Mephisto Illuminauto №31 Sweet 'N' Sour

First-time grower of anything. Using a 3x3x6 and a Meijiu QB 240w in Canna Coco/Perlite. Two 6" Infinity AC fans, (intake, exhaust) RO Water. My initial plan was to run 3 plants, however, I realized too late I only had 2 auto seeds and 2 photos. Which were Expert Seeds NL #5 and Sweet Cream Auto. I went and placed an order with Mephisto, and by the time their seeds arrived my NL #5 died. In combination with a heating pad and swapping to the CFL from a desktop LED I managed to cook the seedlings .... twice. Not sure how the Sweet Cream lived thru my brutality. My initial plans were to run Jacks 321 however trying to measure dry weight into 500ml container proved to be.... beyond what I can do reliably after a couple tokes from the binger. After a late night of perusing Amazon I had a couple of bottles of Canna A+B on the way.... but alas I wasn't paying attention and it wasn't Prime eligible so it won't be here for another week.

So started out with three 1L Airpots while fully expecting the Sweet Cream to die off due to my amateurism. To my surprise it's chugging along. I re-potted the 3 plants that had roots showing. Sprinkled Azos on them and ordered another set of Air Pots. I started adding nutes on day 7. I took Canna's light feeding schedule and diluted it in half. Watering till runoff every 2 days. Added a humidifier but didn't really use it much. They are also under the QB's for the first time. It's at about 45% on the dimmer 18-20" away from the top.

Re potted to 3 gallon's. sprinkled more Azos I was toying with light levels and dropped it a couple of inches and increased it to around 65%. Still watering every other day. Added some gnat nix as a top dressing just in case. The Rhizo and Cannazym finally got in, so I get to add these. Better late than never I guess. Sticking with the light schedule, 1/2 strength Silica, 3/4 strength Cal-Mag and some Yucca to help everything along.

Sweet Cream has yellow new growth. I watered it 2x with 1/2 strength solution to attempt to flush it a bit. I attempted to start to LST the plants although I don't really know wtf I'm doing. The Sweet N Sours look great. Really bushy and a lot healthier looking than the Sweet Cream. Still watering every other day about 500ml each. Towards the middle of the week I switched to 18/6 light schedule and bumped the light up 100% I sprayed them with some Green Cleaner at 3.5ml per 1000ml as a foliage spray once the lights went down. Starting to see pre flowers on the Super Cream and one of the Sweet N Sours by the end of the week.

Got some trellising that I really should have done last week. Added Boost and Bud Candy into the mix. Increased the ratios other nutes as well and removed Rhizo by the end of the week and added a bit more Cannazym instead. Watering every day now. Raised the lights and swapped positions of the plants front to back. My 3 Sweet N Sours seem to be about 1 week behind one another in development The largest one in veg has now become the smallest, and last to show flowering. The 2nd largest in Veg is now the largest and looks the healthiest. At some point I started defoliating the bottom leaves and gave them a light lollipop trim on 3 of them. I figured I'd leave one alone in case I inadvertently murder them. Ironically the 2 Sour Stompers I messed with are now the biggest and smallest of the plants. The one left alone is about as far along as the Sour Cream. Somewhere in the middle. Smell is noticeable now.

Not sure if it's phenotype or just me affecting the plant in some way but you can see that one Sweet N Sour is well ahead of the others. Finally got a flood tray so going to try my hand at blumats. (It's there just in case there is a runaway) Still trying to piece together a top off reservoir with a 5 gallon bucket and a brute 14 gallon storage tub and a circulating pump. That way the blumats will always be under constant pressure and I will just need to top off the 14 gallon res I hope this works out as I'm getting pretty damn lazy mixing these nutes every other day already. I still have my Jacks 321 So I may mix up a gallon of that and use it on the Sweet Cream to see if I responds better. I've been alternating PH by .1 each watering to give it a bit of range but that plant just continues to look unhealthy.

Sweet Cream looking better after the flush. The largest of the SNS is starting to stack buds. Both the largest SNS and the Sweet Cream got PK 13/14 today in addition to the normal feeding that dropped Bud Candy. Sweet Cream was showing the tiniest signs on nute burn on some leaf tips but I didn't notice till after I watered. Prob wasn't the smartest time to introduce PK, but we'll see how it goes. Other 2 SNS are about 1.5 and 1 week behind the largest SNS in development. So I decided to hold off PK for another week for those guys. These got real bushy real quick. Daily work of tucking fan leaves and trying to get an even canopy. Wish I had a larger tent, as they are starting to shade each other out a bit. Since these are Auto's, unsure if I should try defoliating more. My humidity is pretty high as it never dips below 60 even with the lights on. I know those tiny dehumidifiers don't do much of anything ...but it's not like I can fit a 30-50 pint in there. So far still piecing together the blumats as my order came missing some pieces. But other than that just chugging along.

