Northern Lights Fem

Captain_7 Dropped 2 beans. The plan is to veg for 4 weeks, flower for 8. Top once if they are growing fast enough. Will have one in amended organic soil watering with pH’d fish tank water no/minimal nutes. Second plant in 70% coir / 30% perlite mix with organic bottled nutes based on suggested feeding schedule that the girls like. I want to compare growth rates / yields with time and effort payoffs. Will start counting from the day they pop from the soil. Day 7: first week over. In red cups no signs of roots coming out of the bottom yet. Will transport when these come out. Keeping the box nice and humid and warm and they seem to be responding well. Cheers!

Captain_7 Very rapid growth so far. Very uniform size with these two. Keeping the temp high and humidity constant is definitely helping the growth. Very happy so far. Will start feeding nutes soon. I’m putting one in coco with organic nutes and one in ammended peat soil mix from last grow. Loving it so far. Cheers.

Captain_7 Got everything set up as I want it this week. Have one northern lights in coco being watered automatically twice a day with General hydro nutes. It’s a drain to waste setup with the runoff draining into a tub below. I have a 5 gallon resivoir within mixed nutes that will feed for about 5 days. I wanted to use G.O line but don’t have the time to mix nutes daily. The growth is unreal so far, very vigorous. Topped a day shy of three weeks old. Will have 4 mains and tie them down. The organic in soil is noticeably slower growth and was fading in colour. Got some nutes in her and she seems to have perked up nicely. Loving the setup for now and hope this automatic watering keeps up the good work. Will see how different organic vs. regular nutes affects yield and flavor vs. time spent caring for the plants. Cheers!

Captain_7 Another good week. On #1 I have tied her 4 arms down. Topped two of the 4 at the Ford and will remove the second nodes. Will have 4 mains on each arm with 16 in total. On #2 have topped once at the 4th. I’ve bent her over and will just move arms around to try get as many to the top as possible. Will veg these out for 8 weeks total. Expect some solid plants by the flip. Cheers!

Captain_7 Great week. Was away so they just did their thing. Trimmed off some big fans that were blocking the future bud sites so they can get lots of sun. Some slight burnt tips on the coco plant. I’m not worried about this, I take it as she’s at the limit on how many nutes she can take. Tied down coco to spread her out and she looks solid. Trying to get them nice and big and then will put a screen in place. Auto watering system really came through while I was away with keeping plants well watered and alive. Loving the veg so far, biggest plants I’ve had at 5 weeks in, expecting giants by week 8. Cheers.

Captain_7 Another good week under the belt. Flipped to 12/12 on March 24th. Not much stretch so far but she’s looking happy. Slight signs of pistols so should see some over this next week. HOPe to keep her healthy during flower for a good harvest. Let the fun begin! Cheers!

Captain_7 This plant is an absolute beauty. Very uniform shape and nice flat canopy with 16 decent main colas forming. She’s stretched well, 5 inches in the week, with white hairs starting to pop. With the two afghan hash plants out of the tent there is lots of room. Bud sites are looking good. Trimmed off lower shoots and trimmed some of the inner big fan leaves. Changing the nutes now for flowering. The organic plant is much smaller but is looking solid too.

Captain_7 Great week. I love the automatic watering, very easy to manage. She’s stretched well and is a great size. Buds are starting to form and overall plant looks like she’s in great shape, nice and healthy. The organic plant is much smaller which is a bit of a bummer. She’s budding well but much smaller. I have to say that the smell is almost non existent which is important to some and nice not to have to worry about. Cheers!

Captain_7 Had another great week! These Northern Lights are really taking off with buds forming very well. There is lots of bud growth on the mains with a fair amount of growth quite far down. Changing the nutes slightly with more bloom and Kool bloom to encourage growth. The stretch is over and she’s throwing out white hairs like mad. Some crystals starting to form on the sugar leaves too. Overall she’s looking in great shape. Loving the automatic watering system, makes life very simple (knock on wood)! Happy 4/20 for tomorrow! Cheers!

Captain_7 She just keeps impressing me every day. The buds are getting supper thick. Really starting to pack on some weight it seems. There are plenty of white hairs and getting lots of crystals. Gladly nothing negative to report. Each main bud is about 6 inches long (or deep) by 2 inches wide. All the leaves have a really good deep green, some are getting a little shiny near the top. She looks in great shape and I’m very impressed. Don’t have much time to fuss over her and she just keeps doing her thing! Cheers!

Captain_7 A bit late on the update due to life happening! This week she continues to flower beautifully. White hairs are stating to curl now. I lowered the temp and humidity in the tent because I saw what looked like some preliminary fox-tails coming in. Also want her to start finishing off and try and get some fall colours to creep in. The buds are the biggest I’ve grown. So fat and almost round! The colas are at least 2 inches wide and a solid 4 - 6 deep! The smell is very faint given how far into flower she is! Plan is to give full nutes for week 7 and 8, and depending on how she looks start flushing start of week 9 with harvest shortly after. Cheers!

