Virgin Sour Widow Grow

This is my first grow.Trying out autoflowerig seeds for a late planting in January in Cape Town, south africa. Sprouted the seedlings in peat pots with potting soil. seeds sprouted within 3days, then planted in 20l containers. Medium is a mix of coco coir, perlite, compost and potting soil. the potting soil has nutrients already so will go easy with that

The sour diesel is coming along nicely this week. White widow is developing slower, with one doing a bit better than the other. Will monitor and look to adding some nutrients if the slower plants keep struggling

Transplanted to new pots with pre-mixed soil to solve over watering. Lets see how they do in new environment

plants stil lshowing signs of recovery after transplanting at end of week 3. the question is now whether they will continue to develop normally from here or go straight into midget flowering mode. watering 40ml per plant per day. added first nutrients with biobizz grow. bought adding some lighting indoors to allow these to go onto a 20hour light cycle

Sour Diesel plants recovering nicely now, maybe there is bit of hope for them. Both White widow plants are dead. Intereresting to see how badly stunted the roots were - they never made it through the peat pot into medium. I'll keep these going despite them being so fat behind the curve. Keen to see how they adapt after being stunted early. Note that these now get sunlight during day and then under grow light in evening on 20/4 schedule. Feeding Biobizz grow in low concentration (1ml per litre twice a week)

Our sour diesel plants started flowering this week. Very happy with how they are doing, all things considered. The plants look healthy and grown at a decent pace. From today onwards i can increase the direct sunlight exposure and no longer keeping them under veg lights at night. Will add Biobizz Bloom to the feeding schedule from today while maintaining the the Biobizz Grow. Note that there was a couple of days of wind and cloud this week where they were under my weak veg light 24hrs

Good week. Plants getting more sun upstairs. A couple of windy and cloudy days this week. But overall they now look like there is going to be a small harvest despite the early setbacks

Positive week, the kids are allright 😎 Interesting to see how the two plants differ. The one is still growing nicely with smaller buds whilst the other one seems to be entirely focussed on making buds. Don't expect a very big harvest but given the early difficulties its good to see them fully recovered and producing

Another good week, not much to say. Both plants are budding nicely and entering the final stretch. Planning to flush in a week then harvest in week 12. I did see some leaf miners and removed those leaves. Slightly increased the amount of bloom nutrients because some of my plants showed early signs of nitrogen deficiency

Late update after being away for the weekend. All looking good. Still have a couple of weeks to go. Photos are from saturday (day70). Exciting times!

This was an uneventful week. The plants are buffing up very nicely. (updated entry after inspection) The shorter one is approaching harvest time. Inspected with magnifier today and the trichomes are milky already with some browning. The head on that is thick, smelly and sticky. ETA to harvest 2days. last nutrient feed was tuesday. flushing only now. The taller one has about a week to go and will have a microscope with camera by then to share photos.

Starting this week early to keep track of trichome development on the final sour diesel (now on day80). Harvested one plant on Sunday and got 58g wet weight out of it. Both images are taken with the microscope of the last (taller plant). Trichomes on this one are milky but not showing any signs of amber yet. will monitor carefully. Flushing this one hard and will update regularly leading up to harvest.

This was an awesome experience and would not have been able to get to harvest without the support of the growdiaries community. This was my first grow ever and the focus was on learning the basics. Already seeing benefits in subsequent attempts. Because this was such a learning experience I'll focus on the mistakes I made and the lessons learnt. 1. Starting with a bad soil mix - Advice to other newbies: start with a professional mix that is proven in you local community 2. Not controlling Ph in early stages - Advice to other newbies: Get a digital ph meter and test the water (including after adding nutrients), and adjust accordingly - I use 3. Overwatering - It was really hard to find a recipe that works. Advice: Seedlings (up to 2weeks) should get low water (<30ml/per day), for larger plants (assuming fabric pots with aerated substrate, preferably proven mixes) wait until the medium dries (at least two knuckles - or wait until plant leaf and stems starts drooping) before watering again and then saturate the medium until there is a runoff (test the ph of the runoff as well) 4. Bad containers - High risk transplant (not recommended for autos) helped. Better to use fabric pots at the start and never transplant plant autos 5. Underestimating the light requirements - After I started supplementing 7hours direct , 5 hours shade sunlight with CFLs (500W for 28K lumens) at night I saw pretty big boost during veg - as result of these early mistakes early growth was stunted and my white widows died early. Fixing these gave me the foundation to get a decent harvest after taking the impact of early mistakes into account Important lessons learnt later: 1. Don't let pests get out of control. Powdery mold became an issue later in plant life cycle but I also had to deal with leaf miners, aphids and snails. In future Diatomaceous earth will be a standard inclusion with preventative Neem oil during veg and spot fixes to deal with specific issues that crop up quickly. Also be aware that puppy induced damping is a thing :) 2. Low stress training makes a huge impact. For this grow I held back on this because I needed to learn the basics first. As a result I found that lower buds were under developed and larfy (but will be using for cooking). Good training (and better light penetration) can help a lot with this 3. Boveda bags help regulate humidity during curing 4. Microscope was a luxury but one that I would never grow without again. 5. Hydrogen peroxide wash can help to eliminate light powdery mildew infections that reach buds - This is well worth watching: https://vimeo.com/275728566 (Jorge Cervantes demonstrates peroxide wash) - This had less of an impact on this grow, but after washing the buds of my other grow I'm sold 100%, after a wash the bud is sparkling and I've not detected any harmful impact. I started the grow in January (southern hemisphere) to test the idea that it will be possible to get do multiple harvests with auto flowers in period from first planting in September to finishing final grow in late May. The experiment was successful, but in future I will split my resources differently: A couple of photo period plants outside, then cycle through a couple of auto flower harvests in a grow tent with LED lights. The highlights: 1. I had no idea that the growing cannabis could be such a fascinating hobby (I started growing because I wanted better quality bud for a lower price, I'll keep at it because it's so damn interesting) 2. The amazing support I got from the grow diaries community. Special thanks to: - @bbird, your diary helped me formulate the basic idea of how to approach the problem - @DinafemSeeds, Mark your feedback, encouragement and inside knowledge helped so much when I simply had no idea what to expect - @Mrs_Larimar, thank with detailed, specific and actionable feedback to my questions. It's great to see a master at work :) - @Quexos, thanks so much for all the support, knowledge and encouragement. I've really enjoyed our conversations and your wisdom and quick turnaround on questions helped me so much! 3. Dinafem seeds are amazing! I've had 100% success rate with germination and the strong genetics helped the plants to survive everything that myself and the environment threw at them whilst producing sticky, tasty bud :) 3. Lighting up my first home grown joint!