Watermelon (mystery bag seed)

Found these older pics from earlier in the grow so I figured I'd include them! I remember the mute plant had a lot more trouble shedding its helmet than the others. The signs start early!

Found these older pics from earlier in the grow so I figured I'd include them! At this point in the grow I was just praying they survive longer than their predecessors. No nutrients were given, just tap water and pro mix hydro soil.

Found these older pics from earlier in the grow so I figured I'd include them! Not much going on, they were developing nicely, the mute plant was clearly developing much slower than it's relatives. I was watering them every 3 days or so when the soil started to feel dry. No training or anything at this point, I was just letting them grow...

Found these older pics from earlier in the grow so I figured I'd include them! At this point in the grow I started watering them a bit more. Their growth rate really speeds up dramatically. The growth seems so gradual from day to day but looking back at these images really puts it into perspective.

This is my second grow attempt with these mystery seeds. (first-time grower). Had a ton of issues in the first round due to fungus gnats in the soil. I started from scratch 40 days ago with a bag of Pro Mix - Premium organic moisture mix and some brand new fabric pots. I only filled the pots halfway with soil, to begin with, but two days ago I pulled the plants out of the pots and filled in the extra. I started this grow off with only two of these Feit Electric 16W bulbs and picked up two more today. The plants are starting to get quite big for my growing space. I think I probably should have topped them sooner but I got cold feet after how badly the first run with these seeds went. Hard to take blades to a plant that's doing so well. I also only just started to do a bit of LST yesterday to try and even out the canopy. I have more work to do, ideally, I would like to have been able to use a trellis net. Maybe next time! I don't know too much about these seeds. I think they must be photoperiod and if I had to guess I think I would say these are Indica dominant. Two of the four seeds I planted came out a "bit" mutated. One more severely than the others as you can see in the pics. In the future, I would probably just pull that one out but since this is a first time grow for me I felt like keeping it to see how it developed, just out of curiosity. I've never seen a plant grow quite like this, with leaves curling up into spirals and looking so thin. Can't wait to see how the buds on this one develop (if it turns out to be female) I'm debating whether or not to do some defoliation on these suckers, just to get more light into some of the lower branches. Not much to do, but I think if I took out a few of the lower fan leaves it might help some of the lower branches develop better.

Good news!They're girls! Well... at least two of them are. I noticed a few little calyxes with tiny pistils coming out while on the 24/7 light cycle. If anyone reads these maybe they can tell me if that means they are autoflower? I'm still not sure, in either case, I've started these plants on a 12-12 light cycle two days ago. They are big enough as it is, probably too big for this space and these tiny lights I've got anyway so let's grow some bud. I watered them once and noticed some deficiencies so I added a bit of cheap liquid plant food (it's all I've got and I figure it's better than nothing). I can also see some root tips coming out of the bottom of these fabric pots which tells me they have really filled out the extra soil I added in there two weeks ago. All in all, I'm really pleased with the results I'm seeing, I never expected them to grow this big this fast. Here's hoping they make some nice dense buds. Only time will tell...

7 days of 12/12 light cycle have gone by... Did more LST to try and keep the canopy relatively flat. Starting to see more signs of flowering now in my two main plants many more calyxes with pistils are popping up on the other tops, the third plant has a single preflower that I've been able to find, but it's kind of an uncertain preflower. I'm still waiting to see if it pops pistils. The smell is starting to be a bit more noticeable, it doesn't yet smell like buds, more of a sweet floral scent like a plant nursery or a flower garden. It's actually a little intoxicating, really nice. I'm a little worried at this stage that the amount of light I'm providing won't be sufficient for generating an impressive harvest. I'm really surprised the plants have grown the size they have under these conditions. It's something I would like to address before my next grow. The super mutant has yet to show any preflower signs but continues to grow at a steady pace. Looking just as freakish as ever. I actually noticed some features I had overlooked before, notably, some of its side branches are actually fused to the internodal stems. Very interesting... These side stems are outgrowing the internodal stem however and as a result, there are these compressed or bent looking shapes in the fused side stems that give it the appearance of veins or worms or something. More evidence this plant is of the devil.

I decided to do some light defoliation to get more light to the bud sites. It's clear that these lights are lacking. The buds are really starting to develop now. Nothing yet on the mutant plant.

Now that flowering is well underway I'm really noticing big performance differences in all of the plants. One of them is a clear winner. Of the two most successful plants, the one that grew faster and larger actually turned out less productive in the end. I can't necessarily exclude the possibility that some other factor is at play. I'm not sure if this is normal but there's really no noticeable smell yet, still smells like a plant nursery. It would be really sweet if it stays way. I have clones of both the best plants, so I might get a better picture of if the performance is genetic or environmental. Starting to see little trichomes growing on sugar leaves and buds. Pretty cool, really happy with the results so far. Hopefully the buds keep getting bigger!

The leaves are starting to turn yellow on the two more productive plants. The buds are getting bigger, but the question now is, how big? I don't really have a macro lens or a jewelers loupe so it's going to be a guessing game for me, I'll just have to squint real hard to see how much amber is present in the trichomes. Growth has been pretty slow with these plants, probably due to the low light conditions. I wouldn't be surprised if these plants had another 3 or 4 weeks left in them before harvest... I've noticed that some of the very white pistils are slowly starting to turn orange, I'm not sure if this is an indicator of progress but it's a noteworthy observation. Also, the second most productive plant, (which looks to have undergone quite a lot of stress during growth, including some nutrient deficiencies), has started to show some signs of color in the bud areas, the stems are quite purple in places, but now the leaves near the buds are also starting to turn purple which is quite interesting. Mutant number one, which has throughout the grow been more healthy than its deformed sister is growing nice little buds, not super productive but lots of frost on there, in the future I would cull this one, the amount of bud it has produced really isn't worth the effort of growing it. Finally, the mutant has popped pistils! it looks like there probably won't be anything worth smoking to harvest from it, but the fact that It managed to flower at all is a success in my eyes. It has been interesting to watch it develop, in spite of its horrible deformities.