Captain_7 She’s plugging along very well! She’s still bulking up slowly. The white hairs are starting to curl and very few have turned red. The buds are also getting a bit of colour. Very happy just trying to make it down the home stretch. Definitely have some nute burn showing on some of the leaf tips but it’s not looking like it’s caused any issues. Looks like she could use another two weeks of nutes before a good flush but my harvest by June deadline is getting close. For the organic plant she is struggling partly because of neglect. Part of my experiment was to see which watering method would yield better results with less attention and time spent on garden. Clearly hand watered organic plants need to be monitored daily to thrive and keep nutrients in line. The automated watering on the regular plant is holding up well but I have a feeling the pump is a bit clogged and will need some attention.

Captain_7 This is week 8 of flowering update, pictures taken on day 56, just a late post. She’s starting to finish up slowly now. White hairs are Turing red and curling up. The tricombs are still clear but some aren’t clouding up. Going to cut off all nutes are beginning of week 9 and chop at week 10 if she looks done. Very steady now. Pulled a few nanners off one of the buds, don’t know why they are showing up but it’s minimal so I’m not concerned at all. Also some nute burn on the leaf tips but also not worried. Buds are nice and think, adding lots of crystals. The smell is really cool, not a skunk / tell tale MJ smell at all which is great. Smells just like fresh flowers, so it’s not obvious and doesn’t raise any suspicion. There are hints of purple in the buds showing up now too. Overall very happy and can’t wait to chop! Lots of trimming will be needed. Cheers!

Captain_7 Today marks the end of week 9 of flower. Over the week the majority of the white hairs have turned to red. The tricomes are clouding over with a few clear and most cloudy. No ambers showing yet. Buds are thick and heavy. I’ll be starting the flush now with no more nutes going in from this point. Will probably harvest next weekend if tricombs start to show some ambers. I’m pumped to get to harvest this beast. Cheers!

Captain_7 The grow is now complete!! I took out the clippers yesterday and chopped her down! What a grow!! I am so impressed with how this plant performed. Overall definitely my most successful grow in terms of outcome meeting my expectations. Everything went exactly as planned and the results look very impressive. Now the hard part of drying and curing begins. It’s going to be a challenge to keep these fat buds from molding! Weight Update: after drying for 8 days and stems removed, the harvest weights in at 193 grams, 6.9 oz. I’m very happy with that. The organic plant is about 1 oz. The grow summary: vegged for 5 weeks and flowered for 69 days! Fed with General hydro nutes along the way, adjusting the feeding schedule as needed. I have to give a huge compliment to cocoforcannabis.com, as I followed the feeding schedule and methods that Dr. Coco has formulated (I can’t take any credit) and believe this was a big part of my success as his info seems to be spot on. I’ve posted a picture of his feeding schedule. The setup: The automatic watering system was a dream for the most part. Mixed 5 gallons of nutes every 5 - 7 days, dumped it in the bucked and the pump on a timer did its job. The pump would run be the run-off would drop down into a low profile, under bed storage bin. This worked really well, I scooped out any excess water as and when I needed. It also helped keep the humidity up towards the end. The pump started to struggle at the end because I never cleaned it, so this affected the flow at the very end, luckily it didn’t cause any harm to the plant. I flushed generously for 4 days hand watering until the run-off ppm was steadily 250 - 300, then didn’t give anything 3 days before the chop. The setup: the grow tent did what it needed to, the LED lights worked great (again), and my extraction fan and simple humidifier (fogger in a bucket of water with a fan) really helped keep the ideal conditions in the tent and could be adjusted with ease as the grow progressed. The medium: I have a new appreciation for coco/perlite mix. The difference in vegging time is undeniable that coco is very forgiving and much quicker than soil/peat mixes. I would love to figure out how to do organic nutes in coco on automatic watering cycle but that’s my next challenge. The experiment: I started this grow to compare growth in soil with organic nutes vs coco with regular nutes to compare outcome. In veg the coco was a much faster grower, leading to less training on the organic. The organic was significantly smaller than the reg. due to the fact I wanted to be as hands off as possible, with not mixing nutes every time I needed to water. This led to the organic performing way worse. It’s not a fair comparison in the end as the organic got much less attention than needed but same amount as regular. Conclusion: regular nutes work great and with auto system will perform well. Organic needs more attention to perform well with regular nute mixing and more monitoring on watering schedule. The plants: the Northern Light from Royal Queen Seeds performed beautifully. Very vigorous growth, quick flowering, not very demanding and easy to train. The smell was very light, which is what I needed after a few very skunky grows. There is definitely a nice floral smell to the plant but not the tell tale MJ/skunky smell. I didn’t notice how purple the leaves were until I chopped. I was always looking while the LED lights were on which hides the colour, so this was a cool surprise. The buds are so thick and heavy, tons of crystals and some neat purple showing in the bud. The initial trimming was very easy, it wasn’t too bushy so initial trim was a breeze. Had no issues with bud rot, everything went very smoothly, I did notice a few nanners here and there but nothing to be concerned about. Also saw some foxtails starting but in the end these just made the buds fatter!! After two days of hanging, wet weight is 689 grams, estimating trimmed dry yield around 4.5 oz! I could have flowered for another week to mature more. I saw a handful of Amber tricombs but this will spend a long time curing which will make up for it. Will 100% grow this strain again! By the looks of the buds, it’ll be a heavy yield so I might not need to grow again for quite a while (or I need more friends to share with)! Thank you for following along and reading this lengthy post. Cheers! The smoke: very easy smoke. The taste is musty and very kushy. Solid body buzz, nice and chill / relaxing feeling. Not much happening in my head that’s for sure! Great night time smoke