ILGM Auto NL Indoor Grow (COVID-19 era)

5 seeds germinated in water per ILGM instructions on March 24, 2 more the same but on March 25. Planted into final fabric grow bags on March 26 (I'm calling this Day 1), mixture of Coast of Maine Stonington Blend + Perlite + Coco Coir base with top inch or so Coast of Maine seed starter. Sprayed with tap water, loosely tented with plastic wrap. Lowered light fairly close to keep temp up. By March 29 (Day 4), all seven had cotyledons.

Day 12: Waiting for a faucet pressure adapter from Sustainable Village online. They are U.S. distributor for Blumat products. I tried to get Blumat tropf 'carrots' set up using various convoluted ways but could never get water pressure low enough. The actual one from Blumat was more expensive than I'd hoped but my workarounds likely ended up costing more time and definitely time/energy. It should arrive tomorrow and maybe then it will work. The mottling yellowness of the leaves today worry me some. I have pH drops from a few years ago and if they're still good then my tap water may be too basic. Unless someone suggests some other way I'm guessing I'll end up using a reservoir anyway so I can lower the pH before the automatic watering sends it to the soil. Thoughts? Day 13: Blumat pressure reducer arrived. I'd emailed Sustainable Village (great customer service!) so see if there is an affordable in-line way to continue to use the tap while also ensuring water pH'd correctly. One comment I'm hanging on to is that with good soil you shouldn't have to worry about your water pH because of how well it should buffer and adjust automatically. I'll keep an eye on the health of the plant and use tap water for now.... Day 14: Blumat tropfs set up without problems using their pressure reducer. Also paid for the Blumat digital moisture meter. Following the instructions it seemed to show moisture level of 60 (mbar?) I set the carrots to that level. Today, I realized 60 is wetter than ~100, which I'm thinking is my target, so I dialed back the tropf carrot setting a bit. I also realized the moisture meter is meant to live in the soil once set up so I went through that process again. (Soak meter without digital electronic top for at least an hour, then fill to the top with water and reattach top, then insert in appropriate spot in soil, then wait ~2-3+ hours, then take reading. I'll use the pot I stuck it in (Plant 1) as the reference and compare to the other pots based on picking them up and judging weight. I decided to top two of the seven. I plan to LST all which from my reading could happen now but they're still so compact! Gonna give it more time.... Tomorrow is the first day of Week 3!

Tuning in the Blumat tropf with goal of moisture meter reading ~100. Still worried about using the tap as water source since I'm pretty sure the pH is too high. A couple sources say the soil should buffer water pH so much that monitoring it is not necessary. I want that to be the answer, of course, since it is less work. And because I put so much effort and money toward getting the tap connection right. (That's sunk cost fallacy, though, right?!) For now I will judge based on health of the plants but since they're autoflower I know any disruption (such as from alkaline soil limiting nutrient uptake) can be difficult to recover from. My first Grow Question was about the pH of water in a reservoir, should I switch to that from the tap. If I fill it with tap water then ensure the pH is correct will that pH remain stable? I think one answer seemed to think I was asking about stability of the reservoir construction/fittings. Instead, I'm asking about stability of pH'd water in a reservoir: how much does it drift over time? How often would I need to keep checking/adjusting it? The alkalinity of the tap water from what I can find online is 'hard water' which I think means decent buffering ability which in this context would help pH remain stable? Shouldn't the reservoir have water bubbling in it? That would increase the pH, though, right? I guess just setting up a reservoir and checking and measuring will give me answers but I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks! Day 17 (night of April 11): I switched the Blumat tropf water source from the tap to a reservoir of water pH'd to ~6. Made sure to bleed the line of air. We'll see if there's a difference. BTW, the moisture meter today read 160 so I loosened things up a bit on the carrots. The leaves did look a bit dry, with mild cupping. Day 18, moisture meter was 190-ish.... Opened up those carrots and raised the lights a bit. pH closer to 7. Left it there but tonight will check and lower it again I'm guessing. I really don't want to do the soil pH measuring process, which from what I read should be combining soil with distilled water and shaking, letting settle, filtering then checking that water. Hopefully the plants will start looking super-happy and I'll continue the idea it won't be needed. Day 19, evening, moisture meter was 111; pretty close to where I'd like it. Still using water reservoir instead of tap. This morning the pH was still around 7; I lowered it closer to 5 and it's about the same this evening. Didn't do any more LST or anything. Waiting for more plant soft wire to be delivered. I'm satisfied with how they're growing so far. Day 20, evening, moisture meter was 199; I loosened the carrot. Continue to use water reservoir; pH tonight was right about 6. Received shipment of plant tie soft wire stuff and did more LST. Raised light a bit after. Coloring overall seems better with pH'd water; not sure why that one leaf was all messed up. Here's a question: Anyone have advice on LST and/or defoliation at this point, based on the pictures? Day 21, carrot too loose! Soil too wet on Plant 1 and Plant 5, moisture meter on Plant 1 was 22. Tightened back up. pH of water in reservoir still good, around 6. Tomorrow is beginning of Week 4!

