First proper grow attempt (outdoor)

April 3rd Saw the first bit of green coming out of the ground on day 3. Weather has been pretty cloudy the last couple of days, but the days before that were sunny so I moved them outside during the day. Been reading up on nutrients and decided to give Plagron products a try. I'll be using: - Plagron Royal Mix soil - Power Roots - Vita Race - Alga Grow - Alga Bloom - Sugar Royal - Green Sensation Only took decent pictures on day 6. Laughing Buddha is a bit behind on the day I took pictures but has caught up by now. Also changed my mind on building a planter. Using cement tubs will be a lot cheaper plus I can move those around if I want. Looking at 45L or 65L (about 12 and 17 gallons) tubs now. Not quite sure if 45L is enough. I also realised that because I am using heavily fertilized soil I will have to let my plants get a bit bigger before I pot them in there, meaning I will have to pot them twice because the cups will be too small soon. March 26th I put the seeds in the ground on march 25th, one day ago on day of writing. I think I'll be germinating and growing them indoor in the windowsill untill somewhere early May, depending on the weather. After that I will move them to the roof terrace, which is quite small so I will have to think about how I will use my space efficiently. It also tends to get quite warm up there mid-summer (35-40°C (95-104°F)) so I might have do think of something for that too. Most of this grow will be pretty experimental for me. I germinated 3 White Widow Autoflowers in soil last year (outdoor) in an impulse but didn't bother with nutrients or anything. Planning to do things differently this year. I am thinking about building a planter on the roof terrace for my photoperiod seeds, but I'm not quite sure now much soil they need. Autoflowers will be in 10-12 Liter pots.

April 3rd Forecast for the rest of the week is pretty bad without much sunshine. Just going to keep them in the windowsill and have them catch as much sunlight as possible. I received the nutrients today, but the soil was still pretty damp so I'm waiting one more day before I start giving nutrients. Liberty Haze and LSD are 2cms ahead of the other plants but I treated them all exactly the same. Maybe just strain genetics? Not expecting a lot of growth action this week with the forecast we had. As I write this I'm starting to wonder if I should give less nutrients when they don't receive as much sunlight, but I suppose it just takes longer untill they need watering again. Gonna read up on that.

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- April 21st, Day 27 - Forgot to bring the plants inside last night. Temperatures dropped to 10°C (50°F). Hope one cold night doesn't stun them or anything. - April 19th, Day 25 - Changed all the pots today to give them a bit more space, but not their final pots yet. They look much better already though. Contacted Plagron's helpdesk asking if it should be OK to transfer young plants into their Royal Mix or if they would burn. Expect I'll have an answer after Easter. Took a train to Amsterdam to stack up for 4/20 because I'm getting bored with the stains I can get around here. Dropped by Barney's Farm to pick up a gram of some of the strains I'm growing to sort of sample them. Super friendly and helpful staff btw. - April 17th, Day 23 - Done with exams and deadlines so time for an update. Overall everything seems fine. Did notice some leaf deformities on day 19 though. I've added pictures to week 4. Not sure if these are just innocent mutations or if they need to be looked at. Tangerine Dream seems to be showing some burnt leaf tips which makes me wonder if I'm overfeeding. Been adding just under what the grow schedule suggested at first but started to reduce based on the burnt leaves and a tip from the comments. We'll see what happens. I want to move then to bigger pots soon but between sunny days it still gets quite cold so they still have to fit in the windowsill. Think I'll change pots this Saturday if I can find the time. Also planted some fennel and other herbs known for attracting ladybugs because I had problems with aphids last year. Don't have sunflowers this year either so that might help aswell.

