8 x Northern Lights Fem AF

Germinated the seeds for couple of days in a wet paper towel. 8/8 success with the seeds and one seeds seemed to grow two stems from the same seed. I left the twins as they are for the time being. As the seeds are autoflowering, I put them in their final pot straight away (10l). Soil is a mix of 2/4 basic market soil, 1/4 seedling mix/cactus soil and 1/4 perlite and vermiculite. I put couple of centimeters of pot gravel in the bottom of the pot and also made several holes for drainage. The seedlings spent first couple of days under some 10-40W plant lights as I prepared the actual grow area. A bit of stretching appeared during the first days, but got this under control after relocating the plants under the HID (metal halide). Used the Sunmaster flowering bulb (as seen in the pictures) for a couple of days and switched to Sunmaster Cool bulb which was the original plan all along. Watered first time at the end of week 1 with 0,2l of water and some Biobizz Root Juice and Heaven. The grow tent is in a room with around 13-15C average temp so I added a thermostat controlled space heater to keep the nighttime temperature around 18C inside the tent. There´s a 125mm extractor attached to the cooltube and I keep it running when the light is on. As the surrounding environment is relatively cool, the tent tends to cool down too much if the extractor is on during the night. The exhaust tube is now installed on the lower exhaust port, but will switch it to the higher one once I move the light upwards when the plants grow. The airflow is not optimal at the moment when it´s coming in and going out from the lower ports, but then again there´s no heat issues at the moment anyways. I´m actually planning on relocating the extractor outside the tent during flowering hoping the decreased airflow near the light will help bringing the tent average daytime temp around 25C. A 28cm fan hanging from the ceiling keeps the plants in motion 24/7.

GROW DAY 8 (day 1 of wk 2) Had some issues with timers, temperature variations and such, but now with them sorted out and the bulb changed to the more vegetation-appriorpriate Sunmaster Cool, I think we´re good to go and start some serious vegetation growing. Just watered the plants with water (0,2l/plant) and the nutrients listed in the nutrient section. Also added some coffee grounds on top of the soil before watering. Not sure if this is going to make any difference, but I figured it´s worth a shot. I've sprayed the plants 2-3 times a day with water and also the outsides of the pots within reason to increase air humidity in the tent, which tends to be on the low side. GROW DAY 12 (day 5 of wk 2) I was away for couple of days and rigged couple of 10W plant lights as a backup in case my primary light/timer would quit on me. This way the plants would received significantly less light for some time, but wouldn´t be in complete darkness. Upon returning from a short Xmas trip, I was glad to notice the primary light worked perfectly. Some of the plants showed what I figured was slight heat stress, but otherwise every plant is growing on its own steady pace. Watered for the second time this week (last 0,4l/plant was 4 days ago) along with the nutrients mentioned in the nutrient section. GROW DAY 13 (day 6 of wk 2) Nothing special. Still bit of heat stress. Continued to spray couple of times a day. Humidity still a bit low for my taste, around 45-55%. GROW DAY 14 (day 7 of wk 2) More plants were showing stress signs, so I moved the lights up a bit, not at 60 cm above the canopy again. Also added numbering on the pots to make progress followup easier and moved pots in the middle to the sides and vice versa.

GROW DAY 15 (day 1 of wk 3) Watered today with 0,4l/plant after having a break from watering for three days. Continued with Root Juice and Heaven, but added 1ml/l Grow into the mix. Continued spraying with water and poured some on the bottom of the tent to add some moisture. New growth seems fine and the heat stress which I noticed earlier seems under control. After pumping the plants full of water in the morning, I ended up doing some LST late afternoon. Intresting to see tomorrow how they react. GROW DAY 17 (day 3 of wk 3) Last week I decided that HID era was ending for me and I placed an order for HLG 550 V2 R-Spec -light. When changing the HID lamp for the LED, I witnessed first hand the fact how temperature really affects the light intensity of a HID. I had a cooltube on the lamp with an extractor pulling around 16C cool air through the tube. When I started taking the lamp down, I shut down the extractor and the lamp got quite a lot brighter:) After the relatively easy installation, I couldn't be happier with the HLG 550. I spent over a week reading up on different lighting techniques, photosyntesis and all things related to how light and especially cannabis plants work together. After this I did some vigorious comparison of different options and ended up with the HLG 550. I´m not saying it´s the one and only, but seems to be a perfect match for my current growing situation. I started off with the LED hanging 60 cm from the plants, but after a couple of days, raised it to 75cm as I still noticed some heat stress signs. Had to realign my fan and the extractor tube as they were giving the plants hard time as I noticed some clawing leaves. I figured this was wind stress and the symptoms disappeared after realigning the air so I guess that was it. I decided to give the plants a break from LST for a couple of days as can be seen from the pictures. GROW DAY 19 (day 5 of wk 3) Added couple of pictures of the new setup with the HLG 550 and reworked airflow. Continued with the LST today and I'd say it´s working nicely. Increased watering after 4 days break. Gave 0,6l for each plant. Increased Grow and Heaven dosage for this watering, left Root-Juice out and added Bloom and Top-Max to the mix. The plants seems to be reacting favorably.

