One Milky Way F1

drakkon The Milky Way F1 seedling is growing and appears healthy. It resides in my office under an Iongrid S22 LED lamp that hangs from the underside of a motorized height-adjustable desk. The light intensity is currently set to 6 of 10. The motorized desk makes it convenient to adjust the lamp's height. Air circulation is provided by a tiny USB-powered electric fan and the room's HVAC registers. The plant, light and desk are not in a tent, so the plant simply exists in the room's ambient temperature and humidity. Other than my typical HVAC settings, I don't plan to control the room's temperature and humidity for the plant specifically. So far, the plant has received water only, without any fertilizer.

drakkon The Milky Way F1 has received no additional nutrients yet, beyond what is already in the FoxFarm Happy Frog soil. It continues to grow nicely and will soon be ready for transplanting and training. I plan to put it in Happy Frog soil in a "yellow" size air pot (~2.2 gal), but haven't decided yet whether I'll top it or not. Light intensity remains at 6 out of 10, and the plant has grown just a little closer to the lamp.

drakkon On day 19, the Milky Way F1 was transplanted into a "yellow" size air pot with FoxFarm Happy Frog soil amended with a little pumice. The transplant hole and her roots were sprinkled with mycorrhizae granules. She suffered no transplant shock whatsoever, so I went ahead and topped her and removed the lowest pair of branches and leaves the next day (day 20). Light intensity remains at 6 out of 10.

drakkon The Milky Way F1 continues to grow, and a few pre-flowers have appeared. I think this is the last week of her vegetative phase. She now has eight main branches, two each sprouting from nodes 2, 3, 4, and 5. This week, I started to train the upper four branches and the main stem to achieve an even canopy and radial distribution. My goal is to arrange the bottom four branches as a cross-shape (+), and the upper four branches to form a cross-shape, too, but rotated 45 degrees in relation to the lower cross (see top-view photo). I also removed a few leaves, tucked a few others, and snipped a handful of the lowest secondary shoots. Her thirst is increasing compared to last week, and she received half-strength vegetative nutrients with each watering.

drakkon The Milky Way F1 is definitely in the flowering stage now, with many stigmas emerging from the growing tips. I performed light defoliation and mild LST training to encourage a few additional tops beyond her eight main branches. She's undergoing a growth spurt as shown by the photos from days 33 and 37, but remains very compact in stature overall. Lamp-to-plant distance maintained by adjusting the height of the lamp or raising the plant. Over the course of the week, I began notching up the light intensity setting for short periods (from 6 to 7 or 8). Waterings now include both vegetative and bloom nutrients, and this where I admit that my watering volume entrees are estimates only. I mix nutrients in a jug, from which I usually pour directly while manually top-watering several different plants, making exact volumes difficult to measure. The ambient indoor temps and humidity are creeping up as summer sets in, but I don't expect them to become a problem as long as I keep my eye on it and run the AC sufficiently.