Silky Smooth's Solo Cup Challenge - NOT

THURSDAY 7/18: She really perked up in the sunshine with the boom boom spray and kelp dosing, so I put her outdoors again at first light today. I also re-planted her in the same cup, but I put about 2 centimeters of coarse perlite in the bottom along with another handful of soil. Her tiny lower branches are finally getting some light! I'll start training her a bit now, and I should be able to FIM her tomorrow or the next day. She's in direct scorching sunlight for 8 hours a day and about 8 inches below a 40w Sansi 4000k LED and a 75w LED panel (6500k/460nm 1:1 ratio) for 16 hours a day, I'll dial it back to 22-hour days at the first sign of flowering and swap out the blue/white panel for an all 660nm red panel(or two), and continue to gradually decrease her nighttime until harvest I've also got a little 20w spotlight with a Cree chip that's tuned to 3000k that I'll probably hammer her "massive" cola with as she starts to ripen up.😎 SUNDAY: She was looking a little bit haggard after yesterday...I think the sun is beating her up too badly. With such a tiny amount of soil, I think the roots are getting way too hot, even being in a cup within a cup wrapped with duct tape. Today, I'm leaving her indoors under the LEDs, but considering putting her cup inside another solo cup without any drainage holes, and setting that cup into pot of water with a fresh "blue ice" pack so as to keep the root temperature down...and replacing the blue ice pack every couple of hours while she's outdoors...or maybe I'll just take a pot and fill it with some of the orange-red clay that I find when I dig down a couple of feet..create a solo cup sized hole in it so that she has a surrounding layer of clay to keep her cooler during the day...not sure.. I foliar fed her and mixed about 4 grams of Bactrex into a jug with 3/4 gallon of bottled water and douched all my plants with about 2 pints each, except her...she got about 6 oz. of solution. That should really get the beneficial bacteria and fungus kicked into overdrive. I started brewing a 4 gallon batch of compost tea today. Since I don't have any Orgatrex, I am using a little Big Bloom, Kelp Me Kelp You, and Grow Big in the tea in addition to the PK Compost Booster tea from Bio Tabs. I'll add Mycotrex to it about 2 hours before it finishes and thoroughly dowse them all tomorrow morning. MONDAY: Today, after I FIM'd her, I decided to move her outdoors into a semi-shaded spot, with the rest of the girls during the day. To deal with the heat on her roots, I decided to just bury the larger solo cup (no drainage holes or soil in it) up to the rim in a 3 gallon pot full of soil. This will allow me to easily bring her indoors every (or every other) night to soak up more light in my cabinet. The plant's roots will never have any access to the other soil, but I'm hoping that if I keep that outer soil wet it will hold the root temperatures down in the soil inside the cup. If it turns out that her roots are so strong that they "break through" the plastic to get to the outer soil, I'll either remove the plastic and drop out of the contest, or just bring her indoors permanently.😁 She got some freshly brewed compost tea this morning along with a foliar feeding...a major pain in the ass to lug a 5-gallon pail down to the site...maybe I'll invest in a small solar panel and 12 volt battery and inverter so I can do the brewing on site...