- April 24th, Day 30 - pH meter just came in with the mail which is one day earlier than expected. Calibrated and took measurements right away. My tapwater measures at a 8.2 pH, which is even higher than I expected. What's confusing me is that the soil measures at 6.2-6.9. To be sure I flushed two of the pots for more measurements. - Runoff water flushed with the 8.2 pH tap water I've been giving them from the start: pH 6 - 6.7 differing between pots. - Runoff water flushed with tap water corrected to pH 6.0: pH 5.9 - 6.1 This had me wondering if - just like the Royal Mix I'll be using - the Pokon Seed & Cutting soil is self-regulating organic soil. Couldn't find the answer to this anywhere so I'm assuming the answer is no. Soil pH should be at 5.2-6.2 though. What I did find out is that it has nutrients in it for 2 months so maybe that's why my LSD isn't doing too well. Might try not adding Alga Grow anymore, just Power Roots. So now I have a lot more data but I don't really know what to make of it. Bonzai: I was also doing a side project for fun, shaping an unfeminised trash seed I didn't know much about into a bonzai. Shaping was going fine, but today noticed that it was showing male pre-flower so I cut it down. Might try again and keep a separate diary for it. - April 23rd, Day 29 - We've had great weather the last couple of days. Plants are starting to look fuller but they are not growing much in hight. As I mentioned last week I've had to postpone the purchase of a pH meter but I have one coming in the mail this Thursday. I've checked online for data on my local tabwater and the pH should be at 7,03 - 7,74 which I assume is what's causing me problems. Starting Thursday I'll be adjusting the pH of my water, but I am not sure if I can bring it to 6.0 straight away or if I should do it in steps of say 0.2 I'll be using Plagron Royal Mix as soil for my final pots. With this soil I should not have to control the pH of my water but I probably will just to be sure after this bad start. Autoflowers: - CBD Lemon Potion Showing its first pistils. It's still only 10cm tall and I expected this to take another week. - Tangerine Dream Not showing any pistils yet. I was a bit worried about this one at first but it's looking quite healthy now. When I germinated the Autoflowers late March I realized this was pretty early for Autoflowers in the Dutch climate, but I did this on purpose to at least have a small harvest somewhere around early June. I'll be germinating two more seeds around the time I'm harvesting my Autoflowers for a second harvest. I still have one seed of both Critical Kush Auto, Blue Mammoth Auto and Malana Bomb Auto from Barney's Farm. Fotoperiod: - Liberty Haze Has been ahead of the rest from the start, but it's really starting to show now. - Laughing Buddha Did seem kind of fragile at first, but is looking alright now. - LSD Has been looking kind of weak from the beginning. Since week 2 it has been bending over under its own weight and bending almost 45° in a soft breeze. Weak root base? When I checked on it and took pictures this morning it had turned to a pale shade of green and was showing burnt tips on the lower leafs. Just came home and it doesn't look much better.

- May 2nd, day 37 - Changed all the pots today. Using Plagron Royalmix as soil. Tangerine Dream is now in her final 12L Gronest air pruning pot. Laughing Buddha, Liberty Haze and CBD Lemon Potion are in 3L pots. Still keeping pots small because I can't move them outside yet. I will just plant them straight into these 3L pots next time though. - May 1st, day 36 - Apart from LSD all of the plants have started to look so much better over the past week. LSD only started to look worse by the day so I've pulled her. Luckily Barney's Farm has offered to send me some new seeds so I'll be germinating another LSD as soon as it comes in the mail I flushed the pots with 6.5 pH water after I received my pH meter last week and I have only given them 1ml/L Power roots and 2ml/L Alga grow in 1 watering out of 3 since the flush. They seem to love it and are growing healthy and bushy fast now. I won't be home for a couple of days but I am going to transfer them to their second-last pots as soon as I get back. Feel like I already should have but I simply couldn't find the time. Autoflowers Tangerine Dream: Is starting to show its first pistils too now. Has grown a lot the past week and is looking a lot healthier than before. CBD Lemon Potion: Somehow seems to be completely staggered in it's growth for the past 2 weeks and is flowering while it's about 12cm tall. Not expecting any decent yield from this but we'll see. With this whole grow being a learning experience for me I've already taken some notes for next year. They seem pretty obvious in hindsight but I guess I'm learning the hard way - Planting auto flowers early March is way too early for my climate. Not enough sun hours, too cold. - When picking auto flower strains I should take a better look at seed to harvest time. 8-9 weeks is way too short for an outdoor grow with very little influence on grow conditions, even closer to summer. - Also take a better look at climate preference, mold resistance etc. Not that I've had any problems with this so far but I didn't pay much attention to it when picking seeds this year either - Be more prepared. Have all the pots, nutrients, seeds etc. ready before I start germinating. At least I'll have the reusables like pots and pH meter for next year. This way I won't have to change the pots more than I have to. Will update and upload more pictures when I'm back home in 2 days.

Finally some decent weather with sunshine rather than clouds and rain. Got gnats in some of my houseplants. They are in the same room as the one I use for my grow when they have to be indoor. Gnats haven't touched any of my cannabis yet from what I can see, none flying around, none flying up when I shake the pots. Moved the houseplants to an other room and I'm trying some of the cheap counters like raw potato slices on the soil to draw out larve, apple vinegar with soap in a jar with holes in the lid and tomorrow I'll go get some sand to cover the top layer with. Fimmed the Liberty Haze and Laughing Buddha on their 7th internode. Pretty late compared to what I see most people do but they didn't look too healthy before so I wanted to wait. Also since I'm growing outdoor I don't care much about hight regulation. Just don't want it to grow over the fence and hang into my neighbour's garden, but both strains shouldn't grow too high anyway. Decided not to do any form of training on the autoflowers as they were so small and fragile at first and by the time they looked healthy they went into flower. Windowsil is getting a bit small for the Liberty Haze by now, really hope weather allows me to move them outside soon. CBD Lemon Potion Auto 18cm tall and first browning of pistils started to show a couple of days ago. Only has 7 decent buds on it. As I said before, germinated too early for an outdoor, especially with such a short seed to harvest time. Smell isn't too strong but still a pleasant citrus smell. Tangerine Dream Auto Now 23cm with 5 internodes. Buds are looking fatter than the ones on the Lemon Potion, just noticed about 3 browning pistils. Laughing Buddha With 19cm Growing pretty short and compact but is looking much better than a couple of weeks ago. Liberty Haze Has been looking strong and health from the start, is 23cm right now and is almost getting too wide for the windowsil. Both Laughing Buddha and Liberty Haze seem to have taken the fimming pretty well. Did the fimming 4 days ago, think I'll have to wait one or two more days to really see how many colas I'll get from this.

