Aurora Borealis

My S/O had fond memories for Northern Lights strains from the past. So we picked up some seeds and decided to let one go and see how she stacks up.

Ms. Aurora has the benefit of being in a humid seedling dome. Most of my other girls didn't get this luxury, but it's been cold and dry and I thought I'd try it out to see if it made a difference. It does, I'd recommend picking one up if you are in a dry area or a cool area. I probably won't need it in the summer time, but in the winter it's defiantly helping.

Ms Borealis has been under the humid dome and grew like a champ. At the very end of the week she got topped to start her mainline. Starting to increase the nutes on her as she's growing well.

Not sure how I missed taking pictures of her, but I could only find 1 picture for this week. My NL is doing well, she took to her topping like a champ and is growing fast.

My Aurora is doing ok, growing well but I think I need to step up the nutes a bit more as she's showing a bit of deficiency on the older leaves. Going well and she's now repotted into her forever home, a 16 gallon pot.

Northern Lights got put into the 4x4 tent this week. Now that she is in there and has a proper drip tray she got a full flush of the soil and measurements taken. PH was out and the PPM was high, but that's now been corrected. Lights are high up right now (2'-3') as I have some sunflower in the tent as I wait for the weather to warm up enough for them to go outside.

Miss Aurora is doing very well, she got topped again and is now up to 4 nodes. She has a few little marks of deficiency on her leaves, not 100% sure why but I’ve upped the nutes a bit. It’s spring Ms. Aurora is sharing the tent with some distant cousins for the next couple weeks as we wait for spring to arrive.

Ms. Aurora is doing well, trimmed off some of the older leaves that had some spots. Her sunshine sunflower got removed from the tent and some more peppers got put in that were previously with Ms. Buddha. She is bushy and I have to trim the leaves as they get all balled up with each other, you can see how dense with leaves she gets in just a few days. I still have her at 4 nodes, I'm using my stainless steel pins and training her right now to follow the circumference of the pot. I'm trying to decide how I was her main-lining/LST to go. I'm not sure right now as I'd like to maximize the tent space. She's ready to split to 8 nodes any day now, I'm thinking that I might top her for 8 but leave some secondary branches on the 4 node main to give me 16 nodes total.?.?.? not sure yet. Ms. Aurora is feeding well and I've upped her nutes again as she is eating really well, run off is low, and there is the odd little deficiency showing up on some of the older leaves.

Ms. Aurora has started to really hit her stride. To be honest I’ve been feeding and watering her regularly but haven’t been doing a lot of trimming or training, just been so busy with people visiting, work deadlines, and cleaning/fixing up the house/gardens. She has really started to bush up, looks like a 70’s Penthouse spread with the bush she has going on. Very dense and thick and I’ve been pinning her 4 way mainline split around the pot for the time being. I need to address her mainline spread here soon, I’ll have to get on it next week. I’ve attached a feed chart, April 6th is end of Week 9. She’s been feeding really well, I’ve been more or less feeding/watering her every 4 days but the run off is less now and it’s starting to be not enough to accurately measure so I think I’m going to increase that to feed/water every 3 days from now on. I was planning on giving Ms. Bikini (Atomic Bomb) more room in the tent as she is the highest THC content of the current grow, but she is just not filling in quick enough to justify the extra room. The Ms. Aurora (Northing Lights) is outpacing her in growth and I think it’s probably the wiser choice to give her the extra room instead. Ms. Aurora is the only Indica I have growing right now so a bit more of her would be welcome as well.

Ms. Aurora needed a big trim, I neglected trimming her for weeks and now I’m paying the price. This is really the first time I’ve neglected trimming a plant, usually I’m constantly trimming and tying her back to make her into the shape I wanted. With Ms. Aurora I wasn’t sure how big I wanted to let her get or how I wanted to place her in the tent so I just ignored her. I really just did a first pass on the trimming and tying down with her this week. She got over grown and a bunch of branches grew long spaces between nodes and very thing branches that won’t be any good until they thicken up. So I kind of did a 1/2 measure on the trim, took it back, opened it up, and now I’ll let her veg in and see what ends become the winners. Other then that she is doing very well, eating good, and seems happy.

