Living Soil Grow #1 (Sonnenerde)

The first week has officially started, and I didn't do anything fancy. In the first few days, the plants were in the mini grow house, where the humidity was very high at around 90%, and the temperature was about 26°C. On March 4th, 2025, I removed the top of the grow house, so the Jiffys are now standing freely in the grow box. I also started my fans, but not directly aimed at the seedlings rather, slightly above them. I try to keep the daytime temperature above 20°C and around 19°C at night using my mini heater. The lamp started at 20% intensity, and by March 8th, 2025, I had increased it to around 35%. The roots developed very quickly, so I repotted the plants on March 6th, 2025, into 3L pots filled with my specially mixed Sonnenerde. I selected only the four strongest plants. I mixed the soil three days in advance to allow it to develop properly. On the day of repotting, I also added nematodes to prevent fungus gnats, as Sonnenerde is known to attract them. I didn’t water too much the Jiffys remained at a good moisture level. When I repotted the plants, I pre watered each pot with about 300ml of distilled water. Now, I am switching to my mixed water. More details on that next week.

Now we’ve reached week 2, and so far, everything is going smoothly. The plants are growing very well. The only noticeable issue is that the Tangie has some small spots on its larger leaves. However, I believe this happened early on and is not a sign of any deficiency, as the plant continues to grow well without any further symptoms. The front Sour Diesel is growing a bit slowly, but that’s not a big concern. This week, I started mixing the reverse osmosis (RO) water with Cal-Mag and pH down. The pH level was around 6.2, and the EC was about 0.2 I'll gradually increase it over time. I also built a new setup to maintain higher humidity, as you can see in the pictures. Additionally, I covered the soil with straw to prevent it from drying out too quickly. Other than that, nothing major has changed this week. The light intensity has reached around 45% by the end of the week. Just to mention, the fans have been running the entire time, cycling on every 30 minutes for about 15–30 minutes.

The grow is going well so far progress is a bit slow, but steady, and I’ve been learning a lot along the way. Week 3 was a bit more up and down. During the first few days, the plants showed very slow growth, especially the flowers, and I’m still not sure why. I did everything I could to prevent fungus gnats, but unfortunately, they still showed up. That was really disappointing, as I felt there wasn’t much more I could have done to stop them. I’ve ordered more nematodes and hope that will reduce their numbers. I also removed the straw covering the soil to keep the surface from staying constantly wet, making it less inviting for the gnats to lay eggs. One major issue this week has been with the Purple Haze plant it started showing some strange yellowing, and I’m not entirely sure what’s causing it. In response, I brewed my first compost tea using Lurpe Healthy Harvest and watered the plant with it on March 21st. It already looks a bit better, but I’m still unsure if it’s really helping. Next week, I plan to top the plants.

I haven’t posted in a while because this grow isn’t going the way I had hoped. I’m facing the same problems as in the previous run, even though I started out in 20L pots from the beginning this time so I don’t think the issue is due to pot size. I can’t say exactly what the problem is, but I’m pretty sure it’s an issue with the soil, since I’ve adjusted all the other parameters. Honestly, I don’t have the time or motivation right now to keep troubleshooting this, especially since I already tried figuring it out during the last grow. So in a way, I’m giving up on this run but I’ll still let it finish and see what comes out of it. In the meantime, I’ve already started preparing for the next run, where I want to try out no-till growing. But before diving into that, I want to take some time to really learn about it instead of jumping in blind. I’ll be sharing everything once that new run starts. This week, I transplanted and slowly started feeding with BioBizz again that’s what I did last time too, and it helped a bit back then. I also top the plants.

Not much happened this week. The Purple Haze stretched quite a bit, while the others stayed rather short and bushy. So I raised the other plants to even things out. I also increased the light intensity to 80%.

This is the last week of veg. At the end of the week, I transplanted into 9L pots and turned the light up to 100%. I also removed the weak little Sour Diesel since it wasn’t looking good at all, and it didn’t make much sense to take it into flower. I added a net to help keep the Purple Haze under control, and I’m hoping the other two will stretch a bit more and catch up.