Mexican Airlines II... All Aboard Again

Last grow never got past the seedling phase. Bummed I put growing on hold for a little while but now I'm back... Summer grow has begun. This diary features something a little more exotic with Mexican Airlines. I'm not huge on sativas, so this is a big change for me. I'm excited to try something new. I dropped my seed in a cup of RODI water for 24 hours. Once it sank to the bottom I placed the seed in a damp paper towel with another one placed on top (Sunday). This was placed in a metal container that was then placed on top of my rice cooker. Within 24 hours the taproot was out a decent length so I planted. The grow will be a hempy bucket, so I start the seeds in a hempy cup. The cup is a red solo 16oz cup with a hole about an inch up. The hole is made with a philips screwdriver that was heated up. Inside the cup is a layer of Growstone GS-1 up to the hole. On top of that is a layer of Coco Loco with a 1/4" of space left at the top for when I pour water in. The idea is that what doesn't get absorbed by the coco will settle into the bottom of the cup creating a reservoir for the roots when they reach it. Any overflow pours out of the cup through the hole created at the bottom. I place the seeding in the grow space with the Quantum Boards turned on and placed high over them (24"). In 2-3 weeks the seedling will get transferred into a 5 gallon hempy bucket with more of the same grow medium. This is a 9 week grow according to FastBuds so I should be harvesting around end of August.

Seedling phase and for the most part its just water and let it grow. It's the part of the process that gets me the most nervous because I feel like it's easy to stunt a seedling very early on. Luckily I've had really good results with FastBuds in the past and this plant is proving to be just as good as a seedling. It has easily doubled in size within a week. The leaves are a nice shade of green with no signs of distress. Multiple leaves have come in and it doesn't seem to be stretching for the light. I am watering maybe twice a week and since its just straight water I only water until a little comes out the overflow hole. I normally use my RODI water which is pretty good but I didn't want to replace my filter yet to get truly zeroed out water (TDS), so I am trying out Walgreen brand Nice Purified Water. Straight out the container the TDS is 003. The PH is in a decent range as well. I will probably use for the first few weeks then switch over to my RODI water. The lights were super intense early on and it got me thinking they might be a little too much for seedlings. I looked up recommended light levels and everything pointed to about 7,000 lumens, so I bought a light meter and some dimmers for my Quantum Boards. I was at a whopping 23,000 lumens without the dimmers and the lights at 24". After putting on the dimmers I was able to get them both down to 7,000 lumens without a problem. By the end of week 3 my plan is to get up to 10,000 lumens.

With another good week of grow coming to an end I decided to transplant to a 5 Gallon Hempy bucket. Plenty of people are against transplanting autoflowers but with my method I've had good success. The feeding or this week was same as previous. Watered twice using purified water from Walgreens. If you plan on using store bought water make sure it's purified water only. Distilled has minerals added back in and spring water is full of things that will drive your TDS up. I always measure my TDS to be sure I'm getting as pure of water as possible. I also measure PH to make sure it's not too far off. My process for transplanting is pretty simple. I start by preparing the buckets I'm going to use. In this case I'm using the buckets from my previous grow so they already have the hole about 2" from the bottom of the bucket. The hole was made with a hot screwdriver pressed into the bucket. I removed the bucket's handle just to make life easier since the space tote everything is going in can be a tight space towards the bottom. The first thing I put in the bucket is Growstones. This will create a reservoir at the bottom of the bucket when I water the plant. That layer of GS-1 fills the bucket so it's just covering the hole on the side. The next thing to go into the bucket is coco coir. I only use Coco Loco. I've had great results so far and it's only $20 for a giant bag. I fill the bucket until about an inch of the top. I then dig a hole in the center where I'm going to place my plant. I size the whole up with my red cup so it's at the right size and height. I like the plant to rise up out of the coco slightly almost like it's at the top of a small hill. Once the coco is ready I cut up the red cup so I can transplant. This is the trickiest part since the coco the plant is in can easily fall apart. I like to cut the bottom off first to expose the roots. Once the bottom is off I will start to cut the side but not all the way. I place the cup inside of the hole I created in the coco then finish cutting the side while it's in the hole. Simply slide the red cup out of the whole and just like that the plant is in the bucket. I'll water shortly after so the coco settles and usually it will settle .5 - 1" inside of the bucket. I've increased the lights to 10k lumens by end of the week to provide that extra punch of light to assist in recovery from the transplant. Usually within a couple of hours if done right the plant will be super happy and standing taller than before. Next week I will start my nutrients which includes my favorite nutrient to guarantee my plants recover great from transplant.

