1st Space Bucket-Blue Widow (probably)

JKwonTheChef Under a cut plastic bottle to raise humidity. Outside for first 6 hours (other plants flowering, plus it's our "high usage" electricity time) then inside for the next 12.

JKwonTheChef When I went to transplant from 2nd to third pot I had an issue with there not being enough root ball developed in soil that's much looser than I'm used to. Long story short, it was struggle and she (hopefully!) was a little beat up in the process which slowed some of the growth.

JKwonTheChef Overwatered the past week, ended up with a weird node worth of leaves. A bit of light/wind/nutrient? burn on the tips, pulled the light up and dimmed it a bit and changed fan to be on less time during day and facing away from plants. Watered without nutrients.

JKwonTheChef Vigorous growth with a little bit of yellowing on the tips of some of the leaves, especially the new growth. Will be taking the shelf out and adding the last bucket to keep the lights up as high as possible, just gonna keep them on lower for now though. Next go round I will be removing mylar and just spray painting the insides white. Grew to 7th and topped at 4th node to be safe and I didn't want to keep the twisted leaves as only source of photosynthesis until the new nodes grow out. Following Nebula's Manifold guide to see how it all works out - might not . After the overwatering the growth was stunted and I'm a little further behind than I should be, but she (please!) will be strong when she recovers at least.

JKwonTheChef Doing pretty well, still getting the watering down proper. Training her across the initial large fan leaves until the 4th node comes out farther so I can top them there and remove the 2nd node, leaving me with 8 colas as Nebula's Manifold describes. I am not sure how people grow in the 5 gallon Space Buckets, as mine is overfilling its space in 20 gallon Brute trash cans. I will find out if this was just good practice or not soon enough, I think I planted her around the 23rd of March. 3/1/20 Went ahead and topped to the 3rd node and removed the growth from the 2nd node as she went ahead and grew pretty quick over the past few days! I let her dry out a bit more after the last watering about 4 or 5 days ago, which was just plain water as the tips started to look like they got a bit of nutrient burn. Still only feeding at half of what Fox Farms recommends for their own soil, which I would assume has run dry of nutrients after all this time but maybe not. Made sure to get a small amount of runoff so there is not a nutrient buildup and the pH has tested around 6-6.2 consistently.

JKwonTheChef Still training, watering, defoliating when necessary. Seem to be doing better about when I'm watering and not using too many nutrients, though I amended with a soil and earthworm castings combination which could screw it all up again!

JKwonTheChef Another week and she (🤞) is still going strong and adjusting to the torture well enough. Seems the pest(s) has had its fill for the moment, unless the earthworm castings had something to do with it. Bought a few products (neem, diatomaceous earth) to mitigate them as needed if they decide to come back hungrier, or bring their friends! Switched to all coated wires as she is growing too hard for the sharp-edged ties that are cutting into the stems, and tied her down one last time before switching to flower next week hopefully. The longer branches on the sides are sprouting their sixth node and the end ones are at their fifth, plus 2 months is too long already without knowing. I've also grown a little impatient and need to get this grow in the bag so I can make adjustments to the setup and most importantly...get to trying all these other seeds I bought out. At least I know they'll be female in my single plant setup!

JKwonTheChef Tamed this wild beast before switching her to flower today. It's been around 60 days since sprouting and I must know what I'm dealing with! Also, if it doubles or triples in size, I'm worried about my grow light being too close/strong; though they claim the lights are suitable 18-24" I have my reservations. One node on one of the stems has droopy leaves that are curling under and the tips are pointing down (the tips make it look like nitrogen toxicity and not overwatering, though I've been prone to the latter), but none of the rest of the plant seems to have that problem. It's not an end node either, which I worry about being too close to the sides and the reflective mylar. I will be watering without nutrients this week, so after that I will see what happens. Maybe I can just remove the one node if it worsens and the rest stays healthy.

JKwonTheChef It looks like she's going to be a she! I don't know why I didn't take more pictures, but I will post some more tomorrow. Had to get a dehumidifier as summer is coming around and it will be getting more humid in the garage and I don't need bud rot. Did some trimming of the less-healthy looking and shorter/slow growing veg and nodes, especially the ones already growing into the other nodes. She's very bushy so I want to make sure there's plenty of room for air to flow through the inside of the plant.

JKwonTheChef HUGE scare yesterday: the night before had been 16% humidity in my area as opposed to the 70%+ it had been this girl's whole life. The humidity in my buckets dropped to into the 30s even after I had just watered her, which I've learned is not okay for 8 hours! Crispy, droopy leaves that looked a lot like overwatering but I measure the water used and it was the usual amount, so I have to assume it was the one drastic change. Thankfully she's looking a lot better after a day with the humidifier on, but she didn't grow a ton overnight like she has been so a bit of a setback. I didn't take any pics of when I first saw her - I just panicked, closed it and hooked the humidifier back up to hope! - so the last six are after a bit of recovery, but it was bad.

JKwonTheChef Gave her a good flush after the problem with the nutrients and she is doing well again, though I'm sure she'd be better off without all that. While my PPM was a bit high after testing runoff, the PH was running low so the scare was probably due to a nutrient lockout if anything. She's getting back on her way and the trichomes are starting to spread across the top leaves - super excited!

