Early Auto 2020

Counting the first sign of dummy leaves as day 1. Here we go! I'll start most everything I grow in the hoop house and I'll end up finishing an LST photoperiod Wedding Cake run in here by mid to late October. I have a black out tarp and climate/humidity control to beat the PNW winter. I pulled about 3 pounds off two beautiful Wedding Cake plants last year with the same process. For now, it's all about getting an early auto grow jump started, as well as all my veggies and some melons. Oh yeah, I'm also going to try and finish my tomatoes and peppers in here this year, although I think it'll be too crowded. Kept it small to make it easy and relatively inexpensive to control the climate.

Things are looking good. I started counting Day 1 before the dummy leaves even shed the seed, also, I think the 3 gal pots are probably holding back the above ground growth a tad. Been watering about .5 gallons each in a ring just outside the plant every 2-3 days. They look healthy and I'm sure by the end of the week, they'll be screaming along. Not sure if I'm more excited about the ganja or the melons. Lol. Can't wait to enjoy both ☀️🍉💨

Both plants started coming along. The Blue Dream has a weird leaf curl. The ends are pointing straight down on some leaves. Also, a little twisting. Maybe some dark leaf veins. I’d be inclined to think nitrogen toxicity, but I’m reusing some soil from may last grow that I had in a huge pile all winter. And I only put .25 tsp per gallon of Big Grow for the last water. I dunno. Just going to go back to regular water and see how it goes. Funny that the HP isn’t showing any unusual signs.

I’m putting 1 tsp of big grow into a 5 gallon bucket of pH’d water 6.8. They got .5 gal each every 3-4 days. Weird leaf curl stopped on Blue Dream. New growth looks great. Leaf curl started on Honey Peach. I found one leaf with holes in it. No pests above the soil. I did reuse a mix of soil from last year’s outdoor grow and an indoor grow from this winter that had been sitting in a pile outside. I mixed it with steer manure and some compost. Beginning to think there may have been bugs in it.

Flowering kicked in on both and they’re both in full stretch mode. As to be expected, the indica dominate Honey Peach is staying squat with very short internodes. While, on the other hand, the sativa dominate Blue Dream Really started to shoot up! Looking good around here. Oh yeah, they got some roommates. Banana Peppers, Jalapeños, and Roma Tomatoes 🤤

Day 36 today! It was a great week for the plants. Definitely starting to take shape. It’s cool to see the dominate Sativa and dominate Indica strains growing side by side on the same timeline and same regiment. I actually only added .5 tsp of Tiger Bloom to 5 gallons of water last week. So they received two straight waterings of that, and I think they started to show minor signs of note burn. NBD. I did give them a healthy dose (1 gallon each) of straight water last time, and I will do the same (straight water) for at least the next watering. Then maybe a super small dose of Cha Ching after that. IDK. See how they look. Did some LST this morning and by the evening photo shoot the ends were already pointing straight up. Love to see that vigor. Honey Peach is a gnarly little rough and tough Indica strain. Coming in at a stout 15”, it’s the heavier of the two plants and I suspect it has a much more robust root mass (especially if what’s above the soil is any indication of what’s happening bellow). Looking very similar to when I grew it indoors. Compact, stinky and the leaves just go haywire all over the place. It’s definitely looking like it will produce a dense, substantial main cola and some solid spears off the side shoots again. I’m estimating 5-6 more weeks based off of what I saw on the indoor grow. I love this strain for ongoing daytime smoking. Great smell and a nice smooth flavor that gives me a mellow, relaxing high. First time growing this Blue Dream and it’s looking true to the Sativa family. Topping out at a slender 25”, this plant has very symmetrical and even growth. It really stretched the past week. Personally, I have no idea what to expect, but I have seen a few other grows of this exact strain take substantially longer to mature than advertised (I think one went a full 16 weeks). It’s definitely moving slower than the Honey Peach, but that is to be expected as it is sativa dominate. Definitely starting to smell! Time to hook those carbon filter up to the fans!

Wish i did two separate diaries for these... next time 🤷‍♂️ Blue dream is looking nice. This is honestly my first sativa. Interesting to see how thin and sparse it is. I reckon it will take a while to mature. I’ve seen a. Couple of these grows go forever. Hoping the buds will fill in. I’m sure they will. Honey Peach is going for the gold. This is a funny lil strain. It’s pissed off. Lol. It just grows so gnarly and aggro. I like it. It’s looking like it will be a quick turn around again. This is definitely a very fast auto.

Vegetive growth mostly stopped with both. Honey Peach Buds starting to fill in. Looking good. Blue Dream seeming a lot slower. Maybe thats the Sativa, maybe it my watering practice... I up potted the BD earlier in the week to a 5 gal just to get some new soil in there and to see if the root mass had filled the 3 gal. It had not. But it is responding well and buds are definitely starting to fill out. FYIW, I don’t believe that transplanting causes any kind of shock at all if done carefully. I have never noticed any adverse reaction from transplanting, and this time, about 4 weeks into flowering, was no exception. I generally let my outdoor photos completely dry out so they get fed 1-1.5 times a week, been doing the same here but starting to feel like maybe I should be giving the autos a little to drink/eat...

