Mistery Auto #1 (caseeds) NORTHERN SPAIN

****INTRODUCTION**** I'm new to this, but hours and hours of research have made me confident about my 'abilities'. Spring has just begun and I think it is the moment to start my first auto crop for this season (out of two I'm planning), so we'll see within some weeks how things go. As a Physics student I'm going to give this diary the treatment of an experiment report, detailing all of the thoughts I have about the plants' development and the reasons why I do what I do, on top of explaining how I do it. I invite you to see this process through my eyes and give this a more... scientific approach, why not! **DISCLAIMER: I started this as a diary of two different strains, but later on I decided it would be better to keep them separated and split the diaries. And given that I am a newbie, why not participate in Newbie of the month contest! So you'll have Nordlys tracking in another diary, but I won´t delete what i have already written up to week 2 (included). In that diary I'll suggest coming to this one for weeks 1 and 2.** I'm using some seeds a friend brought me from Christiania, Denmark from a trip (local seedbank). The two strains are both autoflowering and feminised seeds that seem to be fairly appropiate for a climate like the one we have here, in which summer is wet, temperatures are not too hot or too cold and rain can come and go any moment of the day -although sunny days are the most-. Knowing that these seeds were designed for Denmark's cold climate -and using local strains- is a plus, but this specific strains are 'trained' for resisting any kind of mold, pest or fungal diseases. Which makes me even more excited, adding to the promise of high and potent yields that the seedbank makes. So before I get into the process, just a quick note about the strains: *Nordlys: genetic background is the same as any Northern Light auto, but it could be that this plants's parents are more used to a Nordic climate. Very resistant and fast, there are two main phenotypes: a branchier one, with longer internodes and a shorter one, more compact. *Sweet Rebel: the genetics are {Mazar F1 x Afghani 00 F1} x Lowryder, which are a mistery to me given that I haven´t found any seed like this in the Internet-not even thinking about a crop tracking-. I expect a less branchy, smaller and more of a 'cone' form, Christmas tree-like. In theory I'll have to wait 75 days 'til harvest for both-but, frankly, I think I'm being a bit ingenous-. Both plants wil measure between 60 and 120 cm in their last days, and I will consider a failure not to harvest, at least, 20 dry grams of bud per plant. I would be glad to show the whole process in this diary from germination to product tasting. Not finding any tracking about these strains or even this seedbank gives me some uncomfortable uncertainty. But, anyways, I'll try to adapt my little knowledge and experience to he plants' needs, and I'll never take any major step unless the plants are indicating they need so. Not even watering. My intention is to spend the less money as possible and use organic pest repellent (see pic), as well as home-made organic fertilizer, while I don't stop paying attention to important details such as pH manipulation and don't take unnecessary risks. ****FIRST STEPS**** I took the seeds out ot the fridge after almost a year -two of each kind-, and started germinating them with the classic 'wet napkin in a tupper' method, keeping this tupper on top of the WiFi's router for an extra heat that really helps. This was March the 28th, so as you can see I made a bet for the early spring -probably a bit anxious and impatient with the quarantine-. sadly I didn't take a pic of this. Two seeds germinated after a day, one of each type, and the other two after two days. As a criteria to establish the day I'm in in each entry and picture, I consider March the 28th as day zero, so I can say i planted my seeds in day 2. To do so i chose the best quality soil i could find, for what I foresee that no fertilizing will be needed until early flowering period. I prepared four 10 L pots with a thin layer of rocks and another layer of clay balls for a good oxygenation and for clearing the way for the bottom holes to work. Filled the pots with the soil and watered until everything was quite wet and water was flowing out of the bottom of the pot. Didn't regard pH this first time. Then I did a little hole for each seed with a pencil, about 1 cm deep, put them in and covered. Sadly again, I do not have pictures to back up this part. Had to wait until day 4/5 for the seedling to come out. As an amateur I was really worried about how they were doing it, but it just turned out to be the way to happen. On top of that, a Nordlys seed was struggled a lot, and I thought i had killed it. I know I'm not supposed not to do this, but i dug until i found the seedling -deeper than I thought-and helped it get to the surface taking some soil out of the way. You can see how they were doing in day 6 in the first real plant pictures of the diary. In order to make things easier I named the plants with the obvious names Nord, Lys, Sweet and Rebel to ease the tracking. You can see the first letter of their names in the pots. Around this day I also sprayed some repellent around the pots but not directly on the plants, just in case they were too young yet. To end this week's commentary, two important things. This whole week the plants slept inside the house, so everyday I would take them out when i woke up around 10:30 and keep them back in when the night came around 20:30/21:00. And I also used some mini greenhouses made out of 6 L bottles of water that i cut off the middle. I also made some extra windows for extra ventilation, and made more within the days. Why did I do this? Firstly, to keep the plants away from the big danger that birds represent to the little sprouts. But also to keep the seedlings in a cozy, warmer and wetter environment needed in the first days -as I read. Waiting for the time to go by, and very excited. Any comment will be helpful, thanks for your attention!!