Day 22 - First day of Week 4! Just kind of waiting at this point. I feel like the setup is okay as-is. The Blumat digital moisture meter read 88 and that pot (Plant 1) seems the heaviest/wettest of the seven. Water reservoir feeding the Blumat tropf carrots contains tap water that seems fairly stable now with pH of ~6. More to come... Gonna play RDR2 then go to bed! Day 23 (April 17) - Bird_of_preys_comeback made a comment last week that included the suggestion I provide readers lots of detail about my setup so people can give better advice. So, here goes: Seeds are autoflower northern lights from ILGM. Using their recommended method I dropped them in tap water (five I'd explicitly ordered, on March 24th, and two I figured out were extra, on March 25th.) They'd all germinated by March 26th and that day they were planted into 3-gallon fabric grow pots, each filled almost to the top with a homemade mixing of (non-fertilized) perlite, coco coir, and Coast of Maine Stonington Blend. On top of that I put about an inch or so of Coast of Maine Seed Starter. I lowered the light to keep them warm and misted and loosely covered with plastic wrap. All seven plants had cotyledon by March 29th. I watered with just tap water for a while. I wanted to use Blumat Tropf for on-demand watering and instead of buying their more-expensive water pressure reducer tried all sorts of workarounds that didn't work. Tubing kept popping off connectors. Eventually got the Blumat brand water pressure reducer and connections remained secure with that. Growth seemed decent but the colors seemed somewhat mottled. I have a cheap digital TDS/EC meter and a cheap digital pH meter from years ago but haven't tried using them this grow. I used pH drops that come with GH pH up/down and tested my tap water and it seemed easily above 8.5! That was disappointing after all that effort to hook it up to the tap. With living soil (not sure if my mixture counts as truly living/super soil anyway) the pH of the water isn't supposed to matter as much but I opted to switch to a reservoir of pH'd water. That's been my water source for the Blumat Tropfs. No nutrients added, pH'd to about 6. Just yesterday (Day 22) I think I've got the Blumat Tropfs dialed in correctly. The Blumat digital moisture meter read 88 which is fine from what I've read. I'm growing in a Mars Hydro 5x5 tent. Light is SpiderFarmer SF-4000 which rates coverage during veg as 6x6 and flower as 5x5. Light schedule has been 24/0 for now. Plan is to switch to 18/6 or 20/4 during flowering. Distance from top of plants has varied with no strict method from ~12 inches to ~18 inches. The light has a dimmer but you have to unscrew the ballasts to use it and I haven't done that. So I think it's 100% intensity, whatever the factory-setting is. The specs for this light include watts from wall of ~450 and efficiency of 2.7 uMol/Joule. On Day 14 I topped two of them to see if that made much of a difference compared to the rest. During Week 3 I've been trying to LST them all but it doesn't look like the pics on websites, maybe because the plants have been so compact? That's why I raised the lights a couple of days ago to ~18 inches. I know distance is exponentially related to light intensity but maybe they need to stretch more? Or should I be happy the plant is so compact? I've read different things about whether defoliation is worthwhile. Information out there is contradictory. Some sources say every leaf is important during flowering because the plant uses the stored energy/nutrients to build buds/flowers. Most sources say opening up bud sites to light and air improves yield but it makes more sense and a few sources say bud sites can't absorb light energy. Any advice based on the above? Any other questions about the setup or other details needed to provide good feedback? I'll keep updating.... I appreciate your interest! Day 24 (April 18) - Just a quick