Purple Lemonade Auto

So excited to run my first autoflower - Purple Lemonade by FastBuds! Seeds wet on 3/24. 9/10 germinated. Just need a few more days before they go into the big recirculating DWC system. I built a room about 10x12 that contains two separate sets of plants. See my other journal for the Girl Scout Cookies by FastBuds for the other side. My buddy got me a great deal on some eFinity Superstar 660w LED fixtures. These lights are awesome! They have a controller with sunrise warm-up as well as manual and automatic dimming. I built the recirculating DWC setup which has worked excellently for my last grow in a tent. Can't wait to see how these turn out! Stay tuned.

Finally fired up the LEDs at 50% strength and put the seedlings into the DWC system at day 9. I dimmed the LEDs down to 50% and set them at 4ft above the baby plants to see how they like it. I expect a few slow days and some manual watering as the roots find their way down to the water. I am having trouble keeping humidity up in this room. My 3 disc fogger and 3000sqft humidifier combined only get me to about 60%. It'll have to do for now.

Making some great progress this week. New fogger arrives tomorrow, so I should be able to crank up the humidity and the light intensity. The LEDs are still only at 60%, but the girls are ready for more.

What a week! I got my LEDs cranked up to 100% and lowered them a bit. I also got the humidity up to 65% with my new 12 disc fogger from the house of hydro. That thing works great! The room stays at a perfect 83 degrees with only my intake and exhaust fans on the lowest setting. Leaf temps are steady at 76 degrees. This was a great growth week. These began alternating nodes early in the week and sprouted some preflowers at only day 22 from seed. I think this was a stretch week for these ladies. I'm kinda disappointed if the veg growth is almost over. They are not big enough to take advantage of the LED footprint right now. Hopefully, they keep growing! I'll be putting in some nets to assist with training tomorrow.

Amazing growth and pistils coming in! One of the smaller plants showed pistils a bit earlier than the rest, and the calyxes coming in at the base are already purple! I am excited to see the colors that come in on these beauties. This strain appears to have a real low requirement for nitrogen indicated by the dark, clawing leaf tips. I cut out the extra N from the Gro formula figuring the Micro would be plenty.

Wow what a week! These things just took off and doubled in size over the past week. The purple one in the front started flowering early, so she's a bit smaller. She's also the most purple. There is another purple one in the back that smells... I kid you not.. unmistakably like PURPLE LEMONADE. I hope the rest of them develop the same scent and colors! This is my favorite strain so far. Great work, FastBuds! These are my first autos, and I was nervous about any little hiccup stalling them out early on. I expected smallish plants, but these things are monsters. They are at least as big as any photos I've grown. My only complaint is with the inconsistency of seeds in general. Clones are so much easier to train and plan. I have about 6 autos between my rooms that will produce probably nothing and are a waste of a bucket.

Okay it is official. These things are way bigger than I thought they would be. I have spent hours pruning and lollipopping these girls. I will definitely be modifying my setup on future runs to give them more space. They are beginning to crowd each other out. I also will not be scared to do more topping next time. These things are plenty big enough. They could have handled it in this system. About half of them are purple now. Hopefully the rest will be soon! I am very happy with this strain so far. It is very uniform across all 8 plants. Well, except Beastly girl who didn't get the memo to quit stretching.

With the lights on, I never really realized how beautiful these plants are. I lost power for a few hours, and WOW was it a great photo op! 7 out of 8 are purple. The last one I can tell will turn any day now. What a fun strain to grow!

Another quiet week. All is going smoothly. Still getting more purple and even better pictures. It looks like I am getting some calcium deficiency on the canopy which I take to mean the lights are too intense. I raised them a few inches considering the manufacturer says 24 inches. My CO2 meter says my ambient level is around 500 ppm, so I thought they could handle a little more. I guess it's too much! These definitely show more light damage than the girl scout cookies, so I guess they require less light than the cookies.

The canopy deficiency got worse, so I dimmed the lights down to 75%. I don't want to raise them because they have perfect canopy coverage, so I took the route that saves me some money on electricity. The canopy measured roughly 1000ppfd when I convert from lux, so it should be good now, hopefully. The plants are still developing. No cloudy trichomes that I can find. I'm thinking another two weeks for most of them!

Getting closer! I am checking trichomes every day. They are very difficult to see due to the purple calyxes. The trichomes even have red stalks which is cool. I'll try to get a microscope pic soon.

I lost power for 3 full days this week. Fortunately, my generator can power pumps and fans to keep things alive without lights. Not much seems to be happening yet except a few new white pistils and hopefully some bulking. Still have a few clear trichomes and not many ambers although the purple calyxes and red trichome stalks make it difficult to see clearly. I'll let it go another week before flushing to look for more development.

Almost there! Just a few days of flushing, and these girls come down next week. I took a cola that was ready just to get some great pics and an early sample. Turning out beautifully so far. 7 out of 8 are very very purple. The biggest one has hints of purple but nobody would notice. I'll have a full harvest report next week.

I harvested 8 plants after only 90 days from seed. I liked how generally uniform the plants turned out to be which made it easy to manage. I loved the dark purple that stayed from the first calyx all the way to the jars. I ended up with one large plant that had no purple, so that was a bit disappointing. I wish this strain was available in photoperiod variety because some of the phenotypes are world-class, and I'd love to make this a regular in my garden. This is a strain that really opens people up to the world of possibilities of strains. It's like having your first craft beer. This is one that you've seen in magazines but never had your own bag of it. This is a strain that your friends will remember forever. A big thank you to FastBuds genetics for this awesome experience! Please note also that I ran these at 75% or 990w so the actual numbers are about 1.5g/w which was more than the Girl Scout Cookies. These commercial LEDs are great! I had absolutely no cooling at all even the couple weeks they were at 100%. I have been averaging 3.5lb per harvest in a 4x8 area, so I am thrilled to do it with 990w vs the 2200w of HPS plus the 1250w of cooling it required!!!