Seedsman Northern Lights (Auto).

The seeds I used were Seedsman Northern Lights Auto. They all sprouted to 100% success. During the germ phase I had kept them in a humidity dome at about ~70% humidity/ 27c. I used 2x 60w CFLs at 6500k about 5 inches above the dome. After potting, I placed them under a Solistek 10K MH by accident because I didn't know it was a "finishing"bulb. Anyway, I maintained a distance of about 30 inches from the top of the plants for the first week after potting. pH of water I was giving them for the first couple weeks was relatively unknown because broken pH meter, but i assume around 7. November 7th - I germinated these seeds in rockwool cubes. I used soaked them in a bit of GMB from AN first at a dilution of about 1ml in 1L of water. I dropped the seeds with the pointed side up, and then I covered the hole with coco coir rather than covering the hole up with the rockwool. My reasoning for this was that I felt perhaps the rockwool would be difficult for the sprout to penetrate up. November 10th - After the second day, I started seeing the sprout come up through the coir. Within 3 days half of them had sprouted (#1-6). This is when I potted numbers 1-6 which were about 3cm tall when I potted them and a couple of them had the root coming out of the bottom of the rockwool. Number 7 was potted the next day (November 11th). Numbers 8-10 took a couple days to sprout and didn't look as healthy. I kept them in the humidity dome a couple days longer and planted them on November 13th. Number 7's cotyledon looked twisted and eventually within 2 weeks I got rid of it because it just kept coming out deformed. Number 10 would eventually try out and die within a few days of potting. And number 9 would grow much slower compared to the others. Number 3 would grow well, but it started out with certain "bleached" patches all throughout the initial serrated leaves and new growth as well. These symptoms would appear on number 5 and 6 as well, but to a much lesser degree. Closer pictures of this will be in the next week's diary. The substrate ratio is as follows: Compost : Coco Coir : Perlite : Vermiculite Plant 1 - 3:3:3 Plant 2 - 3:3:3 Plant 3 - 3:3:3 Plant 4 - 3:3:3 Plant 5 - 3:2:3 Plant 6 - 3:2:3 Plant 7 - 3:3:2:1 Plant 8 - 3:3:2:1 Plant 9 - 3:3:2:1 Plant 10 - 3:3:2:1

Up til now - I had just been watering about 250ml of water around the stem of the plant every other dayish. November 26th - First time watering with nutes until there was drainage. 1.5L per 3 gallon pot. Dryish weight - 3.8kg. Weight after 1.5 L water - 5.1kg Collective Runoff PPM (all runoff went into 1 bucket) - 900ppm Started with 12 Liters of RO water (1.5L x 8 Plants) Starting PPM - 9PPM After 3ml Cal Mag - 58PPM After 6ml GMB - 215PPM pH Strip color - Yellow (Somewhere around 5.5-6? Really need to buy a new pH probe) I wasn't comfortable with the width of the stem as some of the plants seemed to stretch a bit. So I buried the stem in about 1-2 inches of additional soil. I realized I totally fucked up. I had been using a 10K solistek MH "finishing" bulb for this grow. Today I switched to a used Sunpulse LLT/SP400 6.4K MH bulb. November 28th: Below are the height measurements (Measured from top of newest center growth. at the "V" of the plant. So, not the tip of the leaves). One thing I should mention is that I made what I believe to be a huge fuck up. When I potted these initially I was afraid that my soil mix would burn the babies. So instead what I did was I put the soil mixture into the pots, and then I placed about a 2-3 in layer of Coco/Perlite on top of that and placed the rockwool seedling into that. After a few days I realized that the top layer of coco wouldn't give a good indication of the moisture while doing the "finger" test and decided I should try to "scrape away" the top layer of coco and replace it with the soil mixture. So I removed the coir around the plants and replaced it with the soil mixture. While doing this I accidentally uprooted #2. This plant has grown significantly slower than the other fast growers. Number 9 is also showing slower growth and although it wasn't uprooted I am beginning to feel that perhaps toying around with the seedling has caused it to have the same problem as #2. In short, next time I am just going to sow the seeds directly into the soil. Plant 1 - 11cm Plant 2 - 5cm (This is the guy that was accidentally uprooted) Plant 3 - 7cm Plant 4 - 13.5cm Plant 5 - 8cm Plant 6 - 6cm Plant 8 - 7.5cm Plant 9 - 4cm Last week I talked about how #3 started from the beginning with pale patches on the leaves and looked a bit deformed, however the more it grew the more normal the growth started looking, but the pale color did not subside. I am seeing this white come up on a few other leaves as well, but to a much lesser degree. Affected plants are #3, #5, #6, #8. Perhaps the problem already was on 5, 6, and 8 but I just never noticed due to it not being as severe as on number 3. I learned today of a disease called TMV (Tobacco Mottling Virus). I saw pictures and the discoloration looks similar to what is on my plants. TMV is supposed to affected growth, but strangely the plants with this problem seem mostly healthy as you can see in the pics above. I'm hoping it isn't TMV and that it's just some weird genetics.

