First time grow

flatcap Plant 1 looks great, very happy with it so far. Plants 2 is slowly catching on while plant 3 is still lagging behind. Germination leaves look a little stunted in growth, so let's see if it grows a little better over the next week. Used Blumat to water the plants during some days of absence. Seems to have worked well. The soil was almost too wet, when I came back home, but the drainage worked, so that was no big problem. Will let then dry for a day first before watering again. I am currently trying to decide on a day to put them into their final pots for the grow. As all seeds are autos I just recently read that it's better not to stress them too much by switching pots too frequently, and the must preferably way seems to be to start the grow in your final pots... You live and you learn...

flatcap Transferred all plant to their final 11 liter fabric pots throughout the week. Added a humidifier in connection with a hygrometer to somewhat control the VPD. Plant 1 and 2 are thriving. Plant 2 is actually developing a faint odor already. I guess plant 3 will not yield a lot, but I still couldn't find it in my heart to throw it out. Will leave it in the tent and see how it develops. For next week I plan to start using light fertilizer when watering the next time. Apparently I didn't pack the pots properly with substrate, as they are not holding the expected amount of water. Learning something new every week 🙃

flatcap Had some nice growth for plant 1 and 2 last week (I will exclude plant 3 from now on, as I think it's probably to stunted to grow onto a "full" plant, will keep it on the edge of the tent anyway as kind of an experiment 😄) Both are actually starting to smell quite noticeable, and although I generally enjoy the odour whenever I open the tent I am somewhat happy for the carbon filter running and keeping the appartement mostly odour-free. Started giving Bio Nova Xcel this week and of course screwed up the dosage, as I put 5ml into my 5 litre watering can, while the nutrition scheme calls for 5ml/10l water 🙈 Noticed very slightly burned tips on some of the bigger leaves, but I think the damage done was minimal. To be safe I will continue to only use water the next few days. The Bio Nova stuff is supposed to complement the Monster Bud Mix Living Soil that I used. That should theoretically be enough nutrients for the full grow anyway. I am coming to regret not packing more soil into the fabric pots. As the plants grow bushier it gets harder and harder to reach the base of the plants or the soil directly, as the rims of the pots are kind of in the way. Roughly in the middle of week I applied some LST. As this is my first time I didn't want to interfere to much. I basically just bend the plants over once, tied them down and kept tucking away bigger leaves blocking smaller branches as best as I could. Also throughout the week I realized that I have a lot of fungus gnats in the soil 😕 Ordered some neem oil, nematodes and yellow cards that should arrive soon, I hope. Next time I will definitely use nematodes preemptively. I already have gathered some experience with nematodes growing chillis in the past and I was super pleased with how effectively they work. For the next days I plan to 1. water more often and more consistently to try and boost the growth a little further 2. exfoliate a few of the bigger leaves that keep getting into the was to allow for better airflow, easier watering and to prevent any humidity to get trapped below the leaves. Learning so much from growing and keeping this diary, even if the mistakes I make on the way might lead to a shitty harvest I am definitely loving it so far. 🙃

flatcap During this week all three plant entered early flowering stage. Judging by the strain descriptions I found online I would wager a guess that my plant on the right could be the Zamnesia Purple Haze Auto, as Purple Haze seems to be infamous for a substantial amount of stretch during flower. That would leave the other two to be LA Kush Cake Auto (I guess the one on the left) and the RQS Royal Dwarf Auto (in the front). However this assumption is purely based on plant size. I imagine the Royal Dwarf has a fair chance of bein the smaller one (which of couse might not be true 😋) Early this week I did a little additional LST and tugged away some leafs. It seems that the bigger two plants had some nutrient deficiency. After some research I assume it might be a little bit of Nitrogen and CalMag deficiency(?). These mostly showed in the middle, were the lamp has the highest PAR values, which would make sense (more light, more nutrients needed). But theoretically there should be enough nutrients in the soil, so I am hesitant to try and correct by giving nutrients only. Apparently a high pH of the water also leads to the plant not being able to access enough nutrients. I am using tap water and a newly bough pH-meter measured a pH of over 8 for that so... 🙈 Today they were ready to be watered again so I'm addition to a little bit of X-Cel I included PK 13-14 (as they started flowering), but also made sure to down regulate the pH afterwards to around 6.7 by adding a little bit of apple cider vinegar. I took care also to water more carefully, first using a pressure sprayer to wet the top with roughly 0.5l, waiting around 15 minutes and then giving the rest of the water with a watering can. I waited for all of the drainage to run of first and measured the weight of each plant/pot once before and after watering. No let's hope they liked their extra special treatment ans pampering today. 😅 Also during this week I watered once with nematodes to combat the ever increasing number of fungus gnats. Together with some yellow glue traps this seems to have solved this issue at least for now 🙃

flatcap Biggest update this past week was that I upgraded the grow light to a Sanlight EVO 4-80 1.5. While the LED Panel did provide 150W, which I believe is totally fine for this tent size, it also had a very bright center spot and low performance at the edges. I think for 1 plant only (which would have definitely been better as a first grow 🙈) the previous light was fine. But with my three plants I constantly struggled with light stress in the middle and very poor lighting everywhere else. The new light brought an instant improvement, looks and feels like super decent quality and was very easy to set up. I am currently running it at 50%, while it is rated for 265W. I will try and increase that slowly over the course of the next few weeks, but for now I don't want to stress the ladies too much 😇 Regarding the plants themselves, I am still having troubles with plants 1 and 2. Both show some rust spots (CalMag deficiency?) and are a little on the brighter side. Plant 3 on the other hand looks like a total winner. While it lagged behind a little the previous weeks it seems to be catching up already during stretch. Considering I touched here the least (no LST, only very light defoliation from time to time), any problems the other two are showing are definitely on me 🙈 Been continuing to slowly water this week (every other day with around 1.5l per plant, adapting the pH with BioBizz Bio Down now.

flatcap The last weeks I battled with further problems. A lot of leafs are turning brown and especially for the two smaller plants it's also impacting the flower leafs. I had the suspicion, that the high amount of limescale in my tap water might be to blame. So I started using the water out of a dehumidifier I run in my apartment. I think it is too soon to tell, of this is actually helping. I hope I can finish the grow at least with a small harvest and already have a list of notes for improvements for the next run. I also have a continuous problem (to varying degrees) with root gnats. Been giving nematodes which seems to help a little, but every once in a while I see a few new little beasts 🙈