Rough Start, Great Finish!

Hi everybody. It is currently May 18th, 2020, and I am updating this diary retroactively. As I write this entry for Week 1, I'm actually on Week 9 of this grow. As such, I'm able to comment on where I went wrong during the first 7-8 weeks. Hopefully anyone reading this will be able to learn from my mistakes. This is my second grow; the first of which was cut due to a training-attempt catastrophe so I started over. To be honest, this time around was much rockier from the get-go. I currently have a very stunted plant that I contribute to two primary failures on my behalf: 1. Light Stress: I decided I wanted to use a lux meter to measure light levels. I foolishly found a resource online telling me that, lux levels required are roughly as follows: 20,000 for seedlings; 40,000 for veg; 60,000 for bloom. WRONG! While lux meters can be useful, you simply cannot rely on numbers given in this simplistic fashion online. There are too many variables. If you chose to use a lux meter to help you out, you'll need to calculate/experiment and develop your own lux parameters. One thing to realize is that lux is a measure of light intensity. It can be converted to PPFD, which is a measurement of how many photons hit a certain surface area over a period of time. The key word there is TIME! As such, your light cycle will influence your desired light intensity, whether it be in PPFD or lux. If you look up PPFD recommendations for cannabis, you'll find numbers like this: 150-300 for seeds, 300-600 for veg; 600+ for flowers. BUT! These numbers assume a 18/6 cycle for seeds and veg, and a 12/12 cycle for flowers. For this grow, I chose a 24/0 light cycle. In doing so, I should have reduced my light intensity, as the numbers I'm aiming for are based on time! A plant running on 20/4 can get by with a brighter light than a plant running 24/0. I failed to consider this. In any case, I found an online calculator to convert PPFD to lux, which depends on the spectrum of the light. I'm using a 3500k QB LED (135W). I was able to find that the 150-300, 300-600, 600+ PPFD values correspond to lux values 5000-16000, 16000-32000, and 42000-58000. But again! This is based on standard photoperiod light cycles. Accounting for my 24/0 cycle, these numbers should be scaled to 4,000-12,000 lux for seedlings; 12,000-24,000 for veg; and 21,000-29,000 for flowering. Again, this is for my current setup. In short, my plants have been getting TWICE as much light as they should be. 2. Overfeeding I also ignored readily available advice and gave my autos full-strength nutrients starting in week 3. Well, sort of. The instructions on my GH nutrients say to feed with plain water every second feeding. I simply decided to feed my plant 50% of the recommended nutrients, but I fed nutrients each time, with no intermittent plain watering. Alas, I started seeing early signs of nutrient lockout mid-flower, and decided to flush it. So, enough of the preamble. Onto the diary. WEEK 1 You can see the light burn on the seedling. Growth pretty much stops at the end of Week 1.

WEEK 2 Barely any growth and severe deformaties apparent. In addition to the light burn, I didn't rinse the soil before planting the seed, so the soil was fairly hot. I was not optimistic during this week and contemplated abandoning this altogether. In terms of watering, I was giving probably 30mL a day, gradually increasing to 60mL a day.

-Recovered nicely from the seedling stage. It's odd shape can be attributed to my incomplete LST; short stature obvious from too much light early on. -Last week of Veg. nutrients. Will start on Flowering nutrients next week. -Pre-flowers starting to show.

Started Flowering Nutrients this week, and will continue for the remainder of the grow. I can see some pre-flowers starting to form. Also noticing some yellowing of leaves.

Buds are starting to take shape. Getting very excited about this for now! She's also starting to drink more water... now closer to 3L every two days.

Very bushy plant, but nice looking buds appearing. Starting to see some signs of light stress though. As mentioned retroactively in my Week 1 entry, it was during Week 9 that I figured out that having my light run 24/0 means it should be a little dimmer than a light running 18/6 or 20/4.

I convinced myself Nutrient Lockout was occurring during this week, so I decided to flush the plant with around 40 liters of water. In retrospect, this may have been just natural yellowing that occurs near end of life. Nonetheless, instead of just halving the recommended dose of nutrients (as is typically recommended for autoflowers), I probably should have been feeding her plain water every second day. I will try this next time and hopefully forego the flush.

Fed plain water (pH = 7) for the final two weeks. Starting to see lots of yellow turning to purple on the fan leaves. Getting close now! She's appearing to recover nicely from the flush I performed in week 10.

Final week! I gave it plain water only for weeks 11 and 12. Also gave it a full night in the dark the night before cutting it down, although I let it sit in the light for several hours before finally cutting down so it wasn't too humid. In terms of trichrome colors to signal harvest-time, I decided to wait until I could just see amber ones emerge. I know some people wait until they see 50% amber / 50% cloudy, but I've read a few anecdotal reports of people having success with 100% cloudy with a few amber trichromes apparent. This occurred just before the start of week 13.

Final thoughts: Very impressed with the outcome. I debated giving up and starting over early on, but I'm glad I stuck with it. 92 grams from one plant for a first timer seems pretty decent to me! I let this dry for one week and cure for two. I burped the jars every day and now have them stored with 62% moisture packs for the remainder of the cure. Now, this is by no means no super high THC strain. My inclination is that these buds are around 10% THC, and are great for any time of day. A nice mellow earthy buzz for anyone to enjoy. Lessons learned: 1. Less is more! This applies to light, nutrients and water! 2. A 24/0 light cycle is a great way to keep humidity levels constant. However, watch out for light burn! 3. Rinse your soil before planting seeds! 4. Use plain water in between each feeding. 5. Curing is more important than flushing. I flushed this plant toward the end, and sampled some buds after drying. They burned a nasty tarry black. After a further 2 weeks of curing, they burn a beautifully white and smooth ash!