I noticed above the watering volume said "per 24 hours". In case anyone was wondering, I was not feeding my plants every 24 hours. I have only been watering whenever necessary which has been about every 3-4 days. November 28th - I placed an order for a soil pH probe as well as a liquid pH probe. I'm also a bit concerned about the humidity in the room. It bounces up and down between 45-60% RH. A couple of days ago I noticed that walking into the room I sometimes get a wiff of "vegetable" smell. The past couple of weeks I had logged my solution temperature in Grow Diaries, but the truth is I hadn't actually measured the solution temperature. I had a jug of water in my room that I was feeding to the plants so I presume the temperature was actually around ~25c. I will start to log the actual solution temperature this week. November 29th: Huge catastrophe last night before bed. I was removing my lighting hood so that I could clean the dust off of it. As I was doing this the glass fell directly on top of Number 5 and 9. Number 5 got flatted right at the bottom of the stem below the cotyledons! There were still some fibers keeping it dangling on but I pretty well felt that it would be a goner. I took some masking tape and wrapped it around the stem, and then put some duct tape around that after realizing the paper on the masking tape would probably get soggy and wear down. I also took more soil and formed a "mound" around the break. This morning, the plant seems to be doing okay. The leaves are up. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the break or the repair. I am watering the plants as we speak with the same nutrient dilution. I have noticed that there may be some very light nutrient burn going on... Numbers 4, 5, 6 and 8 all are showing a very very VERY slight burn on the tips. You can only tell if you look at it extremely closely. I only noticed it just now in the middle of watering. It has been 4 days since the first feed with liquid nutrients. Prior to this, there was no burning on any of the leaves. This leads me to believe a couple things. 1.) Nutrient burn will take roughly 4 days to show signs. and 2.) even at 1/4th of the recommended dilution of GMB from AN, it can cause a burn. Keep in mind, however, that I am using a soil mixture. Results could be different in an inert medium. Some of the plants seem to be thirstier than others. I've given 2L to some, depending on drainage, but most seem to be getting 20-25% runoff with 1.5L. After watering all the plants collectively with 16L of water, I was left with 5L of runoff and some of the plants continued to drain a bit in the grow area. This amounts to over 31% runoff. This was almost exactly 96 hours since the last time I watered it. With that said, what I think I will do is water it again with 1.5 liters in 72 hours as I want to try to flush away some of the nutes to see if it fixes the burning tips. From there i'll continue an the feed/water cycle every 3-4 days. On another note, 4 days ago I watered until runoff was about 20-30% and ppm was 900. Today I watered to 31% runoff (on all total plants collected in 1 bucket). The ppm today was 1300. I don't know where I got into the habit of checking the runoff PPM, but the more I read the more I see growers saying that checking runoff PPM in soil is pointless. I think I might just stop doing this as it's unnecessarily worrying me. Number 4 has always grown taller than the others. There are much larger separations between the nodes. I decided to begin LST on it by using a coat hanger. Started feeling like I should've just tied it down somehow to the side of the fabric pot as I'm not sure if hitting some roots with the coat hanger would stunt growth. Within five hours the sideways tilted plant had curved upward. December 2-4- Number 1 is showing weird light colored patches as can be seen in the photos. After 2 days the patches started becoming more prominent. They're only on the bottom leaves. It looks like it might be some type of lockout, but i'm not sure. December 7th- A bit of a late update here. I got a new pH probe in the mail, finally. I watered each plant with 1.5-2L of water on December 3rd. I decided to not give the plants any nute except for the cal-mag. The water was as below: Water Amount: 16L Starting PPM (RO): 5PPM Additions: 20mL Cal-Mag Plus Post Cal-Mag PPM: 240PPM. pH: 6.35 I noticed a few days after watering that the top soil was still moist. The pots seemed to retain a lot more moisture than previous waterings. I raised the pots off the ground using these plastic trays with drainage holes. I've started to LST all the other plants that are big enough. Number 1 is tall with 7 nodes (as of Dec 7th), but there is no auxiliary shoot development at the nodes. All the other plants have shown auxiliary shoot growth coming from nodes. Number 1 is also showing some signs of something on the lower leaves. I'm unsure if it is a result of lockout or if it's nute burn. Surprisingly the plant that took the brunt of the damage (snapped stem) from the falling hood glass didn't seem to be phased at all! I'm extremely surprised that the masking tape wrapped around the snapped stem did the job. The plant is a bit less developed and shorter than the other plants that didn't take damage. I noticed yesterday that Number 3 has calyxes with pistils showing! Numbers 4, 8, and 6 are show what looks like calyx formation. Recall last week where I thought my plants might have TMV. Who knows, they still might. However, I did come across a thread (https://www.autoflower.net/forums/threads/advanced-nutrients-autoflower-schedule.65405/) in which the guy happens to be growing Northern Light Autos which have the same look as my plant. Could it be something within the genetics of the ruderalis/northern lights? Who knows.

