The Sweetest Experience

Pretty uneventful so far, the seedlings are growing. Humidity could be higher, I guess. Light is at 40%. I am planning on moving the plants over into the Autopots maybe in the coming week, maybe the week after. In the green box are still some clones from the previous run, which are just being kept alive at the moment in case one of them is a keeper, but they will move to a different place when the seedlings are transplanted into the Autopots.

Transplanted them into the AutoPots this week, humidity could be higher. Maybe I can turn on the reservoir next week already.

I've been a bit hands off this week again. The Black Jack and NYC started to get a little yellow at the bottom, so I could have probably started feeding more a couple of days earlier, but I didn't notice until I was ready to turn on the AutoPots. The reservoir was filled with 20l, and I can already see a growth spike starting. I'll probably top them all in the next few days and flip to flower shortly after.

On the first day of this week, I topped the plants after the 5th node. 3 days later I switched to 12/12. The reservoir wasn't quite empty yet, so I didn't fill it this week, but I probably will at the start of the next one. Plants are growing quickly now, the yellowing in the BJ and NYC has also pretty much recovered, nutes seem to be fine at the moment. I fear they might grow taller than I'd like them to, but I guess we'll see. I just hope I don't have to put in the net this time, as I like to reserve the option of taking them out of the tent. I also bought an RO filter, which I am probably going to use the next time I fill the reservoir.

On the second day of this week, I filled the reservoir again. This time I have an RO filter available to deal with the tap water (EC 0.8mS). I mixed 10l of RO and 10l of tap, which netted a pH of 7 and an EC of just below 0.4. But of course I had to add more CalMag to make up for the filtered calcium. Even after adding all nutrients, the EC was still just shy of 1.5mS which surprised me a little, I was expecting to land closer to 1.7mS, so I am going to increase it a bit next time, probably to around 1.9mS. The plants are in stretch, and they are indeed stretching quite a bit. NYC and SAD are the tallest right now, although the BJ has been catching up a bit recently. They are between around 45cm and 58cm tall, so overall not too much of a difference, which is also good, but I need to keep an eye on it as I would like to keep them below 70cm. I have no plans to put a net in place at the moment, but this depends on the growth of the next week. All of the plants have been showing preflowers around day 7-9 of flower. No signs of pollen sacs so far. Aside from one calcium-deficiency-lookalike type of leaf issue, which I suspect is something else, ther are no issues whatsoever, which makes me happy.

Eventful week. The plants just would not stop stretching. All of them have gained more than 200% in height. At least the SAD seems to have come to a stop at 74cm, and the CBD, which used to be the shortest one for a long time, has now overtaken it, standing, and still growing, at 78cm. As of day 17F, the NYC also looks like it is finally coming to a stop at 88cm. This one I already bent once slightly, but not actually supercropped. Last but not least, BJ is the second tallest, also having taken over the SAD, at 82cm. If that's not enough, I also found some pollen sacs on the SAD, which I removed. I counted only 4 of them, we'll see if that was the end of it. Nutrients-wise, since 2 plants were entering generative phase I, I tried mixing in 50% flores and vega, also increased calmag. Speaking of calmag, I noticed some cal-issues starting on some of the faster growing plants, so I will probably have to increase it again early next week. The plants were also all defoliated and had lower branches removed at the end of the week on day 17F. With all this stretch, I am wondering if this is just genetics or whether I should consider doing something differently next time to prevent a big stretch, e.g. 12/12 fs, or schwazzing. I don't want to do LST or ScroG. The lights are currently set at 60%, giving a DLI of 27 on the edges and 35 or higher on the highest tips. Some are already too close to the lights, I am considering supercropping them in the next days. Oh! And they started smelling.

This week Bj, NYC, and CBD continued stretching. At this point I have pretty much reached my limit. I can get a few more cm if I get different light hangers, but it's a bit annoying. Since at first only the NYC was over 90cm, I supercropped the plant on day 19F. A couple of days later, the BJ and CBD had taken over in height and were also around 90cm tall. On the last day of that week, day 25F, the 3 tall plants all were around 97cm. I'm not sure I want to supercrop them (again?), it looks like they have almost come to a stop now. The light is too close now, so I am considering switching the light hangers instead. I increased the feeding this week and we are at an EC of 2.0 now.

This week I didn't spend much time checking in on the tent, but when I went to check the reservoir, which I expected to be empty, I realized that the system was clogged. About half of the nutrient solution was still in the tank. I opened the tent to check the moisture of the substrate. It was pretty dry already and the plants were showing some heat stress and the burnt tips had gotten somewhat worse. Being too close to the light didn't help either. They weren't hanging yet, but they needed to drink. It was clogged in a small part of piping between the tank and the tap, which I realized, was never actually cleaned before. And I did have some organic compounds in there a rather long time ago, which probably caused this in the first place. I unclogged it within a few minutes, and bought some Canna D Block to try out. I will probably refill the reservoir again early next week.

The plants look like vegetative phase II is starting, so I've added PK 13/14 to the nutrient solution this week. I have also replaced the light hangers and got the distance back to around 20-40cm. The CBD's leaves are curled up quite badly up top, but there isn't much I can do at this point. The other 2 tall plants don't seem to struggle as much with the light, at least judging by the leaves. The tall ones all have some burnt tips up top, which I assume is also partly related to the light - and maybe the clogging related dryback we had last week. For now everything seems to be back on track. I expect the plants to take at least another 3-5 weeks.

The journey continues, nothing much has changed. The Chem Beyond Diesel is taco-ing hard, probably due to the light being close, but since the NYC and BJ are the same height and are not taco-ing, this one might also just be a little more sensitive (?). The BJ and NYC are fox-tailing quite a bit, so the plants could also just be showing different reactions to the same stress? Either way, there isn't much I can do at this point. The humidity is a bit high and I have defoliated some more to help bring it down. I might have to consider some other options, too. I switched from Hesi Root Complex to Canna Rhizotonic now (because my bottle was empty and I wanted to try something new), and also added some D-Block to my reservoir to help prevent clogging. The plants are supposed to be 8-9 weekers, but they look more like at least 11 right now. I guess we will see.