Lava Cake Automatic by Zamnesia

Sapphire9352 Germination went by without a hitch, as did transplantation. The plants responded favorably to transplantation. What more needs be said at this time? Let's talk about the grow philosophy behind this hurry-up-and-wait period? Sounds great, what else is there even, like I said at the beginning. *The Ramble* I submerged my stalks into the substrate and continued to submerge the stalks as they grew and stretched. I would put a light amount of rooting hormones and brush the edge of the plant lightly with my fingerprints. That's all the roughing up it takes!! So, during this crummy down period, my plants are now doing three main things here. It's super simple. Compare the two methods and see why I planted offset, only to pull the plant towards the center and cover it as it grew along. A. Standard method: 1. Sit back and do nothing. Let her grow, keep her fed and happy!! - Foliage and Roots grow. Everything normal here. B. My Method 1. Hit the cheat code and use cheats. We have that in 2025, it's ok. Buy some cheap rooting hormones, they are dirt cheap ya'll. 2. The grower submerges the stem gradually over a week as it grows, pulling it towards the center, supplying it with rooting hormones. 3. Foliage and Roots grow, new roots develop on the stem which was submerged, and the grow medium is permeated with roots at an exponentially increased rate compared to plants grown rooted using the Standard method. - You are setting your plant up here to supply them with a greater amount of ppm in bursts at critical points in the mid-veg period which would otherwise not be possible without serious harm to the plant. - If you do not do this, don't try to replicate anything from here-on out until the week of pre-flower when I flush. Root structures will be identical between Standard and My Method at that point. Remember, this is just a quick skip for root development so you can hit them with massive ppm macro N-P-K amendments. Final Notes: If you use this method, Foxfarm makes a seriously pro mixture with their, "Foxfarm Soluble Trio Pack." Do note, I'm not sponsored by any means at this point in my growing. I say that because you may think I'm selling you a product. I'm not. Nor do I use their trio pack myself. The detail which matters here is their scheduled and accurate dosage amounts for 5-45-19, 0-50-30, 9-50-10. I have similar/identical, but sourced from a vendor who purchases bulk nutrients and sells smaller batches for cheap. These numbers are amazing if you have your ducks in a line and your lab is kicking out healthy, supple, suede-like leaves throughout the grow until the heavy flower period. If that's you, you're at the point where these boosters should be used to maximize. If that's not you, you need to get to that point first or you are going to roast your plants so hard using these. Just to save you from another rabbit hole: This isn't about CO2 having magic powers. This can be done with or without CO2, but could be done much harder with CO2 supplements (bigger gains). That's the honest and me saving you hard cash+time by just pointing out this doesn't work well if you don't have the basics nailed down to a science. I'm sorry. I gave everyone some, "Ramble," thanks for following along!! Feel free to fact check me, or you can read the AI fact check pics I put in there for you to save you some time. It's only contention was sugar... And if you look, it's doing what I said. It's difficult to overdose plants with Magnesium Sulfate and it just automatically assumes no one is doing that, bam!! Partially Accurate... Awwww!!!! Naw, lemme just say, you can definitely make that mistake. I did, anyways *mourn*. No joke... Amnesia Haze of all the strains, too. In Mid-Flower. Flush, flush, flush. If your runoff ppm is higher than your intake ppm... Houston, you have a major problem. Check your runoff ppm periodically or don't. I didn't :P I do now!!

