Strawberry Gorilla Auto - Sonnenerde

Aircoholic Yay! She made it! The week of Germination went great and is not turning into the 1st proper week of veg, even though she's not in veg quite yet, but that's not really the point here ;-) She's looking fantastic so far, very healthy, a little stretched up towards the light, which I forgot to adjust for the first 2 days, but she'll be fine, I'm sure. Update - the living soil appears to have a pretty active micro- and not so microbiome - The silverfish in the two photos was spotted on an exploration from the depths of the pot to the surface and back. I didn't expect this in the soil, to be honest, but I'm pretty happy about it as well - and he appeared to be mostly friendly.

Aircoholic She's doing okay - her stem is pretty thin and stretched, making her pretty top-heavy, causing her to fall over. I did stabilize her with some toothpicks she can lean onto, and I also raised the light intensity and shortened the distance. Hope that'll help her thicken up that stem and grow a little more sturdy. Watering with the new soil takes some getting used to - right now I'm still trying to develop a feel for the right humidity levels. EDIT: Replaced a few sub par photos with okay-ish versions. The new camera is rather complex...

Aircoholic She really seems to like the extra light, after lowering light distance and raising light intensity - and she seems to like the living soil that her roots have reached by now. Her weak stem, that couldn't seem to support her leafy head now is very strong and firm, and since her nodes are growing fast and healthy enough, I've topped her on day 17. She'll get more photons after a day of recovery from this high stress training, and also some mulch, so the topsoil doesn't dry out too quickly.

Aircoholic A lot going on this week - a lot of post-Topping-growth, some mulching to keep the top-soil from drying out too quickly, more mushrooms keep growing out of the soil, I started light LSTing and I just installed a Blumat drip system, so I can leave my two plans by themselves for a few days, without risking drying them out completely. And from the looks of it, Strawberry Gorilla seems really happy about all of this!

Aircoholic She's turning out to be a wild one, pretty hard to handle! Her growth seems really ferocious, to a point where she hurts herself. Last week I thought I snapped off one branch, but it turns out, she did that herself. After a few days, the LST-Clips become too tight, and her branches snap off. We're down to 4 from 6 branches, 2 major ones snapped off, and 1 of the remaining branches (as well as 1 side shoot) have cracked, but I saved it with a band-aid, aka painter's tape. This is a really challenging grow, because the plant is growing so much faster and ferocious than I've ever experienced and at the same time the branches appear to be rather fragile and snap off easily, which I'm sure can be prevented, if it's expected. It's probably safe to say that she enjoys the living soil quite a bit - oh, and she's starting to show signs of early flower. Hope next week there are still branches left - will definitely be super cautious with LST.

Aircoholic Okay, I decided no more LST for her, she's too brittle and snaps too easily. But she's still vigorous and growing wild. Some of her leafs are showing slight clawing at the tips, and she's overall pretty dark green, which both points to a slight Nitrogen toxicity. I see it as a warning signal, but not as a reason to panic (just yet). I'll wait for flowering to fully kick in and the stretch to end - if the dark green is still there or even getting darker and the claws are spreading, I'd sure be switching into panic mode, but right now, I'm too tired to panic. The yellow spots on some of the leafs is just a harmless chlorosis and I think it looks really cool and adds to her overall tall and big punkrock vibe! Still just feeding her RO water through the Blumat drip system and it seems to work pretty well.

Aircoholic She's doing pretty well, considering the growing pains and stress from losing 2 branches. She's stretching plenty and constructing these beautiful flowers and even the first trichomes! She does show signs of Nitrogen toxicity - I'm hoping that now in flower she'll start using that Nitrogen up and the problem solves itself. Still not panicking, but definitely on a higher alert level.

Aircoholic She's not struggling so hard with the Blumat, she seems pretty happy, but the Blumat is still not really where it should be. Enter: my ADHD brain that struggles with the extended focus necessary for this task. But anyway, the plant seems happy - her leafs are in the praying pose, which looks nice, the buds are growing and growing more trichomes. She starts to use less Nitrogen for the new growth - the buds and sugar leafs look lighter green than the previous N-toxic-green and clawing leafs. Seems like her stretch in height is slowing down, she'll reach her final height soon. Around 60-70 cm seems to be the usual height in my room, when topping autoflowers.

Aircoholic Strawbrey is doing really well, especially considering that I've been to 39C3 in Hamburg and have left both of my plants alone for a week with a chaotically conservative Blumat dripper setting. I just never got this set up properly, the pressure the tensiometer measured had a tendency on the lower side of the pressure scale - too low, so the drip frequency is too high, and the soil receives more water than the plant drinks. So, before I left, I turned the drippers down a few marks, to avoid flooding while I'm gone. When I returned, the tensiometer was showing 516 mbar, the drippers barely gave any water and the plant was thirsty! I fed her 1,5 L RO water and opened the drippers a bit. She doesn't show any signs of drought stress, her leafs seem happy in their praying pose, the buds are swelling up, and the trichomes start covering the sugar leafs - and they start to give off some nice aroma. She's doing fine I think, at least she appears to be pretty happy.

Aircoholic Despite having some watering issues, mostly due to under-watering, she looks really happy. Her leafs show great turgor, putting them in the prying pose, the buds are starting to bulk up, trichomes are spreading almost everywhere and she smells really nice. The only issue is her dark green color, hinting at high Nitrogen uptake, but so far that seems to be a minor issue. One of the leafs with chlorosis is starting to show some beautiful reddish/purple tones. I'm considering feeding her some PK Booster ACT in a day, don't think she'll need it, but it might boost her even more - maybe I should leave the Sonnenerde-experiment by itself in one pot at least?