Sweet Tooth - From Seed

I'm creating this diary for friends and family that may want to read the trials and tribulations of growing marijuana indoors. However if you have any suggestions for me I'd be happy to hear them! :) The seeds which I harvested from a bag of Sweet Tooth were started using the paper towel method, after 4 days they were ready to be planted. I'm currently following the directions for lighting height (32'-40") supplied by Viparspectra for the 900W LED grow light I'm using for Veg and Bloom. I waited too long to pot the seeds, between day 4 and 5 I should have planted the seeds. But it doesn't seem to have affected the plants at all. The fertilizer I'm using is the pH Perfect Micro/Grow/Bloom system and as I'm still in the seedling stage I have been mixing at a rate of 1 ml of each into a shared 1 liter container. All in all the seeds took 10 days to be ready for potting up. Roots of each plant were visible piercing through the compost-friendly 2" starter pots. Those pots are now directly planted into the 12" tree pots. I'm not tracking pH or TDS yet, I know I should be but I haven't had the opportunity to pick up a good meter, however I can say that I am following a 12-12 lighting schedule, which I will be changing to 18-6 on Day 11. Future entries will contain more detailed information.

After potting up the plants into the 10 liter pots and switching the lights to 18 hours schedule the plant responded merrily by almost doubling in size, though not with stretching. I raised the amount of fertilizer (as recommended on the label) and watering the plants receive (up from 125 ml to 500 ml) now that they are able to absorb the water. The root systems are I suspect doing quite well as the leaves are pointing upwards and the plants are pushing out ever more growth. 👌

In week 3 I had to monitor the amount of water I gave the plants as they were growing. By then end of the week the plants were absorbing a good amount of the watering over a 24 hour period. Next week I will have to up the amount of water by double to keep up with the growth displayed by the plants this week. They doubled in size week over week, and quadrupled in size over a fortnight. I was able to use a magnifying lens and a delicate touch to determine that both of these plants are indeed female, however after closer inspection I discovered that the plants are displaying differing traits. For instance one plants displays a purple colour to it petiole and throughout the vascular pathways of the leaf, while the other plant displays a more defined white colour with a dark strip in the center. It seems clear that these seeds though gathered from the same product are not in fact the same. I assume this is due to the fact that each seed is capable of producing a unique plant, or that these are likely seeds of the parent species of this cultivar but I will have to research further to be sure. At any rate the only other defining characteristic between the plants is height, the white veined plant has consistently been roughly an inch of growth behind the purple veined variety. Perhaps next weekend I will top the plants, it will depend on the growth I see this week, I may do it sooner. No change in fertilizer concentration, no change in amount of light, or humidity, however I have noticed that the tent has risen in temperature on average by 1.5 degrees F, I have been attributing this to the fact that more green material means more gas exchange, means more green house conditions, and as a result I have increased exhaust rate slightly. (It was partially blocked to help maintain temperature in the tent while the plants were younger.) So far I am quite happy with the progress I am seeing.

Well I had to make a decision this cycle on whether or not to keep a mother plant around and just clone from her. I decided that is what I will do. The problem for me in my area is that there is a limit on the number of plants I can legally have and keeping a mother around drops that number by one. I'm also considering moving into a aeroponic setup, though that will likely be a few grows from now as I have lots of supplies to run through before then. This cycle I topped the mother plants (Day 23) to encourage shoots growth, in turn giving me more nodes to use for cloning. Also watering has jumped from 500 ml per 24 hour period to 1 litre. There is a distinct difference between my mothers, one with a purple tint and an unquenchable thirst, and the other a white with (brown, red) striping which seems to like to savour the fertilizer. The clones are 24 hours old in the photo, not that its a great photo of them. I'll know better in a week or so how that went. Cloned using ProMix Stim Root IBA 0.01, cut across a node, placed in moistened peat media, in a compostable cup, in a red cup to trap heat at the roots. Those red cups were then placed in a transparent tote from Walmart to act as a makeshift glasshouse. If all goes well I'll have a crop (2 plants :)) to manage, and these mothers will be maintained.

My second tent and light came in this week, I unboxed and had it set up in no time. It's a 4x4x7 tent which will give me a bit more room to move in. The lights I had purchased for this task were an inadequate light by a brand named Noah-S. (1000W for roughly $100) I mean if you're down to save the money go for it, but the thing just didn't seem bright enough, and every picture I tried to take near the device was interrupted by lines across the screen. I have taken a number of cuttings which can be seen in the pics, though I didn't focus much on them as there isn't much to say. One of them has rooted and the others are soon to follow, then I will have to choose which I like best and kill the rest. So I'm not sure but I guess I may start a new diary for the clones as they will be the crop. I don't know whether or not to keep this diary open... but I'll figure it out. I should point out that I haven't been adding too much water to the incremental increase due to the fact that it creates a ton of humidity in the tent and even my 195 cfm fan can't keep up to that. So I'm watering as per the plants need, I monitor the plants by periodically lifting them and feeling the moisture of the top 2.5 inches of the dirt. If the dirt seems moist to the touch and my finger returns covered in pieces of media, than the chances are I'm safe and don't need to water this plant. Every time I water the plants I rotate them by 180 degrees and once every couple of weeks I rotate the position of the plants in the room as well. This helps with combating pockets of dead air circulation, monitoring of visible signs of stress in the plants, scouting for pests and afflictions like mold and mildew, and finally it helps the plant by triggering it to strengthen it's branches and stalk. Anyway that's all for this week. 👻

