Canuk Pineapple Express Coco [2nd Grow]

December 25th, Day 0 - Seed put in water and stored in a dark spot. Will give it about 14-24 hours before moving to a wet paper towel, or may just drop it in the coco/perlite mix then. We'll see. December 26th, Day 1 - I put the seed ~1/4th of an inch into the coco/perlite mix. Watered 1-2 times a day, lightly, with RO water (no PH, no nutes) just so I can keep that top layer around the seed moist. I also used half of a water bottle to create a humidity dome around the seed area. December 29th, Day 4 - Seedling pops up above the coco/perlite mix. I have dialed back the watering (once a day) and will just mist with some tap water on the plant (and inside the water bottle dome) a few times per day. Waiting a couple more days until I begin the light 200ppm/0.4EC seedling feed with GH trio, calmag, nectar formula from CocoforCannabis.com December 31st, Day 6 - Started small 200ppm waterings twice a day. Once at light on, once close to bed time. January 1st, Day 7 - Ending the week with the same twice a day waterings. Sometimes giving it a light mist of RO water with calmag. Sometimes putting a dome over it for an hour or so to help raise humidity (as my tent humidity levels are ranging from 30% to 45% right now in the winter). I will slowly begin raising the EC to 1.0 during week 2. Still using that first full strength gallon of seedling nutes (1.0 EC that I diluted part of it to 0.4 for this week) that I made up.

Not much to report so far. Started week 2 and have slowly been increasing the strength of the nutrient solution from 200PPM/0.4EC to full 1.1EC early veg formula. So far this week it has received two fertigations per day with one being on the heavy side to keep the overall medium somewhat moist. I am stretching out the waterings though to encourage root growth. Jan 4th, Day 10 - Fed at 0.6 and 0.8 EC today (larger one at night) and have begun to see the second set of true leaves forming too. Jan 5th, Day 11 - Starting full 1.0 EC feeding today (gave a light feed in the morning and will give a larger one later tonight since the medium was moist). Jan 6th, Day 12 - Continuing full EC feeding, measured out closer to 0.85 EC instead of 1.0, but I'm also not using Dr. Coco's SM-90, or H2O2/Hydroguard (I may use hydroguard later in the grow). So, for now, I'm only using GH's Flora trio, CalMag, Silica (will start in week 2), and Diamond Nectar. I suspect this will keep my EC low compared to the published nutrient schedule. Will inquire later. Jan 7th, Day 14 - Growth continues smoothly. Wish I could get the humidity levels up higher but it is the winter time and I don't have a humidifier. Still feeding the same nutrients from the first full strength batch I started feeding it.

Jan 9th - Day 15 - Today I'm starting the "early veg" nutrient formula from Dr. Coco's high-frequency fertigation schedule on cocoforcanabis.com. Measured this gallon's PPM at 556 this morning with an EC of 1.156 after pHing it to 5.9-6.0. Gave her a good watering with the new batch of nutrients this morning and throughout the day I've given smaller doses (shot glass size) throughout the day at the trunk/root area. Will continue with the bigger feedings in the AM and PM time (to moisten up the whole coco/perlite mix) with smaller feedings at the base of the plant throughout the day while I work. Jan16th - Day 21 - There hasn't been much to talk about this week. She is growing like crazy as I've been feeding her multiple times a day following the nutrient formula mentioned earlier. I did, however, switch to the week 2 of veg formula two days early (started it on day 20) as I only had 2 days left in the week and didn't want to mix up a whole back just for that. So since Day 20, I have been using Dr. Coco's 'mid veg' ratio. This will continue throughout the next week as well.

