Auto Blackberry Kush

This grow is going to be testing my coco based auto watering setup. The plants will eventually be going into 2.5 gallon airpots which I cut to be very tall and narrow which I hope will give great performance for this grow style. Nutrient solution will be pumped from a 5 gallon bucket to halo-style drip emitters 4 times a day for 5-10 second intervals. I am going to try to use inline flow control knobs to dial in the watering and allow for slight runoff every fertigation. For lighting I am using my HLG 100 watt lights, one per plant. I am a big fan of these quantum boards, they have given great performance I. The past! Thanks for reading! 🌱👍 May 13 day 1: the Blackberry breached after germinating in a rapid rooter for 2 days. I am impressed with how quickly this seed popped! It had a stuck seed that was gently removed, and will be falling off the rest of the way shortly. May 16 day 3: Seedlings planted with their rapid rooters into coco filled seedling bags, and given first nutrients. They are remaining under humidity dome. I have also started running the drip emitters to test them and dial in the amount of runoff. It is also continuing to buffer the coco so the medium will be well prepared for my seedlings when the time comes. Day 4: the seedlings are doing well so far, so I will keep them domed for a few more inches of growth. Then I will switch to a humidifier to maintain acceptable RH.

I transplanted the Blackberry Kush a little early so it could start benefitting from the auto watering. For my grow set up I am not worried about overwatering, and I think the root development will be just fine in my tall, 2.5g pots. I will keep dialing up the nutrients carefully, as the Blackberry Kush is showing some minor development issues which I hope will self resolve (the Fastbuds Blackberry is doing great in the same conditions). I will have a lot more updates during the week, happy growing everyone and stay safe! 👍🌱 Day 10: started adding silicon and rapid start (and a little pH down) and upped the trio slightly. In case anyone is wondering if there is any perlite, there is! It's just chilling under layer of pure coco. Right now there is 3l of perlite per pot, with the highest concentration lowest in the pot where drainage will be needed the most. Day 12: I lowered lights to 20 inches which is my vegitative growth hanging height generally. Thanks to those who responded to my grow question regarding this plant's leaf deformaties, the general consensus was that if the other parameters are good and this is the only plant showing symptoms it is likely genetic. This is also what I have suspected, as the only other plant I have had display these characteristics was a Black Cream almost a year ago grown with a completely different growing style. That plant grew alright (although slightly behind it's peers) so I hope this one can do well once it starts taking off! Day 13: I am running low on calimagic as a cal mag source, so I switched out to Greenleaf nutrients cal-mag pro that I have a bag of (that will last forever!) It has a bit more nitrogen, which is good for the current plant stage, so I can save the calimagic for flowering if the plants don't mind the switch. I mix about .5-.6 EC worth of Cal mag, which is about .625tsp per 5 gallons of the Cal mag pro. I will have this reflected on tomorrow's diary entry.

As of day 14, the Blackberry Kush is still exhibiting it's abnormal leaf growth. I've only ever seen this on another genetically purple strain, so I am curious if there is a connection. If anyone has seen similar issues in their own plants let me know! It's growth hasn't been too bad, and I am sure it's going to continue to take off over the next week! I usually top my plants between day 14 and 21, so i am hoping it is growing vigorously enough to prevent any stunting. I haven't seen any adverse effects from temporarily switching to my plentiful dry cal-mag, so I am happy about that so far! I am still adding a similar EC worth of Cal mag (.5) so it's good to have dialed in a rough equivalent. I hope everyone is staying safe, and happy growing! 👍🌱 Day 15: the leaf growth continues to be very screwy, and even if it's at least partially a genetic issue I continue to triple check all my practices and parameters. The PH drifts up mildly in my reservoirs between cleaning/remixing of nutrients, but it is going from roughly a 5.8 up to a 6.2 (at worst) with no change in the EC/PPM. Between the lack of EC drift and lack of smell, I don't think there are any major bacterial issues. The outflow PH is also acceptable (5.8) and the outflow EC is around .2-.3 above inflow, which is also acceptable. I dug into the coco a little bit, and the medium is not oversaturated with water (it is always a bit "fluffy" with good drainage and never compacted) and the roots are white and healthy. With the healthy vigorous growth of the other Blackberry in the same conditions, it brings me back to this being at least partially a genetic issue. I looked through grow questions of other diaries for similar leaf issues, and it seemed that most were either blueberry or blackberry strains from a range of breeders. This could be purely a coincidence, but it does make me wonder. The grows with similar issues seemed to otherwise have no commonalities in how they were grown. I am going to keep trying my best with this plant regardless, so I hope it pulls through alright! Day 17: being very careful with my PH and keeping it a bit lower, to rule it out as a possible cause of the twisted leaves and less vigorous growth. I am keeping it between 5.5 and 6 for the time being to make sure there is no lock out of micro elements like boron. As per the comments, I am being more accurate be using a pH pen as opposed to drops which I may have misjudges. I topped the plant, which is definitely a risk! But I am hoping for some healthier leaves to come in, and the plant hasn't stunted so far! It has grown the number of nodes it should have for its age, it just not as filled in and lush as I would like it to be. Day 19: I have been monitoring PH especially carefully, taking a few measurements per day and keeping it between 5.6 and 5.8 (a little on the low side). The runoff is consistently under 6 as well. EC and other conditions have stayed where they should be as well. I reduced any PH drift by running the air pump for the res 24/7, instead of just for mixing and before fertigations to rule that out. But I haven't seen any overall improvements for the leaves so I am reverting back to my theory of a genetic issue with this particular plant. It's growing larger and it's stems are thickening, so I'm just going to keep it growing as well as I possibly can and see what it yields!

