Ist Grow Ever & Indoors In Organic Soil

Nov. 5, 2019 Just planted germinated seeds into 5gal. fabric pots. Three of each strain. Organic soil mixture of... Equal Parts Of... PeetMoss/Coco Worm Castings Perlite Then added... 1 Bag Water Only Soil Mix Azomite Dolomite Lime 1/4 cup FoxFarm Seed Starter 1/2 cup Kelp Meal Nov 6, 2019 Germinated seeds just popped through the soil. Looks like the Zkittles are maturing a little faster the the California Snow. Nov 9, 2019. Seedlings are taking off. Probably almost 2 inches now. New pics will be up this evening or early tomorrow. Put them on an 18/6 light cycle now. Added a space heater to the veg area. In monitoring the temp and humidity with my Govee while at work I notice the temp drops a little more than I like (low 70's lights off) once the light cycling started. Rotated the pots one half turn. Noticed they were already leaning some toward the strongest light. Also misting the seedlings with straight water a couple times a day while lights are on. The room is in my basement all finished and climate controlled... except that room. Watering as needed with straight filtered well water. The last Ph testing was this past summer and it fell between 6.5 and 7.0. Nov 10, 2019 Noticed the seedlings are stretching a bit too much. I questioned myself several times as I watched them grow over three last 4 days... seeing this with other people's grows... reading forum responses..." you lights are too high". I was over cautious with this as my first grow experience. My son verified my thoughts so I lowered my lights to about 7 inches freon the tops of the seedlings. I'm vegging under t5's. I'll give them a look tomorrow morning to make sure I'm not getting any leaf burn. Nov. 11, 2019 I was advised by a member over at Grasscity forums... thank you Organic Since... to mound up the soil around the stems to counter the stretch. I'll post after pics on the next weeks veg. calendar. Continuing to water and doing foliage spraying with straight water as needed.

Nov. 12, 2019 Seedlings are looking great. I had a bit of stretch going on with all of them. I ended up lowering the light in stages.... starting from 18" to its current height of about 7" from top of leaves. I took some advise and mounded the soil up around the stems leaving about .5" of each stem exposed. I took pics of 3 of the 6 after mounding the soil. I'll have updated pics off all of kids this evening. Nov. 16, 2014 After 4 days of having the lights lowered, we've noticed some weird leaf deformations. On three of the seedlings there is some sort of twisting of the leaves going on. After doing some Googling and forum reading I think it's either normal or from heat from the lights being too close. So the latest change is I've raised the lights back up to about 15". I'm going to leave them there and after five days see if there are any changes. I've added updated pics off all 6 seedlings. Toy can see the leaf deformation on 3 of them. Also completed the set up these seedlings future home. Yesterday I completed the set up of the tent, installed the lights, fan and venting, and installed the carbon filter, fan and venting. It's coming together. Nov. 19, 2019 Week 2 ended well. Seedlings have turned into little vegging plants. Decided to lower the lights back down to around 9 inches. Leaf temperatures are staying at acceptable temps leading me to believe the deforming leafs, I think it's a characteristic of the plants. The one thing I am trying to figure out is watering. I'm a newbie using a light soil in fabric pots. They dry out quick... not sure im giving them enough water. I started near the end of this week giving them 1 cup if water a around the base of the stem daily.