Ms. Aurora is kind of boring compared to Ms. Bikini, because she is just growing like made and taking over the tent. She’s definitely battling the Naughty Nurse (Painkiller) for space and would just run over Ms. Bikini girl who is injured if I let her. Ms. Aurora’s stalk is really starting to thicken up now. I find that it’s usually between week 10-12 that the girl all of a sudden puts a lot of growth into the main stalk/branches of the plant and really thickens them up. It must be some sort of maturity point for them, I’m sure a botanist would probably know what this is and probably have a term for it. The swelling on the stalk is amazing to see and once it starts it continues to the end. Last week she got a heavy prune and you can see at the start of this week she is already back to her full thick green glory. I gave her another heavy prune this week to try and keep her in check and allow all the tops to get light as they like to cover each other up with fan leaves. She is doing well, she just wants to go to flower now and I need her to hold station to make some lighting changes and allow my Bikini Girl to heal.

So I finally was able to switch Ms. Borealis over to flower. This took a lot of work as I needed/wanted to get my second 2’x4’ frame light working with a full set of LED strips and a second 240w driver on it. I also wanted to update the old 2’x4’ back to a full 20 strips as I robbed some, and I needed to update them both with moving all the AC to DC power driver off of the lights to a remote panel outside the grow room. Moving these driver will help to reduce the heat produced in the room as these drivers produce a lot of heat. Moving that heat outside the room will allow the tents to stay more stable in temperature and the room will need less A/C cooling (lower electricity bill). I gave her a major defoliation on F4, the pictures are pre and post defoliation (about 2 hours apart). She is eating lots and has spread out a little more then I wanted her too. Little concerned I may have to many nodes on the go, but hey I might as well swing for the fence right? Her nutes are now more complicated with the addition of the transition to bloom nutes.

Ms. Borealis is in week 2 of flower and just doing her best to stretch and grow as many branches as possible. I’m doing little session to try and keep the low bud sites that won’t get like pruned off and taking the fan leaves off that are blocking or poking adjacent buds/nodes. Dropped the FloraNova grow out of the nutes schedule, added more FloraNova Bloom, and starting to add a bit of Liquid Kool Bloom.

Ms Borealis is doing very well, she should be near the end of her flower week 3 stretch now. She stretched a lot more then I expected and I've had to adjust the lights up a couple times. I've been keeping up with pruning off the lower bud sites but wow has it stretched and made more. I think I'm going to keep her pretty much at this amount of bud sites, some bud sites are a little lower then I'd like but the flower time is short at 49 days, so I don't want to prune too much off as she doesn't have a lot of weeks to make more. Main node count is at 46 right now and am planning to leave it here unless there is a very good reason to due to crowding.

Ms Borealis is getting big and it's getting tough to take good pictures of her. She just won't fit into frame well. Growing well and the buds are swelling nicely, but I feel like the buds should be bigger with her short flower time. But maybe that's just me wishing for the stars. Rearranged/changed the dehumidifier setup this past week and now the humidity is constantly down in the lower 40's or high 30's as opposed to the high 40's low 50's I was having before. Not much of a deal for Ms borealis as she isn't dense enough yet to need the lower humidity but it was needed for Ms. Monk in the 2'x4' tent that is also in the room.

Ms Aurora grew a FUCKING Banana!!! what a bitch. but to be honest it's a bit my fault. It's end of May and we are starting to see hot sunny days in the ~27-29C range and the A/C is having issues keeping up. The room is holding around 27C but the tents are a little warmer then that with the lights on. So I'm guessing it's excessive heat that has caused it.... I'll blame me instead of the genetics. My grow room is inside my detached garage, I have a little insulated room in the back and I'm using that to grow in. Then garage itself is not insulated and as such gets super hot with the sun beating down on it during hot days. I have a "portable floor" A/C and I run vents into the garage for the cooling of it. But the garage gets hot and then it can't cool well enough, plus the heat of the garage, resulting in room temps that are too hot. I've got a ducted venting fan sitting right now I'm going to try to install it in the garage to help move some air through it, if I can keep the garage cooler I can keep the room cooler and I notice if I open the garage door and cool the garage the grow room drops by the same amount of degrees. Other then that she is growing well, still little on the small side for the buds but doing well and she is holding up her cola's just fine right now with no support.

