Green Poison XL Auto

It's been seven years since my last grow. I am easing myself back with this bonus Green Poison XL Auto seed I received on an order. My setup: -2x4x5 tent -5-gallon fabric grow bags -Coco medium -Vivosun 300W full spectrum LED light -Advanced Nutrients PH Perfect Grow, Micro, Bloom The seed was germinated using the paper towel method - taproot appeared after ~24 hours and broke through the medium after ~48 hours. I plan to take it easy with this grow and let the plant do its thing. I'm using this grow as an opportunity to optimize my environment and curing method for future grows while easing myself back into the hobby with the KISS method (Keep it simple, stupid!). It's day 3 now and I'm trying to up my humidity. Since the last time I grew I moved to a much drier climate so I need to adjust. I have a bowl of hot water next to my seedling and it's doing a fine job of keeping humidity in the 65-75 range. I also moved my light about 4 inches closer (started at ~40 inches as per the manufacturer's recommendation). Day 6, I gave my seedling a very light dose of nutrients. I used about 1/3 of the recommended seedling dose, in about a half litre of water. I used a very conservative amount as my TDS meter has not yet arrived and I do not want to risk nute burn. Also moved my light another ~4 inches closer.

Day 9, I'm surprised the Coco medium hasn't been drying out faster. It's remained relatively damp on the surface. Even still, I felt like the lady could use another light feeding. I gave her the same dose as last time, ~1/3 the recommended seedling dose. I gave her a liter this time. Day 10, with her leaves still reaching toward the light, I decided to move it another 4 inches closer. Currently at about 28 inches away. Day 13, gave her a feeding at lights on today. I went a bit heavier this time, at about 1 ml each of Micro, Grow, Bloom per liter. 1.5 Liters total. I noticed the plant is smelling stronger daily, she's got that fresh green grassy smell with a hint of MJ when you get close. A sign of things to come I hope! It is the end of week 2 now and I'm going to look at starting LST in the next day or two. The last time I grew autos, doing any type of plant training was controversial. Now it seems LST is pretty widely used on the newer generations of autos so I'm going to give it a go and see what happens. Every feeding so far I've been mixing the nutrients with filtered water, as I am still waiting on my TDS meter 😒. I don't have an exact reading of my water, but I know for certain it is very high in minerals consisting mostly of calcium and magnesium. For this reason I've skipped the Cal-Mag supplement with hopes the tap water is enough to fulfill the plant's needs. I know many purist growers like to use RO water and add everything back, but I see no reason to add extra work and cost to my grow when my water has an abundance of Cal-Mag. In any case, I can't wait for my meter any longer, I've gotta get some of these minerals to the plant starting on my next feeding.

Day 15: I started LST and have done a poor job at it so far. I used pipe cleaners, which I regret because it's leaving small fabric particles on the plant (not sure why people recommend these so much), and the spacing between the plant's nodes are just too small for them to fit properly at this point in time. I replaced the pipe cleaner with a piece of fishing line with duct tape around the end to prevent it from cutting the stem. Perhaps I will try twist ties going forward. Day 16: -I Moved the light closer - now 22 inches away. -The plant's leaves are curling downward so I moved the light back to about 25 inches. Hoping I didn't stress the plant from having to fiddle with it so much during LST. 😳 -A couple hours after moving the light back there's been significant development in the lower leaves. She seems to be doing better now. Day 17: Fed the plant at lights on today. Used 2 liters of water and 2 ml/liter each of Micro, Grow, Bloom. I used tap water this feeding for the high mineral content. PH 5.8. Day 20: Another feeding, 2 litres at 3ml each of Micro, Grow, Bloom at lights on. 5.7 PH Day 21: Realizing now the recommended nutrient dosage is on a weekly schedule, I've been using that as my guide for each feeding. Woops. Showing slight signs of over-feeding but no major burns just darker green leaves and tiny burn spots. I'll just water with filtered PH'd water until the color is back to normal. From then, I'll break down the weekly recommended dose across however many feedings I expect to give each week. I read that plants in Coco prefer many smaller feedings as opposed to larger feedings spaced out. I'll try that and see what happens. Getting lots of bud sites with the aggressive LST. And let me tell you, she is a fighter...I've been using twist ties to keep her down and she keeps springing back up! The plant sort of went sideways on where I intended to train her. No worries, I will continue on and see how many bud sites I can make before flowering starts in a week or two.