Nov 20, 2019 The plants are doing well. Gave them and the soil in the entire 5 gallon pots a good drenching with a compost tea, kelp, alfalfa, fish hydrysolate, and molasses blend. I'm also realizing I could be watering these girls a bit more. Being a newby I'm over cautious of over watering. But I'm finding the light airy soil mix I made combined with fabric pots.... the soil dries rather quickly. No signs of under watering, but I think I can water them more. This week I'll start watering a couple of cups daily and once a week give the whole pot a good drenching to keep the rest of the soil (where the plants haven't grown into yet) damp.✌️ Nov. 22, 2019 Well I think the girls are starting to give off a little scent. Opened the doors to the room and noticed a slight aroma of woodsy dank. Put my nose right up to the plant.... and yup, they starting to smell. Nov. 23, 2019 Noticed the front row was growing faster and taller than back row. At the start of this week I swapped the rows, moved 2 Zkittlez and 1 Californian Snow to the back row, 2 Californian Snow and 1 Zkittlez to the front row. Today I started LST'ing the taller plants, 2 Californian Snow and 1 Zkittkez. I hope the other 3 catch up soon. I want to keep these all close together. Nov. 24, 2019 I've decided to keep separate diaries here at growdiaries for each of these two strains. Reason is I can focus on journaling the growing characteristics, experiences both good and bad regarding each strain independently. Also after spending time here at growdiaries, I've realized this will make it easier for fellow growers growing or researching the same strains I am to sort through diaries regarding these specific strains when looking for information. I will still update this diary regularly but it will be general updates of the overall grow, environment changes, watering/ feeding schedule, and anything else this grow experiences good and bad without getting into great detail regarding each individual plant. I have provided the links to the strain specific diaries below. Please look them up and follow along. Since this is my first growing evidence ever you never know what kinda crazy shit you'll see.✌️ https://growdiaries.com/diaries/44659-fastbuds-zkittlez-auto-grow-journal-by-weedwacker https://growdiaries.com/diaries/44676-fastbuds-californian-snow-grow-journal-by-weedwacker Nov. 25, 2019 Sitting here waiting for my windows 10 top update...I thought it'd update this diary. Started to LST the 3 tallest plants... earlier I posted the front row was growing faster than the back row. That was Saturday Nov. 23. I LST'd the other 3 the next day. I'll have more details in the individual diaries... links posted above. Started watering today 6 cups/ pot. This seems about right as I'm getting very little run off and the bottoms of all the fabric pots are wet. I found this Hydrofarm soil moisture/ph meter in a box that was with all this equipment I acquired. The electrodes were corroded, after a little sandpaper on them I think it's working pretty well. That's it for this week. ✌️👌

Nov. 25 - Dec.2, 2019 Started to LST near the end of week three. See last week for those details. This week the plants are responding well to the LST'ing. Both techniques are filling out well. The method of bending the main stem to the pots edge is getting easier for me to understand what to do and how to manipulate the plant as it fills out. I decided to top dress all pots today with about 2 cups of Alaskan Humus and water in. Well that didn't turn out so good. Newbies such as myself...do this lightly. The 2 cups per plant made a mess of the tops of my soil in all pots I had standing water/mud. I freaked out a little. I watered about 4-6 cups per plant trying to soak it in. Finally a just stepped away for about 30 minutes and let the fans run. When I came back everything was dry enough so I could just rough up the first inch or so with my fingers and work the hummus in. All is well now. Performed a good amount of LST on all the plants. Keeping fan leaves out of the way and exposing new growth sites. Sorry for the delay in an update. Work has been busy the last week and kept away from the diary. Barely enough time to keep up with the grow. I behind as the grow is 2 days into week six. Week six will have the latest pics. Week has ended and we , my soil has recovered from my top dressing fiasco. All plants are looking well. I have noticed the Californian Snow strain does not respond as well to LST method of bending the stem over to the side of the pot. Of the 3 Californian Snow #3's growth is a bit behind the other plants. The other two CS's were left to grow naturally with LST'ing by staking the fan leaves out of the way of blocking light to the bud sites...kinda like forcing it to grow in the shape of a Christmas tree. All of the Zkittlez are responding well, color and growth look good. I have provided links in the comments sections to the individual diaries of each strain.

Dec. 2 - Dec. 9, 2019 Week 5 has ended. Continued to LST. Californain Snow has started to catch up in growth...(see previous week notes). Moved all plants into their new home on Dec. 7... end of week 5. Grow tent is 4x8 with 2 cooled 600w HPS lights, 6" can fan venting tent pulling air through carbon filter and exhausting into the room. Lights are venting into the room next to grow room. This is in basement in the mid west so the warm air venting into the area is making it easy to control the tent environment. The plant showed signs of drooping leaves for the first couple of days. By the third morning after the move they are looking much better. The light height started at 18" and now is currently at 24". I also topped dressed them all on Dec. 8 with two table spoons per pot of a blended organic powder mix. The mix is mention in week one.