Now it's time for week 2's commentary. As you may have noticed, some 'conditions' have been changed, as the plants' needs have done so. It is incredible how fast they grow, specially if there is a sunny day. I would love to know how roots are growing, désolé it is impossible. In order to make that happen, and knowing how autos work, I'm not watering the plants yet, as I wait for these roots to expand towards the wet soil. What will help the plant nurture better and faster. At the end of the second week second couple of leaves has developed and grown a little, while the first is already about 3 cm long each. This will help photosyntesis a lot. I must make clear that I'm talking for the most of the plants when i state in 'conditions' that they have grown 4 cm tall. In the case of Lys, leaves are growing well but stem is not growing up as much as the others. Might be because of the 'short and compact' phenotype, or that later germination, but i won't worry about that -at least for the moment-. Now that I split diaries by strain this things will be easier to clear. About the rest of 'conditions', they are an average made for the whole week. Birds are no longer endangering the plants, and to make the most of a sunny day streak I stopped using the greenhouse. Just in case the plastic is filtering some interesting rays, and not to burn the plants. Because this greenhouse helps a lot in keeping the plant warm and wet, but it can get to be too much in these days. Instead, around day 11, I start using these bottle gadgets with another purpose. To keep the plants warm at night, given that now they'll start sleeping outside -for what I cover some of the windows I had done-. I started doing this because I was worried about keeping the plants away from the first couple hours of light with the taking in and out thing. So now I'll let them out with the greenhouse on, and when i wake up I just take it off the plants. Guaranteeing 13 hours of light moreorless. With this, they will start getting used to night temperature too. But I'm hoping the weather starts to get warmer and they can make it on their own. Which would mean an average of 12/15 ºC for the night, easy for this plants to resist. Humidity has went down to 75% for the plants as I removed the greenhouse during the day. And there is always a nice and mellow breeze that shakes plants a little everyday, but never too much. In theory that will help stems grow thicker with time, preparing the plants for a possible yield weight resistance in the future. I keep not watering the plants as the soil is still wet when I put my finger in, but I couldn't help to foliar water the leaves a couple times during the week -at the end of the day-. That's because the pots are in a spot where they can get light all day, but at the same time are sheltered from the rain-and some water in the stomas could help too-. The water I used was not fertilysed but I corrected its pH with some lemon juice drops. I didn't document the process with pictures, but I promise next time I will! I took a pic of the spray bottle with the chemical pH controller I used, tho. Also, in the pictures you can see that I'm using CDs as 'scarecrows'. **Remember, from now on, Nordlys strain is tracked in another diary apart!

Everything seems to go smoothly. Plants are growing healthy but I suspect they are doing it slower than I'd wish. But given the climate and time of the year, I can't complain. It is a pity but it rained almost all week, just having intermittent clear moments and a whole day of direct sunlight. As I said the previous weeks, I don't want to overwater the plants, so I just sprayed some foliar with pH 6 on day 15. Soil is still wet when I put my finger in. As it didn't dry up enough as days went by, I started to worry because I hadn't even watered once. Neither fertilized-in theory it was enough with a good quality soil but...- Then I decided to pour in some root stimulator and a little bit of Nitrogen fertilizer to stimulate vegetative growth. *How to make root stimulator: put a cup of dry lentils and four cups of water inside a container. Keep away from any light for 8 hours, and then strain the lentils to keep them in the container again-covered from light-. Save the water. After a day, put the water in and strain again. Repeat for 3/4 days until all of the lentils have germinated and have a root around 1 cm long. Then pour the water in again, add some more and finallly triturate and strain again, having as a result what you can see in the picture I added. Use the liquid in a 1/10 ratio with the water. *How to make potato fertilizer (N): cut up six medium potatoes and put in a pot with 1L of water. Cook at medium heat for half an hour. The resultant water is ready to use -after pH correction- for one plant. I knew my plants didn't need water: soil wasn't dry and leaves were stiff. And given that they are small and autoflowering (need less food than normal), I just added 0.5 L of the potato 'tea' (I made it half concentration) with the corresponding root stimulator (I used a quarter of the recipe's ingredients) for each plant. Can't tell TDS yet, but I bought an electronic tester -for pH too- that is going to be delivered soon. This same day (number 18) I added more soil, up to the cotyledons. Which means I'll measure a cm less at the end of the week. In three days I can say that results were amazing. Plants are growing way faster. I consider that they are big enough to start bearing the cold at night, so I stop using the greenhouses as I did. Also, little green hairs start to come out of the internodes where I'd expect flowers to grow, and it makes me worry. What if they are already starting to flower! It is very soon yet!

