First Grow | Sundae Driver

PDanklin Week 1 of Veg! She's looking good so far and starting to pick up momentum. I just ordered the Advanced Nutrients Starter Pack and some ProMix HP so hopefully by the time it gets here she will be ready for a bigger pot and some nutrients. Transplanting at the end of the week. 8/2/2025- Just transplanted her into a one gallon and started her on nutrients. I got the starter kit from Advanced Nutrients so I am following their feeding chart. Also topped her, hopefully the transplant plus the topping won't be too much at once but we will find out.

PDanklin 8/4/2025- It's week 2 of Veg baby! I'm really enjoying taking photos and documenting everything for this grow diary, almost as much as growing the plants! I'm looking forward to future grow diaries and maybe some contests!! On to the star of the show, the Sundae Driver is pluggin along nicely 💪 or so I think 😅This is my first grow and don't have much to compare to besides looking at other grow diaries but environment/setup can change so much so who knows really. Bumped up the PPFD to ~578. I put her in a bigger pot and a mix of ProMix HP, EWC, Perlite and Gypsum. After thinking it through, I'm not sure if I really needed to put any extra amendments in the ProMix HP because it already has perlite in it and the whole point in using the ProMix was because it was inert and then I went and pretty much undid that... I don't think it will cause any issues and I haven't seen any burn on the leaf tips yet. These little mistakes are good though! This is how I learn and now I know for next time! I put the Gypsum in there as kind of an experiment. I don't think it was necessary but I think it should help with calcium right? I started the seed in FF OF because I was planning on using that as my base soil until I decided on using Advanced Nutrients and they recommend starting with an inert medium so I pivoted to using ProMix HP instead. Next grow I will start with ProMix HP mix so I don't have to worry about transplanting so soon. I definitely could've left her in the solo cup for a couple of weeks but I was excited to use the nutrients 😁 8/07/25- It's about half way through week 2 of Veg and she is looking beautiful and happy!! Internodal growth and spacing is looking good. It appears that there is some new growth coming out of where I topped the plant... I'm not sure if I accidently FIMed it? I'm just going to let it do it's thing for now, more tops/bud sites can't be that bad right? 😅 8/08/2025- I fed/watered her today with the same Week 1 solution I mixed up last Saturday so it had almost been a week since last feeding. I've been lifting the pot everyday and keeping a close eye on her water intake. 💪 8/09/2025- I noticed a some tacoing starting to begin on the top fan leaves, at least that's what I think is happening. It would make sense since I put her in a bigger pot(which lifted her up a bit) and increased the light intensity. So I took her off the box I had her on and the light is lifted as high as it can go so that should solve the problem I believe/hope. 🙌

PDanklin 8/11/2025- It's day one of Week 3 of Veg and she is coming along quite nicely. She is short and squat, which I like but I feel like she might a be a little slow in the growing department? It honestly could be just me being impatient 😅 also I'm used to growing outdoors in the sun and they just explode with growth out there! I do feel like she is picking up speed though which makes sense. Not worried or anything, could be genetics or just a slow down from the transplant and top. Probably the latter lol Next time I will definitely be popping more seeds and then take the one that grows the best. I had some growth coming back from where I topped her so I snipped that off. It was growing really slow and coming in abnormal so I figured it would just be a waste of plant resources keeping it alive. 8/13/2025- Tragedy has struck! 😫 I was doing some LST, massaging the stems and bending them, and snapped one of the stems. I'm pretty sure it will be fine, I bent it back the other way and tucked it under some leaves so it would stay. Hopefully it will connect back together and become stronger than before! Another learning experience that's for sure! I also did a full feeding today, bumped it up to 10 mL/Gal. It's kind of a big jump from 4 mL but she is in Week 3 and they recommend 12 mL on the feeding chart. She is starting to drink faster as she grows more. 8/14/2025- Her stem that snapped partially is doing fine I think? The growth above hasn't looked any different and is still reacting to the light. When looking close at the break, you can see some "scabbing" on the edges of the break. I would say it's roughly 3/4 connected now. I added some tape to make sure it stays in position, I'm feeling like it should be fine. 8/16/2025- Crazy growth on those side branches! Fed her again today, she drank that last feeding quick! I took most of the tape off of the branch that broke and I'm just going to let it do its thing. Growth defiantly slowed down but it didn't wilt or show any signs of dying. A part of me wants to just cut if off and pretend I topped her again 😅 8/17/2025- WELP! The break wasn't really repairing itself like I thought it might, maybe it would've been alright had I taped it right away, so I snapped it completely off. It wouldn't have been able to support any bud growth and it was growing slow because it wasn't 100% connected anymore. It's water highway got cut down to a one lane dirt road... and then a dead end. After that I said fuck it, grabbed my pruners and screamed "FOR SCIENCE!!" as I cut the other stem next to it. I'm sure I just added at least a week to Veg time also but that's fine, I got plenty of time. So I also used some garden wire to pull down the side branches that are growing like crazy. I'm really not sure what she's going to do now, I'm kinda in an experimental/learning zone right now. I read that the more plant material you take off when topping, the more it stunts the growth so this will probably take a little bit to recover from.

PDanklin 08/19/2025- Alright here we are in Week 4 now, things went a little off the beaten path 😅 so yea a lil recap from last week- we snapped one of our main stems and then screwed up the repairing part cause I kept messing with it so I just took it off completely thinking that would be just like topping it again... NOPE! I learned more about topping now though! I ALSO cut the other main stem to make things even cause we can't have any asymmetry now can we! So yea after I did that, I did some researching online and realized my mistake. Nothing is going to grow back from the stems being cut. they're gone lol. So after accepting my fate, I pivoted into kinda cropping the new top stems down with landscaping staples to kinda even out the "canopy." I also topped the 2 new main stems also. I figured why not, I already handicapped my yield by quite a bit, might as well make this a full on experiment. So yea, we're going to see what happens here. I also don't have a ton of headroom so I want to keep her short before I flip.