check and Plant 1 now too wet! Digital moisture meter read 28. This morning is was 290!!! I guess I've got to make more refined adjustments. One other plant seemed fairly heavy (also too wet?) while the other ones seemed fairly light. They looked healthier, too. I dialed back the two too-wet ones, which look droopy/wilted. Water reservoir will need topped up tomorrow. pH this evening was ~6.5. Did some more LST.... Day 25 (April 19) - Plants look wilty! The digital moisture meter reads 91 which is a good number. The other pots are mostly drier than that so I don't think they're overwatered. Water reservoir given another couple of gallons of water, maybe 3-4 gallons total. I added 2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) each of GH Micro, Grow, and Bloom and pH was 6.0. I ordered Recharge awhile ago and it arrived a couple of days ago. I sprinkled maybe a tsp into my reservoir and stirred it up a lot. Hopefully it won't clog the Blumat lines. For those who don't know, it's meant to help boost the microbiome of the soil and is a very fine powder, almost as fine as talc. I feel like I'm just throwing shit at the plants because it feels good to do SOMETHING, which I know isn't a good strategy. I'm considering giving up on Blumat Tropfs, pulling them, letting soil of all the plants get pretty dry then just hand water every couple/few days when it seems it's needed. I assume the problem has to do with water. The only other environmental change was raising the lights about six inches to 18 inches from top of plants. Thoughts? Day 25 (early evening) - Took out the Blumat Tropfs and dug my fingers into the first inch or two of the soil and loosened things up. Except for the small area irrigated by the 3 mm tubing connected to the carrots the soil was pretty dry, even on the heaviest two pots. I sprinkled a bit of recharge on the top of the soil of all the plants and watered them all until reasonably heavy, making sure to get water all around the plant. No water came out the bottom of the fabric pots and with fabric pots and the dryness of most of the dirt I really don't think they were overwatered. We'll see, I guess. If they're worse in a couple hours then maybe I have given too much water. I' hoping they'll look soooo much better and then so will I! If they look better I'll take some after-pics. Oh! And I took off the soft wires I'd been using for LST. I don't want any reason to disturb these plants. I'd rather have lower yield than stressed, stunted plants that may not survive until harvest. Day 26 - This morning they hadn’t perked up but don’t look worse. Maybe the problem is heat stress? I changed the fan settings to try to keep the high temp below 72 and opened the flaps more at the bottom of the tent. I can’t think of what else to do. I’ll try to not fuss with them for a few days unless they show more signs of stress. I’m worried about these plants making it to bloom now let alone harvest. Day 26 (4/20!) - Later evening, I checked on them and they again don't look worse. Took pics at this time. Maybe some recent growth at the tops of the plants. The digital moisture meter was ~230 even though the pot looked watered and was not light when picking up. My 3rd Grow Question about this stuff has one answer, by mrpink. Answer was water pH was too low. I'd wanted it slightly lower since the first days I'd watered with high pH water. I don't have run off to measure pH from the soil but I could take some soil samples and swirl in distilled water then filter the water and check that for pH? Does pH testing solution go bad? If the pH of the water has been too low too long I could just water with tap water and see how they do. Trying not to make too many changes too soon though so will hold off at least until tomorrow or the next day. If you've read this far, I appreciate it! Feedback very welcome! Days 27 and 28 - Basically just let them be. Took some pics.

