First Grow with Mephisto Autos

Starting this log from week 2, which is when I started taking pictures. This is my first grow, so I've done everything pretty naively, but I'll record my missteps. For science. I have a 4x2 tent, and a 2 plant fallponic system from PA Hydroponics which has 13 gallon grow sites, and a 13 gallon reservoir outside of the tent. I bought a cheap LED on Amazon: Exlenvce 1200w. Everything else is standard ... fans, controllers, pumps (water & air), etc. I've had just the veg lights on for the first 2 weeks, and have turned on both now. I put about 10 gallons of RO water into the reservoir and applied the following nutrients: 30ml FloraGrow 30ml FloraMicro 30ml FloraBloom This resulted in about 250 ppm up from base measurement of 10ppm. After nutrients, I added another 15 gallons worth of hard tap water (400 ppm, 7.6ph). I added ph down until a ph of 6.2, and the resulting total ppm was 321. Midweek, the ppm had risen to the mid 400s, so I added 5 gallons of RO The seedlings took 2 days to sprout initial leaves, then about a week to find the bottom of the starter, which is when I put them (4) into the buckets (2 per bucket). I figured I might be able to train two sisters apart in those big buckets, but if not I can kill one (doubt it). I also expected some attrition, which happened with the Super Orange Haze. One spilt and dropped a root, but never managed to get out of the starter. Seeds started germination on Feb 22nd. Midweek, water had lowered visibly, so I added more hard tap, and about 25ml of Silica blast. Ph was back @ 6.2, and ppm around 450. Current state of affairs is: Water temp: 75.6 and 73.5 (two probes). Ph: 6.2 ppm: 456 UPDATE FOR 3/8 Reservoir change: - I drained the buckets, leaving just a little in the bottom that the pump couldn't get. Pulled out about 23 gallons. - I then added 25 gallons of RO water which started as ppm < 10, ph ~8. - The new water mixed with the remnants of the old water came out to ppm 32, ph ~6.2 (? will remeasure RO water next refill) temp: 68F. - I then did one half of the feeding regimen one nutrient at a time measuring the ppm change. My thinking was that I could always go up, but not easily back down in PPM, so start slow and maybe figure out how each nut impacts ppm. Here's exactly what I added and the changes: 1. FloraMicro: 45ml. ppm went from 32 -> 140 2. FloraGro: 60ml. ppm went from 140 -> 215 3. FloraBloom: 15ml. ppm went from 215 -> 240 4. CALiMAGic: 15ml. ppm went from 240 -> 285 5. Silica Blast: 10ml. ppm went from 285 -> 290 6. SuperThrive: 10ml. ppm remained 290 - I then added the same amounts of nutes in the same order with the final ppm coming to 560 and the ph @ 5.5. - I added ph up (~2.5ml) to get to a final ph of 6.

A lot happened over the week. I did a res change with freshly prepared nutrient solution. After 2 days, I added Orca (mycorrhizae), to see if I could encourage some better root growth. The results were disastrous! A few hours after adding the Orca, I noticed orange foam and root rot. I immediately pulled the plants from their buckets and rinsed their roots out. I went out and got Hydroguard and added 2ml/gal (~50ml). At this point, I figured my babies were goners as the root rot looked very serious to my newb eyes. Some of the grow experts here agreed, but I just couldn't pull the trigger. What can I say, these ladies are growing on me. Well, a few days later, and the root rot didn't seem to come back. I dosed with hydroguard again yesterday (Sunday, 16th) and refilled the res with RO water and nothing else. PPMs are steady @ 600. Now, why the root rot? I believe I made several mistakes, but obviously I can't be sure what the root cause was. Here are the things I know I did wrong: 1. I allowed the water temps to rise because of the LED and long light cycle. Water circulation hid this from me initially, as it spread the heating over days, but slowly temps rose enough to (obviously) allow fungal growth. 2. The res change may have stressed the roots and allowed fungus to take hold. Perhaps I should not res change until later next time (week 3/4). 3. I filled the system more than I think I should have. Some of the roots had been used to being in the air, and I may have drowned them providing plant material for nasties to feed on. 4. Adding the Orca seemed to be a trigger. I'm not fully versed on sterile vs non-sterile setups, and I think I committed a cardinal sin of mixing the two approaches. Some other things I did: 1. I got a HOBO monitor for heat and light and stuck it into a grow site bucket. It sits just below the surface of the water, and has been measuring temps pretty high (mid 70's) while a direct measure in the res shows temps around 68. It appears that heat from the lights is able to create a significant difference in temp in the top inch or two of the buckets. The light detection was used to test whether putting something between the plant and the clay pellets/basket would reduce the amount of light hitting the surface of the water. The difference was negligible. 2. I swapped out the purple LED I was using with a Spider Farmer SF-1000. Wow, what a difference! The last two days of data I uploaded as pictures to this diary show the temp impact. Before the swap, my ventilation wasn't able to keep the temp steady, so I'd see temps in the mid to low 80's after several hours of light cycle. With the new lights, I can easily hold the temp where I want it which is 77. The difference is stark in the temp chart, and I'm super pleased! Temperature in the bucket (under ~1 inch of water) also is measuring lower (low 70's). 3. I've ordered a small water chiller which is not yet arrived. 4. I've prepared freezer packs to drop into my res if necessary. Despite the good advice I've gotten, I think I'm going to see these ladies through until the end. I believe I've set myself up for ongoing struggles, but the ladies appear to have bounced back with a bunch of new and healthy looking growth. The outcome will be sub-optimal, but I think it's worth going end-to-end if only to get some experience in the later stages and to be sure my setup can handle smell/drying/etc.