December 9th: Since last week I didn't feed the plants any nutes (except for the cal-mag), I decided to feed them this time around with about 1.5L each plant. Some got a tad bit more. I was reading about TANG's feeding schedule and decided to up the nutrients this time, and by a pretty large margin. Previous feeding they had gotten about .5ml of GMB per liter. This time I decided to give them 1mL. Also, I am not using the RO water anymore. I realized that it may not be necessary as my tap water comes out at around 50ppm already. Instead, I still let it pass through a 3 stage filter to get out the chlorine/chloramine and also let it "air out" for a few days before adding nutes. Starting Water Amount: 14L Starting pH = 7.28 Starting ppm = 50 Post 12mL Cal Mag ppm = 211ppm Post 14mL GMB ppm = 514ppm Post Nute pH = 5.92 I am a bit concerned that the pH of the water I am giving my plants is too low. I don't have any pH up, but have been thinking about using baking soda to bring it up. I have some silica blast on the way which I'll use as a pH up. I'm concerned about #1 as the leaves are looking worse. Again, it's only on the bottom leaves of the first 2 nodes. The plant otherwise looks healthy and is growing tall. It still hasn't grown any branches while the other plants have grown loads of branches. I'm thinking about throwing #1 away- fucking peasant... I'm going to give it a flush with pHed water next week and see if it improves anything. The plants are starting to bush out and I'm LSTing them still. The plant that got crushed (#5) seems to have recovered fully and I removed the tape I've stopped taking height measurements now since I think that is pretty pointless with LST. I'm also unsure whether to record this week as veg or flower. There are pistils on some and calyx with no pistils on others.

