Bag Seed Vs. Bought Seed

I recently completed my very 1st harvest and now that I have gotten over the hurdle, I'm excited to be at it again (and with lots of great upgrades). In my first attempts at growing I thought it would be best to start with the most entry level equipment just to see how I enjoyed the experience; it's safe to say I'm HOOKED! This time around I have a larger tent (3x3) and am growing 4 plants instead of just one! 2 of these plants are Super Skunk (fem) and the other 2 are bag seed that I kept labeled (banana candy & 3x crazy). In addition to the Mars Hydro tent, I also got an affordable LED light that I am over the moon about :) After doing some research for several months I decided that the Hipargero 800w COB was a must-have, especially for the price! I haven't seen many people talk about it or use it but, everything that I did see was a raving review and from the couple of youtube videos and pictures I saw of the light in action I was quite impressed! It has a veg and bloom switch, and a daisy chain feature for those of you who are looking to make an upgrade... this might be the next light for you! These little babies are in Fox Farm's "Ocean Forest" and I am giving them a light misting of distilled water. By the end of the week I will probably place used coffee grounds on the top soil for so slow releasing nitrogen nutrients.

By the end of the 2nd week of veg. I decided to place my babies in their permanent homes. I think I could have waited a week or two more to place them in the 3 gallon pots but, they all took to it rather well, even the tiny Super Skunk that was a bit runty (due to a little damage on her 1st set of leaves). Although they were still a little tiny for transplanting, all of their roots looked sensational, especially the bag seed strains! I'm really excited to see how those develop and I hope we get a least 1 girl out of them. I also fed them a little bit of coconut water this week for some additional nutrients. Most of them liked it with the exception of the 3x Crazy bag seed that is a bit finicky and showed some signs of nut. burn... Last grow I chose to use a 5 gallon fabric pot but, I felt that the size was a little excessive given the original setup + I was sure I could grow a bigger plant in smaller pots - now that I have better equipment.

**I am glad I saved pics. from weeks 1-3 because I was lagging in getting this account setup** - with that's being said, the "girls" (speaking it into existence) are coming along quite well. My last grow I used Green Planet's: Medi-One from veg - harvest, and although the overall turnout was pretty good, I just felt like I was a little heavy handed. This time I am trying something a little different and I'll be feeding the plants coconut water and potentially: -rice water** -banana peel water -boiled egg shell water -onion skin water* I am trying to do this as organic/affordable as possible, and although I haven't seen many cannabis forums talk about these natural fertilizers in depth (if at all), I have found that they are quite common practices in Indian gardening (if anyone is interested I'll link the YouTube videos). I can only imagine that these techniques are not isolated but, most likely common in Eastern gardening in general.... *if anyone can confirm this let me know Also, I did go ahead and top 3 of the 4 plants at the 5th node. I am going to hold off on topping the runt for a while and will go ahead and solely focus on LST for now. I don't want o stress her any further. **Lastly I am not the type of grower that measures things and has schedules, I admire that style of regiment and see it being beneficial commercially... but this is ENTIRELY about observation and the pleasure of growing personally so, forgive me if I don't have detailed notation lol... Feel free to ask me questions about: feedings, lighting, or anything else you're curious about

This week marks a full month from germination and it's amazing to see the amount of growth I have experienced within the last couple of weeks. In retrospect, I am glad I thought to make "environmental upgrades" for the sake of my future plants and their potential. There is no doubt that starting any grow off with stable genetics will help to boost the potential yield but, in this case environment is KEY! Since I have started this grow and observed the plants, I made a conscious effort not to use bottled nutrients just to prove the plant's potential and show that it may not be necessary to invest so much there. In this case, making sure that things such as: -Lighting -Airflow/Circulation -Temp. Control -Propper PH are managed, is far more important than just having good quality seeds. From my observation alone, the bag seeds have really responded well to their growing conditions; in fact the 3x Crazy just started to show signs of pre-flower and we have A GIRL!! We'll see about the Banana Candy but, for now t it's nice to know that more than half of my crop will be smokable <3 If the littlest one ends up catching up to the rest, I might bring out the trellis net and try my hand at the "scrog" technique. I'm going to give them all a few more weeks in veg. and I might flip to flower in week 6 or 7!