Trying to stretch my RO by pulling water from the res and replacing it with RO to dilute. I'm then adding nutes up to around 600 PPM. This is clearly not a great long term plan as whatever the plants aren't eating will build up in my water, but desperate times ... If I can't get fresh RO by end of week, I think I'll have to do a res change with tap and leave out the CalMag. Can't let my girls become another victim of Corona. We'll see! The Cream de la Chem is just doing amazingly well. I've got two sharing one bucket, and they are just total bushes. I have no idea what I'm doing, so I'm just going with LST and not doing any defoliation. I don't know how to predict where bud sites will be, so I'm just going with the flow this time around. The Super Orange Haze, on the other hand, seems to have developed "the claw." Maybe it got too close to the light, or maybe this behavior is normal going into flower for these genetics? Both grow sites share a single res, so I'm feeling a little hamstrung. If I lower PPMs because I think the SOH is nitrogen burned, then will I give my CdlC's nitrogen deficiency? I feel like I should be ramping up the food on the CdlC's because they're really thriving. Next grow, I'll stick with one strain in both grow sites to hopefully avoid this sort of conflict between my girls. I let my dehumidifier fill up, which explains part of the rapid rise in humidity in the tent. I believe, however, that the larger leaf space means more respiration which gives me an idea! I wonder if I can find a way to measure respiration by measuring how much water is in my dehumidifier. I would need the dehumidifier to work at a regular rate for this to give meaningful data. It's something maybe I'll setup for the next grow. I think we're starting flowering, but what the hell do I know  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

My good friend convinced me that trimming and training are paramount, so I've started with slowly defoliating the Creme de la Chems to try and get to lollipop status. They're just starting to flower, so I figured I could get away with a more aggressive approach. Because I failed to train these girls early, I'm stuck dealing with a little rain forest. What I've tried to do is trace each flower topped stalk up from the base, and trim away from the bottom up. 1/3 of the way up per day. I've now got a thick canopy, and I've been trying to just use leaf tucking and manual manipulation every few hours in order to keep the different height flowering sites in direct light. These ladies have really been thriving, and it's been such a joy to watch them grow! I like having two plants in one net pot letting them grow wild, but I think in my next grow I'll keep it to one per pot and train better from the start. As for the Super Orange Haze ... not as good. I attempted to pull the main branch over to train her to some empty space, but I was too aggressive and ended up popping her head off :(. First grow, first disaster. I took the head and stripped her/coated in clonex and pushed her into some potting soil just to see what would happen. There hasn't been enough foliage to really make me want to do any trimming, I've just tried to tie the stalks off to train them apart. I'm really sad about my mistake decapitation, but she seems to be doing well still. She's probably week 2 of flower based on others' journals. I changed the water midway through the week (which is when the videos were taken). I drained most of the water out, but roots prevented me from getting the last few gallons. When I refilled the res with RO, I measured the PPM at around 200. I have to assume that remaining nutrient was completely unbalanced leftovers, so feeding will have to just have to be experimental. My approach has been to give around 1:1 Gro vs Bloom and Micro every 2-3 days when I refill with RO. I want to build my PPM up to 1000, but slowly so that I can detect if I hit a ceiling first. It's hard to measure how much food is in the water based on PPM. CalMag is what drives it mostly, so I've been using CalMag as a sort of measuring stick. I keep the CalMag pegged to the Bloom food, but I know it's only good for initial dosing. I can't assume the plants are eating CalMag in the same proportion as anything else :(. If anyone has a line on cheap lab testing ... hit me up. I'd love to be able to test a few hundred samples at a time for NPK and trace so that I can tell (even if post facto) what was going on.

