4 * Sticky Beast auto, LED (first grow)

It’s 9 days since the last update and lots of new growth has emerged. The tent is filling up quickly and there wouldn’t be more room for a fourth plant, so I don’t regret tossing Elin. They also started to smell a bit, so I installed my filter. It completely eradicates the smell, works perfect! However, not everything went smoothly this week. When I came back after 4 days of holiday, on day 24, I found the plants in good health. They had grown a lot and some nodes were showing white pistils. There was still some clawing (tips of the leaves curled down) as seen in my previous update, but nothing bad. However, the day after I returned, they looked a lot worse, especially Anna. She also had some mosaic spots on some leaves. It still looked like a N excess to me. Despite that, there were now pistils everywhere on all three plants. I noticed the ground was dry and it had been 5 days since I last watered them. Hence, I watered again on day 25, with just plain, pH’ed water, as there were still no signs of any deficiencies, on the contrary, it still looked like a bit of nitrogen excess. I watered until 15-30% run off, just like the last time, as discussed in my previous update. During that previous watering, I noticed pH of the run off water was around 5,5. This is slightly too acid and might cause some deficiencies (f.e. calcium). Therefore, this time pH’ed the tap water down to 7 instead of 6.5. Hopefully, my run off water will be a bit higher in pH when I do the next watering, which is probably tomorrow. During day 25 after watering, Ceylin started to show yellowing tips, especially the newest and highest growth. The plants had grown quite a bit. The distance between the tops and the lights had decreased a lot. I figured it might be light stress, hence, I raised the lights. The yellowing of tips seems to have stopped now. Temperature was still a issue, only 20-21 degrees Celsius with lights on. I raised the light a bit more, but gave it a bit more power, around 225 watt. I also placed a fan above the drivers, slightly aiming down; trying to get some of the warm air from the LED drivers down. It worked and temperature is now at 22,5 degree. So, to summarize: Anna is the smallest of the three, she has some heavy curling here and there, especially on the top of here mainstem, and some mosaic spots, but since the last watering it stopped spreading and new growth looks good. Benthe does great, she is by far the biggest and LST worked like a charm on her. She doesn’t show any signs of problems. Ceylin is also doing fine, but she has some burned tips on some of the top growth, probably caused by light stress. All the symptoms had stopped spreading, but then, yesterday. Disaster struck. I LST’ed all three plants and rearranged al stems further. All seemed fine, but when I came back a few hours later, I found Benthe’s mainstem was broken down, like 3 nodes from the top. It was completely snapped off, probably for a few hours. Also, there was little room at the remaining stem to ducktape the top back on. It was just beyond repair and I threw the top away. I noticed the stem was really hollow, so I closed it with a little tape and a small rope. This would definitely shock this plant a lot and probably diminish yield. Especially since preflowers are already showing. However, today, it seems like she is growing like nothing happened. There are now 2 mainstems and they got bigger in just 18 hours. She still looks perky and no symptoms of stress are visible. Wow, is she really this resilient? I was very careful not to overdo during my LST sessions. Also, the stem broke on a spot where there wasn’t even bending, that was 2 nodes higher up. I think I bended her quite far, but because of the rapid upward growth, the tension just became too big and she snapped. It’s also possible it happened when placing the plant back in the tent, but that seems unlikely to me, as I always check everything after placing a plant back. Today, I tried to overcome my fear and continued to LST, but I’m now even more careful. All in all, they’re growing fast and I can still expect some good yield, despite the problems I experience. It’s a rocky grow, lots of lessons learned already. Any tips or advice are always welcome. See you next week!