Blueberry Auto Outdoor

Tuesday night my blackberry auto seeds arrived. I took a plate, wet a paper towel, put the beans on the paper towel, wet another paper towel and covered the beans, then took another plate and covered the whole thing to keep humidity in. Thursday they had all cracked, so I took 5 4" peat planters, filled them with my standard 60% Foxfarms Soil, 20% perlite, 20% worm castings soil mix, and dropped the cracked beans in. This morning, all 5 seedlings were up and saying high to the world. I will not top these since they're autoflowers, but I might LST them, I don't know - I don't usually grow Auto's, but I thought it would be a good experiment while my Big Buds harvest (check out my Big Bud Outdoors diary if you haven't yet). I'll bring these girls inside every night for a week, then give 'em a week of hardening 24/7 outdoors, then I'll put the peat planters into 3 gallon smart pots which will be their home for the duration. I'm hoping for 40 grams/plant.

The baby's grew, as baby's do. Since these are autos, and it's my first time doing autos, and because of the wind, I wanted to get them in their final homes today. I am big on organic, living soil, but I also really like Fox Farm's Ocean Forest mix. So, I ordered 5 pounds of Nature's Living Soil Autoflower concentrate. You put 1 pounds per 5 gallons - in my case, 1 pound per 7 gallons, because I also used the Happy Frog seafood mix. The way you mix it is you put 1.5 gallons of soil in, + your perlite, then dump the pound of concentrate in. It smells STRONG. IT's got a ton of awesome stuff in it nute wise, but it also has colonies of fungus and bacteria; when you open the pack, it has thick white ropes of mycelium all through it. So you mix that up, put that on the bottom of the container, then fill the rest with you normal soil mix. For me, that's 60% soil, 20% perlite, and 20% worm castings. Since I got the free sample of the Happy Frog seafood mix, I also used that - 1 TBS/gallon. The idea is, I should never need to feed these plants. The living soil and microorganisms will make sure al the nutes are available at the right quantity, when they're needed. We'll see how that turns out - I don't think that would be possible in a 5 gallon pot, but maybe in a 7 - I don't expect autos to really need all 7 gallons. Goal remains 50g/plant. Clean, although REALLY strong smelling, country living.

These autoflowers are growing pretty much on cruise-control. You can see week over week they're starting to grow quickly; the living soil is working well. I found an earthworm in one of the pots, and lots of little closer-ish type babies are starting to sprout up. I think it would be cool if they made a soft little green carpet for the autos to nestle with. Unfortunately, the fertilizers I mixed in last week smelled very good to one of my dogs, and he ended up digging one of the plants up. So, instead of five autos, I now have four. If I can get 50g a piece, that's still a decent haul all things considered. Although based on how they've taken off, maybe I can closer to get 75. Clean country living, with some a**hole dogs.

Easy week for the auto blueberries. My dogs left them alone (yay), which honestly is 90% of the battle. Had to water them once because it was so hot this week, but the 7 gallon pots ensured the soil stayed moist enough. They almost doubled in size. These girls' leaves are broad and fat, not the slim blades of the big bud girls. I'm hoping they stay in veg for at least three more weeks. The living soil amendment is awesome - this week I've seen earthworms in the mornings in the pots, ladybugs fly around frequently keeping the bad bugs at bay, and the soil is starting to be covered in little clovers. Ph tester puts the soil at 6.5, squarely in the green zone. Nothing going on here but clean country living.