This week, I successfully raised the PPMs to around 1000 by slowly increasing about 50PPM per day. The ladies aren't showing any signs of nutrient burn yet, so I think I will hold steady here until my next res change (next weekend). I've introduced a few new nutrients: Diamond Nectar and Flower Fuel, in the last few days. What will that do? Who the hell knows, but we're going to find out! Roots are a little darker than before, but I think (hope) that's just staining from the increased nutes. The 2x Creme de la Chem are definitely at the start of their flower, and I'm pretty worried at their height. She's grown nearly a foot in the last week! My light is already at the top of the tent, and I've shown that I suck at bending main stalks over (see: last week when I decapitated the SOH). Nevertheless, I slightly bent the tallest stalk, and tied her down. So far, so good. I'm only 10in or so away from the lights, so I'm on the lookout for praying leaves and light bleaching. These ladies seem to have taken well to the defoliation I've done, but still the canopy is super dense, and I'm not too sure how to choose what to defoliate on the top. What I've been doing is looking up from the bottom of the ladies and clipping any fanning leaves that look dark (as in, light not shining through them). Other than that, I've been leaf tucking to try and keep all bud sites directly exposed to the light. The Super Orange Haze seems to have stopped stretching (thankfully!), and is full on working on buds. There are bud sites everywhere, and she's spindly enough that even the lower bud sites are getting decent light. I haven't done much defoliation or LST on her since last week's disaster, and as far as I can tell she's thriving.

Too much going on for a detailed update, but here are the highlights: Did a res change on 12th. Was thorough in removing all of the old water, and flushed out the roots of both grow sites until the water ran clear. Filled with RO and did nutes until ~900 PPM. Creme de la Chem just kept stretching, got into the light. I re-worked the tent today, and now they have like 4 inches of space... definitely sub-optimal. I've been trying various techniques on different stalks to see if anything works ... super cropping, topped off some smaller bud sites, and folding over as much as I think they can take. She just won't stop stretching! Finally seeing decent pistils on her, though, so maybe she's almost done. Going to be a lot of toasted and light bleached buds on these two beasts :(. SOH hasn't been getting much taller at all, just adding more and more pistils. I'm waiting for her to start fattening up, and excited to see what she produces. As you can see from underwater temps, I've been doing battle with the water temp fighting to keep it under 72F. I'm rotating ice packs, and it's annoying AF. When this grow is over, I will be adding insulation to the outside of my buckets. I've learned so much already ... my next grow will be much much smoother. For now, it's just a matter of trying to cope with my early mistakes 😂.

Super Orange Haze: This beauty really seems to be doing quite well. The buds are starting to fatten up, and there's frost everywhere. Some orange pistils, but it's few and far inbetween at this point. I was increasingly aggressive with pruning this week chopping off flower producing stalks that looked like they weren't fattening up like the others in an attempt to get this thing down to 6-10 main colas. She seems to be handling it like a champ, and I think at this point I'm done with pruning until it comes time for harvest with the exception of the occasional fan leaf blocking a bud site. As a total newbie, I'm thinking we're about 3-4 weeks from harvest, and I can hardly wait! She smells like candy, and when I prune her scent gets all over my hands and I smell it for hours later. I hope she tastes 1/10th of how amazing she smells! Creme de la Chem: Well, let this be a lesson to everyone about the importance of early pruning and training. She's a plain old mess, and she's gotten into the lights. I've been bending stalks over which results in super cropping, and I've been tangling them all together sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident. I'm just trying everything I can think of to keep her from roasting, but nothing is working. She's just doomed to be a complete and unmanageable mess. She's producing flowers, and appears to be about 2 weeks behind the Super Orange Haze. I'm hoping to just get 4 or 5 good colas that don't end up bleached and withered by the lights at this point. My next grow will be way more controlled! RDWC stuff: I swapped her water out last week, so still running with what I've got at the moment. I'm out of RO, so I've been adding hard tap water when they need a top off and then nutrients in the ratios listed until PPM is at around 1000-1100. I've been rotating in ice packs and trying a few other things like added insulation to the top of my grow sites in an effort to keep water temps under 70 at all times. I've experienced limited success in this as you can see by the temperature chart for underwater. The big dip you see early in the week is the reservoir change I did (last week's update was late, not on Sunday like normal).

Creme de la Chem: Well, I got sick of her unruly jungle nature which led to my just hacking away all of the tangled underbrush which included a bunch of early nodes. Even with this drastic step, and an effort to super crop and tie down what I left alive, she's still right back into the lights. She's been stretching from day one without any quit. At this point, I'm just resigned to her growing in the light, and I'm just trying to keep an eye out for any male flowers from all of the stress. If I get anything smokable from her, I'll consider it a success :(. Super Orange Haze: Based on what happened to her sister, I think accidentally topping her back in week 8 may have saved her life. She looks great to this amateur's eyes. Every day, her flowers get thicker and stack up more. She has trichomes everywhere, and continues to pop out new pistils. Some pistils are going orange, but no sign of amber trichs yet. I'm trying to decide when to start flushing her. I saw a diary posted to a forum that had her harvest around day 90, and I've seen some that have her harvesting around day 70. So, I think if I want to do a full week of flush and then a few days of darkness, I can start that process on day 70 (4 days from now) and have it get done right around in the middle of the known harvest range. I can shave off the dark days if I need to speed things up, and I can hold off on them if I need to slow things down.

