Lemon AK + Zkittlez Autoflowers

Soooo.... I'm here to attest the folks at FastBuds were exceptionally generous with me last year. Not only did they give me a bunch of crazy cool (pro level) photographic equipment worth thou$ands just for growing some herb (2nd place Diary of the Year), when I asked where the seeds were hiding they threw these in ... so Thank You Heather. I promised I'd give them a good home, and it looks like they all made it. Because I like to experiment I'll grow two of these in a tent and one outdoors... just so we can confuse the stats makers here at GD. 😏 The fact that these babies were born this close to 4/20 is a complete coincidence. Or not. 420 FastBuds?... you decide. 😈 4/20 > Decided to combine both of my new FastBuds strains into one diary. Not sure if there will be 2 or 3 Zkittlez, one seems to be putting up a fight at present. If 2 I'll probably still throw one outdoors and keep one indoors. April 22 > Woke up to find one of my Zkittlez seedlings had keeled over and fallen so I performed emergency replanting surgery. I think the environment may have been too wet.

Decided to repot everybody into their final 5 gallon fabric pots today and move them into the tent under Kind K3 LED lighting for the first time. Only one of the Zkittlez made it, can't really account for why except that perhaps the potting soil is a little too hot for seedlings. The most robust Lemon AK actually showed a little bit of what looks like nutrient burn at the new leaf tips. Things should start moving along now in their new home.

Kentucky Derby Day here in the US. My mom used to race horses many moons ago and I've been following the Derby since the 1980's, so a busy day here. So far so good. This is pretty much the end of the first full week in the tent. Of the 3 Lemon AK's, one is clearly further along and one is smallest of all. I only really flooded the containers for the first time yesterday. I wanted things to dry out a little from when they were repotted. I don't expect I'll have to water them much for a few days.

After a full week in the tent the girls are starting to acclimatize. Of the 3 Lemon AK's, one is significantly larger and one significantly smaller than perceived normal. The Zkittlez seems to have had a malfunction of one leaf set that seemed to forget to grow, but the most recent set seems back to normal.

Temperatures have cooled considerably and it's actually raining today... very unusual for these parts about this time of year. All the local grasses are usually light brown and dead by Memorial Day which is only a week or so away and we won't see rain again until fall. Took the girls outside for pictures before the rains came. Haven't had to give these girls much fluid with their relatively small size. One of the Lemon AK's actually came out of the ground growing sideways. I think I'll eventually cover up the base so it turns into a root - but I've never seen a plant do that. She's figured out which way is up now. The largest Lemon AK is at 6" and the Zkittlez is at about 4.5".

Yippeee! Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Yesterday was my last day at work and I am now officially RETIRED. So much more time I can spend with the girls now. 😎 I lowered my LED lights this week to about 24". The Zkittlez is at 7" tall and the Lemon AK's range from 6" to 8".

This is the first week I can say these girls seem to officially be showing signs of flowering. All of them. One of the 3 Lemon AK's is much more spindly and open than the other two... which themselves are dense and bushy like the Zkittlez seems to be. I actually gave them a fair dose of vegatative nutrients yesterday evening as I had let them dry out but that will be the last dose of that. One of these girls I will probably yank outside to finish off as an experiment starting tomorrow... probably one of the two bushy Lemon AK's. The spindly one can't really be compared to the other two growth-wise. We're about to enter a warm period outdoors. The Zkittlez is at 10". The Lemon AK's are are 10", 13" and 15". Today also happens to be Cannabis Cup day in northern California.... Santa Rosa specifically... so you know where I'm gonna be today. Last years event was only the 2nd ever licensed cannabis consumption event in the state... so hopefully everything will be running smooth as silk this year. I'll bring back pictures. NOT coincidently today is also the first official day of my retirement. 👍 June 2 > Added photos from yesterday's Cannabis Cup event in Santa Rosa. Was looking for the folks from NewVape because I thought they'd be demoing their presses but there wasn't anybody there with press equipment, anywhere. Overall I'd say it was only half the size of last years event. There was WAY more folks there selling genetics/seeds than last year. Even bumped into a rep from 420 Fast Buds (the folks who bought me the camera that took these pictures)... so that was big fun. Managed to get in a free massage which I missed last year so I was on top of that. It was the perfect way to mellow into retirement. June 3 > Decided to move Zkittlez outdoors to finish. That will leave 2 Lemon AK's indoors.