The weeks keep flying by and my babies have really grown. This week I noticed certain changes in both bag seed plants that really caught my attention. Retrospectively, I think rearranging the plants and putting the bag seed in front really helped me manage the potential problems that I saw before they became irreversible! Since the very beginning I have noticed that the 3X Crazy seemed particularly sensitive and very finicky. When I would prepare to feed and water all four plants I would make sure to give each plant the same amount of nutrients (at the correct PH). All the other plants seemed to love the rice water coconut water accept for her! At first I attributed the rust spots I saw to nut. burn or a PH problem but, when realizing that none of the other plants were ever this reactive I began to think it was something else. In doing more research I cam to believe that I actually might be experiencing a calcium or magnesium deficiency and quickly concocted a mixture of: -Garlic peel water -Distilled water -Epsom salt I figured this could work as some sort of "make shift" Cal-Mag and the plants seem to all enjoy it! For now I will continue to give the 3X Crazy a foliar feeding and maybe just give her water until I know we are in the clear.. Lastly, It turns out that my Banana Candy was a boy! If I had the space to I would have grown it out because he was handsome :/ We are officially down to 3 girls but I am glad to give them more space to spread out!!!

Week 6 was the official end of my Veg. cycle! This week I had to remove the male plant (Banana Candy) from the garden and as I massaged the dirt from his roots I was amazed at how well developed the roots were for only 5 weeks of growth!! I probably could have flipped the lights last week but I wanted my Super Skunk runt to catch up to her sisters. Now that she has filled out and started to stretch I felt like it would be time to set up the trellis net and give the "SCROG" technique a try. I have never done this before but I think it will be particularly useful for the "3x crazy" bag seed that I am growing. I have noticed just by her phenotypical expression that she looks to be more "sativa" leaning, which got me to thinking about its actual origins. If it was in fact a 3x crazy plant that this seed came from, then it must have been pollinated by something entirely different (something sativa) because this plant is showing NO signs of being a cross of OG Kush, Bubba Kush, and Granddaddy Purple! She sure is fascinating to look at though... I also decided to try banana peel water this week because I was very curious about it and I am happy to say that it was a crowd favorite!!! I finally found something that all the plants respond to positively and it feels really good to be able to use every bit of a banana. Like most of the other water recipes I tried during this grow, the actual requirement to make this form of nutrients is very simple. Literally all you have to do is let your banana peels (3-4) soak in about 2 liters of water for a couple of days, strain it off and PRESTO! When I give to my plants I dilute it with just tape water and make sure to PH it. Week 7 will be the first week of flower so the real fun begins!! I plan on continuing with banana peel water and I will add African wild honey and coconut water to the nutrient solution for my simple sugars.

The 1st week of flower is down and the girls are looking great, I have hit the bloom switch on the light and we are now running at full strength. Since this was my 1st time working with a trellis net I wasn't sure how high to hang it. Originally I had the net setup with a gap of about a few inches but realized that by doing this I would be allowing my plants to grow even taller, thus defeating to purpose of the SCROG technique. After lowering the net I began to understand just how helpful it was to be able to gently move a branch aside to allow for better light penetration! Overall, I am happy that I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and attempted something new, and I think waiting to put the net up in the early weeks of flower was a smart decision because now is the time when the plants will stretch the most. Already I have seen the plants explode in growth and it's looking like I'll get a bountiful harvest! Regarding nutrients and watering: I have chosen to continue with my "water, water, feed" routine. I don't want to over do it with the feedings and the plants look extremely healthy so I'd definitely say "less is more". I am not the type of gardener to water 'til runoff, my preference is to water or feed when the pots feel light and to STOP the moment the pots feel heavy and the bottom of the fabric pot is moist (or completely saturated). These next couple weeks I will most likely use whatever I have around the house so that means rice water and/or banana peel water. I will begin to add simple sugars to the feedings as well and since I already have "African wild honey" at home (because I like to make my own skincare products) I will use that. I have heard of people using raw honey amongst unsulfured molasses and a whole host of other simple sugars but, I love African wild honey and since I used it during my 1st harvest and it worked amazingly, I will continue with it. For those of you who are wondering what African wild honey looks like, it is literally just as dark as molasses!! Here is a quote from the company I purchased it from: "African Wild Honey is an age-old beauty secret harvested from the wooded savanna belt, the richest production area for the wild honeybee colonies of West Africa. The Natural African Wild Honey is 100% all natural, unpasteurized, unfiltered, and unheated; thus retaining all of its natural minerals, amino acids, and vitamins"

