Violet Face Auto

Aircoholic And we're live in 6, 5, 4 days... well after 4 days, but the joke wouldn't work (what joke you ask? nevermind!) Interesting observation on day 1 - Violet Face Auto starts off a little slower than the neighboring Wedding Cheesecake Auto from FastBuds. We'll see how this plays out from here.

Aircoholic Starting with a bit of a slower pace, but nothing to worry. Actually I've seen this same behavior with Rainbow Donut Auto of the previous grow - Rainbow Donut Auto basically took 2 weeks longer to flower than the Fast Buds seed I've grown at the same time. Let's see if the pattern repeats with this grow - she's growing next to a Wedding Cheesecake Auto by Fast Buds, btw. Soil went pretty dry after I was away for 4 days and let's just say, she took that drought much better than the other plants in the same room. She got a good soak and seems really happy with that.

Aircoholic Looks like she recovered alright from the little dry patch in the watering schedule. Her leafs look healthy and vital, so I decided to top her on day 15 - maybe a day or two too early, we'll see. But I didn't just top her, I also removed the two top fan leafs - I'm aware, it's a tricky balance between the loss of energy produced from the leafs vs. giving the new growth underneath more light to stimulate growth. She'll be alright, I've got a good feeling about her! She also received a layer of Mulch on top of the first soil layer. The idea: aiding the microbial life on the soil surface and at the same time reduce evaporation to prevent the top soil layer to dry out too quickly.

Aircoholic So far, so good. She looks healthy and vital, with a lot of growth to the sides of the pot. She seems to have recovered and bounced back from topping alright, although I'm not sure if removing the sunsails was the best idea - it's an interesting experiment, but I probably won't do it again, I just don't see a massive benefit from it with Autos.

Aircoholic She's doing well, but her growth is a bit on the slower side - especially compared to her neighbor (Wedding Cheesecake by Fast Buds). I've attempted LST, but there's not much room for the clips, due to the slow growth. Unfortunately, I hurt her a bit in the process, snapped a young branch - tried to stabilize it with toothpicks and cable ties and also now with a piece of painters tape carefully placed around the wound to give her a bit more stability and prevent drying out. Quite exciting to operate on such a fragile patient. She's not showing signs of pre flower yet, but I top dressed her with some worm castings anyway.

Aircoholic After last weeks accident, this week I completely snapped off a branch, unfortunately. It happened when I tried to remove an LST clip, you can call it accidental topping. The plant grows slow, with very short internodes and a bushy appearance, which makes it super difficult to do any training really. Not sure what's the cause - it could have to do with topping the plant in early veg, it could be genetics. Since Rainbow Donut Auto from last grow performed very similar, I have a tendency to suspect the genetics, but will do one more test with Anesia Seeds (I still got a few of 'em left in the fridge anyway), where I don't top the plant, just to see if they react any differently. Apart from the slow growth, she's looking pretty healthy, showing signs of pre flower, but isn't quite there yet.

Aircoholic She's growing - slow but steady. She's in pre flower, definitely not fully in bloom yet, and the stretch is also still waiting to happen. Still not sure why she's slower and smaller than Wedding Cheesecake Auto next pot, but it doesn't matter now anyway. She takes more time, I feel that. She's super difficult to do LST on, because of her slow and bushy grow - I broke two branches off by accident already, when I tried to remove LST clips on other branches nearby, so I pretty much stopped that and just let her grow however she wants to. Maybe once the stretch starts, I'm gonna be able to train her a little.

Aircoholic She's developing alright, her leafs look lush and healthy green, she's finally gaining some height, but she's very fragile! I've previously snapped off two branches, both times accidents while carefully applying LST clips to neighboring branches. And that's how it happened this time as well - I've put a band aid (aka painters tape) on to save the branch, which seems to work. But I don't want to touch her anymore to train her to grow anywhere.

Aircoholic She's slowly waking up now, and starting to stretch. She's looking super healthy and showing lots of vital growth. Her flowers start forming, not bulking yet, but already pretty to look at. I'll do some light defoliation and lollipopping this week to give her some space and improve air circulation. I would've loved to do a little more LST on her, to open up her canopy much more, but it just is what it is now and after so many accidents and injuries to the plant while attempting LST, I'd rather let her grow how she wants to.

Aircoholic Building buds and stretching out. She finally grew to a respectable height - let's see if she got a few centimeters left in her, but if not, I'm happy with her staying a bit on the shorter side. Her canopy finally thins out a bit, thanks to her growing up. Her shape resembling a bushy leaf ball was a bit concerning as it didn't allow much airflow. It's definitely better now, and I'll do some defoliation sometime this week. The lollipopping I did during last week helped a lot, and she seems to respond pretty well. There are regular mushroom friends visiting her now, and usually quite a fungi bunch. She's also not far off until her ACT treatment, until then, I think I'll just feed her water. Her appearance is very healthy and vital, no deficiencies, no apparent issues in sight, which makes me so happy, because I'm not used to that - not yet at least.

Aircoholic She decided she wasn't quite done stretching, added another 10 cm and is now surpassing Wedding Cheesecake Auto next to her. She's getting really thirsty now, which made me realize, I haven't been utilizing the "Watering Volume Per Plant Per 24h" properly - it's difficult, because I don't follow a strict watering schedule, but give them water, when the soil and/or the plant signals demand. Anyway, she's drinking plenty now and the watering frequency went up, which is a beautiful sign that her roots have grown nicely and that she's putting a lot of energy into bud production now. I'll feed her some BioTabs PK Booster ACT this week. My hope is, that this will boost bud growth and kickstart trichome production.

Aircoholic She's developing lovely in general, but her buds in particular start to look fantastic. She definitely stopped growing and channels all the energy into bud production, and even the first trichomes, that give off a slight, but somewhat fruity sour aroma. To help her in that phase, I made some delicious PK Booster Compost Tea and fed it to her yesterday. That should give the microbes in the soil a nice boost and in next week's update, the effects should be visible.

Aircoholic Really happy with how she develops, after a very slow start. Her buds start to bulk and produce more and more trichomes and a lovely aroma, fruity, slightly sweet, a little sour, a little tart maybe - very curious how that's going to change over the next weeks. She's showing very few signs of nutrient mobilization from the fan leafs - this seems a little early to me, hopefully she doesn't have any deficiencies. I'm not worried about it, but I put it on the 'to observe' list. And I switched to a different camera, so in the process of me trying to understand how this thing works, the images should start to look a bit nicer. Always keep learning new things!

Aircoholic This week, one day before the weekly photo shoot, I gave her 3,5 L PK Booster Compost Tea that was aerating for 27 hours. So far she hasn't shown massive reactions, but that'll take a few days in living soil. She's looking good, healthy, vital, nice buds, good trichomes and aroma, but I felt like she could use a bit of a microbial boost for the last stage of her grow cycle. Some leafs show a funny pattern - a bit sprinkled light and dark green, almost a bit like marble. It doesn't look like a deficiency, and also not like typical signs of nutrient mobilization at the end of growth. Don't think it's something to worry about, just haven't seen that before. I found a couple of leafs with spider mites on them - hope I found them early enough and all of them to prevent this from becoming a bigger issue.

Aircoholic She appears to be closer to harvest than I expected, judging from the beginning of flowering, her bud size, trichome amount - but the macro shots of the trichomes speak a different language and say somewhere between 1-2 weeks. Since I started another PK Booster compost tea yesterday, before knowing the state of her trichomes, I'll feed it to her anyway. Even if the effect from it won't be particularly big, hopefully it can boost the aroma and trichome production a little more.