First grow - 2x RQS Northern Lights Auto

Hello, guys, first grow here, went for: - 3x Royal Queen Seeds Northern Lights Auto (2/3 germination, sadly) - 2.5x2.5" DarkBox Tent - MarsHydro TS1000 (150W QB) - 2x 15L fabric pots. - Canna Professional Coco+ and Perlite (75/25 ratio) For nutrients I'll be using - GHE Tripart Flora Series (FloraMicro, FloraGro and FloraBloom) - GHE CalMag Started germinating 2 seeds only, but one of them wouldn't even sink in water after 12h, so germinated the 3rd and last seed, success! First seed (I'll be referring to it as NL 1) was moved from paper towel to pot on 19/04 and third seed (NL 2) on 20/04. Growth from NL 1 seems okay, but I expected a little bit more, I will update photos every day at least for the first week. I'll do some LST as soon as I see the 4th branch node, and maybe some defoliation if needed. If anyone has any tips and tricks for growing this strain on this setup of coco and GHE nutrients, feel free to leave a comment :) Really looking forward for seeing those girls shine /////////////////////////////////// ///////// EDIT 24/04 //////////// /////////////////////////////////// Plant #2 looks weird, kind of curly and tilted, plus that yellow spot in the middle of the leaf, I could use some help on this figuring this out! Overwatering? Too much light? (150W led ~75cm of distance) Maybe I have to start giving her some nutrients instead of only plain water (pH 6)? Help! :D /////////////////////////////////// ///////// EDIT 26/04 //////////// /////////////////////////////////// Just gave them their first nutrient feed. Went with GHE Flora Series and GHE Calcium Magnesium Supplement. Their recommendation is 1ml/L at this stage, but I went with a lower dosage of 0.6ml/L. Accidentally let some drops of the feed splash on plant #2, let's hope she doesn't get any burns. Also, hope they react well to their first feed, I'm really scared of fucking up this step 😅 Noticed that plant #2 stretched a little bit, tomorrow I'll lower the light for 5cm, just to prevent her to stretching suddenly

Soooooo hyped for starting week 2! 😍 This week I'll focus on finding a good watering schedule for them, so I can slowly ramp up their nutrients and prepare them for hard veg growing next week ##### DAY 8 ##### I'm so happy right now, just went checking on them and they look tremendously happy! They acquired this beautiful light green color, I hope it means a good and strong new growth, but I think it could also be a little from stress, as yesterday was their first nutrient feed. I'll definitely keep a keen eye on their color and happiness on the next days. Lady #2 has stretched a little bit and I think she's growing faster than lady #1. Coco substrate still moist from yesterday's feed, so no watering today, tomorrow I'll feed her again with same schedule: 0.6ml/L of each GHE Flora Series, with 0.5~1ml/L of Cal-Mag. My GHE FloraMicro is for hard water, so I think I can raise my Cal-Mag up to 1ml/L on this week, and 1.5ml/L on week 3. ##### DAY 9 ##### Just watered them, 11:30pm, this was their second feed. Watered a little more than on D7 so I get some runoff and rinse off any accumulated salts, so probably 2~3 more days until next watering. They seem pretty happy and they're growing! I don't know if they're growing in the correct pace, but I like what I see 😅 I ended up increasing their nutrient schedule a little bit, almost 1ml/L of each nutrient, 1ml/L of Cal-Mag. Tomorrow I'll check how they will react to this nutrient increase. I fucked up when correcting pH today, so I had to use some pH Down and pH Up, much more than I'd like to. I don't know if this makes their water worse or not ##### DAY 10 ##### No watering today, they're growing huge! No signs of over feeding or over watering, so I think it's ok staying on 1ml/L of nutrients this week. Tomorrow I'll probably water them again and check is runoff pH is still on point. ##### DAY 11 ##### Watered them today again, same solution as on day 9. They're growing good, and lady #2 is definitely catching up. Lady #1 has a curled/twisted leaf, maybe it was light stress or some heat wave on the afternoon, anyway I increased 10cm of distance from light, let's see if she recovers well until tomorrow. I started to try some timelapse videos, but not much success, wish I had a GoPro for this 😅 ##### DAY 12 ##### No watering today, just adjusted light power and distance. The tweaks that I did yesterday seemed to helped, lady #1 seems to be recovering and starting to slowly uncurl the tips of her leaves, temps raised to 26°C during light and 21.5°C during darkness. Also saw on hygrometer that yesterday temps were almost 28°C, so probably lady #1 suffered from some heat/light stress yesterday. I have nothing to say about lady #2, except that she's a hell of a mighty plant. Even with the heat/light stress she only keeps on stretching and bulking up her leaves! Hope she keeps this motivation until late flower 😂 ##### DAY 13 ##### Watered girls today, 2L for each plant, just to have good amount of runoff and clean all salts. I started changing my solution to a weak Veg nutrient, as they're almost reaching week 3, when I'll bump more FloraGro and give low amounts of FloraBloom. Solution was at pH 5.8~5.9, I need to buy a pH/EC pen!!! Runoff pH was at 6, so all nutrients were absorbed fine, and no heavy salts built on coco. I noticed some tiny light spots on lady #1's leaves, hope they're only light burns from droplets and no nutrient deficiency. I hope they react well, because they need good growth this week, so we can start with LST as soon as possible ##### DAY 14 ##### Finally ending week 2. Environment control is definitely my biggest challenge, controlling the humidity of the grow room is tough. Let's hope the ladies will still react well to these RH problems. Probably new watering tomorrow, with stronger veg nutrients and some light adjusting too :) Another weird thing: lady #2 is missing a pair of leaves, is it "normal"? I mean, should I be worried about this?

