First Grow Jack Herer

Still germinating but set up and ready to go.

I'm not sure why but whatever I put in the strain gets changed to a Dr Krippling Jack Herer Auto, it should be GHS Jack Herer Auto. I am growing a Dr Krippling Chocolate Orange alongside which is in my other diary. Well, my first germination didn't go to plan. After a week in soil pellets in the airing cupboard something wasn't right so I dug them out and found that they weren't doing anything. I soaked new seeds for 24hours, placed them in kitchen roll in a plastic tub in the airing cupboard and in a couple of days they had roots. I carefully moved them to soil pellets (one root was bout 2.5cm) and put them in their final pots (XL Auto Pots as they're not in the most accessible place and I want to make sure they don't dry out). They've been there a couple of days now and they seem to be sprouting nicely... I guess only time will tell! I've got them in the tent with the extractor fan off most of the time to maintain humidity of between 60 and 80%. I've got a tube heater nest to the pots to keep them warm and a larger heater maintaining general warmth with a thermostat set to 25C. Lights are on 24 hours at the moment at and are around 24" from the top of the pots. Exciting times for my first grow... fingers crossed!

Jack (feels odd calling a girl Jack!) has been growing well but not without raising some concerns. The leaves are a coming out mottled and some have started to curl a little at the edges and I'm not sure what's causing it. One thought I had was that she was closer to the air inlet at the bottom of the tent and that could be getting a blast of cold air when the extractor comes on in the morning. I've a had a bit of a shuffle around and brought her into the middle of the tent. Other than that she's growing well, if anything faster than the Chocoloate Orange which is in the same tent. She's got a really nice grapefruit smell at the moment which is really appealing. The photo was taken earlier this week, the leaves still have curl gut growth has continued, if I'm happy that there isn't a major issue I'll start LST next week.

So we're at Week 3 (ignoring the first week which is when the first seeds didn't germinate). Jack has been growing well but there's still a little bit of leaf curl, given the rate of growth I'm not concerned about it any more and she seems to be happy with her conditions. I've started a bit of very light stress training (VLST???) mostly just to move some of the large fan leaves to get some light to the growth below. I've been half tempted to remove some of the larger leaves but I've decided to leave them for now. She's really squat which suits me well given that the height I have to work with is pretty limited, I'm a little worried as to what that's going to mean when she starts to flower and whether it's going to cause issues with mould - I have a dehumidifer standing by so hopefully I can solve potential problems early on. Fingers crossed for some signs of flowering starting by next week! Short update - I manages to snap a branch at the node whilst doing some training. I pulled the branch back towards the stem with wire and it seems fine after 24 hours, fingers crossed I got away with it! I've started giving a very small amount of Plant Magic Oldtimer Grow - I'll probably only give a couple of doses before moving on to Bloom. Because I'm using Autopots I'm feeding directly and only giving about 500ml of extra water with nutes every couple of days.

As expected she's started to show some good signs of flowering, hopefully we're about half way to harvest now - I've set a target date of the 6th of June, no idea how that will pan out but we'll give it a go! I've continued with a little bit of LST and tucking but I'm thinking I'll have to do some defoliation just to open out the plant for both light penetration and air circulation (opinions and advice on this would be welcome). My humidity had been really high at night because of having to turn off the extractor fan due to noise. This week I managed to sort out the fan so that it's pretty much silent, my issue was vibration of the fan unit rather than air noise - if anyone's having similar problems get in touch and I'll try to give you some tips. I also removed the Autopots reservoir from the tent - I'd initially put it in there because I was worried about leaks but also thought that the water would get nice and warm so the roots wouldn't get shocked. Now that it's out I have a bit more room in the tent for my two growing girls (see my Chocolate Orange diary too). My humidity is still a little higher than I'd like so I'll be trying to sort that out this week too. The plant is looking healthy with around 12 main bud sites, nice and stocky and the LST has ensured that she's not too tall - I think we'll finish the grow without height issues. In terms of nutrients I've stuck to my plan, she had a couple of feeds of grow before I moved on to Plant Magic Oldtimer Bloom.

Lots of growth this week and working to solve the humidity issues - Jack had a trim! I think it's probably because of the size of my pots but these girls just won't stop growing! I bit the bullet and did some light defoliation on Jack this week - it didn't seem to phase her at all so I'm a bit more confident about going further. I decided to giver her a bit of a trim, mostly the lower fan leaves. It was because she was so dense and tucking the leaves wasn't really working out, she bounced back fine so now I'm thinking of giving her a bigger trim - not sure I've got the guts though! I've kept feeding her a little bloom every couple of days, not sure if it's helping with her size and density but I don't really want to stop. Flowers are developing but not as quickly as those on the Chocolate Orange, Jack doesn't smell quite as much as her any more either. To fix the humidity issues I diverted the extraction duct to another room which seems to have made a big difference, RH is now consistently under 57% and usually around 55% - still not ideal but I don't think I'll get it much lower. I've moved the fan so that there's plenty of air moving over the canopy - hopefully enough to keep away the mould as the grow progresses.