Dessert Time! 2-Gallon Organic Auto Grow

Hey everyone! This is my 1st real grow and I'm using an organic soil medium made at home from used Peat/potting mix, Perlite, and some homemade kitchen compost. I have amended 1 cup per gallon of soil of Down to Earth 'Bio-Live', which carries several strains of Fungi and Microbes along with NPK from various essential sources such as Kelp. I have also amended Granular Humics, Dolomite Lime, and Seabird Guano at a 1/4 cup per gallon. For the 1st week of veg I am watering with plain PH'd water of 6.8-6.4. I plan to use some additives for Silica, root enhancement as well as organic teas throughout this grow! My environment is very dry right now (almost winter) and I have a humidifier outside of my tent going full-time. RH currently fluctuates from 43-50%.

The girls have not put on a lot of new growth this week unfortunately. I also forgot to mark the genetics by pot, but I'm not too worried about it as I have a good enough nose for strains. I think the more vigorous girl is the Royal. I hit them with a mild compost slurry/tea on day 11 to try and give the soil more life. I've been able to get the humidity in the room up a bit as well so hopefully they start putting on some height a bit going into week 3 as I would like to start some LST before they start to flower out.

So far this week I have prepared a quick slurry tea for the girls. I make it with Down to Earth brand Bio Live, home compost, barley concentrate, very little molasses and a slight PH adjustment. I use about 2/3 RO Water and 1/3 Tap Water (100 PPM tap). I steep the tea for roughly 2-3 hours stirring occasionally, and stirring well before I feed. The end solution is roughly 200 PPM with little compost bits added as a top dress to help add extra organic matter to the mix. So far, the girls seem to like it but have still not entered into their growth spurt ... I think the quality of my soil may not be as good as I thought it would be. I will be sure to do more research before my next run ... Would love to start doing some LST. This is my first real Cannabis grow and I have only had family members and my home garden to show and teach me what I know of gardening so far. This will be my first time training any plants 🙌 Update: LST started on plant #1 on day 20. Also acquired an light controller so my daytime hours no longer rely on my schedule. Up to 18 hours of light 😇

Going into week 4 the main stalks haven't really thickened up much but they are stiff and strong. I have increased my light distance in order to promote some more stretching as well as introduced the flowering spectrum for a little bit each day for the same reason. Nothing crazy to feed this week, just fresh water PH'd to 6.5 and the occasional misting to keep the top soil moist. My environment has been pretty steady and the color on my ladies is fine. Plant #2 has shown 1st signs of flowering which is concerning because it's only maybe 3 inches tall ... I think my soil might be the problem here. It could just be a dwarf, but both plants are showing signs of slow growth so I think the roots may not like something about this "whipped together" soil mix. I really don't have access to a lot of stuff around here, especially during the fall/winter months, so I will have to wait until spring to get my hands on some fresh Canadian Sphagnum Peat and Worm Castings to amend a new mix. This has been more of a 1st grow experiment, nonetheless, so I am not being too hard on myself and am going to ride these ladies out until harvest. I am going to go easy on the H2O this week to see if the root systems establish a bit better in a dryer medium.

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