outdoor '19 | beginner

Week 2 after sprouting (so, technically this might be week 3. I'm not sure, I'm an amateur!); the plants were growing slowly but steadily. This is my very first grow, and I don't have much infrastructure: I have an 82-Watt Integrated Full Spectrum LED (Feit Electric) in my garage. That's it. Plants also get 2 hours of direct afternoon sun through a west-facing window. The plants will move outside in a few weeks. Additionally, since this was my first grow, I wanted to establish a baseline for future grows with a few baseline practices: no nutrients until week 4, for example. Again, to reiterate, this is my first grow. It's a baseline grow. It's on a very tight budget, and I have very limited time to allocate to the grow.

Week 3 after sprouting; did not have much time at all to document or garden. Plants continuing to grow under an 82-Watt Integrated Full Spectrum LED (Feit Electric) in my garage. Plants also get 2 hours of direct afternoon sun through a west-facing window. The plants will move outside in a few weeks.

Plants are starting to grow at a noticeably faster rate now that I am feeding nutrients 1/week. Plants continue to grow under an 82-Watt Integrated Full Spectrum LED (Feit Electric) in my garage. Plants also get 2 hours of direct afternoon sun through a west-facing window. I forgot to mention earlier that I will be keeping only 1 of these, so I've potted one in a plastic pot and another in a fabric pot to see if the type of pot will affect growth. Both have been potted in a local, organic nursery's (Vital Organics Northwest) lite soil mixture. Both plants express signs of overwatering--which is a mark of my amateurity. It's very hard to hold myself back from watering them like other plants I've cared for, but I've backed off to watering every 3-4 days and they seem to be recovering.

Plants continue to grow steadily, if not slowly. They have been repotted into 1 gallon pots with a local, organic garden center's (Vital Organics Northwest) lite mix. I will only keep 1 plant, and I'm looking to see if the type of pot will affect growth (one is in plastic, the other is in a fabric pot).

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After two weeks of traveling, and subsequently not updating, there are 3 changes for this week: (1) I've begun to harden the plant for its permanent location outdoors, and it is currently receiving 3 hours of direct sunlight, the rest under the shade of a cherry tree. Later, in its permanent location, it will receive nearly 7 hours of direct sunlight. Daytime temps hit consistently in the mid 80s, nighttime temps drop to the low 50s. (2) plant was been repotted to a 5 gal smart pot last week. (3) Plant has been topped at the main cola. Unfortunately, in a fit of rage, my toddler hit the plant where it had been topped and you can see where one of the new colas has been damaged. 😥

Growth is continuing very nicely. Continuing to water 3/week & feed 1/week. This week I flushed with Bush Doctor Sledgehammer. Not sure if it was even necessary, but I followed the recommendation on the Fox Farm feed schedule. Temperatures continue to be hotter than normal for the PNW, and skies have been clear every day. Fan leaves are the size of my hands. Smell is pungent. Will be repotting into a 45 gal for its permanent home next week. 👽

Growth is beginning to explode on Blue Dream after I repotted into the 45 gallon fabric pot. The temperatures have held, the skies remain clear, and the plant seems to be enjoying the 7 hours of direct sunlight. The size of the stalk is what surprises me the most--this thing is beefing up! One of the "main" colas remains quite small after the damage from my toddler. This has been a learning experience for him, too!

This journal is now current as of 7/1, and this entry is for last week (June 23-29). Growth is continuing to be explosive on the Blue Dream--she is now 37 inches. This last week, however, received 3 days of rain and very heavy winds that I thought would kill the plant. The video shows just how bad the wind became. She shows signs of overwatering (spotting on fan leaves, though new growth looks fine) which is to be expected given that she received 3 days of rain and had no chance to dry out. Nevertheless, she persisted. 😊 I added the first netting to try out a scrog method. It's definitely not going to be perfect, and I'm definitely an amateur experimenting with method. Will attempt to develop an even canopy. GSC and Green Cush continue to grow reliably.

Blue Dream growing strong--now at 42 inches. She would be taller, but as I mentioned earlier, I topped her in week 6 (can't remember). I've also begun to top some of the side shoots, as you can see in the 3rd image. New growth looks healthy, no deficiencies or toxicities that I can see. Stalk is now just smaller than the diameter of a silver dollar. Animal Cookies is really exploding. Growth is explosive. Growth on Green Cush & GSC is continuing to thicken. All plants continue to receive about 8 hours of direct sunlight every day (10am-6pm).