So I'm at that critical point where the plants are about to start showing their true colours. So I pose, is the plant in the picture a male or a female?

Well this week was really just a bunch of searching the plants daily for any pre-flowers, I was able to determine the smaller plant is a female but this week I wasn't able to determine the same for the bigger plant. I trimmed out a bunch of under growth on the plants to make watering easier, I'll post an update on the height in next weeks photos. I think its important to point out the struggle at this point to determine gender of the plants when growing from seed. Because even now, knowing what I do about the plants it doesn't rule out the chance of a hermaphrodite rocking my world, so to speak. Sorry for the shit post, but I'll update next weeks post better promise.

So updates since my last post a couple weeks ago. I'm finally seeing female pre-flowers, the pistils spurting out are absolute evidence of that. I was starting to worry a little bit, but as my brother in law said, don't overthink it. Which I'm notorious for.. anyway. So the plants are doing great, as you can see in the images the purple plant is 11 inches taller than the white plant, this concerns me a little as I don't want to keep the light much higher than it is without risking stretching the smaller plant. Which doesn't sound horrible, but really what I want to see is the white plant catch up. Maybe that's a pipe dream, but time will tell. I have gradually increased the amount of watering I provide to the plants just to keep up to them. I spent a good hour last week trimming out all the under growth I felt was useless to the plant in it's current state, also I had an eye on making watering easier, I removed every shoot or leaf between the crown of the plant (dirt line) and 6". This will do for now but in the future I will need to trim more. I don't want to take too much from the base of the plant the because the plant is meant to be a mother and the lowest branches will provide the most ideal cuttings for clones in my case, as they have increased levels of the hormones required for rooting. The clones are doing great s well, they are now 6" tall and I will be starting a new diary for them next week. This diary is now complete as the main function of it was to monitor the growth of plants from seed to pre-flower mother plant capable of cloning from. Thank you for everyone's comments and help, it was great sharing this experience with you.

SO here I thought I'll stop updating the journal... then I woke up and found Fungus Gnats flying around my babies. So knowing that there couldn't be too much damage done yet, or at all with the root systems on these plants - I began to scout the plants for any other signs of stress or pests. After careful consideration I decided that I would have to be more careful about how much I water the plants, since a moist, warm environment is a great place to grow fungus, therefore, a great place for fungus gnats to thrive. Now I should also point out that I am using a Peat Mix which contains mycorrhizae, which is a beneficial fungus network which aids the plants in a symbiotic type of relationship. This is great for the plants but probably also contributed to the fact that I now have a fungus gnat problem. The question is how did I get them in the first place? Well they could have been in the peat mix I purchased, I don't steam my peat, or cook it in any way so it's at least possible. I think however that's because of the way I was storing the peat mix, in my garage, with the lids creaked open to let it breath. In any case This is how I intend to tackle the issue. I have some Integrated Pest Management (IPM) training, so I know that best way to approach this problem is wisely. I need to disable the pest from creating any more generations by attacking the adults and the larvae at the same time, while also ensuring I adhere to a more careful regimen of watering plants when needed, rather than on schedules. I searched online and found a decent deal on a product that was at least rated at 3/5. I attribute most of the negative reviews to people who don't understand that this approach is not a set it and forget it approach. Anywho, the Potpopper 8 pack serves my purposes nicely because I needed something quick and effective. The PotPopper contains 8 sacks of (1 million) nematodes incubating and waiting for some fungus gnat stew. You just put a single sack per 5 gallon pot on the surface of the soil near the crown of the plant and then water them in. The nematodes will hatch and move into the soil looking for food, and eating the fungus gnat larvae. The yellow cards are extra sticky on both sides, 8" x 6" and non-toxic. Adult fungus gnats are attracted to the colour yellow, once they land on the yellow cards they will never leave, much like a roach motel. So I hope that this will be enough to reduce if not eliminate the fungus gnats in the tents. I also made one other adjustment. I wired up my duct fans to constantly be on. What this does is created a backwards pressure in the tent stopping any of the fungus gnats from getting out by any means other than the fans, (except when I open the door, obviously) which will force them outside. Best I can do with the tools at my disposal. I'll let you know next week how the fungus gnats problem is going as I apply the second wave of attacks!!! God I wish someone would give me a job...