Day 23: Watered her with 3L of filtered water, PH 5.8. I aimed for quite a bit of runoff to flush out the nutes. Day 26: Plant is still looking well-fed. Gave another 1.5L of filtered, PH 5.9 water. Will start lighter feeding again next watering. Day 28: Plant's color is improving, I'll give her a light feeding in a day or two. I've been doing my best to stay on top of the LST. The plant is quite bushy and low, only about 4-5 inches high. She is still vegging and she is stinking up the room!! 30 minutes with the fan off and her scent fills the entire room. My fan is quite strong, 200 CFM or so, and dries out the tent quite quickly even on the low setting dropping humidity to 35-40. This is great come late flower, but for now I'd like to keep humidity in the 55-60 range. I'll look into getting a timer for my fan to try and regulate the humidity a bit while containing the smell. If you notice holes in my fan leaves worry not, there's no pests or anything, just stab damage from LST 😕. I am expecting flowering to start by the end of next week or so based on other journals with this strain. We shall see.

Day 30: Her color is looking much better! Fed her 2L today at about 1.7 ml per L of Micro, Grow, Bloom. 1.7 ml/L represents the full recommended dose of 4ml/L/week if I feed every 3 days as I have been. I imagine I will need to feed/water more frequently soon as she gets bigger, so I will adjust this as I go. Day 32: I bought another timer to regulate my fan. The plant is way too stinky now to not have my fan on. Keeping the fan on for 15 minutes every 75 minutes seems to be a good balance of smell control without killing my humidity levels for too long. Seeing some pistils on what was the main cola! Very small, can barely see in photos. Day 33: Fed same dose as day 30. PH 6.0. Day 34: Can see the pistils clearly now! LSTing this plant has been quite fun. I'm happy with the shape. Now that flowering is starting, I will focus on evening out the canopy. Day 35: The tent has become quite humid so I started running the fan on the lowest setting all the time. The humidity is now around 58 and temps ~24. Entering the flower stage now and all seems to be good. I'm liking this dry climate - it was a pain to keep humidity up early on but I'd much rather have it that way than fighting high humidity now and going forward. The manufacturer recommends a light distance of 15-18 inches during flower, I calculated about 16.5 inches as the optimal distance so that sort of confirms that. At 16.5 inches from the canopy, I have an area of about 14" x 22" of optimal light intensity based on my calculations. I will do my best to cover that area by spreading out the colas while keeping them at roughly the same distance from the light. It may be too early to tell, but I definitely think my hard water is doing a fine job providing calcium and magnesium to the plant. No signs of deficiency yet. I'm curious how my end product will turn out just using base nutrients and no additives.

The first real week of flower. I forgot to save my day-by-day notes 😬 so I will summarize my thoughts for the week: Early on in the week I gave a heavier feeding as I was unexpectedly away for a few days and didn't keep to my feeding schedule. I gave about 3 ml per L of each base nutrient. I gave 2L and had almost no run-off. A couple days later I noticed the rust-color spotting on some leaves. I'm very confident these are just burn spots from water drops sitting on the leaves, but as I've stated in earlier weeks I am trusting to my hard tap water to provide my Cal-Mag. The thought of a deficiency made me want to ensure the plant got a solid uptake of magnesium. I went a little unorthodox-ed and against the advice on the internet. I researched the optimal PH for magnesium uptake in CoCo and came up with a PH of 5.2 (not even sure if this is accurate as there is so much conflicting information on CoCo). I gave 1 ml of each base nutrient at a PH of 5.2. All of the information on the web says to keep PH between 5.5 and 6.5 in CoCo. I weighed the risks and since I am using a PH perfect nutrient solution, decided to go ahead with it. To my surprise, she reacted very well! Her leaves perked up and she looked great after the feeding. Phew, no damage done. I'm having some problems with humidity - as in I'm having trouble keeping it as high as I want. It's been hovering in the 35-40 range far too much, which is way too low for early flower IMO. The only solution I have is to put my exhaust fan back on the timer, but then I am giving up good airflow which is also important in flower. At this point I'm not sure which sacrifice to make, but I've been keeping the exhaust fan on all the time. Finally, about mid-way through the week I had mostly stopped LST with the intention of budsite production and now am just aiming to keep the canopy as even as possible and improving penetration to lower budsites. My training hasn't been perfect, but I am quite happy with the shape of the plant. There was a point in time I wasn't going to do any training at all and go with the old adage of letting autoflowers do their thing. I am now happy I did more research and went ahead with LST.

