Autopots and quantum boards - Blue Dream

Got started with my very first grow, and seems to be off to a good start. Germinated 5 seeds, and all of them have fully sprouted in their starter cups (though the 5th one is a couple days behind). I'll ultimately get rid of one of them and grow the 4 that look the best. I learned that the water out of my garden hose is really high starting EC of .63, so while I only gave .15 of cal-mag and .5 of megacrop, the final EC is much higher than I would've liked. I might try skipping the cal-mag the next time I mix nutrients, but from what I can tell the first true leaves are looking healthy so it might be fine with the cal-mag added in. Watering twice a day or so until a tiny bit of runoff, using a large syringe.

Lowered the lights and increased brightness a little bit toward the beginning of the week because they looked like they were starting to stretch. Experimented with 50%, then 75% brightness, but ultimately brought it back down to 50%. The 5th plant finally sprouted, but it is a freaky looking plant. It won't make the cut, but my plan was to germinate 5 and grow the best 4 so that is okay with me. Most of the other ones look alright - one of them has narrower leaves and some discoloration, but seems to be doing okay. Accidentally let my pH drift up way too high so a few days they were likely starved of nutes. Learning some beginner lessons, but luckily they seem to be doing alright and I've been much more diligent with pH since.

I missed a day of feeding and the plants did not like it - leaves wilted and yellowed a bit. Transplanted them into their final 5gal smart pots and saw that the roots were also starting to bind a little bit (not sure what counts as rootbinding, as the roots had only started doing laps around the bottom third of the starter pots). Gave them a reasonable amount of water first couple of days, then I saturated the entire 5 gallon pots (should've done this before trasnplanting). After a few days of recovery from the underwatering and the transplant they are looking a lot more healthy - the new growth looks great. I have the breeze fan going as well and the stems are strengthening up nicely. Just turned the lights up to 100% at 24in, and this week they will be getting full veg strength nutrients (~1.1EC of Megacrop). 5th node is just starting to come in as well, so I expect to top them by the end of the week. RIP seedling #5 - my plan was always to grow 4 plants, and I'm glad I planted 5 because that one just never really took off.

It is pretty wild how quickly these plants grow compared to just one week ago. They've been topped, recovered, and started getting pretty bushy. I've been doing some light LST to keep the tops from getting tangled with one another and trying to distribute them out to make a cross pattern. I'm using gardening staples to bend/keep the stems down which are working really nicely. It is very easy to adjust the staples as the plant grows out. Accidentally broke one stem but it looks like it will recover. The nutrients are up to full veg strength at ~1.1 EC of nutes (total EC of ~1.6). I've noticed that my EC likes to drift upward for a couple of days after mixing - not sure if this is normal or if perhaps some of the dry nutes aren't disolving right away (going to mix to a lower EC in the future to account for this). At the end of this week I switched them over to the autopot system with a full reservoir so they will be self feeding from now on. I'm interested to see whether this will cause faster/slower growth. I plan on putting in a scrog net by the end of this coming week.

Continued doing lst and staking down branches, but am just about out of space in the pots to work with. Plants are looking pretty healthy. Built a scrog net and installed it at 8" above the coco. Noticed a couple small bugs flying around, I think fungus gnats. No negative signs yet so hopefully I caught it early. A couple of the pots have stayed moist to the top since turning on the Auto pots, so shutting the water off for a day or so to dry it out a bit. Two of the pots are bone dry at the top but they're growing healthy so I'm confident the bottom feeding is working well.

Growth slowed a bit and I noticed yellowing on lower growth and some purple in stems leading me to believe I had a magnesium problem. I hadn't been adding Calmag because of how hard my tap water is, however this seems to have been a mistake. Mixed up some nutes with calmag and it seems like the plants have picked up the growth rate again so I'm hoping that's all it was. All the plants (not just the monster one) have reached the scrog net and I've been spreading them out under the net every day. I'd say ~50% of the canopy is covered, and I'm expecting to have ~75% and be able switch to flower this coming weekend at the rate they're growing. The plants are super thirsty, and keep sucking down more and more water. My most recent fill of the 12gal reservoir is on track to last ~5-6 days, and they're not even flowering yet. The only problem is that the front two plants have had moist topsoil (err, topcoco) consistently, and I've seen a couple of gnats on occasion. Doesn't seem to be a serious problem though. An addition I might make on my next run is to get inline valves for each of the plants so I can turn off the water supply independently to dry it out if needed next time. I plan on defoliating below the scrog this weekend before flipping which will hopefully help get more airflow to the topsoil to dry it out a bit. I also picked up another fan that I'm blowing under the canopy for more circulation, and have lowered the lights to ~22inches @ 80%.

