Mystery Seed Outdoor Winter

I was gifted a small container packed full of seed. This is the only seed I have grown, other than Durban Poison which I'm trying my hand at right now. I have grown this seed for the past year and I know it's got to be some kind of hybrid, develops into short sized plants. Every harvest I've had has been pretty decent from this seed (all regular too so I throw out the males). This will be my first time documenting the grow with this seed. I'm trying to grow something outdoors constantly through the year. I'm keeping these in small buckets that I can move easily to take advantage of areas with the most light.

3/5 seeds I planted sprouted. It looks like my germination rate for this random seed is started to fall. I had the seed kept in a plastic pill canister, I've moved them still in the canister but also inside a glass mason jar to keep temp and air more regular. Also added some of those moisture absorbing pellets. I use small rockwool cubes to germinate all my seed, with water from my tap. I think the water here is a little on the hard side, ranges about 250 ppm or so straight from the tap.

Set the seedlings into buckets. Two 5 gal and one 3 gal. At some point I would like to get enough data to say conclusively how the size of the pot will affect the overall size of the plant when using the kratky method. I'm inclined to say at this point that the larger containers do better when they have a single plant. I did attempt 8 plants in one large container previously but was frustrated with the roots tangling. Also, 7/8 plants were males, so the single female ended up getting the whole container. I believe the roots of the other plants harmed the overall growth potential however. If you notice the cactus on my pots, I have a problem with racoons. They like to pull my net cups out and throw the plants on the ground thinking there are grubs inside my buckets. I was forced to harvest early on 2 clones from this. I also used to grow lettuce with this setup and basically had to stop due to the racoons destroying my crops. I'm hoping the cactus is enough to deter them. I've added a light nutrient mix that I may continue to gradually increase each day for the rest of the week. I want to get these pups going on strong from the start and in my limited experience I've never given too much nutrient at the start so I want to push the limit a bit and see if I can get fast growth with what little daylight I have here. These are now in the sunniest spot in my yard, shadows like those in the pics only reach in at the end of the day. This spot get direct light for the entire length of the day.

These babies have been growing pretty well in the limited winter lighting. They have done much better than my Durban Poison which I put in a more protected and light limited space. I gave these their first full dose of nutrients today. Looking all good for now. Still crossing my fingers the Racoons don't try to get to them. Maybe the cactus has been a good deterrence method.

These have grown great in the last week. I'm impressed with the growth during the shorter winter days here. I've bumped the nutrient concentrations up for this week, hoping to keep these going strong. Temperatures have been really good the past few weeks, nights are getting colder but there's no worry of frost lows here. They days are also a bit dry, while the humidity peaks up at night. The leaves on these seem pretty broad, I'm hoping for indicas so that's a good sign.👍 But with all these hybrids, and my mystery seed mix, even broad leaves don't mean much. 😅 The smallest plant was the last to pop from seed, I'm not sure if this is a real trend or not, but I've noticed that the slower growers tend to be female, while males seem to pop from seed quicker and grow bigger faster.

I topped two of the plants this week. This is my first experience and test with topping. We'll see how they turn out. The other plant is expressing an interesting pheno where the main stem turned into two leaves, and the offshoots have become the new main shoots without topping. (This is the one in the smallest bucket, and the youngest) I'm really looking forward to see how that one grows without me doing anything to it. These are regular seeds so I'm expecting at least one male, and I'm hoping for all females. I've been unlucky with that lately, been getting too many males. I included some pictures of the roots as well. These three have been fed more nutrient than I've given in the past, I've always been afraid of overfeeding because I burnt my very first plant. (it recovered well though) I think this is the best any of my grows have looked at this stage. Which is surprising since I'm only getting about 11 hours of light right now. What I'm really hoping is that these three stay veg for another 2 or 3 weeks. However, that's very unlikely with the daylight hours, they'll probably start transition this week or next.

I got two females! (Third hasn't shown) Maybe my luck has changed since my Durban Poisons all being males. Both the larger plants in the bigger buckets showed the first signs of being female with the small white hairs. (You can see in the two close up pics) I also suspect that one plant is sativa dominant while the other may be indica. I took a great side by side at twilight showing how one is preppy and tall soaking in the light, while the other is turning in for bed early already drooping for the night. If that has any correlation to how a plant might make you feel, I'm really hopeful. Started transitioning to bloom formula after I saw the hairs. I'll be decreasing Grow concentrations while keeping bloom at a few ml/L I think. Then slowly increase bloom. This girls will look nice by Weedsmas, maybe even look presentable for Weedsgiving!

