stunted WeddingCake with difficulties

kaeba Still no pics. Light was too close to the plant, PPFD was about 250-300, but heat probably damaged leaves and made them curl up.

kaeba Very light leaves, visible damage. I did some light feeding since the previous grow attempt failed because the substrate had an insane EC of 4-5mS/cm (got the EC pen late, so I noticed only after they were basically dead). Flushed the medium but still careful to not fry the second attempt. Will feed more though as I notice the symptoms persisting. Guess it's the woody soil that's damaging here... lesson learned for next time.

kaeba Same as last week. Will need to slowly feed more until plant is happy again.

kaeba Root growth was very healthy, started poking out of the bottom after a few days. Waited a bit for roots to establish more before repotting it. First drain after repotting was 1.7mS/cm, idk what the hell is up with the soil. Flushed down to 1.1mS/cm with pure tap water.

kaeba Roots poked out the bottom again a day or so after repotting. Waited a few more days and then finally repotted into the final 11L fabric pot - once again got an insane drain EC of 2mS/cm, watered only with tap water (0.4mS/cm) because I thought this would happen. (I know the pic after watering looks very spotty, but I took care to water slowly in a circle around the plant multiple times while waiting shortly in between. The water spread more evenly after the pic was taken.) Not sure if I will use fertilizer on the next watering or wait one more time to make sure the EC goes down a bit. Also topped it below the fourth node. Would've loved to wait longer until it was better established, but the side shoots were already starting to push. So far it's taking the chop very well, will see how it develops.

kaeba Since the first drain after repotting was insane, I was hesitant to use nutes at first. I'm seeing some light yellowing on the lower leaves though and some slight discoloration overall, so I will return to feeding again on the next water in the next couple days. So far it's growing very compact, if very slow. I'm waiting for it to get a bit stronger and more vigorous and will top the side shoots again then. The goal is to top again and again until the whole pot area is filled with side shoots :) Note to myself: Will definitely switch to a different soil for the next attempt though, maybe even just coco and perlite. Read some Reddit post yesterday of another person having the same issues with this exact soil. Also, there's a sudden fungus gnat infestation happening now. Had some of those yellow sticky things still here that I'm using until the nematode order arrives. Hope that'll help.

kaeba Still growing, got a tensiometer to get a feeling for watering big pots correctly. Def need to let it dry out a bit more. Some pics appear a little yellow tinted, that's just the camera being funky with the bright LEDs. Plant is a healthy green, even if the color is a bit light, no yellow tint irl though. Applied some mulch/top dressing made of fermented manure and straw because the top layer dried super quickly in comparison to the rest every time. I applied a second topping on the upper branches and pinned the branches down to let in more light for the new shoots. Plan is to just let it grow more, let it fill out the space and then eventually send it into flower. It's very slow going considering the size and that it's already week 6, but whatever, I'm in no hurry. :)

kaeba Plant is still growing, still slow, getting too yellow for my taste. I potted up a much younger plant that was similarly struggling in the same soil into a 20L fabric pot with living soil - no peat or coco or wood pulp, with cover crop, worms from the angler shop, the whole shebang. What can I say, within one week of sad struggling growth this thing started to explode with healthy green and big growth. Just look at the before and after glow up. I will definitely throw out the other soil / get it composted after the grow because she is looking SO SAD. Also need to be more generous with the fertilizer for the WC because her new growth starts a somewhat healthy green but yellows real quick and she's starting to get spots, so probably a N + Mg deficiency or something. Tbh I'm only waiting for the smaller plant (Wifi OG Haze) to catch up a little in size, probably won't even top it just to experiment with leaving the plant as is and also so it won't take up too much time and then fiiiinally send them into flower. V8 and the WC is so tiny, geez.

kaeba Haven't updated in a while. In V9 it's still quite yellow and getting more and more sickly - don't worry though, this will be fixed in the future as you'll see. Up until now I was too hesitant to go further than the recommended max dosage of fertilizer which is 5ml/l, which was a mistake. Definitely not going to use this soil again - attached another comparison picture of a plant that is in living soil, no fertilizer at all. Crazy difference in color - and in growth soon as well as you will see.

kaeba No Hesi TNT this time, only CalMag and compost tea in hopes of adding beneficial bacteria and fungi to break down the large wood pulp part in the soil faster. Also attached a picture of a clone I took from topping a while ago - it's in a different soil, you can see the stark contrast in color.

kaeba Decided to just fuck it and give the double recommended dosage - "if it dies, then it dies". Seems to do the trick though, it's losing the sickly color. Forgot to write down the mbar a couple times for the spreadsheet but I usually water between 120 - 200mbar. It's also starting to drink more, need to water twice a week now. Only one picture for this week, got a bit behind on taking daily pics.

kaeba The double dosage seems to be exactly what it needed. It's not quite on the level of healthy color that the clone and the other plant has, but it's good enough for me to finally pull the trigger. I want to get this plant and this soil out of the tent to have an actually decent run with good soil. I attached another comparison picture of the other plant in living soil. Look at how vigorous and healthy it is, that's a huge difference. Anyway, I flipped the timer to 12-12 on the first day of what would have been V12 and I know that some (most?) people start counting it only as flower week 1 once the first flowers appear, but I'll start counting with the flip. I'm curious to see if this plant will have a significant stretch or stay stunted. Edit as of June 6th: Small shoots are sprouting all over - I'm removing what I am dubbing the "crotch growth" once in a while, aka the tiny tiny shoots growing from the base of the plant that won't reach a significant size and will only sap the vigor of the other bigger shoots that will produce the actual buds.