A lot of lessons learned this week. Since my tap water is very hard and megacrop supposedly upped their cal/mag in the base nutrient, I haven't been adding any calmag. This had been fine for most of the grow so far but they hit a point where they were deficient. The big plant especially started showing lots of signs starting last week. Addressed it by adding 0.3 EC of calmag. My nutrients must not have dissolved all the way because the EC kept drifting up quite a bit so I had to keep adding fresh water to lower it. In preparation for flipping I decided to defoliate below the ScrOG, and I realize now that I should have done this WAY sooner. They were so bushy, and there was a ton of dead and/or yellow growth underneath. I also saw some bits of fuzzy mold on the top of the coco, almost certainly due to my high humidity and the bushy plants keeping all the moisture in. Removed anything that didn't look good. Next grow I'm going to do this much sooner, especially if the plant is bushy. I was going to flip to flower this weekend, but because of the calmag issues I decided to give a couple more days to recover. The new growth seems to be healthy on all the plants, and over the past 24 hours there was a decent growth spurt so I feel like the plant is reacting to having the nutrients it needs again. Tonight I added 0.1 EC of PK booster to the reservoir and turned off the lights. Going to give them 24 hours of darkness before flipping to a 12/12 schedule. I'm a little worried about the temperatures since my basement gets chilly, so I'll be having the lights on during nights.

After re-introducing calmag last week the new growth on the plant seems to be much healthier. Lower growth is still showing symptoms, but its hard to tell if it is newly developed or just left-over from before I addressed the problem - continuing to monitor. New nutrient is: 0.8 tap + 0.3 calmag + 0.1 PK booster + 1.3 base nutrients = 2.5 EC. I know this is a lot higher than typically recommended, but since my tap water is so high I don't have much choice. They've seemed to take it just fine though with plenty of new healthy growth throughout the week (which is filling out the ScrOG nicely) and no signs of nutrient burn - also monitoring this. For better or worse my PH seems to consistently drift downward now (previously it would drift up), so I've been PHing the water a bit over target (~6.0-6.3) and letting it fluctuate. The stems seem to be bulking up a little bit - especially the main tops which are pretty beastly and hard to restrain with the net. I've added some extra string to give myself more tie downs. Next grow I am definitely going to go for the weaving approach, as I think that will help prevent the net from getting pulled towards the plants as much (right now I'm left with some big gaps in the net between the plants).

Week 2 of flower is now complete, and I'm done tucking/spreading across the ScrOG. The net is pretty evenly filled - a few gaps and a few particularly tall tops but overall a nice flat canopy. New growth is looking really healthy, which I'm glad about because the total EC is quite high. I was also ill and couldn't tend the garden for a few days at the end of last week which resulted in the reservoir going dry for ~2 days. I refilled it with PH'd water for a day, then did a full nutrient mix. The plants didn't really seem to bat an eye though - the top of the coco never totally dried out (even though I bottom feed which is wild). No signs of issues and only a tiny bit of wilting for a day. EC this week is 0.6 tap + 0.4 PK (this was a mistake, meant to do 0.1), + 0.25 calmag + 1.2 nutes (actually more because some of the stuff in there seems to not mix right away so I always see a drift) = ~2.45. Drifted up to ~2.8 after a couple days but now it is back down to 2.5 give or take. I just defoliated most of the garden with a heavy defoliation beneath the canopy and a few upper fan leaves where they were blocking light to other tops. Definitely a little nervewracking cutting off so much of the plant, but after seeing how quickly they recovered after the first defoliation I'm not quite as nervous. Still have a bit more to do tomorrow, but hopefully this lets the plants breathe a bit more and send all their energy up top.

