Blueberry Banana Auto - Living Soil

Aircoholic This lady is off to a great start! She germinated on Day 4 after planting her directly in the soil. She immediately got rid of the Seed cap and opened her leaves up to the light. Only water for now, and only tiny amounts, while at the same time trying not to let the soil dry out too much.

Aircoholic She's slowly but surely growing up. So far, there's not much for me to do, except watering. It can take a moment, until the roots reached the bottom of the 22l pot.

Aircoholic She's doing great so far. She's growing nicely, not showing any signs to worry about. She's starting to develop some internodal spacing - will do some topping, once she's developed far enough. For now she's happy with the nutrients from the living soil, plain water and a splash of CalMag once in a while.

Aircoholic She was ready to get topped! She looks so healthy and vital with enough internodal spacing - so I decided her 3-week anniversary after germinating is a good moment to take her top off. As a beautiful surprise, she has triple stalks at the fourth node, her new top, which will look super pretty when going into LST camp! Also, her lower stalks are already growing strong and long, giving me the feeling, she'll be a bushy lady.

Aircoholic She continues to grow super nice, and I'm incredibly happy with her so far. She has reacted super well to topping, at least it looks like to me. There are a few pistils growing near the Topping site, but I guess that could also be genetics rather than a stress response. She's very vital, with heaps of new growth, looking like she's getting ready to stretch out soon. Her tripple crown already looks gorgeous. Switched from normal tap water (pH around 8) to RSO water, with a little tap water mixed in. Living Soil with Terra Preta is pretty good at buffering the pH of tap water, mine just has a pH that's borderline high - hopefully this will help her development down the line.

Aircoholic Blueberry Banana Auto looks fantastic - so far she's developing really well, responded great to LST, grows a nice even canopy and is right in early flower. No issues, nothing that doesn't look right, nothing to worry - so far! Water has been adjusted to 1/3 tap water (pH 8.3) and 2/3 RSO water, since my last grow (only tap water) had rather disappointing yields, so I'm doing this mix as an experiment - all for science!

Aircoholic She's doing really well, despite a decent Nitrogen excess. If I understand correctly, the pH of the water is actually important for living soil after all. With living soil, everybody seems to repeat the same mantra, that you don't have to worry about feeding or regulating pH, just use (unchlorinated) tap water and the soil will buffer, and the microbes will be happy. But maybe that's not true. The rabbit hole I've been to, suggests, that living soil doesn't really like water with a pH of 7 and above, as this will shift the microbiome in the soil and aid Nitrogen uptake (slightly simplified version), leading to dark green leaves, canoeing of the leafs, clawing, tired and overfed leafs early in the evening etc. All symptoms, my last couple of grows, all showed to some extent. I'm only feeding RSO water with a pH of 6,1-6,2, to help the pH of the soil to slowly come down to a healthier level - at least I hope that's how this works. But yeah, other than that, I did some light lollipopping, while she's in stretch mode.

Aircoholic She seems to react quite well to RO water and mild ACT. Her leaf color is turning brighter green, her leafs are in a more upwards pointing position - praise the LED-light! 😉 RH is a little low, so the VPD is on the lower end of the spectrum - hope to be able to find a permanent fix for that issue. Her stretch seems to slow down, her buds are slowly gaining size. So far so good!

Aircoholic Flowering has been fully established, her buds are growing, she starts to smell nicely, but also to show some problem signs. To address some light discoloring and interveinal chlorosis, I added some CalMag to the water. Next on the to-do list, make some proper ACT and feed it in the next watering cycle.

Aircoholic She's showing some signs of stress and nutrient issues, that I tried addressing with some effective microorganisms and algae extract. My attempts to brew an active ACT have failed so far, due to some misinformation. Took me long enough to figure that out. Will try one last time, hoping to give her a bit of a boost for the late flower period, to get her buds to put some weight on. So far so good though.

Aircoholic Top-Dressing the soil with worm castings about a week ago did the trick - her buds gained quite some mass, with lots of new sugar leafs, thanks to the Nitrogen in the worm castings, which also led to her dark green color. Gave some ACT as a last nutritional boost, from now, she will only get RO water. Should be about 2 weeks left for her.