As of day 21, the Blackberry Kush is growing sizable despite the very deformed growth. After really double checking every parameter last week, I feel comfortable saying it is a genetic issue. Thank you to those who commented and responded to the grow question over the past weeks, it really helps! I want to see how this plant grows and what it yields despite the issue, it should be interesting to see what kind of buds it can end up making. I will perform some LST soon as the plant is growing taller even after topping. I with the twisted leaves and wonky growth, it's actually letting plenty of light penetrate to the lower/center portions of the plant which may have it's own positive outcomes (what can I say, I'm an optimist!) Happy growing everyone, and stay safe! 👍🌱 Day 22: started LST to promote lateral growth. Day 24: even though the twisted leaf growth is keeping the foliage from getting very dense, I am happy that this plant is still a good size and is definitely not stunted! If anything it is acting like a defoliated plant, letting plenty of light penetrate to the lower growth tips and center of the plant. Day 25: earliest signs of flowering. Day 26: 5x per day watering, 15 second duration.

The Blackberry Kush is growing well despite it's leaf deformity, and is spreading out wide with the LST I am performing on in. It's stems and buds are as dense as the FB Blackberry, even though it's leaves are more dispersed and scraggly. I am going to focus on controlling it's upwards growth over the next few weeks as it is stretching rapidly and do not want my lights to get overgrown. Both plants seem to be loving the coco. No sign of darker colors yet, but it is still very early in flowering with mainly pistils present (as opposed to stacked calyxes.) I will post more updates during the week, especially if the flowers are putting on weight. Thanks for reading, and stay safe! 🌱👍 Day 33: Auto Blackberry Kush is showing a nice pink/purple color already, in it's early buds. It should show some nice colors as it grows!

As of day 36, my only concern with the grow is that the plants will overgrow my tent! I had to bypass my light ratchets and attach them directly to the top poles to gain more headroom. Hopefully the stretch slows down and I can manage them, I am going to keep LSTing them to keep it manageable in the meantime. The buds are increasing in size, and are already a wonderful red/purple color. I am really excited to see how the colors change over the next few weeks! Happy growing, and stay safe! 🌹

As of day 44, the Auto Blackberry Kush is doing great! The purple/black is very deep and saturated on the buds and sugar leaves, and even spreading onto some of the fan leaves. There is not much smell off the plant right now, but the buds are swelling and the trichomes are spreading nicely across the buds and sugar leaves. I don't think the leaf mutation has held the plant back much, as the plant is a very good size! If the buds get good density they will be very attractive with the colors they are showing. I just hope they smoke well too 🔥 Happy growing! 🥦 Day 48: removed some stunted lower growth under the canopy, and continued to pull dead/yellow leaves throughout the undergrowth. Dropped the hydrogen peroxide so I could run a week with enzymes. Flower bulking is going well and the colors are fantastic.

As of day 52, the Blackberry Kush is bulking up well and showing some very nice purples. It has a nice citrus/berry aroma and is frosting up across it's calyxes and sugar leaves. I will put some magnified trichome photos up soon. Thanks for reading! 👍

As of day 59, the Auto Blackberry Kush is just stacking calyxes and dropping the oldest leaves. I switched to dry Koolbloom from the liquid version, as I have entered the final ripening and bulking phase. The smell is nice, a combination of berry and Kush with a little bit of citrus/lemon.

The plants have been growing fine for the past few weeks, and bulked up nicely. There has been some minor Cal mag lightening as I pushed more of the EC of the nutrient solution towards bloom boosters. I need a larger tent as the two plants squeezed every square inch and created a very dense canopy with too much lower fluff. A little bit of amber (less than 10 percent) has become visible on the buds, so as of day 73, both the Blackberries are being harvested. The buds are huge and very frosty. Unfortunately the photos this week are very poor quality, as both the plants came apart when I started removing my plant supports. Buds were hanging everywhere! I was hoping to get some nice, natural light photos but that will not happen this run. But I will have some harvest photos up soon, which will hopefully show the full glory of the end result!

I wish I hadn't become swamped after harvesting and got some better photos and records of it. But these things happen during a pandemic, and I am back growing after an 8 month break. I found the plants did not have enough room this grow, so I am only going to grow one plant in the tent at a time. The plants growing very vigorously in this circumstance is ironically unideal for yields.