May 23rd Based on answers I recieved on my Grow Question I picked up some Terra Grow at the growshop today. Terra line should be absorbed much faster than the Natural line I use. Sprayed a 2ml/l solution on the plant, which should work as a quick nutrient fix. Also re calibrated my pH meter, Noticed it was a full point off so that might also have been part of the problem. Then again, pH should be regulated by the nutrients I use and I'm just checking pH to make sure. I'd normally want to try one treatment at a time so I can tell which one actually worked, but the yellowing was spreading pretty fast. I'll just have to wait and see if this fixes it. regarding the gnats I mentioned last week, I've taken all of all my chamber plants out of their pots and rinsed of the roost before putting them back in their pots with fresh soil. Found one pot that was completely infested with gnats and eggs. Thew that one out. Most of the gnats are gone now, May 21st Had one or two sunny days last week but only cold and clouds after that. Still keeping them in the windowsill because it's too cold. This week should be moderately cloudy, max temps between 22 and 18°C. Noticed the lowest set of fan leaves turning yellow last week but figured it was just going to shed off the smaller, old leaves. Now the 2nd set of fan leaves has turned yellow too. My guess is that I gave them too much water. I watered them a bit extra last Friday because I wasn't going to be home for 5 days, might have been too much? Don't think it's nutrients because there should be enough time-released nutes in the soil for another 3-4 weeks. Results of the FIMing is now easier too see. I don't see any extra sets of leaves, just messed up ones. This was my first time FIMing, maybe I played too safe, but I really feel like I took about 80% off. Might aswel call the Autoflowers a Windowsill grow instead of an Outdoor grow. CBD Lemon Potion shouldn't take much longer now and hasn't really been outside at all.

Some older pictures of the weeks I didn't upload in

I have not updated for about two months. Been super busy with uni finals etc, but it's time to pick this up again. Tangerine Dream and CBD Lemon Potion harvest was somewhere around June 10th. Very disappointing yield, expected to at least get something decent from the Tangerine Dream, but buds were not compact at all and effect was weak. To be fair this was a bit of an experiment, growing autoflowers in a windowsill in the Dutch climate during May-June so I won't blame it on the seeds or strains. Let's just say the experiment failed. I'll add pictures of previous weeks to week 15. Liberty Haze and Laughing Buddha are still going strong and are outside fulltime now in 52L root bags. Weather has been pretty rainy the last couple of days and nights are pretty cold, going around 13-15°C (55-59°F) but they will just have to put up with it. A friend of mine had some left over LED grow lights so I put the Laughing Buddha under those for about 2 weeks right as I moved the Liberty Haze outside. Liberty started growing like crazy as the weather was pretty great but Laughing Buddha didn't really grow much at all so I moved her outside after just under two weeks. She started growing right after that but is still short and has pretty thin branches, especially compared to the Liberty Haze. It's kind of hard to see in the pictures, but the Laughing Buddha doesn't seem to root very well in it's bigger pot. You can still clearly see the older soil from the 3L pot separating from the rest of the soil. I've put a bunch of soil on top to cover the gap, but it keeps coming back somehow. Figured it might be because I was moving her around to keep her in full sunlight but I've kept her in one spot for at least 2 weeks now and I can stil see the cracks in the soil. Topped Liberty Haze on 11th of July at 85 CM because she is about to grow over the fence that's keeping her out of sight of the rest of my neighbourhood. Growing cannabis isn't illegal here as long as I have 5 plants or fewer (I have 2) but if some grumpy neighbour calls about the smell or whatever, police will still remove and destroy the plants. Smell is getting stronger now, you can smell it as soon as you walk onto the roof terrace. I have done quite a bit of defoliation on the Libert Haze because the fan leaves were huge and I wanted better lighting and airflow because temps can get pretty high on my roof terrace. Also took some clones. I won't be using them as I only grow outdoor so I only have one grow per year but I wanted to see if I could make them root.