Not the best week so far. Nevertheless, there has been some progress: as you can see the plants have grown in height, width and number of leaves-and their size too. So, why wasn't it the best week? Well... not even a single day of sun! Not even an hour long clear from the clouds/rain! In fact, although i usually have the plants sheltered from the rain, they got soaked up on day 22 as I forgot to move them back from another spot. Not enough time to get the soil wet though. Later on, day 24, made the decision to water the plants for second time, also with fertilizer. Which was... another mistake! As I want to give my plants a balanced 'diet' I try not to repeat the same fertilizer each time. And at the moment I was making this 'nettle mix' for other plants-too much time in quarantine!-. And, why not, I tried giving some of it to my two ladies. In a 1:10 ratio as it is supposed to be. However, it ended up giving the plants an excess that was making the leaves look like in the fourth picture. Might be a... phosphorus excess? *How to make nettle 'mix': gather 1kg of nettle and put it in 10 litres of water without chlorine. Stir nicely for 5 minutes, put a lid on it and keep away from sunlight. Make sure some air can still enter. Open once a day and stir again until tenth day, when you can strain the plants out and use in a 1:10 ratio with water. This mix is rich in N and works good as a pest repelent in the same way neem would. It is also rich in other nutrients such as Ca or P. Could be because this mix is very strong, or it could be that soil had enough nutrients. Anyways, I learned this: when feeding autos, use half of the amount of fertilizer. And always alternate between fert and no fert in watering sessions. On day 28 I was very worried, and after thinking a lot about it I finally came up with the idea of root washing. Although the soil was still wet, I watered 2 litres per plant -with chlorine evaporated and pH corrected-, letting the water drain the nutrients. I think almost half of it wasn't absorbed by the soil. Now I hope that I don't make them drown... *I know pictures aren't the best, but I'll try to fix it.

The best way to learn some things is with trial and error, they say. But as it seems to me, the only one really teaching is error! I intended to do the perfect grow first try because I am a bit arrogant. And sometimes don't think twice when I need to. Using that nettle mix... wow... such a big mistake. That s*** is strong guys!! Should have used half dose, and later on. On top of that I didn't do a proper root washing last week when I believed I did. Come on... it was only 2 litres 😂 As I realised this the days had already passed, and I got the inspiration to change my strategy towards the overfertilisation issue. In order not to mess up the soil's nutrients even more, I decided to keep watering normally without fertilizer. This way nutrients would get out gradually at the same time plants eat them-causing some damage, but I guess they can handle it-. Added to that: a more basic pH will stop the extra Nitrogen absorption. The only day I watered the plants was 35, where there was a pH of 6.5 in the 3 litres per plant. *How to adjust pH DIY: use lemon juice to acidify and baking soda to make more basic. Be careful, beacuse a tiny amount of either could be very strong! Besides, weather started to get sunnier around last days of the week. Next week is expected to be crazy good too. Last day of the week i spotted four little green aphids that I killed before I could take a picture. Consequently I sprayed them with the same repellent I've been using so long. *Any comments about the reasons for the yellow spots or the hook-shaped leaves? I'll be grateful for them! My take on that is that I gave a N and P overfertilisation that also caused a Ca blocking -after I discarded some pest, as I thought earlier this week-

Wow!! It was sunny and hot all week! You can see that they almost doubled their size and are looking pretty much more healthy. That is also because I followed @MadeInGermany 's advice and decided to wait more until I had to water. They seem to have liked that, beacuse there is no more sign of Ca blocking in the leaves. And they grew very nicely, no need of everything. Also following his advice I will use Cal/Mag in the next watering. But, you know, I'm making it cheap... so I will use another home-made recipe: wood ash fertilizer, which include those nutrients and some that are needed in flowering stage -which seems to be starting, so next week will have the flowering label-. It also degrades the N in the soil that could be still causing a little overfeeding (leaves' tips are a bit burnt). However, I admit that my mistake was overwatering from the beggining. Lesson learned! No watering for the whole week and the plnat didn't seem to worry about it. Man! If only it had been this sunny all the time! Plants look very healthier and are way bigger, with huge new leaves. A little amount of pistils showed up in the last days, so I guess it is the moment for stretching. Knowing that, I decided to do a little training on Sweet, as it is the one a bit behind. You can see in the last picture how I took a couple leaves that were blocking light from side branches-future bud sites- and taped them, so they didn't. If results are good I might do the same with Rebel, but I have a feeling that she'll do good without it. Sadly, next week will be all rainy and cloudy... Nothing to do tho. Any commentary will be thanked, even if it is about how cheesy the videos are! 😂

