Getting the rust off

At this point I still wasn't checking pH, and the girls were just slowly making headway with a bit of leaf damage from giving 1/4 strength nutrient feeding - clearly Pro Mix is sufficient for them at this point. They got transplanted from solo cups to 750mL containers.

Plants are growing much slower than I hoped for - I recently started testing pH, and my tap water is a stupid 7.8, so that's probably part of it. The other part is I've apparently been losing at the over/under watering game. I stated this diary at week 6, and back adding week 5 now from old photos, and seeing just how small these girls were in soil with bad water pH really high lights how sub-optimal my grow was. As you might also notes the sticky traps, I had some thrip damage, which was the final straw that pushed me from soil to coco.

A quick note as I'm starting this journal at week 6, I'll note it's week 6 since germination, and that until week 4 I was in soil. At week 4 I transpoted from 750mL pots to 2L pots and in the process stripped as much soil as I could from the root ball. This was in part to a minor thrip infestation. Last night I finally got my EC meter, and realized just how bad my tap water was. I've been watering at 1600 EC (you can sea a few bad spots on some of the largest fan leaves). Fortunately I had some distilled water to dilute current mix, so I get 2x waters last night with 1350 EC. I'm getting lots of distilled tonight when I grab groceries for the week, in 4L containers. But as I'll soon be switching to 5 gallon grow bags, I should find a good source of 5 gallon RO or distilled water. I supercropped the stem around node 2-3 for 3 of the plants, and did a bit of LST to arrange things better. In a few days they'll need much more LST. One plant I cracked the stems of both sides of node 4 while trying the rearrangement, and thus the electrical tape. The 4th plant I'm attempting a mainline since these are seedlings. I might have cut it close when making the top. I lost some stipules, but don't think I harmed the growth spots. I left on some of the fan leaves that will likely later be trimmed, but only 4 growth zones are left. I'm thinking I'm 2-3 weeks from going to 12/12 - the main issue will be the mainline plant - this is taking a lot longer. I'm definitely interested to see the results.

I noticed a thrip worm (but no visible damange yet), squished it and sprayed everyone down with insecticidal soap on Saturday. Stupid thrips - I'm never doing soil indoors again. It'll be annoying to try to spray the plants down in the new 5gal containers. I'm a bit shocked at the amount of root growth in just 2 weeks after being in the coco. I should be getting my RO system sometime today, which will be just in time, as they're going through more than a gallon per day now. Mixing nutes will be enough work, but at least I don't need to drive out somewhere, and have cash on hand, to get water. I also need to take some photos with the light off - they look lime green and nitrogen starved, while they're really quite healthy, if perhaps a bit dark green from the high nitrogen soil I couldn't get out of their root ball when I transitioned from soil to coco. In a day or two I should be able to take the final topping for the mainline plant. I'll likely start flowering in 2-3 weeks from now as I get the LST plants to spread out and fill their space better. Tuesday: Final (?) top of the mainlined plant. I have some rivets that I'm going to put in the fabric pots so I can get the areas of growth growing further apart from each other. Hopefully that happens later today/night. Thursday: The rivets I have are far too small to work in my pots. I've used safety pins for now, but I don't have that many. I'll need to buy a bunch+binder clips, as the bushier girls need some LST soon. Mainline will now start getting some separation and better directed growth.

The non mainlined girls are starting to be a right pain to take care of. The wire ties from the LST make watering difficult, and they are keeping the humidity up. Also, the heat outside disappeared, so the house is running a bit cool. I would start to exhaust the air to the house, but my current carbon filter (from the last time I grew 15+ years ago) is failing, and for some reason I don't want to put on the new one until the next grow. The work to LST, trim the anemic undergrowth and difficulty water says enough that this rando LST is not something I'm going to repeat. I haven't made time to get a stable screen setup to attach to the pots, so that's also out. Of course, I also happened to snap one of the mainlined girl's stems. It was a 1/4 stem, so only 2 of the 8 growth tips are affected. I'll update later with a picture of her in her electrical tape, but it's been a few hours since the snap and the leaves are doing well. Her arms are just so thick and short, so don't have a lot of movement to try to pull them further apart from each other. I'm tempted to flip to flower tomorrow just to get this grow over with. The crop and attempt to de-chaos after the super crop is just a mess. I want to be working with 2 4-way LST plants, and 2 neat mainline plants to see how well they compare against each other. The only thing that's holding me back is I think the mainline plant should get a bit more veg time before the flip to flower. But, I will do at most one more week of veg. Wednesday. Considering the mainlined girl was snapped last weekend (and Monday I re-snapped the taped limb), I'm finishing this week of veg. I bought some metal conduit to brace the sides so they can't suck in around the canopy, but likely won't get a chance to put it in until this weekend. The plastic 1/2" PVC piping that others have used felt more bendy than I wanted. I took a few pictures to demonstrate that the girls are currently filling all the space they have with the tent closed.

