Permanent Marker first run micro setup

ThomFoolery Permanent Marker by WeedSeedsExpresss. 7/2 I previously started this diary 2 weeks ago and I had to pull it due to unrealized security issues. Stupidity on my part but I think it's been rectified. First off I can't be happier with the performance of these genetics. The seeds looked less than viable at first but I was put at ease by the people at WSE. I set out with 3 beans and to my surprise they all popped. I picked the strongest to use for this diary and the other 2, I'll select the best for a mother. If trally like to run these genetics in a SOG since growing from clone is my preferred method but this grow is mainly to feel out the tent system, get it all dialed I'm and see how these genetics respond. We are currently at week two and she has 4 nodes at around 2" in height. Damn, this is going to be a bushy little girl!! I was really glad to see how she's stacked up so young. Some background info: Up until a week ago I was having issues with getting all the variables of a small grow like this under control. Temps in summer in the deep humid south can make it challenging. The concept of a lung room, and a tent was new to me, and it has presented some issues. So what I've come to understand is, it's all about the lung room. Keep it cool, and the tent can use that air to keep the grow area cool. Keep it dry, then exhaust and intake fans will pull in and exchange that air... It's genius actually. You can use fancy controllers as well but that's only going to work as well as your lung room is maintained. I added a humidifier and man did it make a difference. Before I couldn't keep the room cool, and humid enough for the veg stage because the AC dries the air. The vpd was all over the place... ( I'm still not totally sold on all that. I've grown dope for decades and I never worried about any of that shit. But I will be running my own experiments to see if it makes a major difference.) The humidifier was a good choice that I felt compelled to get so I can indeed see if the vpd makes a difference. Otherwise I can't zero in on it. I've got it dialed in pretty nicely now and I'm looking forward to seeing how this grow, with these genetics unfolds. 6/30 I make my own compost, and earth worm castings, and use these along with other amendments (kelp, alfalfa, lime, and other things that really make my grows almost completely worry free) and I've been using this recipe for years. I used to grow a lot of genetics by a cool older dude from Colorado that went by B.O.G. (Bushy old grower). Hell, in fact I'm about the age he was then. I learned so much from him. They used to send me cuttings in hollowed out VCR tapes that would almost always root by the time I got them.They called it BoggleGum and I believe it was a cross of true blueberry and bubblegum. I don't know if this is the same BoggleGum that is going around now, I highly doubt it. I did try to search out the genetics, (wow... Searchable strains of MJ. I just can't get over how far this movement has progressed, man. ) This was 15 or more years ago, but I loved this strain so much that I honed this particular soil (living) recipe around this plants needs and as such it will carry that particular strain all the way to harvest with little or no intervention except for watering and some compost tea injections here and there. Took me a couple years to iron it out. I'm really interested in seeing how PM will like the soil. I've heard she was a heavy eater so it's going to be interesting to see if it meets her needs. I don't really except it to. So yeh, there are several experiments being conducted with this grow. I won't be using anything that could hurt my soil at any point in this grow. Not going out and buying high dollar hydro organic nutes. Never needed it and my only means of measuring is mostly by sight. Up until now I only watered this little girl, very lightly. Enough to wet the entire bed once. Upon coming dry I infused the bed with a light compost tea made from nothing more than 1tsp molasses, and some fresh compost in a sock, added to about 1 gal.of water. I brewed it for 36 hours, then cut it by half and wet the soil slowly, very slowly in 2 instances waiting 10 mins between them. No run off. This was done mostly for the soil but I'M sure the little girl will also enjoy it. I'll update with any changes. 7/3 Went ahead and topped her at the 4th node. She was ready. Now I need to decide how far I want to go with the training.. strong LST and a few more toppings, or a full blown SCROG?.

ThomFoolery 7/8 Permanent Marker strain from WeedSeedsExpress. She's is doing really well. So far no sign of any defeciencies, but at her age there shouldn't be any. I' have her in a flatish tub type container. I regret that now but the logic behind thid thinking was I'd have a rim in which to add little eye hooks to tie her down. I am not 100% sure I put enough nutrients in this batch of soil. I keep over thinking it. She looks really good but if I didn't well be seeing the results in a little while. 7/8 I gave her nice drenching of compost tea. The same one I started 4 or 5 days prior but I added some kelp and a bit more worm castings. Holy shit the difference!!! You can look at the pics and see the difference it made in less than 24 hours. i used about 2 cups total to about 3/4 gal of water to really drench those roots and get the microbes going. As she gets bigger she'll process more water but now she can go a week or 10 days with one good soaking. 7/13 Did the first round of defoiliation. She was getting bushy and the side shoots were in the shade. Took off the bigger leaves first, gave her a day, then took off the the two top nodes fan leaves to slow them down so the sides can catch up. Gave her about 3 cups of dechlorinated tap water fortified with a very small dose of fish emulsion, and 10 units of superthrive. I plan to do some LST as well if needed, let's see how the defol takes and go from there. Got my ac infinity laser thermometer today... Lmao. That thing has me even more confused. Which one is right? I was getting very different readings across both devices. I went and bought a dedicated temp/hygro meter and guess what? Was 10% lower on the humidity just like the hand gun was. I guess the probe was off on the humidity so I calibrated the controller to the other 2. Temp is close enough and at this point it's almost an educated guess at the fucking leaf temp! Well... I must have something right because look at her! So forward we go hoping that I've been enlightened a bit more by these fann-cee gadgets. .. I tell you what! I am not sure I put enough N in the soil. If the pot she's in was bigger I'd not worry about it but I think it may be a bit short for this strain. I gave her about .8 tsp to a gal of water so just a touch. They say it won't burn but it will. I'm sure that amount won't burn her.... Time will tell.

