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This girl is super interesting to me. Mainly her product description on the Barney's Farm site combined with the fact that her seed grew a tail in 18 hours and popped out of her Rapid Rooter in less than twelve hours. She appears to have some Serious Business to attend to and had no time for lollygagging. She is the third of my /r/Autoflowers Barney's Farm growoff and was sent to me free by the awesome mods over there.
Day 8 - Interestingly all of these girls look very very similar. During my first grow, I had three strains going, and every single plant had its ouwn quirks and different looking leaves. This time I'm doing five different strains and only one looks unusual, and that's likely due to growing more slowly in her DWC bucket.
Day 15 - She's looking good! The difference between her and the blurple girls is fairly drastic and maybe a little deceptive. The blurple girls are almost a third taller, but they have the same leaf mass. So less stretch on this side of the space. I've been watering in a small ring around the girls with a small squirt bottle daily. Today they all got their first real drink. Spread one gallon across all five girls, just to get the top of the sol wet. They'll probably be able to go another four or five days on that.
Day 20 - Catastrophe? Was adjusting her LST yesterday after taking pics, gave her a small tug, and the entire top half of her ripped off in my hand! (Shit) I ran upstairs with her, grabbed a bulk bottle of CA Glue (Superglue) and a toothpick, ran a tiny line of glue around the edge of her stem, ran back downstairs and mooshed her top back onto her bottom. She sealed pretty much instantly, like CA glue does to moist tissuey things. About an hour later, her top half was limp. A few hours after that it sort of halfway perked up, but was struggling. Her actual top is still alive 24 hours later, but still rather limp. Her two sets of fan leaves are less happy. I don't know if her main stem will recover, or recover before those fan leaves die off. I fed those leaves directly via foliar, just to see if I can give them enough nutrients to survive in the interim. I'll baby her until I know for sure whether her top half recovers. Either way, her bottom half is just fine and didn't even stall, shooting her leaves out by almost an inch overnight. So what we have is a really mighty mega sort of supercrop or a flat out topping. Dunno yet. The limp bit still alive bits at the center of the day 20 pic is the affected area.
Day 22 - She's recovering well, but for all practical purposes, she's been topped, which wasn't part of my plan. PLANS CHANGE. She's still building up bulk so I'm going to pretend it was a purposeful topping.
Day 29 - Well she's recovered from her accidental topping and is throwing out veg mass lightning quick. She's not as large or massive as the Glue Gelato or the Barney's LSD, but she's super thick and showing no signs of slowing down.
Day 33 - She's doing well, and really thick. Defoliating a tiny bit to get more bud sites exposed. Missed yesterday, sorry about that.
Day 35 - As week five ends, I can see that her accidental topping may have set her back some. She's healthy and still growing like crazy, but she seems a little bit small. Having said that, you never know once the flower stretch starts.
Day 36 - So her branches have hardened up in such a way that further training would be risky to her branches, so I'm leaf tucking and being fairly gentle with her. She looks ready to stretch into flower mode and I plan on thinning out some of her fan leaves, because she's pretty damned dense. I'll be running a second net above the grow space, for spreading colas out, but otherwise that's the end of most of her training.
Day 42 - She ends off week six looking just fine and dandy! Not huge, like the Glue Gelato Auto, or bursting with pompoms, like the Grapefruit auto, but she's healthy and looking fine!
Day 43 - This girl is just chugging along, minding her own business. She's showing pistils and seems to be revving up for her flower stretch. Satisfied. Not particularly smelly or sticky yet, but lush and thriving.
Day 49 - Flowering is obvious now. She was slower to get there than the other girls but she got there, unlike her Glue Gelato Auto sister. I may clear out some of her fan leaves to get more light into her mass.
Day 50 - Week eight begins! Flowers are here. Not quite pompoms yet, but hairy. She seems to be drinking a little less than the other girls, but she's the same size and soaking up the nutes well. She's greener than the other girls as well.
Day 53 - She's just plain slower than the other girls... Not gonna complain because having a spaced out harvest will be nice, and she's very thick and lush.
Day 56 - As week eight rounds out she's officially encrusted in pompoms. Her tops are a little pale but look super healthy and she's starting to get a fruity smell.
Day 57 - Entering week nine! She's getting a little pale on her top leaves and I'm experimenting with her feed and her distance from the lights to attempt to correct it. She seems healthy otherwise so I'm not stressing about it.
Day 63 - End of the week! Her top layer of fan leaves are still poopy looking, but she's doing well! I'm giving her some magnesium sulfate in hopes that the issue was sulfur. Such a weird thing when one plant decides she doesn't want to act like any of her friends even though she's getting the same light and diet. They want what they want I guess.
Day 64 - Into week ten! She's just getting past the pompom stage. Recovering from her sulfur issue and she's kind of getting huge. Her flower stretch has been deceptive. Starting to think that she may have one of the bigger yields.