My dehumidifier has been a PITA and not working correctly, it's been turning off intermittently and the humidity has been spiking into the high 50's. I've now got a 2nd dehumidifier in the room. I haven't had this issue before but I've never had this many big girl in the room at once. All pictures from F41 I've now installed a ducted fan in the garage roof peak. it's push the hot air out and I have a small fan in the only window pulling cooler air in. This had dramatically dropped the temp in the garage, right now we are 24-26C during the day sunny and bright and this is enough to keep the garage under 30C and the A/C can do it's job in the grow room to keep it down around 24C. I'm hoping this will be enough but it depends what the weather has in store for us. Ms. Borealis is doing well, her but are much smaller then I expected though, maybe I've just been spoiled with the massive bud from my last grow and this is just more realistic.

Well here we go.... heading into the home stretch... or should I say home swell? My Borealis beauty is finally starting to put on a bit of weight. Her buds have always been a bit on the tiny side and it's nice to see them get some plumpness to them. Canuk seeds says to harvest on day F49, the trichome shots are from F49 and I decided that I want to let her mature a bit more. I'd like a bit more amber and she has been putting on more weight in the last 7-10 days so I figure I'll let her go a bit longer. Sorry folks this harvest has been delayed a few days, probably pull her mid next week. She got fed reduced feed on her first feeding of the week, but then it's just been water after that. I have attached the FW3-FW7 feed calendar.

Ms. Borealis is done her final week, it's day F54 and she drops today. All the pictures were taken within a couple hours of her dropping. She's a bit leggy but strong enough to holder herself up, she didn't need any support except for the odd one or two. I'm glad I let her go 5 days longer then recommended, she's got a bit more amber in her now and she definitely plumped up some in those extra 5 days (5 more days is about 10% long in flowering for a girl that is only suppose to go 49 days). Was tempted to let her go a couple days longer but I couldn't due to other commitments. She smells lovely, like a fresh piney spring rain, it's wonderful. She took up ~40-45%'ish (it's hard to have an exact number) of the 4x4 tent and the lights in the tent were around 500w for the enter tent (~200w to 225w for her area) at the start of flowering and got raised each week until they were at 800w for the entire tent (~320w-360w for her area) for weeks 4, 5, and part of 6. During weeks 6 I turned the lights to 500-600w for the entire tent (~200w to 270w for her area) due heat issues caused by the high outside ambient temperatures that the a/c was struggling to keep up with. So she didn't have consistent powered lights, and she was showing heat stress with the taco'ed leaves and banana's (hence why I turned the power down on the lights). So her flower time varied from 200w to 360w in her area. As such I've labeled her power for this grow as 350w, I broke it down like this, total tent at 800w max, 350w for Northern Lights, 250w for Painkiller XL, and 200w for Atomic Bomb = 800w tent total. This is marking the flower time as the highest wattage the Northern Lights even though she only received that wattage for 2.5 weeks (~17 days) of her 8 week (~54 day) flowering time. So the numbers are going to make her performance look a little worse then it actually was.

Miss Borealis did very well in a tough situation with the heat. It was frustrating because I bought a new A/C, put in a new insulated floor, ran in new power lines, and rejigged my air flow system to help better handle the heat. I did this in the fall/winter after my first grow was harvested. This did help, a lot, I didn't have any breakers flip like I did last fall and I never had a temp spike into the 30+C range, so those are all very positive. I did end up putting a venting fan near the peak of the garage roof as the heat was building up in the garage and I needed to get that out. This was my first grow where I had 4 plants that were all large producers in the room at the same time. The humidity these 4 produced together was more then we expected and realistically we needed 2 dehumidifiers to keep the humidity in the right range. Mainly because if we ran 1 dehumidifier it would periodically turn off to cool down and the 4 plants would spike the humidity in that 15 min and then take another 45 min to recover from the stoppage. Having two in there meant that one was always working and we wouldn't get a spike. Northern Lights was a nice once to grow, we got this single seed to try and it's really blown us away. I wasn't really looking to grow it because I feel like the Northern lights name has been overused and there isn't any continuity to the strain, but I'm now very happy I did the grow. It performed very well and I'll be looking for some more Canuk Northern Lights seeds to grow in the future.