Cream Cookies novice grower

stealthassassin Germinated well, placed seed straight into rockwool and under a glass bowl humidity dome. Changed the bowl to a plastic container on day 4 (you can see it in the d6 photos), enabled me to alter the air flow a bit better. I haven't watered it since day 1 (5 days ago) but the rockwool still has half its weight and i can feel the moisture when I touch it. I watered with pH 5.9 water after soaking the rockwool for a few hours in it on d0. Day 6 - seems a bit droopy in the first true leaves? Nothing major but got me worried. Any feedback would be appreciated! 😕

stealthassassin 😿 Hardly grown at all since D4 - D10 💩 the consensus on D5 was that I had over watered. I had only watered once on D1, but it just didn't need watereing again after that. So when I was told I had over watered, I actually hadn't watered it in 5 days so it was a bit of a shock!. So on D5 I quickly reduced the moisture and now the rockwool is almost dry. Complete saturation weight was 300g, am now having it sit between 70 - 200g in weight. 😞 It isn't dying, but it just isn't growing more than 2 mm per day in the leaves. The leaves are still limp and drooping all the time as can be seen in the last photo. It isn't stretching in the stem at all. 😕 I find it very strange how at the main growth node all the leaves are totally bunched up there, no growth of any stem visible between the main stem and any of the leaves at all. 💪 I wonder when I should start to feed this plant, I am inclined to hold off on any nutes until it starts to grow properly. Day 12 - planted the rockwool in coco-perlite mix and watered with calmag and weak nutes with runoff ppm only reaching 170 and pH 6.2

stealthassassin Since replanting last week and putting into coco she seems much happier! I found out that the ppm of the water I had been using was over 500, but it was all from the pH down I had added so I think that was bad. I diluted the water out and added my nutes to a final ppm of 375 into the coco with pH of 6.1, the runoff was about pH6.2 and only 170 ppm. The coco was buffered initially but I think I rinsed much of it out when preparing the mix. The new growth at the main node seems lighter green than the rest of the plant, I wonder if this means she is hungry? I am leaving her for now though, don't want to over fertilize. On day 15,16 the bottom leaves starting to curl in at the base and serrations sticking up. Next on day 16/17 brown spots appearing on bottom leaves and tips starting to go yellow. Day 20 she is finally starting to look happy, leaves not drooping, less pale. I moved the light up higher and added in a fan so maybe she was slightly heat stressed.

stealthassassin She is picking up now, but still far behind where I would have liked her. Anyone answer any of these questions? - Her fan leaf section numbers seem to go 1, 3, 3, 3 as far as I can see, why would this be is she a mutant? - Do you think she is permanently stunted? She just seems far behind a lot of plants at day 25 on this site.

stealthassassin I really feel like I am learning SO MUCH with this grow, heaps of things I could improve on next time. 😺 Day 28 - I fed her a 420ppm nutrient solution, and as I was watering her a fair bit got on her leaves. I shook it off her but a few drops on her lower fan leaves were stuck. So I grabbed the droplets with my finger and smeared them into the leaf. Big mistake, next day the leaves were all burnt! 😡😲 The upper fan leaves that I didn't touch were fine, the leaf tips were fine also. Day 30 - Plant really looking happy now, growing nicely and stretching up towards the light. The 4th set of fan leaves still 3 pronged (has grown cotyledons, then true leaves with 1, 3, 3 and 3 prongs). The 5th set of fan leaves is now visible as a bud in the center, and I can see that this set has 5 prongs. So was likely the stress that made the first sets of leaves 3 pronged. Day 30 - I really want the plant to be BUSHY to take advantage of this small light and surround it, so I decided to try FIMMING today! The middle bud was at the perfect age for this so took the opportunity, I hope she can handle it. Happy to sacrifice a bit of yield to get more buds closer to the light for a more consistent quality. If you think that yield is more important and I shouldn't do this, here is a fact for you, over the last 5 years I have gone through about 30g of bud with me and one friend, we have some about once a month or two. So yeah I don't care about yield just quality 👌. Day 34 - Female preflower showing! Shit this means she will be into bloom soon, and still so far behind where I wanted her. Researched on the interwebs and found that I could still have a good 2 weeks of fast vegetative growth at this point. I realised my last feed was only 1/3 strength fertilizer. Time to feed her a decent meal, GO STRONG OR GO HOME! I fed her 5L of pH 5.9, ppm = 775 - with 20ml of Canna Rapid combined A&B

stealthassassin She has finally taken off into proper veg mode, I wonder if she was just waiting for a good feed? Regardless, making up for lost time and I am much more confident in her now. She still hasn't started to flower, even though her preflowers are showing for a good week, I hope she kicks over soon! I will start transitioning to flowering NPK ratio next feed.

stealthassassin She is starting to show the early signs of buds beginning to form, so veg is coming to an end. Has been growing well, the nutrients are now at 1.6 EC and she is coping well with it. Finally starting to drink a decent amount too. Unsure what time she will finish, I am going away in 8 weeks and really hoping she can finish flowering before then!