December 11th: As 3 out of 7 plants have shown their pistils, I have switched out the MH for an HPS bulb. I'm still recording this week as veg until the plants stop stretching and start budding. December 12th: It's been 3.5 days since I last watered with the stronger dilution of nutes 500ppm (double the amount of GMB). I should've mentioned that last week numbers 4 and 8 had the lower leaves yellowing, becoming very "soggy", and eventually drying up and dying. I suspected that this was a lack of nutrients which was one of the motivations for following TANG's feeding schedule which called for 1mL per liter of nutrients as opposed to the .5mL that I had been using. Fast forward to today and I have noticed that numbers 4, 5, and 8 are showing slight burn so I'm not sure what was causing the lower leaves to become soggy and die. Next watering I am going to cut down on the nutrients to .75mL/L and give the plants 3 liters each to rinse away some of the nutes with a lighter dilution which was a suggestion I read somewhere some forums. December 14th: Decided to water the plants today. As mentioned in the previous week I've been concerned that I've been giving my plants water that's too acidic (5.9pH). My base water is actually in the mid 7s but after adding the pH perfect nutes, it brings the pH down a good amount. Here is how the watering went down today. Starting Amount- 24L Start pH - 7.4 Start ppm - 54 CalMag Addition = .75ml/L x 24L = 18mL Post CalMag pH = 7.4 Post CalMag ppm = 190ppm GMB Addition = .75ml/L x 24L =18mL Post GMB pH = 6.25 Post GMB ppm = 417 At this point I wanted to try to bring the pH of the water up to 6.5-6.8, so I added 1L of base water (7.38pH), and the pH didn't change! So I added 1 more Liter and the pH still didn't change! It actually went down .05. Post 2L Addition PPM = 390ppm Post 2L Addition PPM = 6.2 I gave 3L to each plants in an effort to give it a bit of a rinse. This is double the amount of water I gave it last week. There was about a 33% runoff. I inspected the calyx of the plants. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 are showing pistils. 2 and 9 are showing calyx, but can't really tell if there are pistils coming out. Keep in mind that 2 and 9 were the ones that have always been growing slower than the others... And of course there is #1 with the brown spots on the leaves of the bottom 3 nodes. It's growing well and the plant looks super healthy aside from the patchy leaves. And I'm confused as to why the others have been growing branches for a couple weeks now while this one keeps getting taller but not growing any branches at all. I was about to throw it out of the grow today, but thought I'd give it a flush with pure base water pHed down to about 6.5. I ran about 9 gallons of water through it. Ah, one last thing. A few days ago while LSTing number 8, I noticed a tear in the stem midway up the plant. Nothing terrible, but I gave it a split by cutting a slit down a straw and then wrapping that around the stem as a cast, and then putting a bit of masking tape on it. Today I took it off and aside from being a bit brown it seems fine.

December 18th - As the rest of the plants have now shown pistils, I've labeled this the start of flowering. Some of the plants are showing what I believe to be deficiencies, but I'm not really sure what is causing it. I've tried to document as much of the details as I could. It looks like it could be Calcium or Phosphorus deficiency. My uneducated guess is that either there is some lockout occurring due to pH fluctuations and feed water pH, or the plants are hungier for P due to going into flowering. I did a couple soil slurry tests by mixing a bit of soil with distilled water and one test with tap water, and the pH came out to 6.8 on the probe. The pH of the water going in is pretty low at about ~6, and then then with ~25% runoff, the pH of the water is higher at 6.8. Does this mean that my soil is actually very alkaline, potentially causing the lockout problems? Below are the feed and runoff details. I also gave a foliar spray to the leaves that were showing brown spots, thinking that perhaps the spots were due to Calcium or Magnesium deficiencies. Number 4 has had these shiny "slug trail" looking things developing on it ever since like week 2 or 3. Every once in a while I'd see something crawling on a leaf, but it was hard to see it without the use of a loupe. I believed them to be thrips. Although there doesn't seem to be any damage from them, nor an infestation (just a rare sighting here and there), I bought some neem oil and plan to give it a spray. By the way I've pretty much given up on Number 1 but I'm still feeding it, but not giving it too much concern. It's still got no branches or any type of development at the calyx areas. Weird. Feed Details: Start: 24L Start pH - 7.36 Start ppm - 50 Cal Mag Addition - 1ml/L post Cal Mag pH= 7.31 post Cal Mag ppm = 225 GMB Addition - 1ml/L post GMB pH = 6.04 post GMB ppm = 530 Plant Runoff Details (Ph/PPM) 1 - 7.04/500 2 - 6.93/1430 3 - 6.86/1300 4 - 6.88/1030 5 - 6.90/1100 6 - 6.77/1300 8 - 6.84/1130 9 - 6.75/1540

