In House Genetics

I grow organically so the majority of the inputs I use are top amendments and are used at the following rates: Gaia Green All Purpose 4-4-4 (VEG): 45mL/gallon every 3 weeks. Gaia Green Power Bloom 2-8-4 (FLOWER): 30mL/gallon every 3 weeks. Kootenay Bio Soils Mycos: 4TBSP-5TBSP when mixing soil. Sprinkle as needed before transplanting. Worm Castings: 45mL/gallon every 3 weeks. Compost Tea: given once per week in veg and flower(stop teas after week 5 of flower). I use a nut milk bag to brew the tea in. Take 2 cups of worm castings and place them in the bag (you could add kelp meal, alphalpha meal, bat guano, and a wide range of other organic inputs if you like but I prefer to keep it simple). Place the bag in a 5 gallon pale with clean water at 21 or so degrees celcius. Add 2 TBSP of organic sea weed extract to the water. Add 2 TBSP of organic unsulphured blackstrap molasses to the water. The tea needs to be aerated to activate the beneficial microbes so you need to place an airstone in the pale. Bubble the tea for 24 HRS, PH adjust the tea to 6.5-7.0, then feed. This week went great. The environment was stable all week. The plants responded very well to transplanting(3 gallon to 7 gallon), pruning, lollipopping, and tons of LST(added the first of two layers of trellis netting). I'll be flipping these ladies to flower in the next 8-10 days once the majority of the trellis is full. In House Genetics: Platinum Kush Breath

This is the last week of veg for these ladies. I'll be flipping them to flower tomorrow. To prep for that I did a heavy defoliation/lollipoping 6 days ago and i also added the flower based top amendments(Gaia Green 2-8-4 at 20mL/gal) to the pots 3 days ago. When dealing with dry top amendments with respect to organic growing you'll want to be adding them before the plants are in need of them. With organics you're not feeding your plants. You're feeding the ecosystem you've built in your pot. The ecosystem(beneficial microbes/fungi/bacteria) in turn produce the necessary food your plant requires at any given stage of your grow. So it can take a week to a week and half for all the beneficial microbes/fungi/bacteria in your pots to make that food available to your plants. As a result I'll top amendment every couple weeks to make sure my plants dont go deficient. I'll post pics of my feeding schedule and feed rates for flower in next weeks update. The grow went really well this last week. As you can see from the pics I posted above my humidity jumped into that 50%-53% range as the plants are much larger and require more water on a daily basis. This is of no concern at the moment. I have a dehumidifier that I will run outside of the grow tent once I'm about 3 weeks into flower to keep the humidity in check(45%-50%). The only issue I ran into this week was some very minor bleaching of a few fan leaves on a couple of the girls on the upper canopy. This was grower error as I didnt adjust the lights accordingly as the plants were growing. I'm running new LEDS and as such I am still in the process of figuring out ideal heights for the lights without causing damage to the plants. I've ordered a PAR meter so I can maintain optimal PAR/PPFD numbers for all stages of growth. You're paying to run your lights regardless so you might as well make use of them in the most efficient way possible.

First week of flower is in the books. I posted my feeding schedule in the pics above. If you find yourself looking at it wondering why you're seeing back to back feeds with mycos or teas its because with organics you never want to let your pots dry out. You obviously dont want to waterlog the pots but you need to find that balance with watering so as to keep your ecosystem happy and active. It's not a feed/water/water system where you're watering every other day as you do with salt based bottled nutrients. Always remember you're feeding the microboes/fungi/bactria and they are feeding your plants. If you dry your pots out with organics those elements become dormant and or die off which will lead to deficiencies and a weakened immune system. The week was going smoothly until last night. The timer for whatever reason didnt kill the lights after 12 hrs had past so they got a little over an hr of extra light. To help maintain consistency with the plants I just altered on/off times to make sure they still recieved 12 hrs of darkness. So I was running 6pm-6am now with the overage last night I'm running 730pm-730am. I have heard some horror stories about how something like this has affected people's plants but they are few and far between. I'm not overly worried about it as a plant thats growing outdoors never gets a true 12/12 lighting period. I caught it early, adjusted my lighting schedule to accommodate a 12 hr off period, and being so early in the flowering stage I should be ok. Obviously it goes without saying but this is taboo and not something you want to be making a habit of with photoperiod plants. My dehumidifier also decided to do it's own thing last night and didn't shut off as per the settings (set to 45%) and as a result it pulled my humidty down to 39% down from the 45%-47% that the room usually runs at. As a result my temps rose into the 28-29 Celsius range overnight up from the 25-26 Celcius (my preferred flowering temps) that the room usually sees. So she was quite the party downstairs while I was sleeping. To my surprise when I turned the lights on the plants looked very happy and healthy and immediately started praying to the sun gods. I got lucky here with respect to what I was speaking about above with watering practices and organics. As I keep my pots in the sweet spot with daily waterings this didnt negatively affect the plants. I've prepped and am bubbling a compost tea (posted a video) which will be fed tomorrow. I also through some organic popcorn seeds and organic mung bean seeds in the seed sprouter (pic posted above) to make a popcorn/mung bean SST for the plants that's loaded with all kinds of enzymes and goodness. It's also pretty sweet to be able to say you feed your plants popcorn. Like I mean really though 😁. I'll talk a little more about SSTs next week but if your curious about it there are many websites about this topic, homesteadandchill.com would be a great place to start. They lightly touch on topic without diving to deep into the science behind it so it's easy reading to help introduce you.