After a relatively cool week last week mother nature decided to turn up the temperatures... we'll be pushing a dry 90 degrees for the next few days. Just keep the girls hydrated and we should be fine. Retirement gives me more time to play with the girls, so I'm back to some tricks I used a decade ago moving plants around in my yard to maximize their exposure to direct sunlight. Basically I stick the plants in one end of the yard to catch sunrise and then I move them halfway thru the day to catch sunset. Not hard when using 5 gallon containers, which all my autoflowers are in. Now the 10 and 15 gallon containers I have my Amnesia's in - I don't move those - too heavy - but I have them on wheelies so I can move them short distances on the patio and rotate for pruning. I made another experimenting decision with the autoflowers also. Of the 3 Lemon AK's... one was/is rather spindly compared to the other two... and I've decided to use a combination of LED lighting AND mother nature to assist in finishing her off. So of the 3 Lemon AKs - one is fully outdoors - one is fully indoors on 18 hour lighting - and the spindly girl is gonna get about 21-22 hours light/day combined..... just for comparison purposes. The Zkittlez will finish fully outdoors. It seems the indoor girls have started stretching more than the outdoor girls. The Lemon AK's come in at 18" outdoors, 22" indoors, and 29" for the spindly sucker. The Zkittlez comes in at 21". Transitioned to flowering nutes... running at normal recommended strength.

Not sure what happened exactly but somebody lit a fire under these girls and they seem to have exploded vertically. I haven't done any topping or substantial pruning of these girls because this is my first experiment growing autoflowers and I didn't wan't to mess with that variable because it seems to have a significant effect on autos. It MAY be because we had a mini heat wave of sorts last week where we had about 3 days in a row pushing the high 90's with minimal fog and sunshine all day - and we're near the solstice so this is about as effective as mother nature gets when I can move my (mini) plants from one end of the yard to the other to suck up those rays. They are clearly feeling it. So the growth leader is naturally the spindly girl - tallest plant by far now. She has a much larger internodal spacing than the other two Lemon AK's - the fan leaves themselves seem smaller, thinner - no stopping the light getting in at those buds. This girl now spends the first half of her day under my LED lights in the tent (which come on starting at 1900 local), then I pull her out in the morning (depending on fog level) to sit in the sunshine until about 1600, then I give her about 3 hours of darkness in the tent. Last week she was 29" tall, this week she's 38" tall. Whoa nellie! Now the outdoor Lemon AK has always been bushier with leaves seeming a bit broader than the indoor girl. At the current flowering level, the indoor girl has almost miniature leaves for new growth - is that a pistil or a leaf - or are you just happy to see me? It's easy to tell the two apart just on looks. Buds are certainly starting to fatten up all around. The indoor girl was 22" last week and 26" this week. She gets 18 hours of LED light/day. The outdoor girl was 18" last week and 23" this week. The Zkittlez is really starting to fatten up in the bud department. The buds seem a bit closer together than the Lemon AK's, a little denser structure... but clearly happy and growing like crazy. A slightly lighter color green than the Lemon AK's. She was 21" last week and is 28" now. Go baby go! 😎 Everybody is getting a fairly high (which for me is irregular) nutrient level, rather than 50% levels, which is my norm.

Things are starting to get closer to the finish line... although it seems like there will be at least 3 different lines... which is fine in terms of manpower (me). Spindly tall girl and the indoor Lemon AK are the furthest along and are starting to get a little sticky. In trichome land the only sample I took is still all clear but things will require monitoring since this is my first set of autoflowers to get to the end. Things be moving fast. The two autos I put outside sooner (one Lemon AK and one Zkittlez) are both WAY bushier than the other two which have seen much more LED light by comparison. None of these autos has received ANY pruning in a vertical sense (no topping, etc.) and hardly any pruning underneath either, which may probably have been a mistake but I like to experiment. The girls have reached the end of their vertical development. It's all about the flowers now. Current numbers are... Zkittlez (outdoor) is at 29.5" Lemon AK outdoor is at 24".... indoor is 28.5"... and spindly girl is 39". Just guessing from experience at this point but the outdoor girls seem to be about a week at least behind the indoor girls.

Things are starting to look nice. The spindly girl and the indoor Lemon AK are the furthest along, with the indoor girl fattening up very quickly and starting to shine with trichomes. She only comes out in the sun once a week for pictures, but theses two girls are starting to glisten. Now, for sheer fatness... I'm betting the Zkittlez will come in heaviest in the end. And she's starting to smell wicked nice. Like candy. I've been giving all the autoflowers a full dose of nutrients in this late flowering stage, whereas I normally dole things out at a 50% rate. Only the indoor girl seems to show any sign of nutrient burn - but the rate at which she is fattening is much quicker than her outdoor sisters - so I'll leave things be at present. I'm tempted to move that last girl outdoors to finish off just to get her out of my way in the tent (making space for new recruits) - but the point of this experiment was to compare indoors vs outdoors and she's the only indoor representative left - so she stays put till she's done. July 3 > After taking multiple sample from all 4 autos I decided things were moving quickly and it was time to flush these babies. This was all completed on the 3rd. It's quite possible these girls will be harvested within the week. July 4 > First sign of amber in trichome land. Time to start shutting down the amount of fluid the girls receive and start drying them out and prepping for harvest. Time to start shedding some of these fan leaves.