Day 30 (April 24) - Okay. Gonna get shit back on track. Yesterday an Aptera ph20 meter arrived. I used it today and measured my tap water which was pH of 8.9. I used a 3-gallon sprayer thing I had and filled it with tap water then added pH Down until it read ~6-6.5. I then added 15 ml of GH FloraKleen. I took the two plants that looked to be in the worst shape. I trimmed leaves that looked to be dying. I added 7-9 handfuls of perlite to the top and worked it into the soil using my hands, keeping toward the sides of the fabric pots to reduce risk of hurting roots. I then flushed each plant. The first one I flushed led to runoff with just about a gallon and the runoff tested pH of 6.7. Put it back into the tent. The second plant took more like 1.5 gallons and was fucking heavy after. I let it drain and put back in the tent. My plan over this weekend is to do the same to the other five plants. Hopefully will see recovery. I also got some Rapid Rooter plugs and am thinking I'll soon get some seeds going there. If the Northern Lights autoflower work out to harvest then great. Either way I'd like to have something else on the way instead of waiting until then.... Days 31-34 - I added perlite and pruned and flushed the other plants and have just been letting them be. They seem to be doing somewhat better.

Day 35 (April 30) - Plants seem better. I continue to do almost nothing. Pots still don't seem that light when lifted. Days 36-37 - Barely looked at them. No pics. Day 38 (May 3) - I plan on watering them with pH'd solution of 1 ml/gallon each of CaMg, Micro, Grow, and Bloom. If they seem to do okay then I'll slowly advance nutrients with a bigger proportion to Bloom. I know I'm not close to harvesting but is flushing the last two weeks something that really affects flavor/quality of harvested flower? Consensus among websites support it as real.... (So do plenty of other beliefs such as you shouldn't swim within 30 minutes after eating and you should wear a hat in winter because you lose most of your body heat through your head. Both of those are myths.) I'm off to the tent. Will upload pics later. Hopefully they seem do be doing well! Day 39 (May 4) - I don't remember. I assume I watered them?

Thursday, May 7 (Day 42, first day of Week 7 total, start of 3rd week of flowering) - Plants seem in much better shape than a couple of weeks ago. They were struggling then, wilting/droopy. In retrospect I think it was from overwatering. I had been concerned about pH because my tap water tests at 8+. I haven't been testing alkalinity but the tap water in this area is considered hard to very-hard. I bought a decent pH meter and after calibrating I've been able to be more precise. The soil mixture run off seemed okay pH-wise, actually. I'd flushed with FloraKlean and the run-off was ~6.5. At that time I also added more perlite into the pot, hand mixing it in, gently to try not to disturb roots too much. Leaves got pretty funky after that. I let the soil mixture get on the dry side (mostly determined by weight of pots but also sticking my finger a couple inches into the soil) and have watered them twice since then with GH nutrients, trying to be conservative with amount of water and ensure first couple of inches of medium dry before watering again. This is my 3rd grow over a period of 5-10 years if I am remembering correctly. The one I did a couple of years ago was the second one and the grow medium was not soil but coco coir and perlite. I think the watering needs of that grow-- basically daily to run off each time-- set my expectations in a way that contributed to water-logging this soil grow. Also complicating matters was my focus on setting up Blumat Tropf irrigation the first few weeks. Friday, May 8 (Day 43) - Just checking on them after the second watering yesterday. Before that water I'd trimmed leaves that looked like they needed it from each plant, meaning if they looked wilty or yellowing. Today they seem pretty good. Well into flowering. A couple of the plants appear to be developing multiple colas. Since I lost track of labeling/numbering the plants I can't be sure if those were the two I'd topped or not. When worried about the plants surviving I had also stopped trying to LST them. I guess my 'Grow Technique' now would be considered Defoliation but I'm not trying to lollipop or anything that methodical. Another aside that I may have mentioned already in the comments but a week or two ago I turned my lights timer from On to Auto which means the plants are getting 4 (or 6?) hours dark now. The outlet and timer are kind of shoved between the wall and the tent so it's not easy to look and that detail isn't important to me right now. I'll double-check at post at some point what the light cycle is. Pretty sure I set it to be dark from 2am to 6am... I adjusted the GrowDiary Conditions above on May 9 which is when I'm updating. Height of plant is estimated. Water quantity is calculated as follows: ~2 gallons spread out among 7 plants with 3 days in between watering. (2 / 7) / 3 = gallons/24-hr water volume per plant. Day 45 (May 10) Sunday - Happy Mother’s Day in United States or wherever else it’s celebrated. Just trying not to fuss with plants. Still another day or two before time to water again. Maybe I can increase nutrients a bit. Day 46 - lights-off pics Day 47 - cut off sickly leaves and watered 5 of 7 plants. Partly because I wanted to see if much different the next day. Day 48 - Not much different it seems. I finished watering. Took some pics from above each plant.