JKwonTheChef She's looking much better! Did a last significant defoliation of most of the large fan leaves, some of the lower growth as well. I will continue to lightly defoliate throughout flower and remove some of the lower leaves/nodes that show they can't absorb enough light even after clearing all this room. Runoff PH and PPM are still low after flushing her but it is rising steadily each feeding; and clearly something it's working better than before! Trying out a super low dose of foliar spray as well so there is some supplementation while the root PH problems persist. Staked some of the stalks so they aren't crowding each other - the weather has been rather gloomy and it isn't helping the humidity issues I already face in a garage. Plus I don't think some of them have thickened enough, likely due to the hiccup in growth. Got the starter box of Fox Farm nutrients in so I used the Sledgehammer to flush her one time since my runoff PH is still coming out lower than I'd expect. Watered once again with the regular nutrients before giving her all the new stuff in the next go around! Added some pics from my nice camera.

JKwonTheChef Pretty much just going through the motions at this point. Watered for the first time with the new nutrients, still didn't use the full amount but I will after the next water-only feeding. PH is still low in the runoff, looking around 5.5 at last watering with a 6.25 reading. As far as I have read it shouldn't be dropping that much! She seems to love the foliar nutrient spray as well so that's good. Going to take a few more of the prettier pictures this weekend. I also ordered a tent because the bucket will be going elsewhere to do autos after I get a nice quantum board, probably going to go HLG as I've read good things!

JKwonTheChef Still doing her thing and growing - buds are coming together nicely and stacking up a bit. Beautiful berry smell and trichomes galore! I have been feeding her nothing but high-PHed (7.2+) water and the runoff PH is rising very slowly while the PPM is lowering - looking at around 5.35 PH today. As long as she's not dying I am not complaining, and now I know where I have messed up for the next grow - got my 2'x4' and a couple HLG 130w quantum boards will be delivered next week to take care of the photos. This bucket grow will be moved to a different room and reserved for my autos!

JKwonTheChef At least the top 1/3 of the buds are 90-100% darkened and curled in hairs and there are a few amber trichomes here and there. Her PPM was getting rather high even though I was just feeding her tap water - I probably haven't been giving her enough water at a time from what I've been reading - so I flushed her down to a little over my tap water's ppm. I'm not big into the couch-lock high so I am thinking of taking the top buds with the amber trichomes off soon. I will probably get my hands on some RO soon for a last flush and once the soil dries up I'll pluck the top buds off and leave the rest of them that have a good/large amount of white pistils left. Hopefully they will fatten up and mature a bit and it won't just kill the girl!

JKwonTheChef Been a little over a week since I chopped the top half. I flushed her with almost five gallons of RO in an attempt to get the PPM down (my tap water is over 400PPM) as a test; got her down to around 100. I want to see if there really is any difference in the harshness of my tap versus RO cause I don't need to be filling up jugs of water if I don't need to! Edges of some of the leaves are turning a bit purple which looks more like the Blueberry Cough on the Jordan of the Islands website, so who knows?! Will be chopping the rest within or some time next week.

JKwonTheChef Purple purple purple! I want to keep her going until the entire thing is purple but the trichomes are mostly amber and without side lighting the bottom buds are just not developing fast enough comparatively. So rather than make the experience just be me falling asleep every use, I'm going to opt to chop her tonight or tomorrow probably. It's been 4.5 months and I need to get the tent set up and make this bucket 100x better!

JKwonTheChef This is the top half of the plant, probably chopped a little early but the trichomes were developing much faster than the lower colas. I am experimenting with different drying techniques as the pictures show - this time I did half without trimming straight on the drying rack and the other half wet trimmed a bit and hung for a couple days before being put on the rack. I can't say that I can fully tell the difference after the final dry trim - both dries have nice, dense buds that aren't too dry. The biggest concern from most people's experience was that the buds flattened and dried way too quickly on the rack, which is why I tried leaving it untrimmed. As the bottom half is still in the buckets I couldn't use that area to dry and the best I could do was a 50-55%RH and 72-83° room. Though they dried in about 4.5 days I don't smell any extra grassy/hay-y/green smell that I read would be present with fast dries. Though it has only been curing for four days but I vaped some this morning and I had to take a little lay down before I could get anything done! I'm much more of a head/up/energy high but this is delicious and does its job for sure! From my experience with Blueberry Cough (and widows) I would have to say this is likely the Blue Widow strain that I got as a freebie from Jordan of the Islands. There is definitely a berry smell and flavor but it is not as prominent as the Cough had been. It was always very purple and not as frosty as White Widow tends to be either. Could always be a different phenotype, I'm going to e-mail JOTI and see if they have an opinion just from the looks of her. Dry weight is about 20g of trim/sugar leaves and 13-14g of manicured buds. I measured after they were in jars on a scale designed for larger weights so that is give-or-take. ****UPDATE**** Chopped the rest of her down last Friday, she finished drying WAY too fast (3 & 4 days) and are not nearly as pungent as the first batch harvested. Got about 10g trim and 14g of buds w/o the excess stems. I have to take the pictures off my DSLR tomorrow and upload them as they're much nicer! Got my new tent and lights up today, going to finish all that up tomorrow and will start a new journal for this plant growing in my backyard that has defied all odds! After she gets thrown in there (she just went into flower two days ago after re-vegging) I will fix up the Space Buckets so they're optimal and have some side lighting and NO MYLAR! Thanks for stopping by and following my grow!! I hope anyone will follow my upcoming ones - I promise they will only get better!