Week 8 was solid. The plants themselves didn't give me trouble, although, my (cheap) exhaust fan did... :/ As much of an inconvenience as it seemed for my fan to give out during flower, I still had an older (weaker) exhaust fan I could setup in the mean time and although it isn't as strong, it is reliable and my temps haven't gotten too out of hand. Over all, I'd say that the plants have taken well to their environment. It definitely isn't perfect but despite my minimal issues with regulating humidity, the girls seem to be growing just fine. Considering the fact that I am growing in SoCal during the summer & using no air conditioning, I'd say mid - low 80's with little to no temperature swings at night, is pretty solid! I've also looked into more information regarding VPD. I've been hearing more about it while doing research and although it's still a new concept to me, It is something to take into consideration; especially since I am running a warmer tent. I just want to make sure that the ratio of temps. - humidity are within an optimal range. Early in the week I gave my plants a feeding of diluted rice water which they responded to well. A couple days later I watered my plants & realized I still had some fish bone meal from my last grow so I decided to put a top dressing on for some slow releasing phosphorus. I think this coming week I will keep to my water schedule and allow for the plants to uptake the nutrients from the fish bone meal. If I add anything else to the feeding schedule it will be diluted garlic peel water & african wild honey of course!

**I had to come through and repost some images because I got disorganized with my photos my apologies ** This past week in the garden was a little bit of a challenge but I'm happy that the girls pushed through! Last week when I realized the exhaust fan went out, I tried to remain calm and figure out a temporary plan while I went back to the drawing board. I initially purchased 2 Damprid containers to work in conjunction with with my older (weaker) fan, and once I realized that it wasn't enough I went ahead and purchases a Vivosun inline fan from Amazon. The package only took several days to arrive and by that point I was so thankful because the humidity was starting to look a little scary for the girls.... and I had no intentions of loosing a harvest with so much potential. I also noticed that my Super Skunks were having a bit of yellowing on some of their leaves and a few very small rust spots. It didn't look like nutrient burn because of the randomness so I did a little research and it seemed as if it may be a slight magnesium deficiency...... I posed the question to other grower friends who said: 1) it looked more like a nitrogen deficiency or 2) maybe the girls just needed a good flush. I have since given them a watering and haven't seen anymore issues but I'll be paying close attention to make sure I don't stress them out too much in the upcoming weeks. Now that we have made it through week 3 of flower and the stretch seems to be nearly complete, I'm excited to see how the flowers develop. Most importantly I am happy to know that the temp. and humidity are back in alinement!!!

Week 10 is down and I'm overall pleased with the progress. The Super Skunks are slowly working on bud development and I believe the yield will be promising! I have grown this strain out (successfully) once before but given all of the upgrades made for this grow, the difference is night and day. Behaviorally the Super Skunks seems to develop the same way my last plant did: in the sense that it spent a long time in the stretching phase of flower and really didn't start to fatten up until the last few weeks; right before harvest. Seeing that 4 weeks are down and the girls have just now started to show noticeable growth in flower size and thricome production, I expect that the Super Skunks will slowly increase in size but by next week I'm sure their growth will be more noticeable in bulk. As for the 3X Crazy (bag seed), I am still amazed at how happy she's been the last couple of weeks. From the moment she started showing signs of pre-flowers, she'd been itching to be flipped. Since then she spent very little time focusing on stretch and very quickly began to focus on bud production. The irony is that, in Veg. she was the stretchiest plant! I haven't had too many problems with her since I figured out how much she loved banana peel water and I'v tried to give them that as much as possible. I have a feeling that she will probably finish around week 7 or 8 of flower just based on the development... but you never know! Last week I mentioned signs of leaf discoloration on the Super Skunks and I think its been resolved. I gave the plants a watering several times this week to see if I could "flush" the soil a bit and they seemed to stabilize. I then gave them a feeding of banana water on Friday and they all seem quite content. Lets hope the coming weeks run smoothly!!!