Forgot to take photos yesterday, sadly. So, recap from last week: lady #1 slow and steady, but aging well, already showing growth of 3rd node; lady #2 growing huuuuuuuge, so much growth with almost no stretch, she's in awesome shape! This week we switch her nutes to veg schedule (+FloraGro -FloraBloom), so we can get them big for starting LST and prepare for flower transition. I'M HYPED ################ ##### DAY 16 ##### ################ We start seeing that internodal growth, lots of tiny leaves growing and ready to burst. It would be veeeeery good if we could start LSTing them right now, but I don't think that their size can handle it, at least for now. My expectation is that by day 18 or 19 I can start LST on lady #2, that has a better vertical structure. I don't know how I would approach LST on lady #1, as she's very short. Watered them today, good veg nutrients (see on nutrients section) and I'll keep this feeding for the whole week, at least until she starts showing her flower pistils. One thing that I changed today is that I gave them water 45min before lights going on, let's see if this works... What's the best time of the day to feed them? ################ ##### DAY 17 ##### ################ Lady #2 definitely bigger than Lady #1. No watering today, they seem to be reacting well to nutrient dosage, so I'll increase a little bit more on next watering. Waiting a couple more days until Lady #2 is tall enough to start LST. ################ ### DAYS 18~20 ### ################ Okay, didn't get much time for pictures and updates here, but lots of things happened on those last days. Saw some 1~2 bugs flying/crawling around the girls, so I decided to let the coco dry a little bit more than usual, and stronger wind blowing on medium, it seems to be working. Lady #2 had her first LST session, it all went pretty well, I think 😅 Only bending the main branch so they start evening out smoothly Lady #1 woke up and started growing again, on her last 2 days she bulked up a lot! A little bit of height and some branches stretching, so good! I don't know if I'll do any LST on Lady #1 during this week, as she's so short and bushy, so I don't know if I should risk this. Finally got their feeding schedule where I want (updated feeding charts above). Almost the end of week 3 and they didn't show any sign of pre-flower (I have to look after white hairs at bud sites, right???), so I have some more time on building their size and structure before flowering starts. ################ ##### DAY 21 ##### ################ End of week 3 and I couldn't be happier, those ladies are growing faaaaast! Only 2 days gap and you can tell how Lady #1 is growing strong, they're starting to smell a little bit and the pot is drying a little quicker. Hope that we have more vegetative growth and only see signs of of pre-flowering on start of week 5. Feeding will continue to be on this 2-3-1 ratio until we see her pistils. I'll try to adjust LST on Lady #2 every day. Excited to start LST on Lady #1 too, I'm just waiting her to get a little more height so we bend her easier.