Day 49 (Thursday, May 14) - Letting them be... Day 50 (Friday, May 15) - Just took some pics. Pots not light/dry but sticking my finger in soil doesn’t reach moist soil until about 1-2 inches down. Will err on the side of LESS watering... Day 51 (Saturday, May 16) - More pics. Not sure why I took six plant close-ups but not all seven. Day 52 (Sunday, May 17) - One pic today. Day 53 (Monday, May 18) - Group photos. Day 54 (Tuesday, May 19) - Shitload of pics. I think they include top and side views of each plant both before trimming and after trimming. Day 55 (Wednesday, May 20) - Last day of this week. Took some pics without the grow light on.

Day 59 (Sunday, May 24) - This is the day I harvested 5 of the 7 plants. I'll keep updating this week regarding the other two plants. Days 60 - 62 (Monday, May 25 to Wednesday, May 27) - Two plants left, one scraggly and the other looking better.

This grow was frustrating but I guess a learning experience and probably some usable flower to eventually enjoy. I think my experience with coco coir/perlite was a big reason I over-watered this soil grow. Also, early on I was so focused on getting Tropf Blumats set up right which I gave up on when plants started looking so bad. I had thought pH issues were one reason for the plants deteriorating. Now, I DON'T think pH was the problem. That reflection is based on what I've read regarding soil grows. Even though my tap water runs quite alkaline/basic the soil seemed to buffer any impact. I tested run-off once and it was fine. I decided to flush with FloraKleen which I think helped even though it kept the soil water-logged. That was when I decided over-watering was the main problem. I let the soil get quite dry and tried to lean toward under-watering from then on. The plants kept progressing through their life cycles but seemed clearly stunted. I initially harvested 5 of the 7 plants. Trichomes were cloudy with a few amber. One of the two plants that I didn't initially harvest had barely any trichomes that I could find although pistils looked right. The other plant didn't look appreciably different than the five I harvested but I'm going to let it go another week or so as a comparison. I haven't weighed the plants yet since I haven't trimmed and have even kept roots attached. The first day or so hanging was in the grow tent which continued the same light schedule and temperatures. I reread harvesting recommendations and figured a different area of the basement that gets little light and would be cooler should work better. I'm going to try to have them dry slowly in that cooler, darker environment. Humidity probably pretty low but I won't try messing with it since that should help prevent mold. My expectation is when ready I'll trim and jar for cure, trying it out just to see how it is but otherwise will cure for at least a few weeks before (hopefully) enjoying. I'll weigh before and after trimming and that'll be the final weight. My estimate is that all 7 plants, bud trimmed in one pile, will yield MAYBE 15-20 grams. Sigh.... We'll see... Dried five of seven plants and trimmed. I only tared the container for the first plant; the others included the 24-gram weight of plastic container. 35 grams total, averaging 7 grams or about a quarter-ounce per plant. Just going to give the last two plants another couple of days to dry before trimming. If average per plant holds that'll be 49 grams or 1 3/4 ounces total harvest. Better than my pessimistic prediction. Clearly growth was hurt from (presumably) over-watering but I also think soil maybe not worthwhile compared to just coco coir / perlite. After this other grow there will likely be a significant break before growing again but will likely then try hydroponics for the first time.... I'll try it out after some more time curing then update smoke qualities.

Days 63 and 65 - Still letting these last two continue until trichomes seem ready. The scraggly plant has few that I can find and I might just pitch altogether but probably will try to scavenge what I can. The better-looking one seems pretty good. Only a couple amber trichomes and all else are cloudy. I haven't watered either and probably won't. Maybe harvest tomorrow or in a few more days... Days 66 to 68 - Harvested last two plants from this grow. I can't start another week and label Harvest so will add on to the Harvest week made before.