5 weeks of flower under the belt and I am beginning to see early signs of a dramatic shift! One of my personal critiques on my 1st harvest was that I wasn't capable of getting my leaves to change in color. At the time I had done some research and asked a professional grower friend about flushing my soil if I was growing organic, and at the time he told me that: 1) flushing soil while growing organic was not going to remove all of the nutrients in the soil because of the microbiology, thus making the practice of "flushing" obsolete. 2) I wouldn't get the same type of results visually as flushing in coco and using synthetic nutrients. At the time I took that information at face value but, now that I have made adjustments to my feeding style I am beginning to think this isn't entirely true. Although I completely agree that flushing your medium when growing synthetic is paramount to ensure a better quality smoke, I do believe it is possible to get the "Autumn Color Effect" (A.C.E.) to appear in a soil/organic grow. Essentially, I believe that I may have been miss diagnosing my plants these last couple of weeks, and what I assumed was a deficiency problem is now starting to look more like a natural progression in fade! At first I only noticed the leaf changes at random and on one of the Super Skunks but now I am beginning to see all of the girls show their change in color and its fascinating to watch!! Between the 3X Crazy (bag seed) and the Super Skunk (fem) I am seeing a difference in both color and fading progression. The 3X Crazy leaves tend to lighten slowly and the leaf itself will lighten entirely until it fades to a bright yellow, while the Super Skunks tend to lighten finger to finger and shift more to a golden orange color. The Super Skunks are still taking their time and slowly developing their bud sights, however, they have increased in trichome production and have a VERY sweet smell (almost juicy fruit like)! The smell is very familiar to the plant I grew before but, the scent is much stronger than my last grow so I am excited to see how they finish in the next couple of weeks!!!

Week 6 is complete and every week I am getting more and more anxious to smoke this harvest! I took some time to look back on the pictures of these plants just several weeks ago and, my have they changed! What once was a vibrant and lush-looking green has slowly morphed into a light green color with a golden undertone. The girls are really beginning to change in color and I expect it to become a more dramatic difference in these last few weeks. I have a macro lens on the way and I'm hoping it arrives within the next week or two because I believe the 3X crazy bag seed should be nearly done by then. Although she appears to be more of a low yielder, I have enjoyed the mystery of growing her and I'm glad I saved this seed for several years. This week I removed a few of her very small "popcorn nugs" and let them dry out because I was curious about the high.... I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of such a small amount (mind you she isn't even completely finished yet)! The high felt Sativa leaning for sure but it appears to be some type of hybrid (which I would prefer if I'm going to have anything that's Sativa at all). It was a very up lifting high and I felt pleasantly energized. This will most likely become a daytime smoke and I can't wait to identify the flavors once it has dried and cured. The Super Skunks are still taking their sweet time but they have definitely started to increase in size this week which is a relief lol! I still don't know if I will go 10 weeks like I did last grow but I know they won't be coming down the same time as the 3X Crazy that's for sure! I really love both of their structure and I think when they fatten up they will be gorgeous and dense! As far as dead leaves go... I let the girls use up all that they can from the leaves before I remove them. For those of you who are interested in a watching video footage of the grow, you can tune into the weekly updates on my Instagram: @_taylor.darling_ (I usually post on Sunday's). ***Also, this week Im going to try feeding my pants barley water since I have it around the house. I have heard of some growers using malted barley but I won't buy any of that until my next grow since I'm nearly done. I'll let you all know how it goes.