Week 2 came to a close yesterday. Today being day 15 of Flower. As per the feeding schedule I posted last week I top amended the 7 gallon pots with the Gaia Green Power Bloom 2-8-4 organic dry amendment mix at 20mL/gallon of soil. They also received their first feeding of Flower 2 which is an organic water soluble potassium/phosphorous fertilizer that's is added at 2 grams/liter of water. Like any other P/K based fertilizer fed during flower it will promote bud growth and bud density. I prepared a compost tea and have it bubbling for tomorrows watering. The girls also received an organic mung bean tea. You can use a multitude of sprouting seeds for SSTs such as popcorn, mung beans, alphalpha, malted barley, anything with quick germination times. Just make sure they are organic sprouting seeds. I take 1 cup of Mung beans, spread them out evenly in the seed sprouter, and run unchlorinated water though the seed sprouter. I give the beans a good rinse in a jar with unchlorinated water before I put them in the sprouter. I will run water through the sprouter once a day to continue rinsing the beans until they start to sprout. When the sprouts from the seeds are a quarter inch long the enzymatic activity is at its peak and this is when you want to use them. Simply throw them in the blender with unchlorinated water, turn the blender on for a couple seconds, strain the mixture into your 5 gallon pale, PH adjust and feed. The week went well for the most part. I did a good pruning on the ladies day 11 of flower both for air flow and light penetration. I forgot to adjust my fans after the pruning and as a result the plants suffered some minor wind burn on some of the lower leaves. To correct this I shut down the box fan at the top of the tent and adjusted all my floor fans to push air around the outside of the pots and right down the middle of the room between the pots. This was obviously grower error as I was too focused on the task at hand and wasnt thinking ahead to the next step which would've been to make all the necessary adjustments with my fans. No big deal I just need to be a little more dialed in next run during early flower. 7 weeks to go then these ladies should be ripe and ready to harvest. I also lowered the second layer of trellis netting and continued to train the plants until about day 12 to try and maintain an even canopy.

Today is day 23 of flower. So I've been chasing a minor P-K deficiency. The plants are happy and healthy and are just feeding heavy at the moment. Well over and above any recommended servings with respect to the dry amendments and water soluble P-K inputs. As with any grow regardless of what you're using for inputs (organic amendments/salt based bottle feeding/crop salts/etc....) the recommended feed rates are never anything more than a baseline. So to remedy the deficiency I added the Flower 2 at 1.5 times the reccomended dosage (3 grams per liter of water) and a little over twice the dosage of Gaia Green 2-8-4 Power Bloom dry amendments (250ml per 7 gallon pot). I also fed a mung bean/barley seed sprout tea as well as a compost tea (2/3 of a cup of each seed). The feed rates will stay well above recommended servings for the Flower 2 but the 250ml addition of the 2-8-4 would be considered a large addition for a single serving so I will give the plants 5-7 days to see how they react to dry amendments before top amending again at any rate (you cant burn your plants with organic inputs but you can still suffer nutrient lockout so you need to be mindful and patient when feeding heavy.) On day 19 of flower I did a large pruning/defoliation/lollipopping of the plants. Both from the top of the pot to the bottom of the first layer of trellis removing everything. I also cleaned the plants out from above the first layer of trellis netting to the top of the plant. As I waited to clean up the bottom third of the plants until my typical strip day in flower (day 18-21 depending on strain and flowering times, these are 9 week strains which is why the strip falls in the day 18-21 range, if they were 8 week finishers the leaf strip would take place somewhere between days 14-16). When running multiple layers of trellis netting it's best to prune/lollipop everything below the first layer of netting about 7-10 days before the flip. Odds are your lights wont penetrate that far down the plant so these areas of the plant typically only produce what's commonly known as larf. I'm running new lights so I decided I'd wait until the big strip I always do in flower. This was grower error. I know better and wont make this mistake again. Its unnecessary stress added during flower that could've been prevented. As I decided to wait to clean out the bottoms I didnt prune the plants as aggressively as I normally would (I adopted Grand Master Levels leaf strip practices years ago, check him out on IG or YouTube if you want to see what that looks like). The week went smoothly with no major issues to report. The seasons are changing here so were getting rain, damp wet snow, and have very humid conditions outside. As a result this affects the atmosphere in my grow room but not enough to cause concern. A little less than 6 weeks until the chop!