Saturday night after 14 hours of light, I turned off the light and set the timers for 12/12 . Later today I'll take a look for light leaks. I've noticed for awhile that the tent sucks in a lot, and it's annoyed me how far the plants are from walls. I measured the canopy, and my 3'x3' (well, 35.5"x35") tent had a grow area of 28"x28" ! I finally got around to fixing this. It was a bit awkward because this is a 2 in 1 tent, so I didn't have access to the right side poles. I used electrical conduit - about the same price as plastic PEX pipe, except significantly less bendy. I did a bit of defoilation on 2 of the 3 plants that need it. I'll hopefully finish the third later today. All's looking well, and I can't wait to see them flower. The mainlined girl definitely should have been vegged a bit longer - it will be interesting to see what she can put out. Sunday night: the mainlined girl that had the stem damaged from the too-tight wire, as pictured, apparently snapped with the training. It wasn't that way when I closed the tent, but had split when I opened it :/ I think there was a micro tear in the skin that I missed seeing, and it just slowly expanded/split from the pressure as more and more tissue gave way. I tried taping it up, but a few hours after the taping the branch is mostly deflated, so not too optimistic that this branch will be saved. 1/8th of her, gone. :/ Update: Friday - Wed morning the damaged branch of the mainline finally started standing up again, huzzah. While working on the self-draining saucers I had enough material to make a few extra risers. So now the main line can be at the same canopy height of the other three. I added a 9" oscillating fan at the top and moved the old 6" fan to the bottom in front of the air intake. Because of where the fan currently hangs against the base of the tent suction support bars it doesn't oscillate, so I turned that part off. The tent is starting to smell more every time I open it.

Sheesh, the stretch is real. Every morning I need to take the light+fan up about 6 clicks. Two of the big girls have much more stretch than the other and are about 3 inches taller. I've decided to stop rotating them in place as 1) in the future when I setup the auto watering system I doubt I'll continue rotating them, 2) it's a pain to rearrange/tuck the leaves, 3) with the mainlined one on blocks, it's especially awkward to move. I did some defoliation on Thursday/Friday of last week, not that one can really tell despite taking off what seemed like a lot of leaves. I'm trying to just tuck leaves until third week of flower when I'll take up a lot of work. I'm still picking some of the easy lower growth while doing watering. I'm not super happy with the prototype for the self draining saucer turned out - using a hose thick enough to work with a hose o-ring+filter is a really unbendy hose. I'm thinking I'll try again, using standard 1/2" hose that I'll be using with the hydro halos and just glue/caulk a pipe screen where the hose and saucer meet.

The stretch continued through this week, and I've got only 2" that I can move my light up, but fortunately it looks like that might have stopped/slowed. I needed to top a number main shoots from the taller two and it looks like they might be suffering some light bleaching already. If I rearrange my tent top a bit, I might be able to get a further 3-5 inches to raise. The mainlined girl I'm not fully sure what to do with her. The very top of her canopy is so dense that I can't really tuck any of her "larger" fan leaves which are blocking growth branches. And I feel bad taking any off because they're really not large. Next weekend (3rd since flip) instead of doing some small amounts of cleanup I'll try a large batch of defoliation and hopefully from there I can just sit back and let them flower in peace. 2 out of the 3 cuttings I took of each individual rooted, so I've got my mother candidates, plus some clones to give away. I think 2 more of the cuttings will root with a bit more time, but one turned brown where the leaves join the stop of it's lower fan leaves before it could leach nutrients from them. I'm leaning to keeping the front left because her stretch was relatively well contained. As a result her canopy is much more regular than the other two. The finished product will be the main determinant of the final mother for this strain, but if the smoke is equal I'll take the one that was easier to manage. I'm looking forward to seeing an explosion of bud sites even if I shouldn't be expecting colour for another month plus. Monday morning: added two 4" platforms to the front two plants, so there's only about a 2" height difference between the front and back plants.