As week 7 has been completed it becomes more and more clear that the bag seed 3X crazy has grown at an accelerated rate, and will most likely be coming down after next week (maybe even the week after). Early on in the week I noticed that I had accidentally bumped my light timer, causing the lights to come on for 30mins or so during the dark period! I am not entirely sure how long that happened for but I am sure it couldnt' have been more that a couple days. Regardless, I was astonished to see that it had little to no effect on the bag seed and I am happily surprised at how stable the strain truly is. Although, the bag seed isn't a high yielding plant it is still beautiful to look at, and I enjoy its extremely pine/tree sappy smell. Im hoping as it cures the scent increases as well as the overall smoothness. As far as the Super Skunks are concerned, they are still behind but I believe their bud structure will be phenomenal. Taking an up close look at how tightly stacked the nodes are, is giving me hope for 2 high yielding plants with quite a few large colas (keep your fingers crossed). For a majority of the flowering period I decided to only use the bloom switch since this is the 1st time I am using this light and I just wanted to see what it could do. However, in these last few weeks of flower I decided to run both the "Veg and Bloom" switches to see how much of an impact it has on the grow in general. I expect that it will give all the girls an additional boost and I'll continue to pay a close attention to their bud size and aroma to see if I notice any difference. Last week I briefly mentioned that I was going to try using some barley water to feed my plants since I had it around the house. I think the plants really liked it but I think in the future I will purchase hulled barely instead of pearled barley because hulled barley is considered whole grain: meaning the exterior shell (that contains large amounts of nutrients) is still intact. A few weeks back I was searching the internet to find more information about barley and its use in the garden and I came across this article from buildasoil.com: https://buildasoil.com/blogs/news/12607517-using-b-a-s-barley-for-enzyme-tea-tutorial It's an article that gives you a step by step tutorial on how to make your own barley enzyme tea but, naturally I had to make some adjustments since I was using pearled barley this time. I will continue with this method until it's time to harvest while potentially adding in ground down, sun-dried banana peels, and perhaps some onion peel water as well. Hopefully by next week we will have nearly completed the growth cycle for at least one of these plants but, regardless, I am happy to have had such a learning experience this grow while making my own nutrients instead of buying it! This all has been very exciting and I feel extremely resourceful as well.😊

Man oh man this past week was insane! I started to see some changes in the plants that made me nervous so I had to quickly make some adjustments to salvage the grow. Mid-week I noticed that one of my Super Skunks was REALLY under preforming. The most noticeable difference was that the stems were showing a reddish tint and some of the leaves began to wilt! I started to get panicked because up until this point things had been running rather smoothly so I couldn't quite figure out what the problem was. I asked a few experienced growers what they thought and many of them suggested that I flush the plants and check the PH because that was most likely the problem. Since I was in panic mode I decided that I would not just test the plant in question but, I would go ahead and flush the other plants as well to see how the run off read. After running gallons of water through and testing all of the girls it turns out that this was not the problem. In fact all of the plants had a PH of 6 or so and since I was growing in soil I didn't see that to be a problem. However , what I did notice was a large amount o fungus gnats that had not been there before😫 Once I started doing more research I was noticing similar symptoms in my plant so I assumed this was the problem and I actively made the choice to try and resuscitate my plant outside instead of keeping her in the tent with the other girls. ** Also,I live in South California so I think its fine for the plant to be outside** Since I currently on have 1 tent running, I didn't want to be held back from my future grows because of one plant that I was attempting to save so I figured If I'm going to keep it around and try to nurse it back to health , it makes more sense to do this outside where the process can be done slowly and I can still have my tent available to start new things. I took precautions and added some additions sticky bug traps to catch gnats as well as putting down some diatomaceous earth to deter the pets. I think that the healthier Super Skunk was also affected slightly because its grows has slowed down a bit (which is extremely frustrating) but, I believe that one has a much stronger chance of completing flower than her sister. Long story short, I will be investing in another tent eventually so that I can run a perpetual grow, that way this type of set back won't feel so agonizing. In addition to this I will probably be covering my top soil in layers with thins that won't interest gnats (i.e. river stones, glass gravel, diatomaceous earth) in a more proactive way so that this doesn't become a problem again..

This grow was purely an experiment and I am happy that I gave it a shot even thought the plant was the smallest of the bunch. The mystery of growing bag seed is quite enjoyable but I think for the sake of predictability it may not be the best to run every time. I trimmed the buds up roughy because I was considering either making a tincture or turning this run into canna butter. The smell is STRONG and pine tree-like and the high is definitely more sativa leaning but I do enjoy it (surprisingly).