First Grow

I started the grow with a cheap light that wasn't putting out the light the plants wanted, and I changed to the proper light in week 2. The new light was a little too powerful at the initial setting, and it looks like it had a negative effect on the early leaves on the plants. They both recovered over the second week, and started to really look happy towards the end of the second week. I used a PAR meter to measure the light at various settings and positions in my tent to get a better idea of where the light is strongest, so when I get to flowering I'll hopefully give them the right amount of light. I repotted the plants around day 11 from their small starter pots to their 3 gallon, final homes. The Wedding Cake plant has what appear to be pistils sprouting at one of the nodes, but we'll see if those are pistils or just very young growth. No training, topping, or tripping has been done yet. This log is on the 15th day.

Things are looking bad for the Wedding Cake plant. It refuses to look good, and no matter what I try the leaves that are turning yellow keep getting worse. It started a super early flower on that plant, and it already has several bud sites forming, mostly along the main stalk. The Northern Lights is also pissed, but not as mad as the Wedding Cake plant. The NL has mostly ceased growth either upwards or outwards, and it has super dense nodes that all stack on top of each other. At this point I don't know what the issue could be for the plants. While the temperature and humidity were within the acceptable ranges for growing, I noticed the VPD was sitting around 1.2-1.3 for the first couple weeks, and after I saw the VPD hit 1.4 I bought a humidifier. The VPD sits around 1.0 now, and the leaves that haven't gone to shit on the plant look happier, but they still aren't growing at all. I don't think it's a nutrient deficiency since the plants are only 21 days old at this point, but I'm not far from adding something to see what happens. If the Wedding Cake keeps getting uglier over the next couple days, I might give it a shot.

Good god, where to begin for this update... I'll start by recapping the reasons why the plants are so stunted. When I first got this tent set up, I had a super shitty 30w blurple light that put out 50 PAR at full power. I ordered a proper 300w AC Infinity light to replace it, but the plants went about 2 weeks with the blurple light. I think I transplanted both plants into the 3g pots between days 10-14, and really fucked up the Wedding cake (the soil was too dry and fell apart when removing it from the small pot). Then once the good light came in, I had the power higher than it needed to be, and the plants were used to getting barely any light. I think these were the main stressors for the plants, but I'm sure I made plenty of other mistakes too. like not feeding enough. The Wedding Cake: I call this one "The Stick." It looked like it was barely hanging on for life for a while, and dropped all of its leaves before I could do anything to try and address the issue(s). The local hydroponic store recommended a product called Recharge that I believe helped tremendously in keeping the plant alive through the beginning of flower. Since it's kinda recovered from its rebellious phase, the main bud on top is actually very dense seems to have good trichome production. Most importantly, it's very purple. The larf on the bottom of the plant has also managed to increase in size from "completely useless" to "popcorn". I think this plant has around 2 more weeks of flower, maybe 3 if I let it go on the longer side. I believe this is week 6 or 7 of flower for this plant. The Northern Lights: Somehow, this plant has just started to flower about at about 2 months old. It was never in as bad a state as the Wedding Cake, but it certainly had it's rough patch. The Recharge product also seemed to revive this plant, and give it another growth phase where it actually looked pretty happy and healthy. It did not look so happy once I came home from Christmas travel, but a top dressing of 4-8-4 and some compost tea has brought most of the green back. I might call this entering the first week of flower on this plant, there are buds just now starting to appear on many sites around the plant. Both plants are on the AC Infinity self-watering bases now, and I give them a top watering once or twice a week. Once a week that watering will include a light dosing of CalMag and a light compost tea. That watering remedy has seemed to help keep these plants a lot happier.