Buds formed up this week, and I did pretty thorough defoliation. Bud sites are nice and exposed, and I removed any non-sugar leaves from the top of the canopy that I could do without risking cutting a bud site. From the top down, there's still not much coco able to be seen, but the buds are nice and exposed. I needed to re-hang my light once again because some of the taller plants in the very back had their tallest about 10 inches from the light, but the rope ratchets were at their highest setting. Since I'm exhausting the tent outside (of a 2nd floor window and I live on top of a hill), I removed the carbon filter, and hung the light directly from the pole via wires hanging about 0.5 inches from the pole. This was a PITA, and a good lesson for in the future to not mix growing training styles if it might mess up timelines. The just LST/supercropped girls were ready much sooner than the mainline was. Complicated by the fact that these were seeds, rather than clones, and two are expressing a phenotype with wickedly more stretch. I think at this point if you take out the 4" platform, the taller two might be 10" taller than the shorter one (not counting the mainline in this). My wife commented after seeing the pics of my work that the girls look like plucked chickens. I'm looking forward to watching the buds fill out.

The tips are looking a tad crispy, so I backed the 1200 EC stuff I first made to 1150, and the tips haven't gotten worse. I was hoping for the buds to start fattening up a bit more by now - hopefully this week they start putting on weight. I'm so itchy to start the next grow.

I'm noticing that I need to water a bit more for the first feeding to get runoff. I still have the ever so slight amount of burn on most of the tips - the untrained one with the least stretch seems to have the least burn. The buds are slowly thickening up top, and I'll definitely have some popcorn on the lower buds to toss to the trim pile for some good butter in the future. I'm also really itchy to get the next grow started. Seeing how dense and well trained the mainlined girl is vs. the height and less evenness of the rest of the canopy leaves me almost a bit disappointed in the other three.

Sadly S, the cat in my phofile photo passed away quite suddenly last Sunday. As he always joined me while I was looking after the girls, his absence is particularly noted. Early in the week I'm starting to see some clearer differences between the 3 plants I have clones of. A, the back left one was the first to start having some pistils turn brown. However all of her buds are the thinnest of the group. C, the front left, has the fastest buds, but they're also more slowly maturing. She's got lots of trichomes, but they're still staying small and not thickening yet. B is has thicker buds than A, but the trichomes are also increasing, and pistil hairs turning brown slightly less quickly than A. D, the mainlined plant that I didn't get a clone of matching C pretty well. I took some time to remove some of the lowest growth. The plants trying to make popcorn, except there's so little light that they're the palest of green. At this point trying to use pipettes in a 2/3 full bottle isn't so fun, so I foil wrapped a bunch of mason jars, and I'll refill them as needed. Likely finally getting in the auto water system later today.

Last week I'd commented that the back two plants which were more similar pheno'ed seem to be maturing faster than the front two. Yesterday, I noticed some purple starting to show up! Of course, just the back two plants. I got the auto watering system in place, and finally have it evened out with the 3 different pot heights, and sufficient time to get run off. This make life so much easier! And they're getting watered 5x daily. I look in the middle of the day to say, "Hi!" and check water levels in the saucers and reservoir then and at night. Whenever I want; no clock watching. When I moved one plant out so I could finagle the hose in, it became just how apparent the back plant near the fan was leaning against the front plant. So now there are some yoyos in place helping to support. Given the purple showing up, perhaps it's actually about 2 weeks left for the back two, and 1-2 longer for the front two? I haven't started looking at trichomes much