SUNDAY - Nothing TUESDAY - 1 Gallon Purified w/ Nutrients PH 6.0 WEDNESDAY - Nothing THURSDAY - Nothing FRIDAY - 1 Gallon Purified w/Nutrients PH 6.0 SATURDAY - Nothing This is perhaps the best recovery I've seen from any plant. This thing has shot up in size. I'm very impressed it's recovering this much after being transplanted. So my regime Has changed slightly to include nutrients. I'm using Emerald Harvest because they are very easy to use AND I had fantastic results with my previous grow. My plan is to water with nutrients up to 2 -3 times a week. The roots probably haven't hit the reservoir yet, so there is no need to water a couple of times a week and until I really see the demand it's probably going to stay at twice a week for a little while. When I feed I like to keep my water at room temperature and PH 6.0. I find that keeping everything consistent will only help your grow. I water from the inside (closest to base of plant) to the outside. I try not to disturb the soil too much. I have 12" drip trays which are pretty good at holding the run-off. I am still using purified water that is store bought. I buy in 1 gallon jugs so I just need 4 a week, which is about $4 per week right now. The lighting has been increased to 10K lumens, which will only increase as the plant grows up towards the light. With the rapid growth this week I was slightly concerned the plant wasn't getting enough light and was stretching to compensate. However there has been plenty of growth with both the leaves and additional nodes. I'm excited to see what happens when the roots finally hit the reservoir and the explosive growth starts to hit.

SUNDAY - Nothing MONDAY - Nothing TUESDAY - 1 Gallon Purified Water w/Nutrients PH 6.0 Wednesday - Nothing Thursday - Nothing Friday - Nothing Saturday - 1 Gallon Purified Water PH 6.0 This plant has woken up in a BIG way. It's shot up from 5" to 10" by the end of the week. I've seen big growth before in other plants, but this is certainly impressive, This week continued the introduction of nutrients along with an increase of lumens from the quantum boards. There is a weak smell coming from the plant which tells me its hitting mid-vegetative already. My feedings this week consisted of one with nutrients and one without. For the first few feedings I like to introduce the nutrients at lower levels than recommended to prevent nutrient burn. The nutrient feeding this week would be the third in a row, so I will follow it up with a just water flush. I usually won't push it to four feedings with nutrients in a row until the plant is in the early stages of flower and gets very hungry. As the plants have shifted out of seedling phase I've increased the lumens to 15K. As it grows taller the amount of light it's going to get will increase, so I won't be dropping the lights down yet. It's super helpful having dimmers on these boards, so I don't have to worry about constantly adjusting the height of my lights. Next week I will turn on the side lighting to give an extra punch in the amount of lumens and to make sure the lower leaves are getting some light. Next week I will also start doing some low stress training. This plant is tall enough that pulling it to one side should open it up to more light and hopefully more bud sites will come out of it.

This really is a beautiful plant. It's grown out in a way that makes it seem like I've been doing LST the entire time. I did end up doing some actual LST towards the end of the week because if this plant shoots up during flower it will out grow my space. The aroma is still getting stronger, so I had to turn on the air filtration system. I like to use plant tie downs for LST. The roll of tie downs I bought are Shintop 328 Feet Garden Plant Twist Tie which can be found on Amazon. These work really well if you are smart. You can run into issues later on if you aren't careful because as any stem grows it will grown around the tie. When it comes time to cut the plant and pulling the ties it becomes a pain. This time when adding a tie down I make sure to leave a decent sized loop. I drill holes going around the bucket that I loop the tie downs through and tie off. I've decided to add an extra step by adding soft tie hooks at the end to hold each stem. This should prevent the stems from growing with the tie downs embedded in them. I watered twice this week with nutrients both times. Went to a full on vegetative feeding dosage on all of my nutrients before I start increasing my watering schedule next week. I've noticed less runoff this week with my watering which is usually a sign that a plant is getting thirstier. Next week will be 3 feedings a week. By the time I get to flower I will be at a feeding every other day. With increased nutrients comes a higher TDS. It's a good idea to look for signs of nutrient burn and nutrient lock out. An autoflower getting full nutrients suddenly can sometimes react negatively, so any signs of stress will let you know if you need to back off on nutrients a little. Increased nutrients along with the normal growth cycle has started to awaken the smell of the plant. I've decided it's time to turn on the carbon filter fan. My temperatures have been pretty high with the highest hitting 85 degrees. I have two AC Infinity AXIAL 1238 fans which bring in fresh air and circulates the air in the grow space, but don't impact the temperature drastically. The carbon filter fan will definitely bring down temperatures to a reasonable range. For the fan and filter combination I use a Hurricane Inline Fan along with a Phresh Filter. This is the second grow I've used this combo for and get fantastic results.