Just another growth week with bad weather. Even though they didn´t get too much direct sunlight throughout the week, they grew a lot in height and side branches-wise. Last day of the week started to get sunny, and a whole week of sunny days is expected, so I decided to water the plants. After 2 weeks straight dry soil! That makes me think of the fact that roots have not developed as much as they would have in better conditions. I'll make sure that is good next time. Anyways, I watered them with the pH and EC indicated, out of a new fertilizer: *How to make ash fertilizer: depending on the dose you need, just put ash that comes from burning vegetal mass like wood in a fireplace or a chimney. This will provide an aggregate of nutrients that suits perfectly for flowering stage, including P, K, Ca, and Mg. It is also interesting to use if you want to degradate N from the soil, in case you have an excess of it or you just want to trigger flowering stage earlier. It is very basic, careful with that pH! In this particular case I put a spoonful of ash for each 2 litres of water. I hope the effects are the expected, so they start blooming soon. It is the seventh week and only some pistils at the very top have appeared... The other strain I am currently growing is 2 weeks deep in the flowering stage, and all plants were planted at the same time. Kind of bothers me. But, at least, this ones are growing a lot more, so I guess it will mean more bud! Even if it is later on that I harvest these, I will have the other ones to start smoking when I had planned 👍. Final note: I think I never said this, but Sweet always seems to go better than Rebel. It could be due to casualty, but I think it is because a simple detail. When I prepared the pots with the soil and stuff, in Sweet's I mixed the arlite clay pebbles within the soil, while in Rebel's i just put a layer in the bottom of the pot. I think this difference has turned out to give Sweet a more aired soil, that handled better the overwatering and also let the roots grow better. I realised this on day 49, one day after I watered, because while Rebel's pot was still very heavy and very wet when I put the finger in, Sweets's was already very light and dry. Might be that in a couple days I have to water her. Anyways, another lesson learned: mix the soil with arlite!

Very sunny week. Not more cares than watering each plant a little in different days as they drink at different speed. At this moment they both seem to be drinking the most, though. Finally they are starting to bloom and pistils can be seen all aross the plant: internodes, side branches tops' and internodes... but the biggest amount is in the main cola. New challenges appear as some strange things happen and I can't address what they are. Last two pictures are showing some trange spots -might be a plague?- and some yellowing I can distinguish in the bottom leaves. I think it is too early in the flowering stage for that to be happening. I will ask in the commentaries what do you guys think. They have already stretched, i think they wll stay in 60 cm. I love how they look now. And Smoking is geeting closer!

The plants are blooming like crazy. There are lots and lots of pistils popping out, but flowers still need to get a lot fatter. Everything seemed to be going perfectly, but right now there is a big struggle. And it is a pity, because now I don't have as much time as I had in the early weeks. The yellowing of the leaves is going upwards, and the ones that first yellowed are starting to die. You can see some necrosis in the pictures. Obviously is my fault, but I can´t tell at all what is happening. Earlier in the week I watered 2,5 l with the ash fertilized water. A possible reason for the yellowing could be a N deficiency, brought by the abuse of ashes because they degrades the N in the soil. Another possible reason could be a very basic soil, also brought by the ashes in that case. I also think my pH test is not working properly at all. On day 60, as the yellowing wasn't corrected with a PK ration, which I first thought of, I got worried and prepared a foliar spray made out of a potato and banana tea. So it had a balance of NPK with EC=1100. As it got even worse with the days, I kept investigating and realised it could be a Mg deficiency. So I watered with some Mg bath salts 'Epsom' up to the EC indicated with a lower pH of 6,3. As Mg is essential for the synthesis of clorofile, a deficiency of it could explain the lack of green in the leaves-they cannot do the photosynthesis then, and die-. Hope it works... And as always, any help would be great 👍

This was a busy week for me, so I could not pay as much attention to the plants as I would have liked. I only took four photos, for instance. And as plants were striving really hard with some nutrient issue I decided to avoid the 'organic grow' mission and bought some flowering fertilizer to make sure buds got fat without making banana tea each and every week. Next week I'll add some images to show how good they are doing, apart from the leaves' issue. I think I'll cut them off next week, tho. Not much more to say.