Sapphire9352 Alright. Zam's Lava Cake is a very easy autoflower to grow thus far. And they're very hearty little tanks. They did a great job on this one!! I wont say which is where, but I'm running Zam side by side with Beanfiendz, Humboldt and RQS cultivars. Needless to say, this Zam is doing very, very well. Like, surprisingly well. The level of consistency in the node formations as I'm trimming them by hand during defoliation is astounding to me. I don't actually know the level of genetics they used, but this level of consistency is what I see on S3 and F1 class seeds. Just sayin'. If you look at the pics you'll see they look a little different. That's me being a Mr. Miyagi Bonsai artist because I like to have neat things to look at. I assure you, these plants are so consistent that it's notable enough for me to give you a full paragraph on it. That's me being fair to the breeder. They did a superb job on Lava Cake Auto. I'm not in the flowering phase, but these plants seem to respond well to everything I have thrown at them. I took them out in the sun for a haircut and they didn't seem to mind so much. In this instance, I was strategic in how I trimmed them. I used three 6" lawn stakes to suspend the plants stalk horizontally in the air across the surface of the substrate. After that, I cut away any foliage blocking light to the 5 available nodes. The idea here is to let each of these nodes grow up and receive equal amounts of light during flower. Roots have thoroughly permeated the substrate and the plants are tanking along. I'm excited to see them take off!! Day 19: The plants responded well to their early defoliation. This may seem counterintuitive to some, but here is my rationale on this method. I don't have the luxury of time to truly enjoy the results of a FIMmed or Topped setup, manifold, etc... We're talking about a plant which is start to finish seedling through late vegetation in 28 or so days. HST requires a 3-7 day period of time to see growth progress, and the goal there is simply to attain more large branches/tops/even canopy. By waiting Until node 4 or 5 to use the method I used, you will end with at least 8-10 tops. I would go further and say at pre-flower, sacrifice the junk nodes you find. Either way you end up with a plant in flower with a lot of tops and zero downtime. I've done them all, they all work. This one yields huge on autos because you skip downtime. It's worth trying if you haven't before, but I wouldn't do it on a photoperiod myself. Photos are all about the luxury of time translating into the art of the grow. Autos are just blazing fast!! Day 20 Prep-Work: ** DO NOT DO THIS - IF... ** 1. You treat your coir like soil and wait for it to get dry before watering. Coco is hydro. 2. If your pH levels are not lab accurate and correct. 3. If you're a person who wants to blame me because you followed my instructions and failed. That's on you, because there's obviously a lot of moving pieces going into this on my end such as hormones and a long list of feed additives. This is my surface level communication to at least get the teaching across at a human level where everyone can understand my perspective, not a tutorial. 4. You don't have a flushing agent. If you need one that'll work, FoxFarm Sledgehammer has always done it for me. Find your fav. Water by itself is not sufficient for this level of blasting your plants with nutes. 5. You have algae issues (pH tilts up), or bacteria/root issues (pH usually tilts down). You cannot do this method if you are not a clean grower, I'm sorry. It's not a sleight against you. The pH issues will roast your plants by mid flower if you are a dirty grower doing this. Trust me, I've been a dirty grower one single time. Never again :) 6. Your not willing to supply Magnesium Sulfate to your plants. Nitrogen is great, but it needs Magnesium Sulfate to be effective. Without this, you can't effectively leverage nitrogen to have leaves which could be in an photos for an online pro article. ** I am preparing for week 3. Specifically days 20 and 21. In my case I'll be using some (Ca(NO₃)₂) Calcium Nitrate in varying PPM feeds for the plants. Overall I will ramp this up and then cease for a week. Each week from here until flush, there will be some degree of (Ca(NO₃)₂) as a one-per-week macro amendment. For the time being I am also including MgSO4 Magnesium Sulfate. The reason being two-fold. 1. Coco-Coir possesses cation sites. Although I have a custom coir mix where I know the exact amounts, I'll just tell you I've done this with the Coir bricks, FoxFarm Coco-Loco, etc etc everything left and right you can think of. I had fun learning. Here's what I learned, take it and run. Ignore the dopes out there under-supplying their grow media. Coir needs to have its cation sites recharged (sodium and potassium knocked off) not just at the beginning... It needs to be continually happening. This solves for that. This gets used to recharge those cation sites continually on top of your feeding schedule, and I play it by ear with each run of plants to determine how often it is added to my feeds. Typically, I find a 1 week interval for this to be just right. I've never found it to be less than this unless you are playing catch-up on a deficiency. You'll see as my grow goes on. Also, I am not giving exact amounts for a reason. This is something you have to learn by experience because every strain reacts differently. Ease into it. You're just looking for angry tips at flower... Not beyond that, just maintain it once you hit that point. I start here so it's available. This auto has 2 weeks left in veg and has been a week permeated with roots. 