3/3 Female! These girls are looking beautiful right now! They are all very small and compact but each looks pretty dense. I expect some significant stretch in the next week or two. The main stems for all are thick and look very healthy, roots all look fantastic, I might have missed when I topped one of them. (as a reminder this is my first time topping) The plant which forked itself looks pretty nice too, and just started to show female. I still think that plant is the most interesting since it grew that way on it's own. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I've fed these girls more than any other grow I've done (which to be fair is not many) but I think they might come out as my best harvest yet. I have a really good feeling about these. Harvest should be right around X-Mas too! This week is WEEDSGIVING! I think I'll try to make a mid week update to share some of the fun.

I didn't grab any pics from Weedsgiving. It was rather poor weather, had to move the girls under some cover to protect them from heavy rain and hail. Now that it's sunny again, they're all looking good. I was a little concerned when I checked PPM this week (I honestly haven't been great about checking in previous weeks) it's at about 2500. However, I know I have hard water here with a pretty high PPM to start. So I'm thinking 2500 is probably right where I want to be sitting? We'll see, I might do a partial flush since we're still at the start of flower. Just to ensure there's no nutrient lock. However, since they're looking so good, nice color, thick stems, broad leaves. I might just keep up with the routine as is. I will try to make a point to measure ppm before adding nutes next week. At least I'll be able to see how much they used up in the week, maybe lighten up on the feed. I also added Sweet Raw, and Hydroplex for the flowering stage. Never used either before. I'm making a point to take it easy with the Hydroplex to start. I read up on it before purchasing and will need to keep my pH in check. I'm thinking about defoliating the thicker looking one a bit. I've never defoliated or even trimmed plants unless leaves were browning already so I'm not sure if I want to. I'm concerned that if I remove leaves which are soaking up the limited daylight, the plant might lose some of it's vigor and growth potential.

So, absolutely against the recommendation I received from a friend of mine who's been growing for 20+ years, I pruned/defoliated my plants up a bit this week. I decided to for a few reasons. - the plants were really dense with foliage, many leaves overlapping and pushing other leaves - most of the bud sites were shaded under several layers of leaves - the leaves pilling up would have been restricting airflow quite a lot, I want to prevent budrot or mold by increasing aeration - I wanted to control where the plants were growing, and focus their energy into the buds - with this being an outdoor grow late in the season with less sun I felt it was more important to expose the developing buds to the sun With all that said, I think my plants have responded extremely well to the pruning in the last few days. I've never pruned or defoliated before so this is going to serve as a test for me. I like doing new things and seeing what happens. No matter what, these plants look really good right now and I'm sure I'll get a decent harvest, I'm trying to push it from decent to fantastic. My PPM is a bit high, though none of the plants look like they're being hindered by it. I did a partial water change on 2 of the 3 (the one in the 3 gallon bucket and the one that looks more like and indica). The 3 gallon bucket plant was at a PPM of 5000ish so I made sure to get it more in line with the other two, and with the partial water change I got it to around 2000. The other plants are sitting at right about 3000. I will continue to monitor the plants and check PPM, if it doesn't go down next week I think I'll do another partial water change. I want to keep pumping in nutrient while preventing any burn or lockout. Trichomes are no observable on the two plants in larger buckets. The smaller bucket plant was the last to sprout, so it's about a week or two behind the others. This week has been pretty poor weather where I'm at. Lots of rain and clouds. I've kept the plants under cover but still in direct sunlight. This coming week is supposed to be clear sky again so I'll move them to capture the most light once the rain stops. I know defoliation is debatable, especially with outdoor grows, but I like to push boundaries. Here's a list of the things I've done with this grow: - kratky method hydroponics (other than a partial water change I have added no water since starting in buckets, no airstone, no pump) - Winter grow (shortest light period of the year here) - Topping (and it looks like one is more like FIMing, also one grew as if it were topped without my input) - Dense nutrient load (I've added more nutrient in this grow than any grow I have previously done. Mostly because I never achieved super large buds and I'm really aiming for that this time) - Water change (like an aquarium, I've never done a water change other than flush before, this week called for it with the high PPM which I think was residual from nutrient loading in veg so I wanted to make sure there's room for the flower nutes) - Defoliation/pruning (nothing too crazy or drastic, started this week and don't plan to trim again unless I see a need to)

