DIY Cheap Noob Indoor Amnesia Haze grow

Ok, so first of all I am still pretty noob at this. This is the start of my second growth, the first growth was a test of my setup on a "blueberry" canuk seed that came for free when I bought the RQS Amnesia Haze. I did got a nice harvest, very potent (for my taste at least) and with a very fruity smell (its true, it does really taste like blueberries!). The whole premise of this growth is use the cheapest/most cost-effective tools I can, while at the same time being noob friendly (cause I am still learning myself). I dont want to spend too much money/time/effort on this growth, besides the initial investment to set up everything. Actually, it was kind of the point, I really didnt have the time or money to go out and buy expensive equipment or nutes for growing what might end being a death plant (cause of lack of experience, and I did almost killed the blueberry by overfeeding), and I just wanted to give it a try to see if I like growing plants (spoiler alert, I did! I now also have lettuce and peppers growing outdoors). I decided to create this diary, the investment involved with growing your own cannabis is generally a barrier to get started. Maybe others can be inspired by a cheapo approach, with decent results and dip their toes into this magical world. Here is my setup which you could see in one of the pictures: 1. My nutrients are what you would buy for garden plants or even grass. I only supplement with epsom salt (MgSo4) and eggshells on vinager (Ca + H2O). You will see in the picture that they are bought on the dollar store always around 3 CAD ( I have one that is 15-30-15 and another that the bag is not in the picture of 15-0-15). ( I actually only used about 15% or less of each bag on the first growth). 2. Growing tent was made by lining the corners of a room with aluminium foil/cardboard to create a closed environment for when I have to flower in darkness and to bounce the light back inside a little bit, I added a CPU fan for airflow. 3. The LEDS are actually cheap COBs from china (bought in aliexpress for about 4 CAD each [full spectrum, 3500K 50W each of the 4 for a total of 200W], and I bought some CPU heatsinks from the same site for about 6 CAD each). I literally held them together with sticks and tape but it worked, so I am happy about that. I also have them on a dollar store auto timer to control ON/OFF time. 5. The only other tools that I did bought were a EC/ppm meter and a pH meter also from china for about 5 cad total. As I noob, I sure as hell had no idea how to feed a plant, and how to tell the pH of my water with the limus paper (I guess I am kinda colorblind). With these meters (which I bought at week 4 of flowering of the blueberry growth, because I simply couldn't figure out if I was giving too little or too much nutrients) one can make sure that the water being fed to the plants is appropriate, check the runoff of the water to make sure that the soil isnt retaining too many salts and needs flushing, and to see when you are done flushing also! 6. Soil is cheap dollar store soil. The cheapest I could find. Right now my seedling just came out of the seed, so I haven't gotten it into the growing tent, it sits in my desk directly below a dollar store LED bulb, about 15W (1500 lumens). I will move it to the tent when it gets bigger and can handle more light, (cause why waste 200W when a 15W can do a decent job at starting a seedling?). Sure, during this growth you will see many practices that might be not "optimal" or that might lower the yield in comparison with others, but the key here is convenience, low investment in time and effort and low footprint in my room. You could comment so others can learn alternate ways of growing! That being said, it is just my second growth, and its a seed from a different breeder, different strain, sativa, not indica, and I am bound to run into some problems because of that. Anyhow, if you decide to hop along for the ride (which I hope ends with a nice harvest), I welcome you and your comments, as long as they are constructive ;). Update 16/06/20 ** P.S. I am only watering about 150ml of 6.5 pH water when the soil around the base of the stem changes back to a the color it had when it's dry (about once a day, you might need to increase water volume or frequency in the next weeks). You can also touch the surface of the soil and make sure it is not wet. It's important to let the roots breath by cycling between wet and (somewhat) dry soil. *** Also, I pH my water by doing drops of vinegar until reaching the desired level. **** It's best to leave the water uncovered for 24h to let the chlorine evaporate before giving it to your soil, in my opinion even if you are using powdered or liquid nutes it's a good idea to try to minimize your impact to the complex soil ecosystem as much as possible. An undisturbed and nurtured soil is a happy living soil that will protect your plant from your own mistakes. ******Also, if you have a window sill that receives a lot of sun you can use that instead of the led bulb to get started. You will know that your seedling needs more light if it's begging to grow taller and thinner instead of growing the leaves fatter. In that case, dont worry, just get more light (under a stronger light source or closer to the light) and add a bit more soil around the stem, so it will be supported, anyhow, the stem will eventually develop its own roots when surrounded by moist soil. ******For the first week of care (and for several others) you will only need to spend a few minutes a day to take proper care of your plant. My routine is to check the color of the leaves and the overall growth of the plant for a minute, pH the unclorinated water I left the day before, then water the plant and refill the water container for the next day. That's all you need to do. I occasionally stare at the plant, take pictures, imagine how it might smell during flowering, etc... but that is optional, however the more you know your plant, the easier it will be to notice when something is wrong. >>DISCLAIMER<< Please be at least as careful with electricity as you would be with fire. You should know what you are doing around it. If you dont feel confident enough to wire your own system (i.e. electric outlet to fuse to light array) please seek advice. I think is very simple to do, but also very simple to get wrong and burn your damn house down! I will assume you dont want to burn down your house, so please do things properly, or buy a light fixture that you trust.