SUNDAY - Water w/Nutrients MONDAY - Nothing TUESDAY - Water w/Nutrients WEDNESDAY - Nothing THURSDAY - Water FRIDAY - Nothing SATURDAY - Water w/Nutrients Major growth every week has me doing some pretty serious LST. This plant is starting to be a beast. It started showing pistols so this is the last full week on Grow nutrients. There's a bit of a fight for space going on between this plant and the other one in my space tote, but nothing some LST can't fix. I'm watering with nutrients 3 days a week or basically every other day and this plant is very thirsty. I've begun the shift over from bottle purified water to a mix with my own RODI water. This has raised my TDS slightly but the plant doesn't seem to responding negatively. I think it's mature enough to handle the higher TDS. The lighting stayed the same and hasn't caused this plant any issues. The aroma on this plant has been steadily getting stronger and stronger. Nothing my carbon filter can't handle but you can definitely tell this plant is going into flower.

SUNDAY - NOTHING MONDAY - 2 Gallons Water w/Nutrients TUESDAY - NOTHING WEDNESDAY - 1.5 Gallons Water w/Nutrients THURSDAY - NOTHING FRIDAY - 1.5 Gallons Water SATURDAY - NOTHING Growing a sativa is unlike any other when it comes to vertical growth. This plant just won't stop growing. It seems to be slowing a bit, but my guess is it's only because it has to redirect some of that energy towards bud growth. Now is the time to make sure that canopy is open and light is penetrating to the bottom. Watering is consistent at every other day. I started with a heavier than normal watering only because it's been very hungry. After that initial large feeding the plant has been giving me consistent run-off with just 1.5 gallons of water. I will probably water less frequently with just pure water since during flower it will need all the nutrients it can get. I will eventually flush the plant but that won't be until the final week or two. I did some slight LST just to make the canopy a little more even. I definitely like to avoid that dominant main cola whenever I can. I also like to open the canopy as much as possible to get light to the lower bud sites. It's a little difficult since this plant is huge and my grow space is small. So in this case stripping the fan leaves becomes very important. I like to start at the top center and work my way out and down. I will try to pull larger leaves first, especially if they aren't connected to a bud site. The idea is to pull enough to be able to see the lower portions of the plant from a top down view. I won't pull more than a large handful of leaves and unlike my previous grow I am only doing this during flowering. The lights were increased to full intensity at the start of the week but by mid-week I turned them back down a little. I realized that much light too quickly didn't make the plant happy so I will gradually increase it.

SUNDAY - Nothing MONDAY - 1.5 Gallon w/Nutrients TUESDAY - Nothing WEDNESDAY - 1.5 Gallon w/Nutrients THURSDAY - Nothing FRIDAY - 1.5 Gallon w/Nutrients SATURDAY - Nothing Buds are starting to come in nicely, so this week is about feeding and stripping. Get your dollar bills out. This was a solid week to strip leaves. The canopy was getting dense so I pulled leaves that weren't attached to bud sites. Stripping helps with light penetration which is great for lower bud sites. However it's also a good time to look at the plant and decide if the lower buds are worth keeping. While I like to keep as many bud sites as possible the reality is not every site is going to give you good bud in the end. I decided to also lollipop a bit. This means cutting off any bud sites that don't look like they have the same level of development as sites mid-way up the plant. It's a heartbreaking thing to do since it feels like you are losing out in your final harvest BUT the buds higher up the plant will be better off because of it. Feedings have been consistent with flower nutrients and steady amounts of water. The TDS will probably start getting pretty high soon as I start to increase nutrient amounts in various stages of flower but the plant is hungry and needs the constant feed of nutes. Next week I will switch to mid-flower nute schedule. Lighting has been turned all the way up to a lux that makes sense for flower, which is a minimum of 65,000 lux. This plant has become a little too tall and some of the tallest colas are starting to touch the light. I will have to mount it higher to accommodate. I don't want colas ruined because they have no where to grow.