I would have loved to have more time to give to this plants, but right now I am really busy and it will get worse with some time 😁. But the plants are doing good, as flowers start to bloom more and more. And now that nutrients are more controlled, as I bought some instead of cooking them, plants finally seem to be healthier. I got rid of the necrotic leaves in Sweet all at once, so now it looks like a bouquet of flowers! In order to make a comparison and study the consequences, I am defoliating Rebel gradually. So I am taking out one leaf each 2 or 3 days. --o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o-- By the way, this is my take on defoliation: logically, leaves are very important in a plant as they take part in the photosynthesis, where they absorb light with clorophyll -what gives them the green colour-. There, they take nutrients from the sap and produce vegetal matter. And the more light they get, the more they grow. On the other hand, they also have an intake of nutrients to be alive -apart from the ones correspondant to photosynthesis-. This wouldn't be a downside of having a leaf in the plant, as 'you' are having a profit out of it: growth or bud growth in flowering -I don't know how much a fan leaf contributes to that, tho-. Then, why defoliate? To understand that, we have to move to a bigger picture, and see the plant as a system. The cannabis plant has in its DNA some survival mechanisms that have been perfected with trial and error in nature, as other plants do. So, once the plant hits flowering stage and we know no new leaves will appear, if there is a deficiency of some nutrient the plant will respond optimally. And how does it do it? Taking those nutrients from the less important leaves, sacrifying them for the wellness of the whole. The plant tends to consider the older ones are the less important. Why? Because generally they are in the lower parts of the plant and are less optimal as they absorb way less light, and consume nutrients. Probably, this fan leaves would be blocking sunlight from budsites, so the right time to defoliate would be determined by your consideration of how profitable is to have that leaf. But have in consideration that if you don't correct the nutrient deficiency and you take the leaf off, another leaves will start to die. And they will be upper in the plant, and more important in consequence. You must also have in consideration that necrotic leaves, while still in the plant, atract pests. This is what happeend in my case, as I had P and K deficiency, but also Mg deficiency. Now it is important to answer the next question: in which cases it makes sense to defoliate too? My point, as it seems to be clear, is to think in terms of profitability of the whole plant. Sometimes you will have to defoliate the lower strati of the plant to optimize air flow and prevent mold and meldew in those parts, and sometimes it will be needed to give more light to some area you are interested in to grow more. That happens a lot when you tie a plant to LST it, for example. However, if you are growing outdoors like me, that will be less neeeded as light is multidirectional and not limited, opposite to growing indoors. Last thing I feel is important about this is considering the stress you are producing to a plant. When you are defoliating you are opening a wound in the plant, and it has to recover from that. So if you take all the leaves out at once, you will lose productivity. At least that is what I think, and what I try to demonstrate with the different approaches for Sweet and Rebel. --o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o--o-- Nothing else needed to say, just that I watered on day 76 with the shown parameters. If you want to discuss about my defoliation mini 'treaty', I am open to learning some more 😁. Because I am not even close to an expert on this important subject.

Nothing intereseting to say this week, apart from the fact that I'm busy and cannot take pictures. Enough with one day 😁. And I kept defoliating Rebel as I said last week. Buds are getting fatter and start to look like the weed I'd smoke. That makes me happy and anxious. I can see pistils getting brown indicating their maturity, but I also distinguish new white ones that are appearing. Which makes me see the way the buds grow: firstly pistils show up in potential bud sites like colas or internodes, indicating where a new calix will grow. And until they get brown, this calix gets fat and also turns into a spot to let new pistils grow. At least I THINK that is how it works. Might be something similar tho. I did not water the plants this week, as I did it at the end of last week, and when they were about to be ready for watering, it rained on them. The soil was wet again and I prefered not to make it even more wet, drowning the roots. Missed an opportunity to give more nutrients and/or adjust pH, and some meldew -or mold?- appeared and I had to get rid of it.

Wow guys... this first experience has come to an end, and sadly I was too damn busy to document the last couple weeks. Not even some harvest pics... I really consider this a shame as I worked very hard during the whole process to learn and make a good report of what I was doing. Until the crucial week! Anyways, hope you enjoyed my diary, in which I discuss some interesting methods and theories. specially until early 'late flowering'. If you have any doubt or comment, I'm open!