GROW DAY 22 (day 1 of wk 4) Had some heat issues in the tent, max day temperatures were around 30-32C, so I added a inline fan to the intake tube also. This helped to bring the day temperatures down to around 26C and the night temperature is around 16-17C thanks to the thermostat heater. Watered with 1l/plant. Drainage seems to be working, had around 2dl runoff, so I guess 0,6-0,8l will be enough water next time, after 3-4 days from now. GROW DAY 25 (day 4 of wk 4) Did some more LST to get some more light for the lower branches. Bent some of the plants and for some just moved the larger leaves out of the way. GROW DAY 26 (day 5 of wk 4) Watered with 0,6l/plant along with this weeks nutrients. Still had some drainage, so maybe 0,5l does the trick next time. I figured the humidity in the tent is too low partly due to the quite effective ventilation. Decided to order a humidifier and control units for it and for my inline fans. Looking forward on them to come so I can rig the up. GROW DAY 28 (day 7 of wk 4) Visited a local grow shop to get some supplies as I´m planning on trying for some chili growing on the side. I´ve grown chilies before, but nothing too serious. On that shop visit, I also got some Alc-a-mic, Activera and Leaf Coat, all from Biobizz. Going to apply the first two with tomorrows watering. As for the leaf coat, I already tried spraying it. You´re supposed to use it once/week to fend of pests and other nasty things which are after my precious plants. It formed a wax kinda film on the leaves with a glossy finish. Let´s see how it works out:) One plant is showing signs of a nutrient burn (my initial diagnosis). Seems like couple of leaves are goners, but otherwise it seems to be doing fine. Ps. When looking at todays pictures, I noticed signs of nitrogen toxicity on the leaves (clawing). Will leave Bio-Grow out of the mix when watering tomorrow.

GROW DAY 30 (day 2 of wk 5) Watering day, 0,6l/plant seems to be just the right amount at this point. I was planning on leaving Bio Grow out of the mix altogether as I noticed some nitrogen tox symptoms last week, but I ended up dialing it to 1 ml/l. Alg-A-Mic and Acti-Vera were new additions to the mix this week. Leaves are nice and shiny after spraying them with Leaf Coat. GROW DAY 31 (day 3 of wk 5) Did some more LST on the plants today and installed some new equipment in the tent. Added a humidifier with a control unit and set it on 60%. While I was at it, I added a control unit on the inline fans too, so now both the incoming and outgoing airflow are temperature controlled and the temp goal is around 25C. One reason I wanted the fans not to run at 100% all the time (except nights) was because I added a Boost Buddy CO2 bag hanging on the ceiling and didn´t want all that precious extra CO2 blown out of the tent right away:) GROW DAY 33 (day 5 of wk 5) Watering day, 0,6l/plant. Did some defoliation today. Nothing too drastic, just cleaning up some of the lower branches. One of the plants that started growing two stems right from the start is doing very fine and one of the stems looks almost like it was main-lined though it´s just LST done around weeks 4-5. GROW DAY 34 (day 6 of wk 5) I officially categorized this week as a flowering week 👍 Continued with the LST as some of the plants seemed too bushy and tight looking at the canopy and considering airflow and getting most light on the plants. I aimed to spread the branches and allow more light on the most prominent bud sites. GROW DAY 35 (day 7 of wk 5) Plants are on a growth spurt and filling up the grow space nicely. I´ve moved the pots around a bit when doing the LST to allow more even distribution of light. Moved the oscillating fan down to plant level to increase airflow under the canopy.

