Third Go: Royal Gorilla Automatic by RQS

Week 3 is an interesting one for sure. Early in the week I knew there was going to be changes soon. What I didn't expect was a notice on my door of a safety inspection. I'm growing in a city that is cool with cannabis for the most part, but the rest of the state is pretty not...yet. So I knew I couldn't make any drastic changes the night of 2/25. The next morning before work, I figured out what to do. I took down the whole tent. Everything went back in its original packaging except the tent itself which got rolled as small as possible and shoved in a storage bin. All five 7 gallon fabric pots, with 10 immature and 3 mature plants went into my storage closet connected to the patio for the 12 hours I'd be gone for work. At worst, I imagined maintenance would be in my place for 15 minutes tops. I was probably overshooting that by 10 minutes. The notice said they check smoke detectors, pipes, and look for water damage and they have 300+ units to inspect. 5 minutes for my place which was otherwise pretty immaculate (cluttered, but very tidy) probably wouldn't give anyone a moment's pause even if it smelled a bit weedy. Everything seemed fine when I got home, and they survived 12 hours in a cool, but not cold storage room. I reconfigured the apartment as I put the tent back together that night. Since I rarely have company, I figured I'd just set everything back up in the living space of the 1 bedroom apartment. I reclaimed my closet that night and left all 7 gallon pots to have some light before I messed with everything...again. After the first two pictures on 2/27, I pulled the two plants that were ready for harvest to open the space. Laboriously, I pulled and repotted all 10 peat starters, saving as much root under as I could. It was hard to tell how much damage I caused, but I made a crucial mistake here that has affected the rest of the grow. The peat starter pots are designed to degrade slowly allowing your plants to thrive. Well, they don't biodegrade over the short span of an autoflower, so they basically are just blocking roots. I did not pull the plants out of the peat pots but put those straight into the 3 gallon pots filled with Ocean Forrest. Slowly over the course of weeks, with adorable zen garden tools, I've picked and ripped away most of the top portions and successfully integrated the soils. But if I'd pulled the pots off now, oh so much trouble saved. They were triumphantly, all 10 when I'd hoped for 8, back in the tent, with room to spread. Well, sort of. Since I'd been planning on some time with one of the 7 gallon pots for sure with all the Gorillas (he said GO-rilla, not GUE-rilla. GOrilla. GUErilla. HUGE DIFFERENCE!!), making all 10 fit took some Tetris skill. I brought back one of the cinderblocks, put two plants on that near the height of the last Barney's Farm Purple Punch Auto. One got squeezed between the cinderblock on the tent wall, but fit. No, it didn't really, but the tent shut. Much like March would do, week 3 wasn't done delivering setbacks. This one intentional. On day 20, based on perceived success with topping PPA3 from my second grow, I decided to top all 10 to control height. My LST on the first two plants of the second grow were not done with a light enough touch for an auto, so I for sure topped 5 and tried to FIM 5. One of the FIMmed plants went triceratops, but all others responded well. The group shot on 3/2/20 has a little bit of debrided plant material on top of more peat I consistently pulled from the larger pots. Perhaps week 4 will bring some normalcy. By the end of week three, several plants were clearly smaller, and one was showing various unknown issues while the squeezed pot probably had roots affected. Even if two of them were to die, I'll still have my original goal of 8 healthy plants. Time will tell. Grow notes: multiple issues described above, light water every other day, no added nutrients.