So, the Blueberry Auto strain from ILGM is weird. Last week, the tallest girl was 5" high. It was about the height of a soda can - you can see in the pictures from last week! It was regular, old auto-blueberry. This week - 8 days later - that same plant is 15" tall. I measured her with a tape-measure several times. She grew 10" in 8 days. At the start of this diary, I mentioned the living soil amendment - for a 7 gallon pot, you mix about 1.5 gallons of your medium, and then put in the pound of amendment, mix it up, and then put the rest of your medium in filling, up the pot. This means most of the good stuff is at the bottom of the pot, which is fine for lots of reasons. But it ALSO means that when those roots start getting to the bottom of the pot and drinking up that goodness...BANG. Growth was awesomer this week for three of the four girls. One of these girls though just seems like a dude. She's scraggly, growing tall but really spindly, misshapen little leaves, almost no internode growth...I suspect I'll get lucky to get 15 grams off her. Just a genetic misfire. The other three are doing much better, although they all have the same quirk - one side of their internode growth is very long, the other side is very stunted. I don't think these genetics are very stable. On the other hand, they've been much more mold resistant than the big bud has been. I saw the beginnings of spider mites on one of these plants, and with the powdery mildew starting on the big bud, all the plants on my deck ended up with a neem oil/spinosad soaking. I also absolutely love the garden of eden developing in the biggest auto. The living soil is really awesome. I need to start learning about what plants are in there with them. Despite some funky inbreeding, we're still enjoying clean, country living.

I posted last week's diary on Saturday. On Sunday, all four girls went into flower, so this is the end of week 1. For the most part it was an uneventful week. Lots of rain, so I didn't need to water them. Eden, the girl with all the companion plants busting out, grew a full 12" - she's 27" tall. All the flower sites look like basic flower sites, no purple or blue yet. Smells getting pretty strong - when you walk out on my deck now, the smell of pine and earth hits you immediately. I defoliated away all the fan leaves except the top-set at a bud site. The skinny little twig I didn't really need to defoliate, she's so pathetic...I did it mostly out of spite. I wish I had gotten 7 weeks out of these plants before flower - 7 gallon pots were definitely overkill. Not sure if I'm going to run autos again - they seem like great fit for SoG-type runs under a grow light, but not sure they're a good outdoor plant. Clean country living.

Week of flowering...girls grew 3 inches this week, and started to get their bud-sites more well-defined. I did some light defoliation after I took these pics just to get some of the big fan leaves away. I'm looking for a 50:50 amber:cloudy mix on the trichomes, so I'm guessing ~5 more weeks of flower, 12 week total run-time. I'm hoping to get 50g off 3 of then, and then maybe 10g off SkinnyTwigs. Clean country living.

This has been a weird week. Plants only grew about an inch; the buds are starting to swell up; I assume we've got three or four more weeks to go. No trichomes yet, but I'm assuming they're coming. No purpling either. Right now, this is just...weed. Twiggy is actually the stinkiest girl by far - she smells pretty strongly of under-ripe citrus; think the smell of cutting into a baby lime too soon. The others all smell much milder, and have more of a slight berry hint. Twiggy also has a strange speckling pattern developing - it looks a lot like insect damage, at first...but I've been washing these girls in spinosad for several weeks now, and neem oil before that. Further, the way the pattern is developing is weird - it starts as speckling at the tips of the leaves, and then spreads inwards. They're like little yellow and red specks, and I'm starting to see them on the other girls, with the same pattern. Visually, it just looks like bug damage, but the way it spreads seems more like a fungus maybe? I have an open question, and all the answers so far point to bug damage...maybe I'm overthinking it. But the undersides of the leaves on all four plants look pristine :/ The other thing I'm wondering if it might be is molybdenum deficiency. I checked the Ph of my soil on Thursday, and it had shot up to 7.1; I suspect that could cause some nute lock-out? So when I watered them I added 1 cup of apple cider vinegar per gallon of water. I only had to water them once this week due to rain. The pigweed companion plants are pretty awesome - their flower structure is similar to cannabis. My wife dries out the flowers and makes a grain out of it that she adds to oatmeal and smoothies. You want to avoid the leaves, as they store a ton of nitrogen, and can cause nitrogen toxicity. They make great companion plants for flowering cannabis because they pull any excess nitrogen out of the soil. The leafy ground cover companion plants are purslane; all of this plant is edible. My wife picked a handful of leaves and tossed it in a salad last night - they have a lemon-peppery flavor. Not bad at all. In the mornings they have tiny little yellow flowers that open up, and close again after a few hours. The entire purslane plant sort of folds up at night, and then opens back up in the morning. I don't know exactly how, but purslane helps lower soil temperature; maybe just the shade? I don't know. I didn't intend any of these plants as companions - they just ended up there, probably through my compost. Clean, confusing country living.