This is gonna be a long one… So things seemed really slow for both plants last week. That continued into this week. In fact, growth almost seemed to completely halt on the blue dream. I started with the IDGAF method and then relaxed even more from there. It started by having no idea what soil I put in which bag. It’s either a combo of leftover soil from last season, or some absolutely terrible soil I got from a local place. Then, to make sure I really messed up, I didn’t do any initial soil testing. Day 63 and I guess it’s finally time to take account of my ways and try to get these plants on track and across the finish line. Better late than never, right? I did some soil testing on both and wasn’t all that surprised by the findings. Here we go… ——— BLUE DREAM Some purple streaks popped up when flowering started. It was around day 37 when I first noticed some purple spotting around the nodes on lower branches. I initially thought it was strain dependent, since it wasn’t happing on the honey peach. But remember, I have no idea what soil is in either bag. Lol! Anyway, over the past two weeks, the buds on the blue dream have really slowed down to the point of almost not even being able to see any growth. They are filling out a little, but barely. Also, I started to notice purple on the tips of the leaves of the topmost growth. It was time to do some test and see what I’d been doing and what I could do for these next few weeks. I tested the slurry with a decent PPM and pH pen, and I tested nutrients with the little color reaction capsules. For the tests, I used distilled water that had a pH of 7.6 and a ppm of 0. SLURRY ppm pen - 103 pH pen - 6.43 pH capsule - between 6.0 - 6.5 N - N1 (deficient) P - P4 (surplus) K - K3 (sufficient) RUNOFF ppm - 1570 pH - 5.74 So the NPK wasn’t surprising. Last feed they had straight Cha Ching 9-50-10. What I did think was weird was that the slurry showed an excess of Phosphorus and Potash but only a ppm of 103… Regardless, the lower pH and high ppm, along with the purple stems and new growth all point to nutrient lockout. So I flushed, with 5 gallons of water pH 7.0 POST FLUSH RUNOFF ppm - 580 pH - 5.9 I’ll do another deep slurry after it dries, before the next watering. Everything looked good the next day. I already saw more pistils and it looks alive again. ——— HONEY PEACH The honey peach always seemed to be doing okay. It definitely didn’t grow at big and bold as when i did the indoor grow over the winter. But again, I used fresh Ocean Forest soil from Fox Farms. This time, I have no idea what I used. But there were never any purple streaks or any other signs of deficiency. Still, I did a slurry because it did seem to be slowing down. Also, the pistils stopped growing and receded on a lot of the buds, but the buds are still growing. SLURRY ppm pen - 59 pH pen - 6.69 pH capsule - between 6.5 and 7.0 N - N1 (deficient) P - P3 (sufficient) K - K4 (surplus) RUNOFF ppm - 534 pH - 6.2 So the NPK wasn’t surprising. Last feed they had straight Cha Ching 9-50-10. What I did think was weird was that the slurry showed an excess of Phosphorus and Potash but only a ppm of 103… I figure this one has about one, two weeks tops before it’s finished, so went ahead and flushed too. With 3 gallons of pH 7 water. POST FLUSH RUNOFF ppm - 392 pH - 6.3 ——— The big takeaway was that I likely have two different soil structures going on. Either way, they got a good flush and we’re in the home stretch.

Man! the Blue Dream is responding really well to the flush - feed - water this week. Lots of new white pistils, bud development and trichome production. I’m guessing around 10 more days. Smells so good. I think I stopped feeding the Honey Peach too early. Some buds are developing, some look like there getting toasted. I’d say 50% milky trichomes for the most part right now, a few amber heads here and there. I might harvest it soon, today or tomorrow.

Day 75 Blue Dream has really been bulking up. So many new white pistils. I’m thinking 2 more weeks or so. Honey Peach seems to have stalled with about 25% milky white trichome heads and about 5% amber. The trichomes on the tips of a few main flowers are turning brown. I gave it a feed on day 73 just to see if it helps it across the finish line. Most likely will harvest on day 77 or 78...

Probably harvested the Honey Peach a little early. It seemed to have stalled. The Blue Deam’matic is still developing new pistils and calyx. No amber trichomes yet. A few cloudy. Keep on keeping on.

This never had the best chance to succeed. I grew it in old soil from last winter’s indoor grow that sat in my yard all spring. Probably flushed clean from the rain. I reckon this got the bare minimum. When I grew it indoor in fresh Ocean Forest soil i got twice the yield. But overall it produced consistent look, smell, and flavor in line with other times of grown this strain.

Almost there! Probably take this down on Tuesday...

This grew well. To be honest, I planted it and another auto early in the season so i could have some fresh bud at the end of the summer, while I wait for my photo grow to finish. I did not pay attention to the soil I used, which was some combo of leftover, salt-drenched FF from an indoor grow, the leached soil from last years out door, and a bag of FF Happy Frog. I barely fed it any additional notes until the end i hit it with some beastie bloomz and cha-ching. Probably the last I’ll ever grow with that kind of salt-based nutrients approach as I spent the summer developing a healthy compost pile and some living soil. But I digress... It was easy to grow. I basically planted it and forgot about it in completely crummy soil and almost got 2 ounces of beautiful, strong herb.