December 20th: I mixed up a neem oil solution and gave Number 4 a good spray all over as well as on the soil. I wanted to spray the others, but want to test it on Number 4 first to see if it fucks anything up. December 22nd: I felt like maybe the plants are deficient in some nutrients as I'm using a 1/4th dilution of what's recommended by the manufacturer as that seems to be the recommendation for Autos. What I really want to do is give it 2ml/L instead of 1.25, but I think I'll gradually work my way up and see if it helps the spots go away. I've also got some silica blast coming today which I plan to use as a pH up. The watering details for the feed/runoff are below. Keep in mind that #1 is the one I flushed a couple feeds back and that I pretty much have given up on. During watering I noticed a really fucked up looking leaf on Number 6 that I hadn't noticed before. It's the only leaf in the grow that looks like that. From googling, it looks like it could be a Manganese deficiency. Also on number 6, I noticed a big yellow spot developing on one of the leaves pictured above. Any suggestions on what it could be would be appreciated. Start - 24L pH - 7.35 ppm - 50 Cal Mag Addition - 1mg/L Post Cal Mag ppm - 236 GMB addition - 1.25ml/L Post GMB ppm - 615 Post nute pH - ~6.1 Runoff PPM/PH (about 20-25% runoff) 1 - 7.02/700 2 - 6.74/1290 3 - 6.85/1010 4 - 6.67/1100 5 - 6.72/1240 6 - 6.65/1500 8 - 6.66/950 9 - 6.79/985

December 27th: This week I decided up the nutrients quite a bit, about 200ppm higher than before (1.75ml/l instead of 1.25). I gave each plant at least 3L of water. Some of the thirstier ones got 3.5L. The watering details are as follows: Started with 24L Start ppm = 50 Calmag addition - 1ml/l x 24 Post calmag ppm = 225 GMB addition = 1.75ml/l x 24 post GMB ppm = 749ppm post GMB pH = 5.81 on meter (might be off by -0.18) so it could be ~6 Runoff details (pH/ppm): 2 - 6.36/1360 3 - 6.43/1200 4 - 6.30/921 5 - 6.36/979 6 - 6.31/1130 8 - 6.34/1050 9 - 6.45/915 I've also switched out the 400w bulb to a 600w. Every week there are some leaves on the bottom that turn yellow and soggy and eventually crisp up and die. Not sure what it is as I feel like I'm definitely giving it enough N with the addition of the nutes as well as the calmag+ which is 2-0-0. Growth on plants looks otherwise healthy with the buds starting to develop now. One of the plants has been getting this white dots on them. It looks almost like it's dried up salt. I'm not sure if it's from foliar spray or what. It doesn't really look like white powdery mildew pictures that I've seen online. The dots are only forming on the edges of the leaves. None of the other plants have this.

December 31st: It seems like the plants just sucked all that water up faster than usual. Usually it takes longer for the plants to dry out but by the 30th the pots were already light. I decided to up the nutrients again to 2ml/l instead of 1.75ml. Again, each plant got about 3-3.5L of water Start water: 24L Cal Mag: 1ml/l post CM ppm: 217 GMB addition: 2ml/L post GMB ppm: 787 post GMB pH: 5.8 Runoff details pH/ppm: 2 - 6.26/950 3 - 6.25/996 4 - 6.11/898 5 - 6.24/965 6 - 6.21/1010 8 - 6.24/932 9 - 6.36/1090 January 1st: Today I noticed the bronze spots all over some of the bigger fan leaves of number 3 and 6, but also to a lesser degree on some of the other plants. I don't know if I just didn't notice this yesterday while feeding, but today I was pretty shocked to see the damage. It honestly seems like it happened overnight. One thing I feel like I need to do is stop feeding nutes to the plants. Any advice would be appreciated. I felt like the dilution of the nutes at 1/2 strength wouldn't require a feed/water rotation, but perhaps I was wrong. I'd been giving nutes with each feed, and even upping them, so I'm wondering if perhaps there is a salt buildup. Trying not to freak out.