Look at that pH level. Terrible. Last week I mentioned how I had some kind of leaf damage - maybe insects, maybe a fungus, maybe a deficiency...well, it's a deficiency, caused by pH levels that got completely out of hand. How did that, you ask? Because I made a rookie mistake - I was pH testing the soil with one of those cheap analogue soil testers, and it was consistently 6.8. Perfect. But with the leaf damage happening, and it spreading to the other plants, I got into real investigative mode all week. So I decided to pH test my water, something I just never really do since we had our well tested three years ago and the pH was "fine". That's right, ladies and gentlemen...I claim to know what I'm talking about (sometimes) when it comes to growing in general...and I don't even know what my well's pH is. I know it's "fine". So, I test it...7.6 - highly alkaline. So now I'm skeptical of my soil tester, so I go stick in the forest, all over the place. Every single time...6.8, 6.8, 6.8. My soil tester has been lying to me. So, now I do a TRUE soil pH test - I water to runoff, collect the runoff, run it through at least a shintillion-quillion coffee filters until the water is clear, and I test that. 7.6 Frustrating, but now I know what to do. So I went and bought several gallons of spring water, pH tested at 6.3, and I just started flushing. Flush, flush, flush. I also cut back all the companion plants, let the plants dry for a few days, gave them an acidifying watering, and now the pH levels are down a touch to 7.3. It will be a process. I cut off almost all of twiggy's dead growth...I won't even pull 5 grams off her. The other plants I think I'll be lucky to hit 15g. My first time growing autos, and it's been quite the teacher. Clean-but-highly-alkaline country living.

This week I lollipopped the girls, to the best of my ability. My hands are shaky, so it's hard for me to get in and do a real precise job, so if it looks like a crummy job, that's why. But I need to sort of pre-trim as much as I can, or else "trim day" is more like "trim week". Anyway, I lollipopped the girls because they're 90% clear-10% milky, with a random amber trich here or there. I am guessing we are seven to ten days away from harvest - I'm kind of glad. I learned a lot this grow, but unfortunately that's going to be my primary harvest - learning. The pH issues in early flower really stunted their growth, and rendered little twiggy almost barren, with funky, deformed flowers. I'm thinking she's just going to be a hash plant. The other three, I'm guessing ~15-20g per plant, so roughly 2 oz overall. Not at all what I was hoping for, but don't blame the garden, blame the gardener. pH, pH, pH. Still, although the I expect the yield to be small and nothing fancy, it is nice to see one of the girls really starting to frost up. Not much sugar on the leaves, but a lot of ice on the calyxes. Should make for a nice smoke reserve for 6 - 8 weeks. Clean, introspective country living.

These girls are very close to harvest time. Twiggy, the pathetic mutant, got taken down this week - her leaves were brittle, and I didn't see any real growth out of her. I don't think she's going to provide anything smokeable, so I took the whole plant and tossed her in the freezer; I'll make hash out of her when the other three girls come down. The three remaining girls all put on a lot of trichomes this week - the buds are nice and frosty. The trichomes are roughly 30% clear, 60% cloudy, and 10% amber. I'm aiming for a 50/50 cloudy/amber mix...there's a good chance they'll come down sometime this week. Right now they're getting nothing but rain water. Growdiaries staff, when I'm flushing I am not feeding them anything, so your diary-guide prompts me to add something to keep this diary 'dope'. What's the right way to handle this? I kinda' fudged it by adding a gallon/gallon rain water :P

So 245g on the scale wet, which I think projects out to ~56g once it's been dried. I leave the branches to hang for 3 or 4 days until the stem is crispy, then I'll trim away all the extraneous leaves and put them in a jar for two weeks. I'll have the final smoke report up then.