So, week 4 and I've been so tired recently that I didn't have much time or energy to take decent pictures and update the diary. I'll try to keep up! ############### ## DAYS 22~24 ### ############### Okay, both plants EXPLODED. LST showed good results on Lady #2, she has now 1 main branch and 3 great contenders for growing and reaching an even canopy with at least 4 main stems. I'm adjusting Lady #2 LST everyday, tucking some leaves here and there, just to expose more light to lower branches and stimulate growth. Lady #1 started to fatten up and she's reaaally bushy, but I'm afraid to LST her as she's too short, so I may hurt her stems when trying to bend, what do you think? I'm experimenting a little bit with this BioBizz pH Up and Down, as pH Up has a little of humic acid, does it make sense? Not all the news are good news. I found some spots and marks on old leaves from Lady #1, my newbie guess is a Phosphorous deficiency, so now I'll try to drop my pH to 5.8 and if it persists, give her some P booster or a little bit more of bloom nutrients. By the time I only have that GHE pH test kit, with the colorizer liquid, so it's not much accurate, so I regulate to yellow (6.0 pH) and then I use bits of pH Down powder, to bring an orange shade to the test color, something between 5.6 and 5.9. I'm really worried about stunting her and hurt her growth, as this would mean less yield on later stages. If you have any tips on what should I do now, I'm all ears! No signs of pre-flowering yet, so let's keep up with her health to extract all possible growth from this veg stage! ############## #### DAY 26 #### ############## And there we have it, PRE-FLOWERING!!! Just noticed today those tiny pistils! This just reinforces my newbie guess about Phosphorous deficiency, because if they're on pre-flowering, maybe they're starting to get hungry on Phosphorous, only this! Also, new additions to setup: EC Pen from Hanna and a pH Pen from Adwa, now I get to see exact values and stop complaining with those damn pH test colors 😂 Changed nutrient dosage to pre-flowering schedule, will flip to full flower when they stop stretching and start forming the buds indeed. Also, adjusted my pH to 5.7~5.8 to fix Phosphorous deficiency. Hope that we see some good stretches on next few days, as we're almost finishing week 4.

And there you go, starting week 5! Completed 1 month of life on them and I'm pretty happy with the results until now. ########## ## DAY 30 ## ########## My whole focus now is stabilizing feed on Lady #1, as her deficiency is still spreading to other leaves. Tomorrow (20/05) I'll do 1/2 or 1/3 nutrient amount, just to understand what I need to change on Lady #1. I'll keep pre-flowering ratio 4-4-3 (Micro-Grow-Bloom) and maybe change to 3-4-3 throughout the week. I'll down on Cal-Mag from 1.2ml/L to maybe 0.8~1ml/L, does that make sense? Please, I need suggestions on this! So, for the training I readjusted my LST on Lady #2 and finally started doing some LST on Lady #1, adjusted them today. As you can see, Lady #1 canopy is much more even and well distributed than before, no longer that dense stack of leaves blocking everything down the branches. I also started doing a very light defoliation only on necessary leaves. So I'm removing like 2 leaves from each plant, each 2 days, just to expose lower nodes a little more and help them grow without getting blocked by other leaves, second defoliation session today, let's see how they react to it. Please, I need tips on nutrient schedule for this transition phase, and also suggestions for EC and pH range, should I keep on EC 1.4mS/cm and pH 5.8? I'm curious on one thing. When I update a diary week, comment or add new pictures, do you receive updates/notifications? Should I wait and post the whole week at once? Lastly, I'm new to GrowDiaries, so I don't know if I should put this week as Veg or Flower 😅

So, long time no see! Past weeks have not been easy, fixing Calcium/Magnesium problems and now dealing with early Nitrogen deficiency... Some leaves are already falling off both plants, soft stems, yellow/brown-ish color and crispy dry feel. Good thing is only lower small-medium leaves were affected, big fan leaves are still there (almost no light, but still there). I've been collecting 3-6 leaves from each plant every day, at the same time, we're a bit behind on bud formation, so my guess is that this Nitrogen deficiency (which is completely normal on late flowering stages) came a bit early than expected. Also, burnt tips on almost all leaves from Lady #2, nutrient burn. So, for the start of week 8 I'm changing a little bit my feeding schedule, increasing Nitrogen levels (bumped FloraGro from 0.2ml/L to 0.33ml/L, bumped FloraMicro from 0.8ml/L to 1ml/L). We're on a nutrient burn, so I need to lower my EC right now! I'm targeting EC for week 8 at 1.2~1.35 range, so I'll decrease Cal-Mag (from 1.5ml/L to 1ml/L) and reduce PK until plant is past nutrient burn (reduced FloraBloom from 2ml/L to 1.5ml/L). For her last feed during week 7, after managing pH to 5.9, I ended up with EC levels at 1.25mS/cm. A couple of growers suggested me giving them Silica (Armor Si, etc) and some PK booster (Liquid KoolBloom) during weeks 8 and 9, any suggestions on this? Which PK Booster and Silica should I use?