Bubba's Gift 2nd

Welcome to my second grow. It's the same strain, same grow tent, same lights, same... everything. Except for some more knowledgeable grower I hope :) This should be market as week 0 (or maybe even -1), since it's juts about popping the seed. Again I picked one seed for this grow, this time I went for the smallest one from the pack. Seed popped in about 24 hours, developed nice white root with some purple shading and started to grow really well. I thought that size would indicate growth, but I was wrong. This one grows faster than last one, looks better from the start (no weird crookedness of the leaves) and needs way less maintenance than the last one. After 5 days the seed was put into hydroton and covered. In less than a day the plant pushed away all pebbles and broke through. By the end of this week there was the first set of true leaves visible, with cotyledons nice and green. Only tap water (left to degas over night) was used for seed pop and initial sprout, nothing added. Or maybe it's just me leaving the plant alone to do its thing :)

Everything seems so familiar the second time. I remember on my first grow I checked up on plant several times per day, checked pH and EC obsessively, adjusted pH even more aggressively and worried a lot about every little thing. This time it;s way more relaxed, more calm. Plant seems to be doing very fine without me bugging it too much :) I started to feed her. Much sooner than the last time, but she seems to like it. Growth is very good. It's already under 150W DIY LED strip light, but the light is about 50cm above the plant for now. Once it gains some more greenery, light will come down within centimeters from the plant. I did one major change from the last grow: the slimy, smelly and brown nutes did not please me during my first grow. So this time I decided to try out beneficials. I bought a pack of... just about everything from a company that caters to mushroom growers. Apparently mushrooms really need benes to grow at all, and this mix has just about everything I could think of or find on the internet. I did not find it among the "Nutrients" section of this site, so here is the link to the product: https://gluckspilze.com/Mycorrhiza-Soluble (I hope linking to commercial sites is allowed... if not, please delete the link). This thing turn nutes into nasty brown color. Really nasty, looking as if the slime is already at full swing. Got me worried a bit, but then I figured that growing in soil would also turn everything brown so I might just let it grow and see how it goes. So far so good, plant grows fast, has nice green color. No weird smell from nutes, pH seems stable. It's just the color of nutes that is not at its best. I think we're doing well.

Plant is still in the first batch of nutes which I prepared at beginning of 2nd week. Nutes are still brow, but that's about it. pH is nice and stable, there is no smell, plant seems to be doing very well. Even cotyledons are still nice and green. This week I basically did nothing. No pH adjusting, no light adjustment, nothing. I just checked up on the plant every day, took measurements and left the plant to grow. I thin she really likes it, plus this gives me more time to enjoy harvest from my first grow :) As you can see from photos she is getting big. Roots have hit the nutes solution last week (really fast compared to first grow), and growth has accelerated tremendously. She went from showing 2nd set of true leaves to having those leaves outgrow the pot with 3rd set on the way. I decided to let it gain some height this time before I top her. Last grow I kept her really low, and when she got big this made taking samples for pH and EC quite clumsy. This time I will go for more initial height, then after topping I will squish her with SCROG net to keep her level.

Made new batch of nutes to bring her to veg concentration. No benes this time, just maxigro + pH adjustment. I did not wash bucket extensively, since I wanted for benes to stay alive and present in the reservoir. Nutes are not brown anymore, the solution is very clear. pH seems super stable, EC is within expected range with some headroom for cal+mag if need be. She is growing quite fast as you can see from photos. Last week one could clearly see the pot under leaves, this week it's all overgrown. Currently reading up on defoliation... what to pluck, when to pluck, etc. This time the plant will definitely be bare under the net when time comes. So the plan is to grow it a bit higher than last time, then squish it with the net after second topping to keep it horizontal, table-like. A few more vertical centimeters and she will be topped for the first time.

She is still growing strong. As you can see from photos, she has grown to the edge of the bucket this week, which is great. Soon bucket will be completely shaded and nute temps will be a bit lower. Which will be great :) I also did some defoliation this week, basically just plucked suckers on bottom leaves and trimmed away first and second set of leaves since they were in complete shade. You can't see it on the photos, but underneath the big fan leaves she is quite naked. :) I _feel_ that taking leaves away spurred more vigorous growth, but it's just a feeling. So she has been sitting in the same nutes solution for two weeks now. First nutes (weeks 1, 2, 3) had benes in them, this batch was benes free. No weird brown colored water. As you can see from photos, the brown stuff from beginning of the grow did not leave any color on the roots. They are white and shiny, they are firm, they look very healthy. I decided to change nutes today, and I mixed a batch with benes added, pH'd it, let it sit to dissolve nutes and get constant pH, then it was time to open DWC bucket. Nutes solution in DWC bucket was (almost) clear. It had a bit of earthy smell, but no slime, weird color in weird smell. When I opened the bucked, I noticed some brown clumps on the bottom of the bucket. At first it scared the shit out of me, because I thought that slime is back at this early stage. But after close inspection the brown stuff just laid on the bottom, not clinging to anything (neither the bucket, tubing, airstone or roots). Again, this is just my feeling, but I think this indicates that my benes worked as advertised. I think the brown stuff was microorganisms, that couldn't survive in the nutes. Either part of my benes died off (no biggie, since I can add them at will), or some other microbes were killed off by my benes. I like the second option more, so I'm gonna go with benes killing brown slime and keeping my plant roots nice and healthy. So I decided to add benes to the fresh batch of nutes as well. Again it turned nutes brown (nasty looking weird brown), but since I _think_ it did more good than bad last time, I'm OK with sampling brown nutes for a week or two. I actually feel I'm in change of brown slime now, not just fire-fighting it where it pops up. You can also see on the photos that she got her first haircut! Yes, after 5th or 6th set of leaves I took the top of, and you can see four new branches growing where one used to be. These 4 will be allowed to grow vertically for a while, but after second topping SCROG net will keep all new growth on the same level.

