First Attempt DWC - Bubba Kush

StonedSage Week one was the clone's roots finding the water. Healthy root growth coming from all 4. Topped 3 of the 4 plants and knocked off a few fan leaves to allow more direct sunlight at branching locations. Going to run existing nutrients for an additional week as there wasn't much uptake for week 1 given roots having to establish.

StonedSage End of week 2. Plants are really taking off now. Left tote a little bigger than the right one. I have to imagine that has to do with size of initial clones since I took them all from the same plant. Hopefully they balance out in size. Used some LST clips on 3 of the 4 plants. Leaving one without to see if it makes a meaningful difference. Hoping they are developed enough for scrog net by end of week 3.

StonedSage Plants nearly drank the tote dry! Wanted to wait and see how low on water I could get before there were negative ramifications with the plants. Made it the full week with maybe a quarter inch of water left. Looks like that was enough to keep the plants healthy, but not a practice I intend to make a habit. With the light intensity increasing as I go, the totes will empty faster so I will need to be sure to replenish the water most likely midweek. Plants bushed out like crazy this week and I defoliated some as the week went. Still the same height though. Knocked off as much as I could from the base to about 5 inches up to allow for improved airflow beneath the canopy and hopefully encourage upward growth since it won't have to spend energy maintaining that lower half. Installed the scrog net as well. Still a lot of holes to fill in. Knocked off a bunch of fan leaves to expose more sites to grow up through the mesh. Hoping to see satisfactory progress by the end of week 4 so I can switch to flower. Having a lot of fun with DWC so far!

StonedSage Constant daily defoliation during week 4. Doesn't seem to matter how many I cut off, there's a million more to take their place. Stretching the plant's footprint to try and fill out as much of the trellis net as possible. I am satisfied with the progress though to end veg, so week 5 will be the first week of flower! I've read/seen (don't remember) that I can keep bending the plant to fill in the trellis netting for the first couple weeks, so I am going to keep doing that and try and take advantage of the stretch. Kind of a boring update for you all this week, but unless I messed up the flowering nutrients formula, next week should be more fun.

StonedSage Still filling in the scrog net, but it is starting to look a lot fuller. Seeing first pistil hairs! Should be entering the fun stage soon. 😊

StonedSage Starting to see some bud beginnings! Week 6 was all about the stretch. Hoping they will slow down with that in week 7, we'll see. Ideally I won't have to do any high stress training to keep the plants out of the light. I've been letting the reservoirs run really low again, there appears to be no negative effects to the plants as long as some water is still there. I'm playing with fire a bit, and the water consumption will drop faster I'd imagine the more weight the plants start putting on, so I will need to for sure do a mid week top off moving forward. Just curious if leaving the water levels low like I have been doing is allowing for faster oxygen absorption and quicker plant growth? Could be something maybe, could be me trying to find an upside to my during week laziness probably.

StonedSage I let the water get stupid low again... and everything is fine! It's going to bite me at some point I would imagine, but I've been checking the water levels, and while low, there's enough there to sustain the plants. I'm hoping the exposure to oxygen from the water being low is worth the risk. The last two pics show what I mean. Roots are stained from the FloraMicro, but as far as I can see are otherwise healthy. I've been getting by with just a weekly refill of the totes with one 5 gallon bucket each. Buds are starting to resin up a bit! Still stretching some, but not near as much as the first two weeks of flower. Hoping to continue to see bud size increase and a stronger terpene profile develop, but there's plenty of time left for that.

StonedSage Sticking with running the res dry during the week. So far so good. Just topped her off for week 9. It's looking wild in there right now! Smells are coming in finally, very sweet and citrus-y to my nose so far. Starting to see some buds plumping! Did one of the heaviest defoliations yet to expose more bud sites to the light. Judging from the pics, they took to it well and it was the right call. From what I'm reading I should have probably done it the week prior. The stretch seems to have calmed down thankfully. I still have another level I can go up on the light, but I don't feel like I really need to right now. Will likely save that for the last two weeks.

StonedSage These are starting to smell very sweet/candied. Ran the totes down on water again, still no negative side effects. They still seem to be putting on plenty of weight, so I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing for now.

StonedSage I was out of town this week, so it was more neglected than usual. It looks like from the browning on some of the leaves I need to up the CalMag. Also going to keep the reservoir higher with a midweek refill to make sure that isn't an issue. I don't think it is though as the right reservoir still had a decent amount. Also fully vacuumed out the reservoir water instead of topping off. Between these fixes, hoping the leaves can rebound and it doesn't get any worse. Good week for bud weight gain though!

StonedSage Looks like the fan leaf damage from last week is a bit worse this week. Wondering if my CalMag dosage is too low, so bumping that up for the coming week. Outside of that, buds smell incredible. They have a sweet melon/cantaloup scent that is great!

StonedSage Well, what I thought was a nutrient issue I believe turned out to be a too much light issue. Kinda clicked when only the top fan leaves were exhibiting the "deficiency". I turned down the EVO 6 to the 8 setting instead of the 9 I have had it at in the AC Infinity app. Damage is done though for sure on the fan leaves. Luckily the buds themselves don't look light burned. Still smells great and looking at the trichomes and the fade that is still happening, I think I'm getting close to harvest. Want a few more ambers before I chop.