stealthassassin Oh boy, she has really stretched out in her early flowering phase. She has been growing very fast! After her first feed this week, her runoff was 1100ppm (2.2EC) and she is lapping it up! No signs of toxicity, very healthy. I have been defoliating all the young leaves that would have grown up to cover any of the surrounding bud sites. However, I have left all the leaves that stick out to the side of the plant. It is getting very crowded in the grow box now, touching all 4 walls! I want to try to speed up her flower so next feed will be with bloom nutes, so lower nitrogen.

stealthassassin She is still stretching up, seeming very happy. Drinking faster and faster so finally the right size for her pot now. I am removing fan leaves at the top that block access of light to the bud sites. I am really trying to speed her up to get her to flower as fast as possible but I don't know how. The guy at the hydro shop said some mild stress will speed her up but I cannot find it anywhere online. He said try raising the daytime temp to 30 degrees in early to mid flower (not late) to really get her going. Anyone heard of this?

stealthassassin Her pistils are getting way long now, but still no trichomes that I can see. I am resigned to her not finishing until about another 6 weeks from now but I have my fingers crossed hoping she can prove me wrong and speed up. She has soooo many bud sites on her now, and they all look super hairy with massive pistils. I removed a few of the very small and delayed ones that were way down the bottom of the plan. Also removed a few of the leaves from the bottom of the plant that don't get light, and which were going a bit pale. A few (5-10) of the oldest fan leaves have 1-5 small rust-coloured spots on them but most leaves look very healthy so not too worried - pruned a few of the most severely affected.. I have started using the VPD chart for flowering, and have kept her mostly within the optimum levels. Hoping this helps her to grow well.

stealthassassin We now have trichomes! Nice to see them come along to the party. I have been keeping the VPD within the optimum levels and she doesn't seem to look stressed any more so very happy about that. She would sometimes have wilted leaves etc. around the morning and evenings, and now I realise that the humidity was too high. The heater broke this week, and somehow I managed to fix it by opening it up and testing the cutoff switches - found out the mechanical thermostat wasn't working. Then I cleaned the contacts inside and it magically started working again so very lucky to find the fix!

stealthassassin She is really starting to smell now. Particularly on the really hot and dry days which I try to avoid as much as I can with her. Some pistils turning brown. Trichomes are already 75% cloudy, 25% clear, no amber. Will start posting trichome pics next week. I finally have a plan for when I go away in 3.5 weeks. I am thinking I will probably have to harvest just before I leave. So I purchased a humidity-controlled power-plug outlet the Inkbird IHC-200. I am going to set up my grow tent with just the extraction fan running on low. Then inside the tent I will set up a cardboard box with a fan hole in it and a few holes to let air out. I will attach a fan to the hole, with the humidity sensor inside. The fan will be running, blowing air through the box and removing the moisture from the air. The humidity sensor will notice when the humidity gets too low, when it will stop the power to the fan. I would guess it would be blowing most of the time for the first few days but this will prevent it from drying out too fast. When I get back, hopefully it will be ready to jar. Any ideas of what humidity RH% I should set as the shut off? I was thinking 65% to start with. Please put any feedback on this plan you might have, in the comments below.

stealthassassin I am thinking to start the flush in a few days. I want to chop on the earlier half of the harvest window, but not so early it is wasteful. If I flush for a good 7-14 days could I start soon? I still hardly see any amber trichomes at all, less than 1% most leaves have none. I am also seeing some new growth of white hairs still appearing in the buds, although over 50% of pistils are now brown.

stealthassassin Getting close now, I can feel it! The trichomes are occasionally amber now (still less than 1% on most buds though). Have lowered the nutrients right down, the ppm of the runoff after the last feed was only 600 (1.2EC) I will start the flush at the start of next week. I am maintaining optimum VPD with my new inkbird humidity monitor. http://happypotfarmer.com/inkbird-humidity-controller-review-and-usage-instructions I have a heater linked to the monitor that switches on when the humidity is too high during lights-on. I set the humidity percent based on the forecast dew point outside for that day (as it draws air in directly from outside). Using this, the heater maintains the VPD to the optimum level where it can (without the use of a humidifier). Below I pasted the relative humidity (RH) values I set it to based on the dew point outside. I also tried setting the temperature too, which also works if you are using a heater. I found that most days most of the time it was in the optimum. Had to change the setting when the weather changed quickly outside though. Luckily, the dew point here is usually between 5 and 12 so it didn't get too humid in there. Dew(C)--RH(%)--Temp(C) 1----------32---19.9 2----------33.7---20.1 3----------35.4---20.3 4----------37.1---21.0 5----------38.8---21.3 6----------40.5---22.0 7----------42.2---22.3 8----------43.9---23.0 9----------45.6---23.0 10---------47.3---23.7 11---------49---24.2 12---------50.7---24.7 13---------52.4---25.2 14---------54.1---25.8 15---------55.8---26.6

stealthassassin The day after harvest I went away on holidays for 10 days, so I was a bit worried about the drying process. I put the bud in a cardboard box as you can see in the photos, with an inkbird humidity monitor attached to a fan. When the fan was off there was no ventilation through the box. When the humidity got over 70% it would put a gentle breeze through the box until it got down to 65% and then shut off until it went back up above 70 again... When I returned home the humidity in the box was 59% so it didn't get too dry! The buds have lots of trichomes on them but they are a bit more airy and leafy than I would have liked, I think perhaps there were too many small bud sites the plant was putting its energy into. Needed to prune more aggressively to just have a few main bud sites.