This week was almost non-eventful... almost. Se the photo from day 29? Just a nice green plant. Day 30? So weird white-ish dry spots on the leaves. I searched internet high and low and found nothing about these kind of spots. Wen't to bed that night scarred shitless, not knowing what is going on with my plant and what those spots are. Next day spots were kind of the same (not getting worse), si I figured I should at least do a thorough check of the plant to see if I can spot any pests or something. I got nothing. No pests, no bugs, no info from internet. Nothing. And then I remembered: when I samples nutes solution for EC and pH measurements, I somehow managed to loose my needle in the bucket. During me loosing the needle, I also sprayed couple of drops of nutes on the plant. I thought nothing about it at the time, but since spots were not getting bigger, no new spots were forming and no one in the history of growing cannabis seems to have seen these spots, I kind of figured I must have caused very localized leaf burn by spraying few drops of nutes directly on the leaves. I reexamined spots pattern and it fits plant being sprayed. Spots on two overlapping leaves formed a perfect drop, when taken apart each leave had half of the drop. I noticed this in two or three places, so I'm fairly certain my plant is still well, it's just me being clumsy. Again. But all is well that ends well, so let's hope this one will survive all the way to harvest. On day 35 I did the second topping, I also plucked all the suckers from the 4 main branches, so I can controll which ones will grow into flowers. On my first grow I did not trim the plant at all. I just let it grow, topped it twice, squished it with SCROG net and let it grow some more, only taking off leaves that did not look well. It grew into a jungle, with center of the plant almost suffocating, leaves everywhere with lower buds being really small and weird looking. This time around I pay much more attention to how the plant grows, which shoots I want to keep, and which ones I pluck/cut as soon as I decide I don't want them. I have 4 main branches right now, which should become 16 main branches after second topping. That is if I pluck all the suckers that will grow in following weeks. I will probably decide to leave few of them, which should get total flower count to about 25-30 when time comes. I also know now that this strain does not stretch at all, it just grows a bit during the first two weeks of light switch and that's it. So I will grow it to almost the final size before switching the lights, making damn sure I get at least 15 cm of each branch above the net. In theory this should result in about 25 15-20cm long flowers, fully grown and ripe, which should increase yield significantly. But it's just a hunch, I might suck at this and will get the same yield as the first time, when I had small(ish) flowers since most of the plant was stuck underneath the net with only 5 cm or so sticking out of the net :( I'm still using same nutes for 2 weeks during veg period. Plant does not drink much water, and does not consume too much nutrients from the solution at this point. But it does start to speed up it's food and water uptake, so flowering phase will most likely see one batch of nutes last for one week.

This week went by without added benes. Everything seems OK, no weird color, no weird smell. So far so good. If you look at the photos carefully, you will not only notice how plant overgrew the bucket this week, but also that I've been quite busy trimming old leaves which no longer received much light. This way the center of the plant is more airy, and plant looks better to me. Kind of lean (for an extremely bushy plant). She is starting to drink more now. EC was dropping on daily basis, and by the end of this week she'd drank at least 5 liter of nutes, if not more. I guess it's time to switch to changing nutes on weekly basis, instead of biweekly. I still get a bit eager while tucking under the SCROG net so there are damaged leaves everywhere, but luckily it's just small spots so plants still seems to be fine despite my clumsiness. I really have to work on tucking more slowly and being more careful.

Growth rate has picked up a lot now. I had to tuck her two times this week. For the last tucking, I made a point of taking photo right after tucking, so that I could see how quickly she recovers and continues to grow. It's almost like she likes to be tucked, because afterwards she grows like crazy on all branches, with lots of suckers forming along the branches. This week I had another batch of nutes without benes, and it went well... ish. I do my nute change on last day of each week (it just happened to be Saturday, and I have a lot of time on Saturdays to fiddle with my hobbies), and this week there was the smell. It was very faint, and I couldn't see any brown stuff or slime, but I remembered the smell. It was definitely the smell of root rot, so I did a full bucked wash with soap and water, scrubbed the bucket, airstone and tubing, and made a new batch of nutes with benes. I only used 1g per 15L (1/2 of the recommended dosage), but I think it will do the trick. If the smell comes back after this week, I'll go back to full strength of benes. I am now one week longer in veg phase compared to my first grow, and I think I will keep plant vegging for at least one more week. Like I wrote (too) many times in this diary, last grow was a bit clumsy in a way that only 5-10cm of flowers were above the screen. I was really scared of the stretch, but there was no stretch. Bubba's gift doesn't stretch apparently, it just grows as normal for those 2 weeks when lights are flipped, and this should be just enough time for her to get those flowers 20cm or more above the net.

So this is it for this grow. Next up is Blue Dream from HSO. This was actually a gift seed I got in my order :) The diary will be even shittier that this one, since I'm still not fully able to document the plant daily and need lot of help taking care of the plant. No photos, probably no real data (definitely no pH and EC data). Sorry for that.