Week 6 Dec.9 - Dec.15, 2019 Dec. 19, 2019 The girls are adapting to the new environment very well. I have noticed since being these 600w HPS lights they get a whole lot thirstier. I've up the watering to 1/2 gallon per day. ZKZ #3 is recovering from the broken stem very well. CS #3 is growing very lanky and taking its time producing bud sites. Not sure it likes the LST method. I've noticed a leaf or two have some discoloring. Not all leaves on all plants. Just one or two on two separate plants. The last pic shows this. Any experienced growers....I welcome your thoughts. Dec. 15, 2019 Started to notice the top set of leaves showing some signs of light stress at about mid week of this week. Thought I had a nutrient problem but after further checking, I think I narrowed this down to lights being too low. They started at 18, then 24, now I have them at 28". I also reposition all the plants that are trained the same way together so I can get the correct light distance. Tall plants at "28. The plants that were bent to the side, those lights are 24"

Week 7 Dec. 9 - Dec. 16, 2019 Dec. 18. Experienced a couple of conditions that helped me learn and understand this awesome experience of growing cannabis. The plants that were left to grow straight up started to show was looked like nutrient lock out. Since only the tall plants were showing these signs I kept researching. I came to the conclusion I made another rookie mistake of starting with my lights to low for the way I was growing these 3 plants....it was ZKZ #2, CS #1, and CS#2. Light stress can present itself as a nutrient deficiency, but since only the tall plant showed these signs I eliminated that. I have these girls under 600w HPS and I started the light distance at 18". Now I have the light at 30" for these 3 plants and 24" for ZKZ #1 & #3 and CS #3, which are LST'd by bending the stem to the edge of the pot. The other conditions was my well water PH. I was coming in at 8 which I thought was some of the above problems also. I'm growing in amended soil which can buffer PH, but I think may be to hight for that even. I found the liquid fish fertilizer is slightly acidic and 1.5 tbsp per gal. of water brought the PH to just under 6. I did one feeding with this at the start of the week. I have started to use 100% pure lemon juice concentrate at 1.5 tbsp per gal of water for all future waterings. This puts my well water at 6.8 PH. Plant CS #3 although still looking a couple weeks behind the other plants has really filled out very nicely and I think it will be my highest yielding plant. ZKZ #1 is the runt of the group. I pretty sure this is due to me squeezing and rolling the stem during the first LST day. All the other plants are doing well and starting to show a little frost... except CS #3. I will possibly feed with a tea or top dress with an organic powdered fert later in the week. Enjoy the pics.

Week 8 Dec. 17 - Dec. 23, 2019. Dec. 25, 2019 Week 7 has ended, week 8 has started. Catching up a little late due to the Holiday. Merry Christmas to my grow diary friends. Nothing has really change much during week 7. Top dressed all the plants with 2tsp of Roots organic Uprising Bloom at the start of week 7. Californian Snow #3 still is at least a couple weeks behind the other plants for some weird reason. You'll notice in the pics. I'm still impressed with how the cannopy evenly filled in after training... we'll just have to see if it produces the buds. The other plants are getting really sticky and frosting up nicely.

Week 9 Dec. 30 - Jan 5 Week 8 has ended. Not much had changed. Watering every other day, watered at the beginning of week 8 with a table spoon of molasses. Each plant is taking about 10 cups if water. I moved the lights up more for each group of plants due to them being a little taller. Zikktlez will be ready to harvest next week... maybe a little earlier. Californian Snow #1 & #2 will be a week later. CS #3 is the odd one out of the bunch. This plant had grown nothing like the other two CS's. I trained it differently but I don't think this is the cause. The main stem is twice the length of the other two. Bud development is at least 2-3 weeks behind. This plant may be 12 weeks or more before harvest. I gave it another top dressing of Roots Organic dry amendment for bloom and another watering with molasses at the start of this week.