So I ended up with 2 outdoor plants and one indoor. Of the 2 outdoor, one was somewhat spindly and I started a routine of giving her about 20 hours of light a day, about half LED and half daylight. She ended up being the tallest of the 4. Still spindly compared to the other 2 outdoor girls (one was a Zkittlez) which grew quite bushy. So there was no problem with light getting to buds on that girl. On the outside girl, the buds were so dense it was difficult to remove all the fav leaves without pulling the buds apart so we'll leave that for later and attack with something sharp. The indoor girl almost seemed stickiest and I left her outside the tent overnight to get an extra 12 hours of dark cycle to finish off. The other 3 girls I more or less pruned the majority of fan leaves off yesterday evening at sunset. One more difference amongst this group of plants - I washed all of the plants EXCEPT the indoor Lemon AK... mainly because I want to refresh my memory how long it takes to dry a plant that hasn't been washed (I think my washed plants actually dry faster) - and since she was never really outside except for some photos she hasn't got the debris that some of the outside girls accumulate. Once everything is dried and cured I'll update with weights and more pictures. Sticky stuff. ======================================================================== July 13 -> Got all the way thru trimming the outdoor Lemon AK this evening and added pics. Didn't even realize the weight between buds and trim was almost identical at about 77 grams... so I'm guessing I'll end up correct in that the Zkittlez will end up the heaviest of all the autoflowers I grew because I think the outdoor Lemon was the heaviest of those 3. Won't have time to trim the other 2 Lemon AKs until tomorrow evening or Monday - golf takes over tomorrow. This retirement stuff is hell. 😆 July 14 -> Played golf respectably but not going to scare anybody. Still rebuilding my swing post-surgery. Had fun in great weather. Returned to another favorite passion. Trimming cannabis plants. Tedious perhaps at times... especially when you get down to that point of no return and you decide to just call the rest trim because you're too tired to go further looking at what's in front of you. Then when I updated the diary this evening all the captions were gone from the photos so I had to recreate that from memory. 😳 The big story of the day is the weight on spindly girl - she kicked ass. I thought outdoor Lemon AK would be the heaviest of the AKs, but spindly girl came in with 84 grams on the buds and 81 grams on the trim... both higher than outdoor girl. Spindly was noticeably drier when trimming - with just that one extra day. Stalks would snap pretty easy. Checking the dryness of this stuff it seems under 55% at present so we'll be curing it a couple months essentially with Boveda packs at 62% humidity in CVault containers. So I still have one Lemon AK hanging.... the (indoor) girl I didn't wash. No doubt in my mind she's not as dry as everything I've trimmed to date. Stems still won't snap... but she's close... glad she's not ready yet because I'm tired. There must be something in my washing procedure which acts as an astringent on the plants that get washed causing them to dry quicker than something that wasn't washed. Gotta be either the Hydrogen Peroxide or the baking soda/lemon juice. I think I'll be able to trim that baby either tomorrow or the next day and do a final update on the diary with total weights. ======================================================================= July 15 -> We be done... at least with this batch of auto-flowers. The last of the 3 was quite dry when I went to trim it. Many of the buds practically fell apart on trim. It also reminded me of what the difference is between indoor and outdoor grows. Final weights > Outdoor Lemon AK > Buds 77g and trim 77g Spindly Lemon AK > Buds 84g and trim 82g Indoor Lemon AK > Buds 31g and trim 38g July 16 -> Added photos of kief and buds. There was an amazing amount of kief on these Lemon AK's. Even the fan leaves that were trimmed off were coated in sugar, so we'll probably get a good run of hash from this trim. The amount of kief came in at 2.75 grams. I basically rolled the trim over the screen in the bottom of my trim bin before storing.

I thought this plant was going to turn out to be the heaviest of my autos but the outdoor Lemon AK fattened up quite quickly at the end there so we'll have to see how things weigh out before we can compare, but this baby smell great. Like candy. I'm unlikely to actually taste any of this for at least a month after she's cured a bit. We'll be back to update the diary after everything dries and we can trim and weigh everything. July 12 > Dry enough to trim so away we went. Finished up the Zkittlez first to get it out of the way of the other 3 which are the same. Lovely smell on this flower. Ended up with a bit over 3 ounces of bud. July 14 -> Something be messed up with notes on photos - they seem to keep disappearing... but in any event the final updates to this diary will actually be contained under the Lemon AK harvest diary... ummm.... because there were 3 of them and the last one crossed the finish line last.