2. If you got this far, I'll tell you the 2nd goal with using MgSO4 Magnesium Sulfate. Volatiles will pop like you've never had them pop before. If you don't know what those are, take a bit and do some research. If you're lazy and want to skip the research, this is how it's done: -Sulfur-. Practice on Diesel types to become pro ;) In this case, sulfur is a happy bi-product of a nitrogen-cal-mag nute blasting because it's attached to the magnesium in MgSO4. It's cheap, and you can find it at Anytown U.S.A. Wal-Mart's all year around in the garden and bath section under the name Epsom Salt. Enjoy the tip!! Here's another on the house. If you smell sulfur, stop. You went too far, and you need to address why you are hitting them that hard with a minor amendment for next run. This is like, feather touching it. For perspective, I'll use 1/4 teaspoon or so in English units per gallon, once a week. This is a cleaner, elemental alternative to Molasses as a source of elemental sulfur additions. Be careful though, I said sulfur. You would still need magnesium. But if you're using this method you do need to stop using molasses because they conflict. The greatest miss of all would be the molasses sugars in a coir substrate. You'll want to find an alternative source of glucose for your Mycorrhizae health. I highly recommend the switch. And hey, I'm running this on top of my Cal-Mag supplement which is ran at 1.5x manufacturers recommendation. See why pH and having everything matters, now? You can easily get salt buildup if you don't flush. Use a flushing agent before flower and before your fade/pre-harvest. It doesn't burn up the plants. I find Saponins to be quite appropriate, cost efficient, and effective for use with Coir dominant mixes. If you find one that's better, I'm all ears!! I don't know it all, I just know what really does not work!! LOLOL Lot's of fails to figure this stuff out for me. I'm a goofball at life!!

Sapphire9352 Day 21: All of my Zamnesia Lava Cake Automatic plants looks vigorous and healthy. The defoliation I performed has allowed the internodal branches to reach up and become tops as I had hoped. From here it is just a matter of ensuring consistency in following my protocol for these girls. Days 22-26: My goal here is to ensure my root health is in tip top shape for the mid-late vegetative period. The speed of this auto is start to finish, 10-11 weeks total time. I am in week 3, which I assume is mid-late veg period based upon my experience with Ruderalis crossed cultivars. Personally, I believe this is where people fail with autos. They are too gentle on feed ppm's because they are still building root structures. Hence, my little hack with growing roots from the bottom-up, and simultaneously from the top-down through rooting hormones should be leveraged here. Because my roots have permeated the grow substrate, I can nail em' with nutes as long as I maintain proper CO2 and actually read the plant for requirements. In this case, I can say with Lava Cake Automatic, universally across my 4 plants I am seeing that these plants by week 3 are showing a preference for cooler climates. Indicative and as would be expected with such a rich Indica dominant background. In the day time I am running 77F, at night I am running 68F. I see zero signs of anthocyanin accumulation at this time, but the day is young for these gals at week 3 in the growth process. I don't expect purples, but sometimes I'm surprised when the symptoms begin to show up in the leaf stems. Hints of purples, despite providing sufficient magnesium and other trace elements (macros goes without saying here). If you see that, you MAY have a purple gurl on your hand. Again, no signs yet. Days 22-26: Significant findings with this Lava Cake Cultivar: She's easy on P and K in N-P-K at this rate. Don't over-do it. I did indeed push mine, got my tips just a hair angry, and I would say ease into building her up. Read her well and she'll reward you with some decent stretch here in Week 3 from the looks of it. Day 27: Pre-Flower Pistils Emerged. I pinned down the plant to ensure a final training before the stretch phase I'm sure will come. The most important consideration is growing towards excellent airflow beneath the foliage during flower once I am there. Although this is a mold resistant cultivar, I'm not messing around with that at all. "Fail to plan, plan to fail." I already know I'm lolipopping this plant, and there will be zero popcorn buds. How can I be so certain? I'll be excising every single popcorn site as I read the plant in the future. For now, I'm making sure all these tops I went the distance to cultivate out of these plants can be uniformly exposed to light.