Finished defoliating at the beginning of the week, but other than that a pretty quiet week. I've been struggling with humidity and temperature. If I vent out the window it gets drafty and cold, but if I don't the humidity is insane. I added an oil filled heater which helped, but I also found that the heat vent could be opened a lot more, so now it's nice and toasty. Almost too warm so going to see if I can get by without the heater. I also taped the window with painters tape to seal the cracks around the dryer vent I have my ducting venting through, and I'll be adding some bubble insulation tomorrow that will hopefully help insulate the room. Buds are starting to grow nicely. They're currently drinking plain PHd water as I'm waiting on a scale, spice grinder, and drill mixer attachment to make nutrient mixing more predictable. going to do it by grams per gallon instead of trial and error with the EC meter (since I get nasty drifting). When mixing nutrients tomorrow I'll be introducing a second reservoir. Nothing special here, just increasing capacity in preparation for a week vacation. I'll have a friend check the pH while I'm gone, but other than that should be able to be hands off for that week.

Got my temperature woes in order! Even with insulation over the window it still got too cold at night so I put an oil filled electric heater in there which keeps it toasty. Also bought a scale, coffee grinder, and stirrer that attaches to my drill to make nutrients easier than the guess and check I had been doing. Works well other than the coffee grinder emitting a cloud of dust when I open it. Overall buds are growing and looking great and no signs of any issues at all. They're not as tall as I'd like but that's something I can improve on next time now that I understand how the stretch plays out. Smelling really strong in there too!

Just got back from vacation, and I'm very pleased to see that the plants are doing well! Was gone Saturday to Thursday, and had a friend check on them once to adjust the pH but other than that they've been on autopilot. The Autopots are amazing for this - I got 2 kits with 2 pots each (instead of 1 kit with 4 pots) which gave me an extra reservoir in anticipation of this vacation. I connected the tubes from both of them with tees, and it worked exactly as I hoped. There's still a few days left of water in the reservoirs, so I think I could theoretically go a full week if needed (though the pH does drift a bit). Switched my feeding approach from guess-and-check EC measurements to doing mass/gallon which has made mixing nutrients a lot more consistent. The current feed contains 5.5g/gal of Megacrop, 1.5g/gal of calmag, and 1g/gal of bud explosion (PK). This works out to be an EC of ~3.1 including my tap water. They've been at this strength for a few weeks and are due for a little bit more, but I didn't want to mess with nutrients before leaving since I'll want to monitor them. The smell is getting pretty strong, with a very sweet scent (almost like berries) when I open the tent. The buds are starting to get some weight as well. Interestingly the two plants that veg'd a little bit slower seem to be budding the strongest. The plant that had explosive growth during veg has a ton of tops, but the buds are smaller. But overall they're all looking pretty good. No signs of issues as far as I can tell, tons of trichomes on the buds and sugar leaves. Expecting ~10 weeks of flower, so they're about half way done. Hopefully they'll keep packing on some weight!

The week 12 entry was a little bit later due to my vacation, so its really only been 4 days since then. They just today finished up the double reservoir I mixed before vacation so all the nutrients are the same as last week. I just mixed some more nutrients and filled both reservoirs again which should last another week or two. I upped the nutrients a little bit to 6g/gal of megacrop and 1.5g/gal of the bud explosion. Following the recommended strengths from Greenleaf has worked well so far, so I'm dropping the calmag this time as recommended. Some of the fan leaves were covering other bud sites, so I did another round of light defoliation. Mostly just removed leaves that were covering buds - didn't do any defoliating under the canopy even though there are a few lower bud sites that survived initial defoliation. Didn't want to stress the plants too much. They seem to have taken it very well and a lot of the sites that were smaller are already starting to pack on weight which is great news. I likely won't do any more defoliation unless I see more bud sites getting covered a lot.

They seem to be getting a little bit bigger but not by much. Hoping this just means they're packing on weight within the size they already have. The one plant that's been pickier throughout the grow has some signs of either light burn or nute burn on the tips. Not exactly sure which. It has always had really minor signs on the tip but it never got worse so I've left it. Wondering if it is because I upped the nutes last week. Either way I raised the light an inch or two just to be sure. Need to mix more nutrients tonight so probably going to go back down to what I had been doing before.

No news is good news. Tip burn seems to have stopped, so I'll just keep it at 5.5g/gal base nutes and 1g/gal of PK from her on out (unfortunately I think the other 3 plants could handle the higher nutes - downsides of autopots I supopse - though those plants are growing just fine). Trichomes seem to be starting to cloud up a little bit. No amber yet.

Things looking pretty good. A little bit of foxtailing throughout all the plants (the one in back right in particular), but the trichomes are starting to cloud up (I think) with a few amber ones, and buds are fattening a bit. The plant with the most foxtailing also has some yellow color on some leaf edges but I'm not sure if I have enough time to correct (~week or so left I think).