ThomFoolery 7/15 Pulling into this week after a major defoliation. I've never cut one back so quick but if I'm being honest. I've never only had one plant to focus on in any other grow, in my life. It's always been 30 or more clones, or 100 or more seedlings so this endeavor has me second guessing years of experience because basically, I'm bored. But the idea here is to keep the canopy even and we're starting really early. 7/16 I'm about 4 or 5 days off on the age of this plant. But it's close.. she's starting to recover nicely, no adverse effects from the fish emulsion... Yet. It probably wasn't enough to matter. I'm going to give her 2 more days and then I'm going to start LST on the 4 side shoots. I may top those as well. That will be about the time to water her again too. I keep thinking she should be bigger, but I'm not familiar with these genetics. She doesn't need anything that's for sure.... Atm I want to go ahead and flip her but I think she needs about 2 more weeks. 7/17 So there is more than enough N available in this soil. There is a tiny bit of tip burn on 2 of the largest leaves... So very slight. I don't think I need to do anything. I tested the pH of the run off from the compost tea the last time I gave her a dose. It was a perfect 6.8 which Is about where we need to be. However... I did some re-organizing to my tent, moved the exhaust fan, ducting, and carbon filter. I now have the fan resting on the top, evacuating the air and blowing into the filter. It works surprisingly well. On 4 it will collapse the sides. (This has to be rectified with the intake fan) So that tells me its moving a lot of air. As of now the intake fan is only controlled locally. It has its own controller, but I have to live with it when I'm away. If something happens and it stops... Well, I just opened the back vent so that wouldn't be a problem if it happens. HEPA filter I added the bottom half of a levolt air filter. It's a micro HEPA filter and it fits perfectly onto my 4" inline duct fan. Bringing in very clean air. I'd like this to be the only intake but to do that I need to exchange this fan for an ac infinity fan and christ almighty... I've spent so much money already! But ... I have it sitting on the floor so it pulls in the coolest air around. It really does work well. I still have to get the dance between the 2 to work correctly because the heat is still a problem. Right now the humidifier is keeping the box nice and in perfect VPD range but come time to flower..... I have some issues to address. 7/18 Started the LST. However, I cannot train the the top 4 bud sites. I am going to let these 4 grow straight up for a while and in the meantime train the side shoots. As they put on a few more nodes I may supercrop them and they all should catch up. I trimmed he back, pushed her down and the. I gave her 2 cups of dechlorinated tap, 0.5 unit Superthrive, and 1/10 tsp of molasses. She seemed thankful and began to turn to the light a few hours later when I woke before work. 7/19 She's looking good. Will be interesting to see how the Main tops carry on. I honestly don't know how the hell I let that shit happen. Should have left the nodes on so I could have ties it back sooner, but now I have wait and then deal with it. Pretty much fucked up my even canopy. Within me lives an experienced gardener with the patience to let nature unfold, and a child with no patience and the urge to experiment as much as possible. More to come.

