4 Assed Monkey - 2nd Grow!

Started 4 plants, one of them popped but stopped growing so I aborted it. The other seeds popped within 24 hours and have been growing steadily. I transplanted to their final 3 gal pots after the roots started coming out the bottom of the rapid rooter plugs.

Still just watering with distilled water, about 1-2oz every other day. The soil I'm using is a Vermont Compost Company Fort Lite. It's very light and airy, but also extremely dry so I'm having trouble with it being hydrophobic. I have to mist the top of the soil a lot just to get any water to penetrate the surface. I'm hoping once I'm watering larger amounts, it's not a problem. The plants seem to be growing slowly, but comparing to pictures from my last grow they actually appear to be tracking almost exactly in size. Got a new light this week too. It's an Autocob 3500K from Cobshop.net. I don't need the extra light this early, but I've been running it about 30"+ from the plants just to test it out and see how much heat it adds. So far I really like the size and quality. We'll see how it helps with yield though.

Plants seem happy and are to be tracking almost identically to my last 4AM grow (maybe a little taller though). I gave the plants some RO water w/ Cal-Mag+ once this week after giving them only distilled water from seed. Temp and humidity has been a bit higher than my last grow, but not seeing any significant differences in the plants, so they must be able to tolerate lower temps and humidity in early veg better than I thought.

Overall I'm happy with the progress this week. The plants are the same height as my last grow, but the leaves are bigger. I started adding some Big Bloom to my watering along with increasing the Cal-Mag+. I also added a little bit of Sledgehammer hoping to help with the hydrophobic peat-based soil. I'm noticing what appears to be nitrogen toxicity on all three plants. The Cal-Mag+ is 2% nitrogen, and I increased it this week because I'm watering with RO water and noticed some light spotting. It looked like the start of a magnesium deficiency. I might drop it down to 3ml/gal next watering and see if that helps reduce the N. Last grow had the same issue so the 4AMs seem very sensitive to nitrogen.

First week where all the plants are flowering. I haven't started any flowering nutrients yet but will start Tiger Bloom this week. The plants are looking OK, but not great. Two of the three are showing heavy N-tox despite not adding any more nitrogen than what's in the Cal-Mag+. New growth on the affected plants is very twisted and seems to have almost stopped. I hope they grow out of it like they did last time because I don't know what else to do with them. I decided not to do any training this grow and just let them grow out naturally. Last grow I started LST in week 4 after they started flowering and I ended up with banana shaped buds. The healthier plant is stretching a bit each day and I'm hoping it doesn't get too tall.

This was a sad week for my grow. I noticed some weird looking pistils coming out of one of the plants and realized that it was a hermie and they were actually nanners (stamens). There were only three coming out the top of the bud but I decided to chop it down just to be safe. I've read a lot of conflicting info about what to do in this situation, but didn't want to risk the other plants having seeds, so down she came. The remaining plants are my weaker ones. They've been showing signs of heavy N-tox the entire grow and just aren't as healthy looking as the one I chopped. They haven't started producing trichomes yet either, whereas by week 6 of my last grow, they had. I did a light flush with Sledgehammer last night. The ppms going in were about 180 ppm and coming out was over 2200 ppm. This probably explains the N-tox and burned tips on both plants. I've barely been feeding so the soil must just be really hot. I'm still hopeful these plants will produce, but feeling a bit discouraged right now.

Still mourning the the loss of my hermie last week, but the other two are filling the void. Both plants are showing signs of early-to-mid calcium deficiency, one plant is much worse than the other. The spots started in the lower leaves and have been making their way up to the middle leaves over the last couple days. I've been watering with RO water but have been adding 4ml/gal every time I water. I thought this was going to be enough, but clearly the plant is struggling to get Ca for some reason. I tested the runoff a few days ago and the pH was 6.4-6.5, but when I watered last night and it was on the lower side for the first time, between pH 6.0-6.2. Looking at the charts, this is too low to absorb Ca, so it may be a pH issue. Next time I water, I'm going to increase the Cal-Mag+ to 5ml/gal and try to up the pH a bit. Overall the bud development looks great so I'm not super concerned. It doesn't look like the N-tox or Ca def have slowed them down. They've been stretching a bit each day and are now about 16" tall. Stretch seems to have slowed or stopped now and they seem to be focusing on bud development.