Sapphire9352 Day 28: The Lava Cake Automatic gurlz have recovered very nicely from the gentle LST pindown I performed. If you're new to this growing stuff, get yourself some lawn staples and bonsai your plants early on for some easy longterm gains. If you do this long enough you will discover some plants are cool with FIMming, some with Topping, other love the manifold, etc. This auto loves LST pindown and recovers very quickly!! I took them outside for some pics early in the morning to get a natural feel. With the timing of my pics I intentionally missed, "The Golden Hour," so people following this diary could get an honest look at my foliage. Stem overall length, including submerged length is right around 13" at this point in the grow. Future meristem sites appear healthy and vibrant, reaching for the, "Sun(LED lights offset at 22degrees)." Day 29: ([Morning at time of writing] After a night under some commercial lights, these plants entered the stretch phase. How can one be sure? In the case of my Lava plants, they all on the same day grew roughly 2 inches in a 24 hour period. It's a bit humorous because this is a dwarf/stealth/low-profile type plant with a supposed 2 ft height according to Zam. Mine went from 13 inches to 15 inches overnight. That's a 15.38% size increase in a 24 hour period, wowz!! Great job on the stretch with this one, Zamnesia!! Beautiful little plants thus far. I went ahead and did some nerd math for everyone just for some fun here, too!! So we can all join in and see if a hypothesis is correct. The goal here is really just to see how the plant progresses so future growers of this strain know what to expect. Even so, it's fun to see math work sometimes. In this case, I'm not showing my work. You go do the work. Math I'm using says in around 4.28 days this plant will hit that 24" mark, given the growth rate is LOG. Who knows, the growth rate may not actually be LOG, or the rate I accounted for may be incorrect and it's still LOG. Who knows? That's why it's fun. Either way, Zam says it's getting 24", so we'll find out!! My hypothesis: It gets to 24" in 4.28 days. Obviously, I'll measure at the day 4 point, and the day 4.5point, and avg that to see a fairly close estimate. If I'm wrong, I hope it gets much bigger!! Either way, I'm blown away by it's current 1 day 15.38% growth rate in a 24 hour period. Bonkers, especially for an Indica!!) Day 30: Impressive foliage and stem stretch continues. Another day where they stretched around 2" in a 24 hr period of time. What surprised me is the difference in foliage feom day 29 to day 30. The leaves must have gotten the message, "Time to grow, we have meristem sites to build!!" Day 31: The plants are halfway through the day and have uniformly added 2.5 inches. I'll measure again tomorrow, but as of 10 hours into a 20 hour cycle, this plant is already at 19.5". Here's some fun math, just basic easy percentages here. From day 28 to day 31.5, these plants went from 13" to 19.5". -Days 1-28 = 0.48"/day growth avg. -Days 28-31 = 1.86"/day growth avg. -1:3.5 growth ratio change from days 1-28 and days 28-31.5. That's neat to me!! Stretch mode is on for sure!! Dqy 32: Logged 2.126" (2 and an 1/8th) growth and defoliated. I went heavy on the defoliate.

Sapphire9352 Day 35: A heavy defoliation the day before, leading into the tail end of pre-flower stretch. Day 36: Plants are between 21.5"-24". They may continue to stretch, but as of now it appears Zamnesia is on the money with overall height. Pistils are really beginning to show up, and the plant is beginning to look like an early flower female. My nutrients and lighting have been adjusted accordingly. Happy roots, happy plant!! I switched from 20/4 to 12/12 from here until the end. Also, i run by DLI for autoflowers. As long as you track DLI properly, its all the same whether 12/12 or 24/0 with autos. I opted for 12/12 this time around, but I've done many different lighting schedules with autos over the course of time. DLI, DLI, DLI. Nothing else matters with autos, that's one of their greatest strengths!! In this case, I'm nailing them with high DLI for a day and will give them a little break tomorrow. Day 37: Nailed them with a high DLI for a day. In my mind, here's my thinking: In nature you get some big shifts with temps, weather, etc. The plant needs to face adversity and overcome it to be a strong plant. A few times in my grow I will simulate different settings for differing reasons. In this case High DLI from a previous day means the next day I subtract how much over my target DLI I went the day before from the current day I'm on. [Example. Theoretical target DLI is say, 25 for whatever phase. If I want to hit hit hard, I hit it 32 or something the whole day. Next day, I remember I went 7 over, and on that day I simulate a cloudy, lower VPD (higher RH%) day with a DLI of 25 - 7 = 18. Today is my 18DLI or whatever, even though that's not my actual DLI, just the example.] Here are some adversity settings you can simulate for a short period if needed. 