ThomFoolery 7/21 My humidity reading on the controller is all over the place. I guess I need to call ac infinity because it is constantly wandering off point. I'm not even sure what is right anymore. And don't get me started on the laser temp gun.. jeez. It's all just a shot I the dark. I have tried purchasing a decent hygrometer but the one I got isn't as sensitive and it never seems to be right either. So the main one I'm going by is the one on the hon&Guan fan I have. It seems to be right on temp and humidity. The temp is right on all devices it's just the humidity I can't trust. If I'm going by the H&G, then the pro 69 humidity is right +3 or as much as -6 and this can be off any time of the day. This shit is crazy. I don't want to have to go through the hassle of having to go through support, send back the controller, etc, etc .. hell it's almost easier just to spend the 139 and buy a new one... The one with 8 ports instead of 4. Anyway..... Since it seems like im fucking guessing what the humidity is she still seems to be doing well. I have been picking at her for a few days so she's not doing much. I have Introduced a CO2bag, but I'm not optimistic. I totally got rid of the active intake. It was just not working. The passive intake works like a charm. I mean it cools down really quickly. Hell, it makes it difficult to get the temp to go over 80. Ill have to set the AC thermostat to 75 to get 81.... Any warmer and I'll be sweating in here!! The exhaust fan is so effective and efficient I have it on 1 and it seems to be about where I need it. (No carbon scrubber as of yet. There is no smell. No sense cashing out the charcoal before she starts to flower) One fan below the light , one above. All on low and the system is just purring. The only thing I don't like is how the humidifier really, really cools down the tent. I really need to have it warmer and humid to try and get this co2 bag to work, not humid and cooler. My main concern is that she just doesn't drink hardly any water.. so that means the transpiration is off.. I keep the vpd in range... But is it? I mean if the humidity is never right how do I know? I could be right on target, or I could be as much as 10% off... Fucking hell.. For the next 3 days, I'm laying off this little girl. I'm going to try and figure out this humidity reading issue but I don't need to do anything for the plant. She needs be left alone so she can recover and start growing again. I know all my interference has slowed her down, but she should have been growing faster anyway. Something isn't quite right. 7/22 A bit of light stress. Yeh, I wasn't sure at first, but yeh. The newest growth closest to the lights is looking bleached. Moved the light up 3". Since I took out the active intake... man! Smooth sailing. I was even able to adjust the ambient temps to 79-80 for day time and 74- 76 for night... I'm hoping that the CO2 bag will do its thing. Yeaaaah, I'm not real optimistic here, again. But it's usually my experience when I think one thing, the other is almost always what I get. So hell, do your best! So now I guess I need a light meter? My God y'all... I have never owned so many fucking gadgets to grow weed. But, I feel compelled to buy it all. Then I want to incessantly watch the metrics and try to keep it somewhat copacetic... Not trying to hit a finite target, but camp out in a range of values the cannabis gods (or those whove come up with the acceptable ranges) have deemed suitable. But like I said way back on the first days. This grow is to dial it all in . Feel it out and get used to growing in a tent. So... We still going and the only real issues I've seen so far were of my own, and what I've done to that poor girl. But she will spread out. Letting her recover. Humidity sensor issues are at bay. No water needed. Moved light up 3" Environment is on low and readings are pretty stable. For the first time in my eco, a spray of mist will last 10, 15, even 20 seconds. Sometimes more. Purring ... 7/23 All is well. I'm on the 3rd day since I hung the cO2 bag. I really don't want to buy a cO2 meter man.... Lol I should have known, as soon as I purchased something to alter a part of the environment I would need a way to monitor said changes... Probably once, twice, and I'll never use it again. Unless I see a difference. I'm just going to give her another week on that. They aren't exactly cheap. * That night * I implemented some creative LST with hemp twine and some strategically placed drill holes. I literally had nothing else on hand and I've spent enough.. roughing it. Afterwards to dull the pain: Watered her 4.5 cups ph balanced declorinated tap water with a dose of Superthrive. She is already responding in the images. 7/24 Looking really good. Two more days and I'll do the final topping to double what I have now then two more weeks in veg, and finally 12/12, hopefully. 7/25 She is doing better than I expected. I almost hate to slow it down by topping her again. But... More to come.