This grow is interesting for me. The plant showing the deficiency in the leaves is the one that has the fattest, frostiest buds. What I thought was a calcium deficiency I'm now thinking is a phosphorus deficiency. The fact that the spotting and leaf issues started at the bottom of the plant, combined with the purple stems, seems like textbook P def. Did some more research about this and I'm wondering if the plant is having a hard time with the colder temps at night affecting the intake. I've been measuring runoff pH and it's been around 6.0, which is low for P intake. I have been running Sledgehammer through this plant hoping to get the soil back in order but may have also flushed out needed nutes. The other plant is doing great and not showing any signs of this issue so I'm hoping to just stabilize it until it's done. I'm guessing about 3-4 weeks til harvest.

This week started out great but took a bad turn for one of the plants. I started noticing a mottling/mosaic pattern appearing on the upper leaves a day after feeding w/nutes. I knew the runoff pH was on the lower end (5.8-5.9) but I figured the plant could hold out for a few days until the next watering before I tried to correct it. That shit spread fast! Within 3 days, it was affecting all the upper leaves and they were starting to get crispy at the ends and die. When I watered again I added some Sledgehammer to try and rinse out any thing that was happening, and the runoff pH was still 5.9 despite going in at 6.5. I ran an extra 1.25 gallons through it with Sledgehammer (2.5 gal total) and was able to get the pH up to 6.2. I've decided to stop using RO water and just use tap water with some added Cal-Mag+. The pH in the tap water is way more stable and I think my issues have been due to low pH rather than a lack or excess of nutrients. It's been 3 days since I did the Sledgehammer rinse and the leaf issues seem to have stopped or slowed. I'll keep the feedings light through the rest of the grow and hope for the best!

This week was pretty boring. The plants are just chugging along and fattening up. One of the plants is showing mostly brown pistils and a couple of amber trichs on the calyxes. I think it will be ready for harvest in about a week. The other plant's pistils just started turning brown this week and is at least a week or two behind. I'm guessing it will be closer to 3 weeks before I harvest that one. I've been trying to let the soil dry out more between waterings and only watered once this week. I think they've been too wet and that has affected nutrient intake a bit. I'm not a believer in the "final flush" so I'll just keep on with a light feeding every other watering until harvest.

Almost there! The plants have been doing great this week considering all the issues I've had during flowering. The main colas are getting huge and the side buds are filling out nice too. I think one plant has about a week left and the other is at least 2-3 weeks out. The one that's almost done is starting to show some nice dark colors. It's a shame I had the Ca deficiency issues earlier, because this would be a beautiful plant. I cut back on the Cal-mag and have been letting the plants dry out more between watering. I also raised the lights to let them recover a bit. I think the issues I had were a combination of pH fluctuations from the RO water, too much N going into flowering, overwatering a little, too much light when issues started appearing, and adding nutrients when they weren't really needed. Despite the mistakes, I'm pleased with the results so far and the next couple weeks should be smooth sailing.

The healthier plant is coming down tomorrow. The trichs are mostly cloudy and it seems like it's ready. The buds haven't really put on any weight in the past week and the leaves are mostly yellow. The other plant is doing ok considering how quickly the leaves were dying a few weeks ago, but it is not quite ready. Most of the fan leaves were totally dead and dried up so I clipped them off to expose the healthier lower leaves to light. It's still fattening up a bit so I think it has at least another week, maybe two before it's ready. I'm psyched that I was able to salvage this one because I was pretty sure it wasn't going to recover. I raised the lights as much as I could and it has responded well.

Overall I like growing this strain. It's a bit finicky in the early days and is very sensitive to high N levels. I started with 4 plants. One didn't make it past a sprout - I think I drowned it after it popped. Another was a hermie from the beginning and I chopped it once it started flowering and showed male nanners. The others were mostly happy but are not the heartiest plants. It's also very light-sensitive. I had my LEDs at about 18-20" running 20/4, and it started burning the tips, despite low temperatures. I didn't do any LST so I didn't have much room, but I raised the lights to about 22-24" and that helped a ton. I would recommend 18/6 for lighting unless you have underpowered lights. Despite having a bunch of issues with low pH and too much light, the plants yielded well. I had a 50% increase in dry weight from my last grow. If you have adequate lighting and tent height, I don't recommend any training for this strain. I let mine grow naturally this time and was rewarded with a significantly higher yield.