I did a water change this week again to bring all my bins around 2000 ppm after nutrients for this week. They were all floating closer to 3000 ppm, and I figured that wasn't good since most of it was the nutrient from veg phase. My goal with the water change is to get the plants to focus more on bud growth. I trimmed last week and the plant grew back a bunch of the leaves instead of focusing on fattening buds. I suppose that's what happens when you defoliate outdoors? Or it's just from the high veg nutrients it was still sitting in? Anyways that's my logic, so I did the water change. I was pretty upset today checking on my plants, I think the gardener who just shows up to cut grass that our landlord pays for took a clipping from one plant. You'll notice in the pics that the plant which was growing in a big V shape is now missing a section. Looking at the place of cutting, and the straightness of the cut, I believe it was done on purpose, and not by an animal. I also saw no other damage to my plants. So that's frustrating. If someone wants some weed all they gotta do is ask, but to pick my bud when it's not even ready for harvest... Well, is what it is. Can't say for certain how it happened but now I've got less bud on my plant. Shortest day of the year here is next weekend. My plants still look great, getting along nicely. I think it'll be another month before these are ready. Trichomes are visible on all now.

Girls are looking good this week. Trichomes really came in and smell is really nice right now. The water changes worked well I think. The plants look like their focusing more on flower now. Weather has also been good the last week with some sunshine which could be the other reason flower development started to take off again. After paying more attention to the PPM, which didn't drop much in the last week. I wanted to go light on the nutrient this week. More rain is expected in the coming week, starting tonight. I don't want to stress the plants at this point with too much nutrient, and I've already spiked a ton of nutrient in them over this grow period. There's an argument to be made with how much nutrient I'm pouring into these off season plants that won't have as large of a harvest as something grown through summer. So I think from this point on I won't be adding much nutrient. I'm guessing I have about 4 more weeks of flower before harvest. Maybe a bit less. So going easy on nutrient for the next two weeks, then ripening with a fresh water change for a week before harvest. Also, at this point I'm sort of regretting topping these, probably would have been better for a winter outdoor crop not to top them. Very compact plants overall. But the bud sites are developing nicely so I'm not to worried about the missed opportunity. I labeled my pictures this week too, I noticed other growers label them which is probably good practice. P1 is the indica looking plant P2 is the smallest that naturally grew into a v shape P3 is the largest plant and looks like a sativa

Smells good right now. Getting thicker and frostier right now. I continued to drop nutrients a bit more this week. PPM is really high again on P2. Sitting around 3500 for the other two plants. I feel there's plenty of nutrient in solution now for the plants to get enough until harvest. I probably won't add nutrient again, a few more weeks of fattening then flush to ripen. Past winter solstice now, so the days are getting longer. As far as I'm concerned that means I was successfully with my original goal of growing through the winter season. The plants look good, but I wouldn't recommend growing with less than 12 hours of light. None of these plants developed the way they should/could have. Especially with the nutrients I used in this crop. Although, growing in the 10 hour light cycle does work, so if you choose to grow outdoors and not supplement light, I'm pretty confident you can as long as you don't get freezing temps. I will likely continue to grow during the winter season but don't plan on using quality seeds or very much nutrient. Good for an easy hold over. I like having fresh crop all the time. This will make for a nice January harvest. If you're fortunate enough to be able to grow outside, I recommend it, really easy maintenance. Sometimes I forget to check my plants for the whole week. Keeping a grow diary is actually the only thing that keeps me checking on them regularly. Anyways I'll give a more full recap of my growing experience post harvest.

My smallest plant is starting to turn purple! It's always exciting when you don't know what you're growing to see changes like that. Past crops of my mystery seed have been potent indicas when they turn purple. I'm hoping for that this time around too. No nutrient feed this week, here's the stats on each plant individually. P1 (looks like indica) Around 3200 PPM, 5.2 pH P2 (starting to turn purple) Around 5100 PPM, 5.1 pH P3 (Probably sativa or hybrid) Around 3800 PPM, 5.3 pH P2 has always had a higher PPM, no signs of burn though. I just don't feel the need to add anything with the PPM for each plant being so high. I still think I'm about a month or less from harvest so I'll leave them as they are until I do a flush water change. Starve them for the last week or so. I took lots of pics this week and a video that I think turned out pretty good. Very photogenic plants right now. Buds look great, they're bulking up really well and trichome density is fantastic. They all smell really nice right now, each has a different scent. Outdoors the smell isn't overwhelming, especially with the small plants, but when I walk up to them I can smell them from a few feet away. A small nugget tore off of P1 when I was trying to remove a leaf that was curling up, I'm going to dry it for a few days and use it as a test smoke. Lots of trichomes even on the leaf that was curling.