[This is a beginner's journey to grow a Blue Dream plant outdoors, from seed, for the very first time. I added 3 clones in week 7, and I will include their progress, but each week this journey will feature Foster, the Blue Dream. Thanks for joining me as I learn to grow outdoor cannabis in the beautiful Willamette Valley.] Busy week for me with work, so I wasn't able to snap the best pictures. But you can see from pics that new growth continues to look healthy, and the topped sites are beginning to shoot on the blue dream. Growth slowed a bit this week, and I believe its due to a combination of the cloudy weather and my forgetfulness/overworkedness, as I forgot the feeding this week 😖. all plants just received water this week. I'll definitely resume with better pictures and updates next week.

[This is a beginner's journey to grow a Blue Dream plant outdoors, from seed, for the very first time. I added 3 clones in week 7, and I will include their progress, but each week this journey will feature Foster, the Blue Dream. Thanks for joining me as I learn to grow outdoor cannabis in the beautiful Willamette Valley.] Foster is doing very well this week. At the recommendation of my local organics shop, I've switched my nutrients from Fox Farms (Big Bloom & Grow Big) over to GreenGro's Nature's Pride veg nutrients (info here: http://www.thegreengro.com/product/veg-6-3-3-5/). It's a powder, and I'm feeding 14ml/gal (or, since she's in a 45 gallon pot, 630ml) as a top dressing once/week. I really like the nutrients--it includes mycorrhizae. I will also add a microbial compost tea next Friday at feeding. The Nature's Pride nutrients are a bit more expensive than the Fox Farm nutrients I was working with, but the folks at my organics shop have the plant science background, and its what they use, so I'm going to track the results in the coming weeks. At any rate, It's been a very hot, windy, and humid week in Western Oregon, and she's been drinking nearly 2 gallons/day. New growth looks very healthy, and the sites where I've topped are growing 2 new vibrant colas.

[This is a beginner's journey to grow a Blue Dream plant outdoors, from seed, for the very first time. I added 3 clones in week 7, and I will include their progress, but each week this journey will feature Foster, the Blue Dream. Thanks for joining me as I learn to grow outdoor cannabis in the beautiful Willamette Valley.] Foster has exploded. We're now up to 55 inches--which is 10 inches of growth from last week! I believe this is a result from the new nutrients, the perfect outdoor growing conditions, and a very careful watering schedule (because it's been very hot, at least for Oregon). I continue to feed GreenGro Nature's Pride as a top dressing at a rate of 1 tbsp/gallon of soil. The new growth looks very healthy, and the stalk looks, well, very stalk-y. I'm guessing that we have about 2 or 3 weeks of vegetative growth left, as that's what the locals have been telling me. Outdoor photoperiod plants usually enter the flowering state in the first or second week of August around here. That'll be pushing it, since I expect 8 weeks of flowering, and that would push us into an early October harvest. Let's hope we don't have early rains this year.

Bad news, friends. I'm writing this update to let you know that Foster, the Blue Dream, turned out to be a male. 😪Allow me to explain. First, I want to let you all know that I struggled with posting this update. I was considering erasing the grow diary and pretending like this all never happened. I almost did that to hide my shame. But since I'm an amateur, and since I'm learning (and basically teaching myself) I ultimately decided to post this to normalize failure and mistakes. Failure is, in my humble opinion, the most important aspect of learning. I made a big mistake in misidentifying the sex of this plant. It really sucks, and I'm really embarrassed. I will harvest zero flower from the blue dream--complete failure. But I learned a very good lesson. In fact, I learned so much about cannabis, about growing cannabis. And I want others out there to feel okay if they fail. So I'm posting this update, and I'm keeping this diary up, as a message to other amateur growers out there: its okay to fuck up. I really fucked up. We will learn. I didn't grow an award-winning plant. But that's okay! And next summer, you bet your ass I will grow some dank ass flower (ha, I'll be ordering feminized seeds this time 😂). So, my friends, thanks for following this journal, and thanks for all the support. If you've provided answers to my questions or tips for growing: i extend a sincere "thanks." I love being a part of an online community that is supportive of noobs like me. Thanks for following, even if it did ultimately end in failure! Cheers.