#5 - Northern Lights & Jack Herer

ojulhao Around day 16, I topped both plants above the third node, leaving each with four main branches. A few days later, I began training them. For both techniques, I followed tips from BasementGanja on YouTube. The picture above shows the plants on June 2nd, 2025, which was day 18.

ojulhao At this point, I’m wondering if there was something I could have done earlier to avoid the significant height difference between the two plants. Jack Herer turned out compact, while Northern Lights grew taller, with buds more scattered and spaced out. A few weeks ago, I did some lollipopping to remove very low, underdeveloped buds, and also some defoliation to help light reach areas that were shaded. I’ve been really struggling with the Berlin summer. I can’t get the tent temperature below 28°C. Sometimes the humidity outside the tent is higher than I’d like, but since I don’t have a dehumidifier, I usually just leave it as is, especially since it rarely stays above 55% for too long. Just a quick note about the nutrient Vegan Phosphor Boost: I’m following the recommended dosage of 3g per 10L of pot size (not per liter of water). Unfortunately, GrowDiaries only allows nutrient input based on volume per liter of water, so I can’t log it exactly as used.

ojulhao Looks like Jack Herer has denser buds than Northern Lights. Hopefully, Northern Lights will still fatten up its buds a bit. We had a week of extreme heat here in Berlin; one day, it got so hot (around 32°C inside the tent) that I had to turn off the lights during the day. Other than that, I can't wait to harvest them, though there's still a few weeks to go.

ojulhao I really like how Jack Herer is growing. However, I still don't see nice buds in the Northern Lights. At this point, I don't think it will change that much.

ojulhao Hello friends! Today the plants are entering week 10. I see some possible problems in my leaves; I'm not sure, but it looks like potassium and magnesium deficiencies. I will try to correct that over the next week with some CalMag and BioBloom. I will stop using Green Power for those plants. I believe I will harvest them around August 7, at the beginning of week 12.

ojulhao I kinda messed up because I thought it had a phosphorus deficiency when it actually had phosphorus toxicity. I decided to use only plain water with CalMag this week, and it looks like I didn’t have that many problems. Jack Herer shows a lot of amber trichomes, while Northern Lights seems to be growing a bit more, but you can’t really see much difference. It seems like the buds aren’t full of trichomes and don’t seem to be changing.

ojulhao This was the final week for both plants. The Northern Lights showed less resin production and seemed to have stalled in development, so I decided not to wait any longer. The pistils had mostly turned orange/brown, and visually it didn’t look like the buds were going to bulk up much more. For the last days, I only gave CalMag and plain water adjusted to pH 6.3

ojulhao The Jack Herer is dense and frosty colas, covered in trichomes with a nice mix of cloudy heads. Compared to the Northern Lights, it clearly had more weight and resin, making the harvest very satisfying. For the last days, I only gave CalMag and plain water adjusted to pH 6.3