Jan 16th - Day 22 - We are 22 days from me dunking this seed in water and the plant is growing very quickly. Fan leaves are big, the first 5-finger fan leaf it grew has already turned into a 7-finger leaf. The plant is working on developing its 4th node right now and I'm hoping that it has grown enough by the end of this week to be topped for the first time. We will have to wait and see though. Just like last week, I don't expect much to happen or change this week. I will continue feeding the mid-veg formula multiple times per day and continue to watch the health of the plant. Jan 17th - Day 23 - I went in and counted how many nodes I was at and saw I had established 4 and the plant was working on the 5th. My plan his time around was to top right above the 4th node so I did that. I also chose to take off the little side branches down here as the leaves were getting big and touching the coco. With the big fan leaves covering the plant, it was also making the inner part very humid. These little branches were taken off of nodes 1 and 2 and am leaving the ones from nodes 3 and 4. Jan 20th - Day 26 - I started to tie down the first two sets of actual branches (not the fan leaves) very lightly with some plant ties. I had begun to push down the fan leaf branches to help this but am seeing fan leaves laying on top of each other. So I have also cut the bottom two fan leaves from the plant to help with the airflow. I only cut two fan leaves off, will wait until the other branches grow in before cutting off the other two big fan leaves that are covering the top of the pot. I am seeing a bit of clawing in some leaf tips. Research says this is from wind damage or nitrogen toxicity (at least those are the two common reasons). It's not bad, just the tips of a few, but I think it's from the humidity in the tent being so low. It's winter and I don't own a humidifier so temperatures have been in the 75 to 80F range with humidity typically being in the upper 30s but sometimes I can get it into the upper 50s by slowing down the exhaust fan. This low humidity is just temporary in my region (due to winter) so I'm not going to buy a humidifier just yet. I will be training these 4 branches to grow sideways to help fill out the tent space. After cutting, I'm starting to regret taking the side leaves from the second node though. That would have given me 6 branches to train. . .but I do have a small grow space so this may be best. Jan 21st - Day 27 - I have continued to slowly train/tie-down these 4 side branches. I started with the bottom 2 yesterday and then did the top 2 today. Plant ties are not tied tight. Instead, they are just loosely anchored to the pot. When I water, I try to remember to push down the branches and fan leaf stems as they naturally grow up. The goal is to get the base of these growing horizontally before they wooden up and become too stiff to train. I had a branch of a plant last round that snapped and needed to be held together with tape while it healed. So I'm trying to avoid that this time around. Jan 22nd - Day 28 - We're ending week 2 of veg on a high note with a healthy plant and some progress. I topped the plant this week and begun to train the 4 core side branches as well. Manually at first, a few times a day, by pressing down on the branches with my fingers. And then by tieing them down with some plant ties that I have leftover from the last grow. I also removed one of the bigger fan leaves late this week. Mainly to just help with watering (I was tired of having to lift up the fan leaves just to water it) but also to help get some airflow to the lower part of the plant. I will be taking this part slow and likely taking off another fan leaf every other day or so until those big 4 leaves that are left are gone. I want the plant to focus on growing the 4 side branches and removing these bigger fan leaves also helps give them room to be tied down and grow outward. I'm just focusing on keeping these branches growing horizontally right now (and throughout next week) before they wooden up and get too difficult to train.

Jan 23rd - Day 29 from Seed - I clipped off another low fan leaf today. Marking the second leaf I have removed (minus the topping I did). I will continue to feed as I have and focusing on keeping these 4 side branches tied down so they grow as straight outward as possible. I will finish up the rest of the mid-veg nutrients I have left in my sprayer tank (little less than half a gallon) and then switch to Dr. Coco's late-veg nutrient solution. I will go ahead and mix that up today and then pH it tomorrow when I pour some into the sprayer tank. The formula calls for an EC of 1.25 and PPM of 625, but that's with H2O2/Hydroguard, RapidStart, SM-90, and Diamond Nectar. I'm not using H2O2, RapidStart, or SM-90 so mine will be much lower (like last week). I am getting some Hydroguard in but that's mainly for Kratky experiments I'm working on. My EC right now seems to be around 1.1. Jan 24th - Day 30 - I clipped another big fan leaf today to help with branch training. I added another plant tie to one of the 4 side branches that I'm training as it had grown out to the point where it was growing up again. The other side didn't need another tie, for some reason, so I just repositioned the original plant tie on that side so that it's holding down a better part of the branch. Will likely give the top two branches a couple more days of growth before I reposition its plant ties. But we'll see. Nothing is set in stone. I also mixed a batch of "late veg" nutes, as mentioned earlier, which measured out to 573PPM and 1.21EC after I added enough diluted pH Down to bring its pH to 5.7 - 5.8. This will likely go up a couple of points over the next few days (at least that's how things typically are). I'll recheck again in a few days but as long as it's between 5.5 and 6.5 then I'm happy with it. Naturally, I always try to target 5.8 to 6.2 for my coco grows. Jan 25th - Day 31 - I ended up clipping the other two big fan leaves today to help with branch training (easier to train branches when big leaves aren't in the way). I also noticed a bit of tip burn during its last watering yesterday so I poured a bit of RO water into my current batch of nutrients. I didn't measure anything out, just poured some in there to drop its EC a bit. Again, I'm just focusing on keeping the plant healthy right now while carefully training its side branches to grow horizontally. I've noticed it is times like this, and during the middle of flower that the plant really tests your patience. At least for me (as I would say I can be impatient at times). Jan 27th - Day 33 - I tied a branch down too tight and during the night and into the next morning the growth ended up snapping the branch. This brings me down to 3 core branches but I will be attempting to train two other branches in the direction of the broken branch. All in hopes that I don't leave out any space above the pot that could be filled in by buds. Jan 29th - Day 35 - Trying to be more careful with the rest of the branch training. I'm wondering if pinching the branches until they crunch (some call it supercropping, others call it chiropractic training) will help with horizontal branch training and preventing them from snapping like it did. I will be researching this later. There really isn't much else to write about. All I'm doing is watering multiple times a day, watching the plant ties/branches and trying to get these branches trained to grow outward before growing up.

Jan 30th - Day 36 - Today begins week 6 from seed. This is about the 4th week of veg and I'm expecting plant training to be wrapped up either this week or the next. We will see.