Started flush today. Changed out the water from each plant with clean water no nutes. P2 has become even more purple, looks really nice right now. All trichomes look cloudy, not quite Amber on any yet. P1 had a couple sugar leaves that turned brown that I had to pull. I'm hoping it's not bud rot, but I'll be monitoring it for the next week. I might have to harvest a bit earlier than I wanted to if I can detect bud rot. It's been damp here almost every morning and I was already concerned the morning dew on the plants might cause some rot. Thankfully the cooler temps should prevent a quick spread.

I found some budrot on P1 this week. I had already seen signs of it the previous week and decided since it had spread a bit that I would partially harvest the areas where I saw signs of rot. Under microscope none of the trichomes yet look amber, mostly cloudy and some still clear. I anticipate harvesting all plants next week, but final look at trichomes may prevent that if they still don't look ready. Thankfully the rot was not widespread, and I didn't lose much bud. I will continue to monitor all plants closely this week for signs of rot. If I see any further development I think I might harvest all of them even if the trichomes don't look quite ready yet. This will be second week of flush, no nutrient. Just water. Plants have not started to kill off their fan leaves at all, so I'm still thinking it might be a bit early for harvest. I did trim some fan leaves from P1 to improve airflow and prevent further budrot. Also P2 is very colorful now and looks quite delicious. Smells the best with a scent of berries. I think I might enjoy the smoke from that one the most.

During this week I had to harvest P1 and P3 as both were showing signs of budrot. I chose to harvest early to minimize the amount of bud lost. I would say I was pretty successfull in that, see the final post for harvest. I was a bit foolish and left these girls out in the damp, with no protection from the humid weather, rain, and fog. All the plants within about a week started showing signs of budrot due to those conditions. Something I should have been more cautious about growing outdoors in the winter right near harvest time. Trichomes were all cloudy but hardly amber at the time of harvest. Probably would have been best if I could have waited a full extra week. P2 got some extremely beautiful coloring and smell. All 3 have very different scents. P1 is piney, P2 is dark and berry like, and P3 is a bit citrus like. These are final pics prior to harvest, see the next page for harvest details.

This grow was an experiment to see how well I could grow during winter months in my climate outdoors, using the Kratky method of hydroponics, and my first experience with topping. First, the Kratky method of hydroponics is basically just plopping a plant in standing water with nutrients and leaving it out in the sun. It's the easiest and least time or maintenance intensive style of growing I have ever found. I don't even have to worry about watering each week, and the nutrients technically don't need to be added each week either. Although this grow I did maintain feedings each week. I have grown like this previously with great success, and I think this time was no different. I do not think the Kratky method will result in the best yields or quality of plant, but it is the cheapest and easiest method of growing as far as I can tell. These plants never received additional water (besides a water change) so the total volume of water actually used in the grow was something like a gallon per plant (winter means less water uptake/transpiration) I used the leftover water to water other plants in my garden after harvesting these (all buckets were still close to full). My only ongoing cost with growing the plants was the nutrient, which I would say is roughly $10-$20 per plant depending on how heavily I feed them. During this grow, I think I gave too much nutrient and the cost was a bit high for how low my yields were. I was able to successfully grow a decent crop through the winter, however, the plants remained incredibly small and compact. I also tried trimming my plants, and topping them. This was interesting to see the results, but I think the wrong techniques to use outdoors during winter. I believe I would have gotten overall better crop if I had not topped them. That way they would have capitalized on the limited light in the winter. I ended up with a rather disappointing quantity of bud at harvest. Across 3 compact plants only about 1.1 oz. But the quality of the crop was still excellent, so I call it a success. The experiment proves I can grow in my climate, outdoors through winter. A time when most climates would not be able to grow outdoors. What I learned though, during winter I need to monitor my plants very closely after flowering starts to ensure they don't develop budrot. I had to constantly move my plants around to keep them under cover during rain, and the one night I missed moving them, budrot developed. Growing these 3 mystery strains also helped teach me how to better identify what kind of high might come from a plant based on it's looks, like leaf shape, density, and color. I think I will continue to grow through winter outdoors, but during future grows I will probably use less nutrient in the winter. A winter crop should not be grown outdoors seeking a large yield, but a small yield that acts as a holdover until the full grow season starts. The winter temperatures in my area never dropped lower than 45, and that was only during a few rather cold nights. The average temperature through this grow was likely around 60 during the day, 50 during the nights. Thank you for everyone that liked/commented/ or followed along during this grow! I hope that my random experiments might help others figure out their best grow method or offer some kind of insight! Good luck all!