I changed the water to straight RO midweek, and gave them a few days running clean. I was thinking of flushing and chopping, but some good advice convinced me to give them a little more food (up to 150ppm) and re-evaluate in another week/week and a half. I'm seeing isolated clear looking ambers and pockets of clears, so it seems like the only thing not really indicating that we're starting to ripen are the pistils which are just slooooowly going orange and the lack of any discoloration on the fans. Nothing about this grow has been easy on the ladies, so this might just be a case of me stressing the girls to the point of getting crazy. If I were a father, they'd be on the pole.

Just harvested, so more to come on the strain itself once I get a chance to smoke her. This was my first grow, so take it with a grain of salt. She had root rot early on, and she got it early than the CDLC that was sharing a reservoir with her. She healed more slowly, and throughout the grow her roots were more stained and smaller than her CDLC partner. She would wilt at times with water and temp changes while the CDLC didn't notice a thing. As a beginner, I can't say for sure ... but either she's a bit finicky, or the CLDC is a super stable champ. One way or the other, she sustained through a long list of mistakes I made: 1. Didn't top her. 2. Accidentally broke off her main cola several weeks into flower 3. Let her get into the lights ... like ... within 6 inches. Enough to burn the tip of her main cola. 4. I trimmed flowering nodes late into the flower (trying to cut future larf). 5. Used shitty plant ties that dug into her branches She never showed any male flowers, she never stopped thriving, and at the end of the day she produced 850g wet weight. Despite my best efforts, she just never slowed down. I hope to get my hands on these genetics again so that I can grow her right and see what I can truly get with even a little bit skill! She smelled lovely throughout her flower. Trimming her was addictive, as the juice left my hands smelling like skittles for hours. Later in her flower, she became more pungent ... maybe a little cheesy? Her trichome progression was confusing for me, but maybe it was the stress and distance from the lights? At no point could I say that all were cloudy, but there were large patches of the plants where that was true. The ambering was similarly patchy. Where they showed up, they spread. _rapidly_ in week 11. I want a nice energetic smoke, so I was attempting to get as few ambers as possible. Growers beware ... her ambers are clear and you have about 2 weeks once they start showing up on the sugars. The 850g wet haul completely overloaded my standard size Herbsnow dryer. I had to remove one tray so I could fit the 4 fat colas, and stuff the other 3 layers to the max and was left with enough to carpet about 4 sq feet of cardboard box. Damn! I can't wait for the dry and cure, and I'll surely be back to update these notes! ***UPDATE 1*** Dried weight overall ended up at ~170g of which I kept 68g for smoking. The other 100g, I soaked in alcohol and then distilled down to about 1 ounce of dark brown nasty decarbed "tincture." I use those quotes because this first attempt was pretty bad, but it works. I dried the nugs in a MyHerbsNow dryer, and I'm not sure if I like it or not. They dried way too quickly... around 3 days to be crispy on the outside. I allowed them to puff back out just sitting in an open jar, and I've been doing the curing thing ever since (about 1.5wks curing, 2 weeks since harvest). Taste test still isn't on the table, as the smoke is too harsh. I'll update again in maybe 2-4 weeks once it's truly smokable.

Quick update just on the Creme de la Chem that I've totally butchered. She's still in the lights. Still bumping her heads on the tent in every direction. I'm actually pretty excited about her, even with all of these mistakes. I've basically stopped feeding her, and I let the water in the res get very low (half full), and I'm planning on running her in the dark for the next maybe 3-4 days. Interesting tidbits ... 1. She's showing colors on her buds, deep purple. This started up before the fans started dying off. 2. Fans changing color and dying is a mix of maturity, nutrient drop, and in some cases flat out light stress. Still, cool to see. 3. One cola has managed to grow totally out of site out of direct lights for weeks now. It's produced a "ghost nug" that's super light yellow/green. This has me super interested, because I still see trichs! What if I could induce this ghost nug status while still keeping decent bud size? Could that mean less chlorophyll to wait on during drying/curing?

Just jarred up for the cure, and these flowers are already top 10 favorite all time. It's just full of chemical funk, and makes me high like I was back in HS. Holy shit. I can't say enough good things about the terp profile on this stuff. I can barely describe it in the state it's put my mind at the moment, wow. I wish I had treated her well during the grow, but I'm still learning. I will 100% be growing these genetics again. Given how good it is with my newbie skills, I can hardly imagine what it'll be like when I know what I'm doing. I grew two ladies in one 13 gallon RDWC bucket. Even sharing root space, they outgrew my tent and I spent all of her flower trying to save the run. Not much more I can write at the moment other than 10/10 wow.