Week 4 is a wrap. I've been chasing a minor deficiency as the plants are feeding heavy right now. I've been adding the Gaia Green 2-8-4 power bloom dry amendments at twice the rates and Flower 2 at 1.5-2 times the feed rates to get it under control. Compost teas and seed sprout teas are still going in weekly and I will continue to add them weekly with the last of the teas going in start of week 6. The weather here is all over the place. Cold then warm then cold then warm etc. So it's been hard to maintain consistent levels with respect to humidity but nothing to raise any concern as it's still in the sweet spot between 40%-50%. The plants are happy and healthy. They're starting to stack up nicely and the trichome production is on point!! It's going to look like it snowed in here by the end of flower 😁😎. The 4 plants are taking up just about every inch of the 36 square foot tent. 44"-48" wide by 48"-56" tall. I lowered the lights to the 18"-20" range during week 4 and will lower them one last time to the 16"-18" range around day 35 to finish out the run. I'm still selectively pruning as needed to accommodate air flow and light penetration but try to limit it to 5-7 fans per plant and only as needed to limit stress on the plants. I use a fluctuating PH schedule for watering alternating from 6.2/6.5/6.8 changing the PH at every heavy watering. I water for run off(no more than 5%-10% run off) every second day and then have to give them a liter or two to keep the top 1/3 of the pot moist in between.

Week 5 has come to a close. Dry amendments, compost teas, and seed sprout teas are finished for this run. It's just water and Flower 2 until the chop. The week went very smoothly. I over fed a little with the Flower 2 trying to correct the deficiencies from week 4 which you can see in the pistils from the pics. The plants aren't quite developing as quickly as I would've hoped. They look like they're about a week behind. New lights, new room, new equipment, this is the break in run. Now that I have everything dialed in with the room, food/teas, lights, I'm really looking forward to harvesting this run and resetting the room. Its frosty in here and it smells absolutely ridiculous in the room. Straight gas and fuel Terps.

Week 6 came and went fast. Its ridiculously frosty in here ❄️❄️❄️. There were no serious problems during week 6. The humidity dropped to 37% overnight mid week. Nothing to serious but not ideal. I water every other day with touch ups in between as needed and as a result the humidity in the room can be a little tough to manage the day after a big watering. I have a humidifier but I cant put it in the tent to help stabilize the atmosphere as the plants are literally wall to wall so theres no where I can place it so that it wont soak a plant or at least part of it. To remedy this issue I just started watering everyday at 3.5L-4L per plant. This corrected the humidity issues and were back on cruise control now. I gave the ladies a final pruning on day 40. Not a complete strip job like I typically do in flower but a good clean out none the less. I like to do a heavy strip job early in flower around the 18-21 day mark and a good clean out around the 40-42 day mark. Past that I won't pull anything off the plants unless its necessary (dead/struggling lower fans or to let light in if needed). The ladies got their final feeding for the grow which was Flower 2(P-K fertilizer). The majority of the organic inputs I use (veg/flower base dry amendments) are slow release so they have everything they need to carry them through to the ✂️✂️✂️. Theyll get only water now moving forward. With organics theres isnt a scheduled so called "flush" period like there is with salt based feeding programs. Theres no heavy flushing required, no checking EC/PPMs in your run off, etc. The terps in the room are straight gas/fuel ⛽⛽⛽ and they are very strong. Cant wait to smoke on this in a few weeks!!

That a wrap for week 7. I gave the ladies one feeding with Flower 2(PK fertilizer) from Blue Sky Organics mid week. I hadn't planned on it but they looked a little hungry and they still have a little over 2 weeks to go. They are showing some signs of stress (red striping on the stalks). This is likely for one of two reasons or both.... my room temps ran a little higher than normal as the weather here changed and warmed up a fair bit. That coupled with the added heat from the dehumidifier running regularly now as apposed to intermittently as needed in an effort to bring my humidity down to that 41%-43% range to close out the run. I like to slowly start bringing my humidity down in the closing weeks of flower so the plants uptake more water and nutrients. It also couldve been the distance from my lights to the plants. As I'm running new LEDs I've been playing around with different heights from the canopy to try and find that sweet spot where the plants are getting the most light possible without stressing them out. I cant confidently say with any amount of certainty that it's either room temps or lighting so in an effort to resolve the issue I raised the lights up to 19"-20" above the canopy and adjusted my intake/exhaust fans to get the temps down to 26.5-27.5 degrees Celcius. As mentioned earlier in my diary the Terps in here are very strong and very fuel/gas dominant. It may be hard to see in the pics but the trichome production is ridiculous. I have to glove up just to move shoots around during health checks so I can see into the interior of the plants. When I did my last pruning on these ladies around day 40 I actually had to stop and soak my bonsai scissors after each plant. They got so caked just removing fans leaves that they literally wouldnt function. I'll start checking trichomes in the next few days to see where they're at. I'll post pics in next weeks update.