Just watching the girls slowly continue to ripen. The back 2 haven't really taken on too much more purple, and the front two are not doing any purple at all. I guess this is what one gets for going with a house brand seeds; at best this might be an F1 cross of strains used to make GDP. If this doesn't give my wife the giggles, we'll need to get some actual GDP seeds. The USB mic is too hard to focus/keep still - I might get a poll/broom stick to use as a mono pod to help steady my hand. The camera on my (work) phone is just not up to the job; I'll need to either beg my wife to loan me her camera, or to take some shorts to try to get a look at trichomes. The front two are no where near done, but the back two might be getting close-ish. Their sparkle has taken on a more ghostly characteristic, which I assume is trichomes becoming more milky than clear. I keep having to pic the lowest bud sites as they keep putting out some growth that won't really be worth keeping. I'm really happy with the coco grow; nothing has gone wrong with the plants coming in to when the fade should be starting. My outdoor girls meanwhile are still going yellow, and I remember my previous indoor soil grows always saw some issue shortly into flowering, and sub-par tightness of colas resulting. Once I'm growing from clones (argh, about a year from now?!) I think I might try a side by side super soil vs coco grow, but unless that has some drastic differences, indoor coco is my future.

The purple-ish plant in the back-right is starting a 2nd wave of growth. Also, some of it's buds seem odd to me in that it just stacks a tower of single calyxes. Some of the other colas on the front left plant are also starting to foxtail. Which is just odd, as this plant is the furthest from the light. I'll try lowing the pH of my water a bit; apparently the original breeder of GDP say 5.6-5.8 for a hydro grow, and coco counts for hydro - this will hopefully help bring out more purp. I realize that my no-name seeds are likely an F1/F2 hybrid of something with a similar parentage of GDP, but hopefully that's simiar enough that walking the pH down doesn't fuck things up ;) The plants are doing well, and there's some purple entering the leaves of the back two - with fall colors coming in, I'll make an extra effort to try playing with macro mode with my wife's camera to look at trichomes.

15x macro lens arrived which shows trichomes well enough. Depth of focus is quite low, and I've got to get pretty close for focus (I.E. my phone is a sticky mess), so I might be getting a 10x macro lens soon. Trichomes on middle-ish level bud are reasonably cloudy in the back, but barely at 3% amber. Maybe ready for flush next week? The two plants in the front seem to not even be at 50% cloudy, assuming at least 2 weeks. They still haven't the slightest hint of purple :/ My plan for drying plants are going to be attaching some 2x4's to the wall at the studs and 2 opposite walls, putting hooks in the boards, and running nylon/poly rope between them to hang from. I'll put stuff up high enough that I don't need to take it down, and my tent is already exhausting outside the room, so moisture will quickly-ish leave the room/house. And I need to say a Huzzah, my seeds, finally cleared customs and should be here soon. So rather than the 10 year old Blueberry seeds that I was going to do, I'll first be doing Super Lemon Haze, and then Tropicanna Poison. Tropicanna Poison is what I want to do for my outdoor grow next year. F1 Fast Finish to hopefully avoid October without needing to move them to a shed. It's annoying not having anyone other than my wife that I get to be so joyously excited about my "novelty" seeds clearing customs.

Over the last 2 days, the back left plant has been putting a lot of purple into the leaves instead of just the bud; I'm so happy to see these pretty colours. It's giving me a bit more hope that this might pack the punch my wife is looking for. It's also just sad that most of the best purple leaves also are suffering from light burn being too close to the light (but too late to change that). Seeing the back two plants not pack bud on super tightly (this might be because the main colas are too close to the light), and the 3rd plant foxtail like crazy has finally pushed me over the edge to try to clone the 4th plant. Initially I didn't because when I flipped she barely had vegetation. At week 3 I didn't because I was wondering about potentially epigenetic changes from revegetation potentially not being great for a mother plant. Now much later I finally just had to. And I'm extra glad that I tried now that plant 4 is starting to show a bit of purple on the bud. Of course, if she takes a similar progression of the back two plants, she's got 2-3 weeks of purple bud, and 1-2 weeks more of slowly purpling leaves. Speaking of purple, the leaves are really starting to show nicely. But I am losing my mind a bit; I'm ending week 11 since the flip, and 2 plants might be another week yet, and the other two may now be looking at 2-5 weeks more? They're so fat, I'll have to give them the time they need. I always thought "flowering time" was from the flip, not from bud appearing. In theory GDP should be 8-10 weeks. I'm tempted to try doing something like putting ice packs by the air intake of the tent when the lights go off to bring out more purple. If the back two aren't ready yet by next week I might switch to 11/13 and possibly 10/14 another week later.