1st grow Blackberry Kush & Daiquiri Lime

My first grow! So exciting! I've put just a bit of granulated horse manure fertilizer into the germinating soil, right before I've read it's a no-no. I made sure to mix it thoroughly and the seedlings are looking fine so far, but maybe it has come back to bite me later. I've kept them on my windowsill for the first week, they had sun in the morning and then I put them under my desk LED light, which is quite strong, and kept them there till about midnight. Then back to the windowsill. On pictures they look quite similar, but the Blackberry Kush was growing a bit faster since the beginning. Might be (partly, maybe) because the Daiquiri Lime seed was smallish and light in color, probably a bit weaker. I managed to accidentally delete most of my pictures, hence just these two.

I've transplanted them to the big pots on day 8. Since then they are staying in a greenhouse during the nights and I usually take them out when the weather is nice (it gets very hot in the greenhouse when the sun's out). The soil is a generic gardening soil with some (may 20%) home made compost, some horse manure granules (not much, maybe 300g for both pots), some wood ash (as I've read it's a good fertilizer), also not much really. I've also added some lime to raise the Ph, as I've read the wood ash brings it down... But I have no means to reliably measure it, so I just added "some". Didn't add any perlite to the mix, as I wasn't really planning to get any supplies in advance and just used what was around the house. I hope it will be fine... On day ~11 I've watered them with a tea from stinging nettle, dandelion, and a few other herbs I found growing around :) I saw a similar thing on a different grow around the site. I just poured hot water over the herbs and let it sit till next day. Shouldn't be hot on nutrients since it didn't really ferment but should extract the minerals from the plants. I've diluted it like 4:1 for the watering. Didn't observe any noticeable effect. Now the seedlings started mostly being the same color but really differentiated after a few days. The Kush has a nice deep green while Daiquiri Lime stays true to it's name. At first I thought it's the strain, but then I looked at other people's pictures and it had mostly normal green color. Its also growing slow, especially since the transplant. The night temperatures were also quite low in the greenhouse (around 5C some nights), so that might have been a factor, but the weather got warmer about midway into week 2. And, its growing asymmetric leaves. Perhaps its nute burn? Maybe there was a pocket in the germinating soil with high content of the horse fertilizer... Dunno. I'm waiting for it to snap out of it... Not much else I can do I think.

I was away for a bit. When I returned, the Kush was growing nicely but Daiquiri Lime (unsuprisingly) looks quite stunted. I've been trying to figure out what's wrong but don't really have a clue. I went and bought Alg-a-mic, as I've read it helps in general to releave strees. I gave them both a foliage feed plus some very light watering (I fully watered two days before and I think it was still a bit early - I just freaked out a bit when they were droopy, but they were just going to sleep). So I just split like 0.3l between the two of the Alg-a-mic to give them some goodness. It seems Daiquiri Lime picked up some speed since the Alg-a-mic treatment! We'll see. She's still way behind... We're having some cold and cloudy weather now, so I'm not expecting miracles really. Also, I came to check them today and... are those pistils on the BlackBerry Kush? Is it starting to flower already on day 22?? Not sure that's good?

The weather hasn't been great this week, but they did get at least a few hours of sunshine every day. Growing a bit slow, Daiquiri Lime is quite a bit behind. I think the main issue is big pots and overwatering. It will take forever for the pots to dry out, especially with the weather we're getting now. Well, I'm going to see how long it takes. Blackberry Kush has spotted leaves which I think indicates PH issues. I measured my run-off and it's between 7 and 8. I guess I've added too much lime. Also the wooden ash I've added is actually alkaline, not acidic, turns out you should double-check the facts you get from the internet. I'll be using PH down while watering, just not sure when that's gonna be... I've topped the Blackberry on day 24. Not sure if I didn't mess it up, the new main colas are developing very slowly, hopefully they pick up speed soon. Still growing though! Live and learn 😎👍

The weather has been really bad this past week. Damn cold and cloudy. Didn't do any watering, pots are drying out on the top, still very wet at the bottom though. Not sure what to do. Still probably gonna wait a few more days. I'm doing Alg-a-mic misting every couple of days. Blackberry Kush is in full flower, still no signs on Daiquiri Lime. Just as good, it's still very small... I hope LSTing it will make it bush out, the secondary colas are very small though and struggling a bit...

Weather is getting better, was cloudy at the beginning of the week. Found the depicted yellow aphid along with about 15 black aphids total on day 36 😠. Might have been because I put them near some trees that have the aphids, I've been more careful and have been removing a few aphids and eggs every day since. I did order Neem oil immediately, but it seems to not have much effect so far and I've also read it shouldn't be sprayed on flowers 😦 Picking them off is getting tedious. Pots have dried out a bit, I've started with light watering. Also on some mornings I find loads of ants crawling over the Blackberry, don't know what they're doing there. No aphids were around alongside them. They didn't seem to do any damage, but they make me nervous... Daiquiri Lime is still not really flowering, She did put up some pistils on the sides of the stems, so perhaps she'll begin soon. She's about 2 weeks being the Kush both in terms of flowering and size I'd say.

Blackberry Kush is coming along. The colas are way short and stubby, which I think is due to her beginning to flower very soon and she just didn't grow so much beforehand (due to weather etc.). I'm worried the buds will be too close to each other once they thicken up a bit... Especially the top 4 ones. The top two ones are the result of my too-late topping, she went straight to grow buds in place of real colas 😐. But she has 10 nice-looking colas total, fingers crossed 😎 Daiquiri Lime still isn't flowering. I've read some autos take long, as long as she does I'm happy she grows bigger in the meantime. She's still got ph issues though. I think I should have repotted her, but I was scared and it didn't look too serious. I'm more scared of it as she grows bigger... The new leaves look a bit better, so I'm hoping it will fix itself over time with low ph watering. I've flushed the pot a bit on day 49 with a very low ph water (it was below my liquid ph kit scale, haha), the runoff was still a bit above 7. She's stretching out quite a bit with a lot of colas, so as long as she flowers nicely, I think it will be good. I've been picking aphid eggs off the Kush almost every day. Its very tedious and I'm scared they'll eventually go out of control. None on the Lime, maybe because I've sprayed her with neem oil twice (only once for the Kush as i've read you shouldn't spray it when flowering). The bloom nutes noted are for Kush only (should I use them for Lime as well to push her to flower?).