead of covering the dirt with a plastic cover, to use the borage as cover instead. will be fun to try down the road.
We are in, what I am hoping will be, our final week. I put my environment schedule on what Build-a-soil recommends for "ripening" post week 8 of flowering. so we're down to 11 hours of light per day and reduced temps/humidity. Almost all of the trichomes look milky (so close) but I'm seeing very few amber. Also for the first time today I'm starting to see some purpling on the very edges of the sugar leaves and some orange in the center vein of the leaves as well. It all appears to be healthy fading and so i will continue to do just minimal watering and prepare for harvest.
Going to start really chopping back my companion plants starting tomorrow. I'm having to dry in my grow tent so they will not do well in the darkness anyways.
Day 42: The buds are stacking nicely. Purple is developing nicely. Added a little bit of water, but I'm also trying to keep the humidity down which is tough with this much moist soil in a small tent.
This is the last week of flowering, Just barely starting to see amber trichomes. Doing some very sparse watering maybe twice week. The soil is still moist, so no danger of drying out. The purpling as becoming more and more prevalent every day.
BallJarNative