Started out by rotating them front to back again. The tall ones in front just made it a pain to access the back ones. Defoliated a bit on the bottoms of the plants. And raised the light by about 6" from canopy. Had to add risers on the 2 full flowering plants as the other ones that were slightly behind, now tower in size over the 2 that are in full flower. #1 and SC are both getting PK, I may hold off on the PK for #3 and #4 till next week. The smell from the #1 SnS is almost bubblegum like. Definitely sweet, Not sure what the Sweet Cream smells like, as the SnS over powers it.

Just chugging along. SNS #1 and Sweet Cream are now getting 1/2 strength nutes as it bulks the flowers, SNS #2 and #3 are getting PK this week. My guess is that SNS #1 and Sweet Cream have maybe another 1-2 weeks before I start flushing. And the other two, are 1 and 2 weeks behind that respectively. I feel like I should defoliate #3 more as it is really bushy, and it's fan leaves are crowding out the buds, but not sure If I should do that being this far into flowering.

Another week in the books. It's starting to really smell now, piercing and lingering in your nostrils. So much for the bubblegum, its straight gas now. I ended up defoliating some top fan leaves on all 4 to expose bud sites. And to get some airflow. I've never dipped below 65% RH even with the lights on and no standing water, so worried about mold/rot. I have a 6" oscillating fan that I swap tent posts every night to get different directions of airflow on top of the canopy. And a fixed 6" fan pointed perpendicular to the 6" inline fan intake for the bottom. And my intake and exhaust are already at max and about 50 RH at the intake. I stopped adding Silica, and halved the Cal-Mag. Stopped PK, and started reducing A+B while keeping the Boost and Cannazym the same. Sweet Cream and SNS #1 will get a 50% diluted solution of this new nute schedule, and will start flushing next week. SNS #2 and #3 are starting to bulk up now and some pistils are starting to turn orange. They both look a lot frostier than SNS#1. I'm guessing another 2 weeks for these than a final flush. Sweet Cream is getting really bulky, more so than the SNS's however unless magnified you'd be hard pressed to make out trichomes. Still cant make out a smell because the others are overpowering

Ok so apparently my math sucks and I've been actually a 1/2 week behind what week I've been stating in this journal. I also counted from the day I placed the seed in the ground, and not the first day it germed (it took 3 days, so minus an additional 3 days LOL) Anyways. If we count from the day it germed, this would be 76 days or 1 day shy of 11 weeks, So the some of these pics are at about 10.5 weeks. If you look at previous pictures and minus 3 days, you will have the actual days the plants have been above ground. Starting this week I am counting days since it has germed on the pics. With that out of the way, SNS #1 has had 7 days of flush. Sweet Cream has had 4. I intend on flushing for 10 days. My run off is already below 200ppm The other 2 SNS's are both still on nutes. I probably would have left #1 and SC on nutes for another week If I had done my math right. But at this point they've already been flushed and I don't see any reason to restart nutes just to drop it again. Once I get #1 and SC out of the tent and into the dry space, I will have more room for the final couple of weeks for #2 and #3. The few Sweet and Sour's I've seen on IG and other sites, have gone for 90+ days. So I might stretch out #2 and #3 for another 2 weeks.

Not sure the taste cause I haven't smoked it yet. Still waiting on a real cure. Also I did a real shit job of segregating the 2 plants while chopping them. So this is my best guess as to breakdown by eyeballing / smell test the nugs to differentiate them. I ended up with what I deemed 61 grams of dense nugs, and 50 grams of larfy buds dryish. I never took a weight when it was wet. I'm realizing now the direction I bent the main stem during LST was incorrect as there was a huge cola sitting under the shadow of the main growth. I didn't even notice it until I pulled the plant out, and by then it had been flushed for about a week. They dried for about 4 days. The buds aren't as dry as I would like so there is still some moisture to be lost. (The larfy stuff still clumps together in the jar and tapping inst enough to separate them, so they could be drier) But yea kinda holy shit moment because I was looking at worse case scenario 1 oz per plant with 4 plants. And this one plant came out to be about 4oz albiet with some moisture still. I'll update the weights and taste when they are ready.

Like the Sweet Cream, I'm still waiting on a cure to smoke it. Smells wonderful, and frosty. This plant is the smaller of my Sweet and Sours. The other 2 are much larger. I had a much higher ratio of what I deemed dense nugs to larf compared to the SC. 73g dense, 50g larfy. It suffered the same problems with space as the Sweet Cream. Most of the inner buds weren't as fully ripened as I would have liked. But it too was already flushed so I moved it out the tent to give the 2 larger ones some breathing room. This too can get a bit drier, there is some weight/moisture still to be lost. And I'll update with the taste and final weight when it's ready. I'm a bit of a prude when it comes to weed taste and quality so I don't have really much desire to try it out until some cure time. I managed to double my expected goal in weight with my 2 smallest plants. So in that respect, more than happy.