1. Near drought: Let the plant go longer, or even reduce water intake by 50% for a day or two. At some point, let those leaves all hit where they are close to a droop. Then take care of them and nail em with nutes one day, then normal back to how it was before simulated drought. 2. Bend those buds down at least 2 nodes if they are real tall. If you do it right and don't break your tops off, they'll want to stand up again within 24 hours. At 24 hours, do it again. Keep doing it until those lower buds get bigger. Then let those tops go. They'll stand up and become near Thai sticks before its all over. 3. Break up the media some with some bamboo stakes or long lawn staples if you are in any sort of media. Don't wreck the roots, but get oxygen to them. That's all we are trying to do here. 4. Randomly just cut off something. Just junk it out, the energy will go elsewhere. 5. Flush. And actually do it right, and take the time. It's not a flush and done. Real flush in media needs a resting period for the minerals to get dissolved with whatever flushing agent you are using. And use a flushing agent. Water alone is not doing what people say it's doing in a flush, just look at showers and see the calcium buildup if you are on a city water system. Water isn't clearing that out. After flush, that plant is starved for nutes. It'll give you some lip a day or two if you really get it clean. From then on, nail it till it looks perfect, then back to normal. They love it 6. Haircuts: Pre-flower - 21 days later - 21 days later. Plants love a haircut. 7. Let it get hot one day. 8. Let it get cold one day. 9. High wind for short periods (just enough to strengthen stems). 10. Do a soil drench with pure H20. Then, do another after an hour (simulated flood, followed by high vpd and high light, no wet foliage until media is normal again). There are so many unique and interesting ways to introduce artificial stress to a plant that the list could continue for as long as our imaginations allow. I keep it to a minimum and limit myself to using 2-3 throughout the entire cycle at critical points. In this case, I'm on day 37 and coaxing out new buds and foliage. I do indeed want my foliage and branches tender to ensure I get all the stretch and extra bud sites possible during pre-flower. After this phase is done, I'll do what I call, "Hardening." Where I increase the VPD (lower RH%) dramatically for a bit to lock in the plant where it's at. To let it know - "Use your solar panels, it's time to become beautiful." For me, I can always tell when I hit that day where I know it's time to harden when the remaining foliage from my pre-flower defoliation has grown out to maturity. That's coming soon, almost there (Early Flower)!! Day 39: It's morning time for these Lava Cake Auto girls and they decided to keep the stretch phase going. I'm currently seeing 22.5" to 25.5" overall length. As they continue to stretch, the foliage is coming in strong and will eventually need a 1/4 defoliation. To do that and make it as simple as being able to count by 2's ------ Every other node gets a single fan leaf chopped. Always chop the ones facing inwards to improve light penetration. On top of this I am seeing the plants begin to look like mature plants more and more each day. The pistils on this plant which have appeared are abnormally thick in contrast to the size of the plant. On top of that I am seeing signs of anthocyanin potential with some shades of purple in the pistils and sugar leaf stems in a scenario where magnesium deficiency may be ruled out with certainty. This tracks with what Zamnesia states on their website in terms of lower temperatures seeing anthocyanin production increases. I have been beginning them at 52 degrees in the morning, and they end up in their mid-day period with an avg temperature of 75.6 degrees according to my master controller. Humidity floats between an avg of 55% and 61% depending on the temperature, but that's me trying to translate my setup into a way people without a VPD controller can understand. I think if you target around 58% on avg, you'll do really well with these Lava Cakes. Also, I cannot stress this enough: Listen to the seed vendor (Zamnesia) if they are offering advice on what a specific strain enjoys most. In this case, I took a leap of faith on temperatures and ran her low. To my amazement, this is where this strain truly began to shine. It's as if she really needs a lower temperature at some point in her daily cycle to enjoy life to the fullest. From all I've learned, plants which can produce purples will produce their best/maxmimum purple coloration (anthocyanin buildup) where a 22-23 degree F difference exists in it's daily temperature swing. Don't forget, this is a mountain plant. Especially so with it's ruderalis genetic crossing in-play here. What I did is simple ----- I want to run them 75'ish average in the day. 75F - 22F = 53F. I went with 52F to be safe. I would normally never go below 62 with plants, but running this one real cold at night does indeed appear to bring out the best in her!! Make sure you read what your seed vendor says, no need to reinvent the wheel with each strain you run.