SUNDAY - Nothing MONDAY - 1 Gallon w/Nutrients TUESDAY - .5 Gallon w/Nutrients WEDNESDAY - Nothing THURSDAY - Nothing FRIDAY - 1.5 Gallons w/Nutrients SATURDAY - Nothing Low key grow week but a really good one for bud sites. There has been serious bud development which is what we've all been waiting for. I was getting slightly nervous since nothing was happening, but it's all coming in fast and furious. Watering has been pretty normal for the week. I ran out of time on Monday so was only able to mix up a gallon of water and nutes, so that meant making up the additional .5 gallons the next day. I hate doing that but life happens. I decided not to water until Friday just to give the plant some time to soak up everything that was fed and start with a fresh watering cycle on Friday. The plant didn't miss a beat so it was all good. With the mid-flower nutrient plan the plant is getting everything it needs to grow some fat buds. This plant has grown taller than expected so it was pushing up against the light when I would close my grow space. Thank goodness I caught it before every cola got pushed down. Unfortunately a few of them did get squashed a bit. I went ahead and just mounted the light directly on the top of my grow space. Even with the extra bit of height the light pushes out plenty of lux to compensate. I lost the ability to adjust the height of the light but I have a dimmer attached to the light.

SUNDAY - NOTHING MONDAY - 1.5 Gallons w/Nutrients TUESDAY - NOTHING WEDNESDAY - 1.5 Gallons w/Nutrients THURSDAY - NOTHING FRIDAY - 1.5 Gallons Water SATURDAY - NOTHING The finish line is in sights. Buds are getting dense and some frost is starting to come in. I started the week with feeding a lighter nutrient plan. I want to start phasing the nutrients out so we can go into a flush. The frost was starting to really come in on the buds, so I didn't want to completely eliminate the nutrients. I also was running out of Emerald Goddess and King Kola. So this was the last week it was getting either of those two nutrients. Even with coco I find that a good flush will usually see nutrient water coming out the bottom of the bucket, so I wasn't too worried about not having enough of the nutrients. I also started trimming more fan leaves. At this stage there are enough leaves on the buds to absorb the light needed. I don't need giant fan leaves getting in the way. I also am thinking about how much I'm going to have to trim once this plant comes down and I just don't want to be trimming all day. Lighting has been the same for a few weeks and it will stay the same. The stickiness of this plant has really increased and that's exciting. I'm genuinely impressed with what fastbuds is able to with their autoflowers.

Flush week arrived and that means nothing but water for a full week. Feeding has come to an end and it's time to prepare for harvesting. I like to water my plants just plain reverse osmosis water for the week prior to harvesting. I want to make sure any excess nutrients are pulled out of the coco and reservoir. This forces the plant to burn off any nutrients left over in the plant itself. Some people claim it leads to a better smoke. I find that my vaping experience is better with a flushed plant in comparison to previous grows where I didn't flush. The last 2 - 3 days I turn off the lights pushing the plant to really eat up those remaining nutrients. It can also help trichomes if they haven't turned amber yet. I am very light on amber trichomes with this plant BUT it is a sativa and I'm not interested in couch lock or getting away from the heady-ness of the strain. Look forward to chopping her this week.

Another home run from Fast Buds. They consistently produce the biggest buds with the largest yields. This strain just grew and grew. It almost grew too large for my space, but with some LST I was able to make it work. Definitely keep an eye out for bud rot! With any strain where the buds get huge you run the risk that the air circulation isn't enough. Unfortunately for me I had this problem in the last week and had to cut some of the largest colas and toss them. My yield would've been closer to a full pound if I didn't run into this issue. To be clear this isn't a Fast Buds problem but just a huge buds problem. I will definitely be growing this strain again and to be honest I would love to grow at least one Fast Buds strain with every grow going forward. You just can't beat their quality strains and great yields. I trimmed this plant wet and dried in a mesh rack. I thought about hang drying, but I wanted to try a different drying method. I'm happy with the way they dried, which took maybe 5 days. From the drying rack I trimmed any stems I left on then placed the buds in mason jars for curing. A full week of curing without any humidity packs with twice a day burping. At the start of the second week I insert 62% humidity packs to help balance the moisture levels and put a little moisture back in the buds if too dry. I will continue the cure for a month with twice a day burping for the first 2 weeks followed by once a day burping for the last 2 weeks. In the end I should have some very aromatic and flavorful bud ready to be vaped or turned into edibles.