ThomFoolery Permanent Marker by WeedSeedsExpress. 7/27 She's looking really good... About time to top again. 7/28 Took the last node on all 8 tops and maybe went down one more on at least one. Think it was just one. I may pull the top off once more. I only took the very tip so it was more like a FIM I think. Kinda want to see how they turn out, but jeez man, I'm ready to flip this bitch .. The top, tops are getting long enough now to tie over. Still trying to get past the previous topping debacle where I took the node too low, where the stems where really rigid. Now they are growing to the point I can get past all that. That's the cool thing about plants. They grow back. I removed some leaves that were blocking bud sites. I took all the top fans off of one of the big four because I want to see what the plant does. On that top, without its fan leaves. Seeing some tiny black dots that are clearly bugs. They try to hide but aren't very good at it and I have only seen maybe 8 of them the entire grow. I have seen a couple holes (in the leaves) pop up, but only a few and they only get so big, and then it just stops. Idk what to do but I'm going to buy some of this Arber organic spray to treat the top of the soil and some diatomaceous earth to put on the top soil. Some have said they could be beneficial, and seriously the damage is almost non existent. It's almost like they tried it, and said nah.. not for me. But the little gnats I'm seeing crawl around the soil is enough to make me treat it all. I don't want them to lay eggs and then have a shitload of larvae eating my roots and then all hatch into a thousand fucking gnats!!. Hell naw! I live in that room and if I had to contend with gnats in my bedroom..... I'd probably chop her and start over.... I'm ordering the DE now. 7/29 Defoliated, tied down, topped, treated the top of the soil for any larvae these little gnats may lay. It didn't do much to the gnats although they did hide for several hours after the initial soaking. I'll do it a few more times as long as I see no ill effects and hopefully it'll kill any offspring. They couldn't care less about the plants. They are only here for the soil and the substance that it offers. I think this is the last time I am going to slap this poor plant around. I should see new growth burst forth from all these exposed nodes now... At least that's the plan. The topping and small amount of I've finally pulled over enough shoots that they should yield a nice array of buds. How the hell would I have gotten fungus gnats in the first place? I am very adamant about proper watering, and thus far I have only been watering once every 4 to 6 days. The top layer of soil gets so dry at times it looks like the substrate has dried into nothing. Well... Whatever they are they aren't the least bit interested in my plant except for the shade. They just run around on the substrate and go in and out of it. But it's not an infestation. You can still count the ones you see, and I have soaked the top layer twice. I'm going to lay down some diatomaceous earth and then see what happens... 7/30 Ahhhh yeh .. she's coming back strong. I've got her tied down/open with 20 or more bud sites all across the top poised to burst forth with bountiful infrastructure to support resinous buddage! As you can see the diatomaceous earth (Henceforth known as DE ) ring went in. I got some with peppermint oil infused. I thought it would be nice but that shit gets old really fast. Carbon scrubber helped a bit with the smell believe it or not and upon discovering that, I also found out that even at this age she is putting forth more smell than I thought possible. So it's officially hooked up and hopefully the charcoal is "empty" enough to take care of the smell throughout flowering ... I haven't seen a fly, moving spot, nada 10 hours after the last soil treatment and the addition of the DE. 7/31 Picking up momentum. I'm seeing growth and no insects. I'll see one on the tent floor here and there but so far, that's it. Hopefully, it was that easy. But I'm keeping an eye on it. Waiting... More to come....

ThomFoolery 8/2 -- 8/4 I removed the top inch of soil and replaced it with a mix of Pro-Mix, EwC, and perlite. I am almost positive I have too much phosphorus in this soil mix and I believe it's locking out the Calcium. I mixed in the diluted new soil in hopes it may cut it enough, but I am skeptical. I tied her down again and re warmed a few shoots to get them flatter. 8/7 Holy Moses..... I don't know how I stunted this plant so bad, (premature defoliation, too much defoiliation, nutrients may be a bit too hot. Slight nute burn a few weeks back, possibly too much P is making it hard to get Ca... 🤔) but she really hasn't grown fast, at all. I was going to flip her on the 11th, but I am probably going to go one more. She just needs to let all these shoots in the middle get a little longer so they form nice long buds. I am glad I have seeds of this strain left. I intend to run it again maybe in a DWC setup SOG next time. I do believe she will rebound.. I mean this is a photo plant so you can literally undo any mistake. It just takes time. If I wanted, I could literally cut her back to one node with 2 shoots, and 2 fan leaves, and start all over.... This is the beauty of photos. I'm not going to get that drastic, but I feel I can still persuade her to put out some nice buds to be proud of.

ThomFoolery 8/11 She has put on some nice new shoots and the tops are vollying for supremacy. Kind of at a loss for what to do atm.... The plan is to carve out and lollipop the tops I want to send into flowering. It's a bit late because I fucked up early on.... Hey, this is the first grow in a new environment for about 10+ years. Given enough time I can make her fill out the tent but it's taking too long.. so I'm making due. I think I can pick out 8 to 10 tops that should fatten up relatively well. Trying to get 2oz and I think it's doable at this point. I see some defs going on. But vaguely.. I'll attempt to instill a fix on those before defol. 8/12 Look at how she has bushed out.. so I'm going to remove a lot of that. As I said yesterday I ma going to carve out 6 to 8 colas, reserve the top 3 to 4 nodes, and stripp all below those. Then I will water her with a vitamin laced solution and let her recover for 3 days, then flip her. I believe the def problem is a touch of Ca. I will address this tonight if I still think It's a problem. The "ain't no way in hell this will ever work" cloning project: Some of the shoots at the bottom are 3"+ in size. Normally I'd never take clones that small but let's see what happens. So I'm going to pick the best looking 10 clones and load them into Superthrive soaked peat pods put em in a dome and and stick a light over them.... See what happens. If they root, I'll put them all next to the "mother" and flower them all. If they don't, well we had the time, the extra plant material and the motivation and it will no doubt be a learning experience. I bet at least 3 will root., and I should still have the real estate to flower them. The "mother" is quite small and I don't really anticipate her more than doubling in size. I could leave the shoots on the plant, or make clones out of them. Hmmm.... By the time they root, or die, it will give me 2 weeks to really get the main plant filled out and ready to go, and whatever makes it will be little 5" plants going straight to flower.