Not much to report this week (it's all about the photos anyways! 😁). I gave three feedings this week, 6L each time with an average of 1.4ml/L of each base nutrient. Now aiming to feed light every 48 hours as the coco is drying out faster now and frequent watering keeps my humidity where I want it. Continued LST to even the canopy. Saw a bit of flower stretching this week. The leaves are showing trichomes now at day 14 of flower. I'm quite happy with the progress so far...lots of pistils and some real nice colas forming.

Day 50: Fed today near lights out. 2ml/L of base nutes, 6L total volume. PH 5.9. Day 53: Fed today, 2m/L base nutes 6L total volume. PH 6.0. Day 56: Another feeding. Same dose as above with PH 5.9. Trichomes are really thickening up on the leaves. Plant is starting to smell very fruity and sweet, yummy 😋. Smell is getting stronger every time I open the tent!

Day 58: Feeding, 2ml/L base nutes, 5.8 PH. 6L total. Day 60: Feeding, 2ml/L base nutes, 5.9 PH. 6L total. Day 63: Feeding, 2ml/L base nutes, 5.7 PH. 6L total. The smell! I can't put into words how lovely this plant smells. Most days she consists of a strong fruity smell with underlying pine (love pine 👌👌). Some days I can detect an underlying skunky smell and mint. What a lovely, lovely combination. 😋 LST has all but stopped, I tied one stretchy branch back this week but that is it. Mostly just tucking leaves now for greater light penetration. Buds are really forming now and some hairs are starting to turn orange. Resin production is getting out of control!!! Loving the low humidity now.

Day 65: Fed 2ml/L Micro, Grow, Bloom at PH 5.7. 6L total. Day 67: Fed 1.7ml/L each base nute at PH 5.9. 6L total. Day 69: Been feeding pretty heavy so I just gave her plain PH'd water this time. About 7L at a PH of 5.8. Plan to dial back the nutes a bit before the final flush. Breeder recommendations has harvest at about 80 days from seed. I expect the plant to go a little longer. Delays may have been due to heavy feeding or my LED lighting. In any case, not really a big deal, buds are really fattening up and covering itself in trichomes. I've dropped my temps and humidity slightly. About 20 degrees during the day and 18 at night. Humidity in the low 30s. Smell is incredible. I'm pretty sure I say that every week but it just keeps getting better and better. 😍

Day 72: Fed her with 1.7 ml/L each of Micro, Grow, Bloom. PH 5.7. 6L total. Day 75: Fed her with 6ml/L of just Bloom nutes at a PH of 5.8. 6L total. The instructions on the bottle say to give an even amount of each base nutrient throughout the life cycle of the plant. Since I am not using additives, this throws off the ratios a bit and has far too much nitrogen at an overall ratio of 4-3-8. Perhaps I should have adjusted this earlier in the plant's life, but I decided to just give Bloom nutes for the remaining feedings at a more favorable flowering ratio of 1-3-4. Also triple filtering my tap water now to remove minerals for the remainder of the plant's life. This week finishes at day 77 of the plant's life. I am currently uncertain about when this plant will be ready to cut, but it's certainly going longer than the recommended 80 days from seed. The buds are way frostier than I envisioned, however I am hoping they fatten up a bit and put on some weight. I will probably do one more Bloom feeding before the final flush.

Day 78: Started flushing. Will be finishing up the plant's life cycle with PH'd, filtered water. Gave her about 9L of it this watering PH 5.8. Day 81: Gave ~9L of water with PH of 5.8. Day 84: Another 9L. PH 5.8. She is getting close now. I'd like to get in another couple waterings before chop. 😋😋

Well, I can't believe I forgot to finish this diary off three years ago! This grow ended around February 2020 - after harvesting and other events I just completely forgot to come back and finish this off. I apologize to anyone who was waiting for this harvest, if you are still around! Luckily, I still have the pictures from the grow so I can complete this diary! I continued with the flush and cut on day 88, conditions would have mostly remained the same as the previous reported week.

This strain was easy to grow, produced well for only a 300w LED (45 watt actual draw). The buds were beautiful, tasty, and potent. There are plenty of areas I could have improved on that would have likely allowed me to eek out an even bigger yield e.g. proper nutrient measurements with RO water, optimal lighting. My big takeaway here is that you can get good results from using basic nutrients without all the pricey additives. Thank you Sweet Seeds, this was a pleasure to grow and smoke. I would recommend this strain to any grower.