GROW DAY 36 (day 1 of wk 6) Another week starting at the garden.Nothing much going on today besides speayong with water and some additional LST.Mainly just moving some of the bigger leaves shadowing bud sites and bringing them on the same level with each other wherever possible. I started the LST quite late in the game in my opinion and therefore got quite varied plants.Couple of them have a clear one big main cola thing going on and some are more of a SoG structure.Imo in general it seems like a good harvest coming up:) GROW DAY 37 (day 2 of wk 6) Watered with 0,6l/plant, adjusted nutrients a bit by increasing Bio-Grow to 3ml/l. I moved the plants down on the floor as they´re bigger now and I have a properly adjustable light fixture. Earlier they were on top of boxes with with open bottoms to allow better drainage, but now when they are on the floor I´ve seemed to have hit some problems. Couple of the plants show signs of what I figured is overwatering due to poor drainage and subsequent nutrition lock. Leaves are drooping quite unhappily and turning yellowish. At least the drainage part should be it as they seemed better after I made the holes on the bottom of the pot larger and added pieces of wood under the pots to lift them little bit from the floor. I think I´ll water with plain water couple of times this week and see how the plants react. Most plants are darkish green, so this shouldn´t cause any problems nutritionally for the healthy plants. GROW DAY 38 (day 3 of wk 6) Added couple of pics to follow up on the recovery of the plants afftected by drainage problems. GROW DAY 39 (day 4 of wk 6) Took some pictures in normal room lighting of the plants that took the most damage from the drainage issue. I cut out some of the smaller and lower bud sites while I was at it to allow the plant to better focus energy on the upper parts. GROW DAY 40 (day 5 of wk 6) Couple of plants show a mix of symptoms I figured were due to overwatering with poor drainage.This seened to have caused a build up of nutes and maybe the PH is messed up too.Watered with plain water this time although I’m aware plants need to adjust a little interfering with growth but I guess this won’t hurt if I’ not making a habit of it. GROW DAY 41 (day 6 of wk 6) Some nice flowering going on.Some more LST to bring lights where it’s needed the most.Some of the plants still seem troubled. GROW DAY 42 (day 7 of wk 6) I seemed to have made an amateur mistake placing the pots in almost direct contact with the concrete floor.The root temperature has quite possibly been too low and caused part of the problems. Luckily most of the plants didn’t mind that much and I noticed an immediate change for the better with the problem plants too when I added insulation for the riits and lifted then higher from the floor level. Also made a foliar spray from Algamic (3ml/l) and Activera (1ml/l) and sprayed the plants all over not forgetting the undersides of the leaves.Plants seem to react positively.

GROW DAY 43 (day 1 of wk 7) Removed all LST strings today.Going to let the plants be for the most part of the week to avoid stress and let the problem plants recover as much as possible. GROW DAY 45 (day 3 of wk 7) It seems I let the soil dry out too much between watering days as many of the plants absorb water quite poorly.I dunked the pots which felt the lightest into water for 15 minutes.At least the pots felt heavier after this and the normal watering. Alsi did some drastic defoliation as I figured the lower leaves which were in quite bad shape were sucking the life out of the healthy parts. Sprayed with a mix of Alcamic and Activera (1ml/l each). GROW DAY 47 (day 5 of wk 7) The actions taken couple of days ago seem to have worked.The plants seem stronger and livelier. Watered the plants normally.Going away for the rest of the week so we’ll see how it’s looking at the start of week 8.

GROW DAY 51 (day 2 of wk 8) The garden seems to be thriving and the flowering progresses nicely.I think the plants are goung to finish flowering at various times so I’ll need to arrange a separate space for the 24h darkness period when we get there. Dunked the pots in water for 15 mins,but only those which felt unusually light.Watered all plants normally.Also cleaned the whole grow area while the plants were outside the tent. Ended up doing some LST to spread buds apart a little for maximum light exposure. GROW DAY 53 (day 4 of wk 8) Several plants are showing darler hairs and getting real fat and juicy.The significant height differences are evening out a bit at the moment.Sprayed the plants with 1ml/l Activera and Algamic.Adjusted the oscillating fan as I keep in mind the damgers of spraying dense blooms with too much moisture. LST from couple of days ago seemed to bring some positive boost for several plants. Lowered the moisture controller setting to 40% from the earlier 50%. Also took pictures from each plant in normal light to better evaluate where we at with the flowering.Looking good imo:) GROW DAY 54 (day 5 of wk 8) Seems like I have some uninvited guests in the garden.There’s i picture of one of the fellows in this days images,but I figured it’s a fungus gnat.This would fit together with the watering problems I had earlier.Also humidity in the tent got out of hands at one point.I let the top soil dry out properly,sprayed the plants with Leaf Coat and ordered some other products to combat the problem.

Grow day 57 (Day 1 of wk 9) Cut off two of the tallest tops to give more light for the lower flowers and also to bring the two more on the same height with the others. Grow day 58 (Day 2 of wk 9) Started flushing all the plants on preparation for the harvest in couple of weeks.The two plants topped yesterday along with one other plant will be harvested after two weeks,others a week after that. Watered with plain water with only Advanced Nutrients Piranha added to end the fungus gnat infestation.The three plants to be harvested earlier also got some Advanced Nutrients Flawless Finish.

Grow day 68 (Day 6 of wk 10) Happy to announce the gnat infestation is over with the help of couple neem oil sprayings and AN Piranha watering. Added individual pictures of all of the plants to show where we at. Moved three plants to be harvested tomorrow out from the tent to be kept in dark for 24 hours before cutting em down.