Jan. 12, 2020 Some how my original week 10 entry got deleted. So here it is again with an update. Update: I harvested the Zkittlez plants. 10.5 (69 days) weeks from germination. No Amber trichomes, mostly all cloudy. Wet trimmed then weighed wet... Yield was 11.5 oz. from 3 plants. Zkittlez #2 was the smallest at 2.2oz. I over stressed this plant when first performing LST on it. I've learned what not to do to these plants. They are drying in my home made dry box at temps between 60 and 70 degrees and humidity between 52% and 60%. I will update yield once big stems are removed and curing is complete. Week 10 Jan. 6 - Jan. 13, 2020 Jan. 7, 2020 Californian Snow #1 & #2 are growing nicely. The main colas are as tall as my forearm and the buds are as thick also. Californian Snow #3 is filling out nicely also. It's still a bit behind. It leaves are getting quite a bit on TNT light side. I've given a couple extra feedings...top dressed with Neem meal and kelp meal yesterday. Watered with fish hydrysolate during week 9 I think because there's soo much more foliage on this plant, being about 3 weeks behind the others, and my soil is organic water only...I think the nutrients are running out for what this plant needs. The lower leaves appear to be getting darker so I think the plant is responding well. Zkittlez plants are looking good. Closer to being ready for harvest. Tricomes are clear to cloudy. So I'm thinking around thr end of week 10. Nothing has changed. Standard waterings every other day

Week 11 Jan. 13 - 19, 2020 Jan. 17, 2020 I'm a few days late updating week 11. So here it goes. I harvested the 3 Zkittlez plants. I enjoyed growing these. They didn't get as tall as I'd liked but that was my fault, I kept my lights too close during the early stages of the grow. I learned that these auto flowers don't not need to be LST'd. My Zkittlez #1 I over stressed and it yielded out only half of what the other plants did. Of the other two plants...one was LST'd and the other was left to grow more naturally with very little training. They both yielded within 1 tenth of an ounce of each other. Final dry weight is 2.5 oz. Could've been better, but it's my first time and I learned a lot. Here's a link to my diary for Zkiitlez if you'd like to check out my first grow experience in more detail. https://growdiaries.com/diaries/44659-fastbuds-zkittlez-auto-grow-journal-by-weedwacker/week/212148 Looking forward to harvesting my Californian Snow plants which still fattening up and putting on major trichomes. No amber trichomes but wow the plants are frosty and they have a strong pungent smell. When the main cola is bent a little sideways it really begins out the smell. The smell is like a gassy fuel, diesel fuel, strong chemically smell. I love it. CS #3 is giving me some problems. The pics might show it. The leaf tips are curling up and thr leaf edges are turning brown. Not sure if I can correct this befor harvest. It's late into flower. I may just ride it out until then. I've topped dress once weekly for the last 4 weeks with kelp, and a blend from roots organic for bloom 4-6-3.

The effects are.... not quite couch locking, but you don't really want to do much besides chill, watch some tv, and snack lol. This was my soil mix. Quick Mafs: 25lbs Worm castings = 5 gallons The Dirty Work: Promix - 3.8 Cuft (gal. = 28.426) Worm Castings - 22.5 Gallons Perlite - 20 Gallons Dolomite lime powder and pellets - 9 cups (gal.=0.57)(1 cup per cubic ft.) Azomite - 12 cups (gal.=0.76) (1-1.5 cups per cubic ft) 75 Gallons Total Split into 2 batches: 22.5 - Autos Flowers. Used with first grow and recycled with the cooking dirt amendments below and currently cooking. 52.5 - Cooked for 3 months. Currently used for this grow. Auto Dirts: 22.5 Gallons of Dirty Work 7.5 Gallons of Great Lakes premixed soil 2.5 Gallons of Worm Castings 32.5 Gallons total Cooking Dirts: 52.5 Gallons of Dirty Work (7.01 Cuft) + 1.33 Gallons Amendment Mixture: (3 cups per cubic foot, 21 cups total) Equal Parts: (except for Kelp Meal) 8 cups Crab Meal 8 cups Alfalfa Meal 8 cups Neem Seed Meal 8 cups “Happy Frog Jump Start Fertilzer” (in place of Tomato Tone) 16 cups Kelp Meal (use 2x the amount of other amendments) 53.88 Gallons Total