Solitary Watermelon Auto

drakkon My Watermelon Automatic is doing fine on day seven. It's working on a third set of leaves and appears relatively healthy. There are a few light spots on one leaf, which I will monitor. Calculating the watering volume is difficult, because this week I watered it by submerging it and letting it absorb water from the bottom and sides.

drakkon The Watermelon Automatic is doing swell at 14 days. She appears healthy overall, except for a few tiny spots on a leaf or two, which I will monitor. She got a plain-water misting several times per day, and I expect to transplant and top her soon.

drakkon It was an eventful week for the Watermelon Automatic. She was topped on day 18 and transplanted on day 19 without suffering any shock or slowdown. At the time of topping, I also pruned the two branches from her first node, which now leaves her with nodes #2, #3, #4 and #5, for a total of eight main branches. She is currently growing nicely and appears healthy. Each day, I mist her with water several times. I have not fed her any nutrients beyond what's in the Happy Frog soil, other than some mycorrhizae I added during transplant. Training will commence in the upcoming week.

drakkon The Watermelon Automatic appears happy and healthy, and she underwent training this week. I fertigated her once with half-strength grow nutrients and once with diluted cal-mag. She looks great to me for a plant at day 28.

drakkon The Watermelon Automatic is growing fast and has not yet started to flower. There are pre-flowers at many branch sites, but the growing tips still appear like vegetative growth. I did introduce some dilute bloom nutrients to her watering regimen, as I expect she'll start flowering soon. Training and light defoliation continue. She's starting to have quite a lot of secondary branches and potential bud sites, which looks promising.

drakkon As of day 42, the Watermelon Automatic F1 is growing quickly, and it has just recently started to flower. Training is now complete for the most part, and light defoliation continues. A few mid-to-older leaves bear faint rust-colored spots, but they're very slight. I've spotted a few mites and mite-bites, and remove the affected leaf when I do. Unless it gets worse, it'll be just part of ongoing defoliation. Bloom nutrients increased a little, but still less than full strength. Now that the plant has outgrown the 18" x 24" photo backdrop I've been using, I'll soon be getting a larger one.

drakkon The past week was not great for the Watermelon Automatic, but no disaster either. A fair number of leaves showed signs of stress, and I suspect I overfed and it's nutrient burn. I went back to plain water, and thankfully the issue didn't spread too much. I also spotted a couple mites and signs of their bites, but nothing widespread. I removed any affected leaves, and now she looks a little sparse, but not too bad. I am hopeful she's on a better trajectory. The same thing happened to her neighbor, my Gaia F1, but to a lesser extent. And ditto for a recent Epsilon F1 grow. I'm still relatively new to growing autoflowers, so I will simply call this a learning opportunity and be careful not to overfeed going forward. I included a photo showing a few of the leaves I removed. Please speak up if you think I'm wrong about it being nutrient burn.

drakkon As of day 56, the Watermelon Automatic is doing ok but not great. After showing signs of nutrient burn in the prior week, I administered a plain water flush, and then re-introduced nutrients at an even lower concentration for one watering. She has recovered somewhat, but some leaf browning and curling has continued. I removed and trimmed some of the worst affected leaves, and she now appears rather over-defoliated and sparse for my liking. However, the buds seem to be doing ok, albeit a little small. Leaf-charts and AI tools point to nutrient burn, P or Ca deficiency, or a PH issue (or a combination?). I really don't think it's PH given my soil and setup (and it tested at 7). I'll continue to monitor the plant, and we'll see how next week goes. For now, I think I'll stick with very dilute nutrients every second or third watering. As a hobbyist growing for myself, friends and family, I'm not overly concerned. In fact, I enjoy experimenting a little, so I look forward to seeing what happens with the buds given the extensive defoliation.