1st Grow! Dutch Passion Auto Orange Bud

Day 22: Continued to LST the ladies and gave them their first set of nutes, but kind of screwed that up. Last time I grew I used the old FF schedule from 15 years ago, so I had that schedule around for reference at the same time I was using their new schedule. One schedule uses Tbsp and the other Tsp which helped screw me up a bit. I accidently watered them with a 1-½ times strength solution instead of the intended ½ strength solution of Fox Farm Big Bloom not realizing my mistake till the watering was done. Thankfully I made this error with a fair light organic fertilizer so I decided to roll with it as flushing and stripping the soil seemed like it might cause more problems than it would solve. Time will tell. Still seeing severe curl on some early leaves, but they seem to grow out of it as the advance and I’m seeing very little curl on more mature leaves. I’ve investigated how others with these same lights run their setup and I’ve seen claims that others have run these lights at over 200 watts (with the same power supply as myself) while being able to have the plant touching the light panels without issue. While I’m slightly skeptical of this claim, I’m currently running mine at ~175 watts and this gives me some confidence that my lighting intensity is at a good level (~31,000 lux) and I should be able to further bump up the wattage once we get into the flowering stage. Day 23: There are no complaints from the ladies for yesterdays overfeeding as I’m seeing over 1-2cm of growth on every branch that was LST’d the previous day. The plan before the overdosing was to begin a cycle of feeding every other watering. There was a thought of modifying that schedule in the short term but the response I’m seeing says otherwise. I will go back to a ½ solution of FFBB and add in ¼ strength FF Grow Big for the next feeding. I have also began weighing the containers daily as to keep a keep an eye on their approximate moisture content. Using a scale, I have been able to maintain a similar amount of moisture in both 3-gal and 5-gal fabric containers by watering with like ratios of water to container size. This has allowed me to have 1 watering schedule for the entire grow. My assumption is that maintaining this schedule may become more challenging as primary source of moisture loss switches from soil evaporation to root consumption. My hope is that this weight data can help me determine and maintain a health amount of soil moisture. In practice this means lower volume watering (at a current rate of 8oz water/1gal soil) on a more frequent basis (currently at every 3 days, likely to move up to every 2 days this week) vs. the more common practice of watering till x amount of run-off. Humidity has been lowered to 60% as well so this will contribute to needing more frequent waterings. I also adjusted and LST’d several more branches on each plant. Beginning to think I mixed up my germinated peat pods. I noted in week 1 that I was growing each strain (Auto Blue Berry – Indica; Auto Orange Bud – Sativa) in both a 3 gal and 5 gal for comparison purposes. Well, both my 3-gal containers are short and stocky with very little stretch while both 5-gal containers are spreading out and stretching much further. This has me thinking both the 3-gal are the Auto Blueberry and the 5-gal are Auto Orange Bud as I don’t suspect container size could cause this much different this early in the grow. I’m going to give it more time before making that call and if I do, I will need to rearrange my photos for these two journals. Day 24: Weighed containers and they were dry enough to water again, pH’d cal-mag solution. Backed off the daily LST treatments, going down to every other day. Ladies are growing more vigorously than I imaged they would, I think they will be happy with some nutes in the next couple of days. I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather lately so haven’t been taking pictures like normal. Day 25: Vigorous growth continues to impress. The two 5-gal ladies continue to demonstrate a higher internodal growth rate than the two 3-gal ladies which makes LSTing the 5-gal ones is much easier than the other two. In a way its good all 4 aren’t turning out to be as big as the 5-gal ones as I think space could be an issue in a few weeks if they were. Weights taken. Day 26: Weighed the ladies tonight in anticipation that they would be ready for some H20. Came to find they were bone dry in only 48 hours, particularly the 3-gal containers. Going to have to plan on watering more frequently from here on out as growth seemed to slow a little today. I’ve been getting a little bit of burn on the leaves from watering & feeding as maybe noticeable in the pictures. Replaced the measuring cup I was using with a small watering can which should help with not burning too many more leaves. Fed them with ¼ dose GB and ½ dose BB. Day 27: Some more LST today, crossed my mind that perhaps even every other day is too often? Happy to hear feedback from the community on this or any other aspect of the grow. Day 28: I gave the ladies an early morning watering and lowered the humidity to 55%. Looks like we’ve reached the point where the humidifier won’t be necessary to maintain that level. Dropping below 50% is going to require use of a dehumidifier and I’m unsure what the impact of that will be on the temp in the room the tent is in. Once we switch from heat to A/C the temps will be easier to manage, but that’s a few months away yet. I’ve been messing with the fan setup a bit, trying to find the best way to get both oscillating fan setup so they are both moving air around the ladies. I have a set of cycle timers coming that will allow me to alternate which fan is blowing at any one time. Looking back over the pictures this week its I amazing to see how much these ladies have grown. Grow Summary: 4'x3'x6' 2 in 1 tent 250 watt full spectrum LED FFHF & FFOF soil w/FF Trio Dutch Passion autoflower genetics