Day 70 - The end of week ten! Probably another two weeks for this girl. Gave her a three gallon 1/4 nutrient flush today, just to clear out her soil as she's had nutes with almost every feed in her grow. Seems like a lot of crud came out in the wash. :-D
Day 71 - I went through her with two gallons of 1/4 strength Maxibloom yesterday, just to clear out her soil and make certain that did doesn't have any sort of lockout going on. She seems to be growing fine either way, but just in case, you know? She is s slower growing strain so she'll be at least another couple weeks most likely.
Day 77 - As week eleven ends I'm giving her a bit of a timeout from water and feed. She's been running wet and I need to ease back. She's still got at least another week, so I'll let her be until she's bone dry, then feed her once more. Maybe twice at most.
Day 78 - Still another week I think. Letting her get as dry as possible because I think she was a little too wet at the roots for a week or so. She's finishing, but pretty slowly.
Of all the plants I've grown, she is the first to catch a disease or pest, (Fungus gnats.) but she pulled through with a decent yield. She was given the same regimen and soil and so on, and for whatever reason the bugs just went after her. The other three plants that were right next to her for the entire grow had no problems. The only reasonable explanation would be that the soil I used bunched up too tightly at the bottom of the pot due to an uneven distribution of perlite, causing poor drainage maybe. her runoff was similar to the other girls but she managed to go the last nine days without a feed or water, and hand't dried out until yesterday. None of this reflects on her genetics, of course.
She started off strong and everything went very smoothly until around day 55 or so. She started getting yellow up top, and I ended up finding what may have been multiple issues. She was growing with three other girls under the same circumstances, in the same soil, with the same nutrients, although the nutrient schedule was adjusted to the different growth speeds of each girl. Her symptoms *looked* a little like a nutrient lockout, but that was absolutely impossible. Sulfur deficiency came up as a possible culprit. Magnesium deficiency was explored. (Gave her a little magnesium sulfate as a one-two punch for both.) - In the end, it became clear what was happening when she started getting full on yellow tops, with some dark brown spots, and goddamned fungus gnats started appearing in the grow room. Her drainage was poor. Could have been a dry spot in the soil. I';d water her, and she'd have a normal runoff, and she's dry off up top, but water was pooling inside the pot, *above* the drainage holes. Her roots were so thick that they had been filling the drainage holes as well. I kept being confused as to how heavy her port was when she was dry up top. Anyway, I ran a moisture meter into her bottom and it maxed out, even though her soil up top was dry as a bone four inches deep. In the end I just let her dry out until it looked like she was getting limp. It took nine days. The gnats were janky and weren't going after any other the other girls so I just vacuumed them up off of the flood tray a couple times a day until they stopped showing up. Today I did the first cut off of her, watered her, and stuck her back under the light. From her overall mass and my previous experiences, she looks like she'll give me around five ounces, but the yield number above is still speculative. I'll continues to update as I chop more of her and add more pics, of course.
Day 89 - The final chop! She is no more! Well, she's drying on the rack.
Looks like a sulfur deficiency. You can give her some magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt) for a couple of waterings in between feedings. Use 1/4 teaspoon per gallon of water it should help green her back up again.
@Philindicus, Nutes in are at 6.15ish and runoff is at 6.6ish. She's actually recovering at this point. I did some magnesium sulfate as you suggested and while those top leaves don't look much better, the problem stopped cold and she's packing on bulk. At this point I'm officially calling her "Okay now"
Def no lockout because she's packing on flower and still stretching. Topmost layer of leaves is the only effected part of her and she hasn't gotten any worse.
It'd be a super weird issue if only this girl had a PH problem or a lockout because all five of the soil grow are in the same soil and are getting the same nute routine, and I'm PHing with the same meter for the other five girls plus the DWC. If any of them were going to be upset about bad PH readings, I'd imagine it'd be the DWC first. At this point she only has three weeks or so anyway, so we could be looking at a combination of things, including a bit of natural fade even, but all of her new growth is lush so I'm guessing it was a non-mobile nutrient. Sulfur, like you pointed out as a possibility, is a semi-mobile right? So she may just not be able to green back up as quickly.
She only started going really pale eight days ago and she's only had one feed in between, with the MagSulf.
@Hexus, I think I would give her a flush it could be nutrient lock out. It looks like more than just one deficiency. Check her runoff ppms see how high they are also the runoff ph see if it high. This could be the issue.
@Philindicus, Didn't see this post! Sorry. Nah, that's the grow room. I built it to grow in. :-D We have 2000 square feet of unused basement so I figured I would build this room as a practice run for completing the whole space.
Looking really great! I have 2 out of the 5 Zkittlez in my tent that are looking very similar to your Zkittlez. They're late to flower too. My other 3 Zkittlez are much larger and started flowering sooner. Happy growing!
Fungus gnats very persistent little f#*ckers. I had some on my last grow any one who tells you they're easy to get rid of is full of it! If you have one plant that has them you may have more in the future. I tried a few natural ways to "control" them. You can try mosquito bits mixed in with your soil mix. It takes time but they may help. They love moist places to lay their eggs. I stopped short of using Azamax on them because I'm afraid it will kill my beneficial microbes.
Hexus