Week 2. I am using a little more water (250 ml) because the soil started to be very dry from one day to the other. Also, I started feeding the plant but only the slightest amount (my tap water comes at 0.25 mS/cm, so I added another 0.25mS/cm of balanced nutrients (15-15-15) for a total EC of 0.5 mS/cm) , just to get the seedling comfortable with the taste of nutrients ;) I will pump up the dose in the coming weeks (you can also just look at the leaves for deficiencies to know when you need to up the dose. Its better to go slow and progressively up the dose once a week, because you can always feed more, but you cant unfeed (well you can flush the soil but its a lot of work and stressful to the plant and the soil ecosystem). Here is a nice guide on how much to feed your cannabis plant (in terms of ppm/EC : https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/blog-cannabis-water-quality-part-2-ppm-ec-n298 , although I tend to feed on the lighter side unless my plant is showing signs of deficiency). *For the nutrients, use any vegetative balanced nutrient formula so that N-P-K are about the same, you can use any kind of fertilizer specially tomato which has very similar requirements as cannabis.You can pretty much treat a cannabis plant how you would treat a tomato plant. Or if you wish you can buy whatever cannabis nutrient solution you trust, go ahead, after all they are supposed to be "engineered" for maximum yield quality/quantity; just start SLOW!!! ... I'm just telling what I've been using, and that the result is wonderful for me, and whether any difference in yield is worth the price is up to each individual grower. Maybe in the future I will start another growth with a side by side comparison between generic tomato fertilizers vs popular cannabis fertilizers in terms of size and trichomes, the rest is personal preference and hard to measure objectively. *I started preparing a new aluminum foil grow tent for my girl. I will get her into the grow tent new week. I will also upload a picture of the tent, to give you guys some ideas of how you could do one for yourself. Mine will be 80x80cm, which is plenty of room for a single plant. You could also just buy one, or dont use one altogether, just make sure that no light enters the room during the dark period on the flowering stage and that you can control the temperature and humidity around your plant. Some people like to use space buckets or space cabinets, or their closet, its up to you.

Environment I moved her to the DIY grow tent. The humidity hovers round 45-50%. I haven't added a ceiling yet, so there's plenty of ventilation. At the end of the week I added a CPU fan to help circulate the air inside the growtent, besides preventing mold, soft wind also strengthens the stem. I will add the ceiling when we get closer to flowering, when darkness is critical at night. Temps are 20 C at night and 27 at day. Light I used a dollar store automatic timer to set a light schedule of 18 hrs ON/6 OFF cycle. The LED fixture is at a distance of 45 cm from the top of the plant. Water I will up the nutrients to 1 mS/cm. However, I will alternate between using 6.5 pH unchlorinated tap water (no nutrients) and using 6.5 pH unchlorinated nutrient solution (tap water + 15-15-15 balanced nutrients at EC = 1 mS/cm) to avoid salt build ups in the soil. Remember water only when the soil feels at least a little dry, it's easier to overwater than it is to underwater. ************************ Ok, so pretty much repeat this week to keep the plant happy until harvest, just in flowering you would change the light cycle to 12/12 and the nutrient ratio to 15-30-15 or something like that. Summarizing: 1. the environment : keep humidity 40-60% and temperature 18-30 *C. 2. the light : keep rising the lights as your plant grows, and change the cycle to flower. 3. the nutrients : look for deficiencies and add more nutes ( I recommend from 1mS/cm to 2.5 mS/cm max and Ca +Mg); or toxicities to flush the soil. ************************ <TRANSPLANT> So, you could technically flower and harvest in the 2L pot, however as the plant grows faster and faster it will drink more and more water, and you would need to water evermore often. By repotting to a bigger size, you can water less often with more liquid. Also, the more space your roots have to grow the bigger the final plant (and yield will be). You might ask why not start in the big pot (in my case 15 L)? The answer is that is really easy to a overwater a seedling in a big pot. As this tutorial is for first timer growers on the cheap, it's better to prevent the death of a seedling than having to buy more seeds (in my case the seeds where as expensive as the whole setup). <TRAINING> From now on, I will do some extra stuff. If you want the least demanding growing experience,you don't have to follow the rest of the instructions, But if you have some extra minutes every week, I think the increase in yield that training your plant brings is worth it for most cases. This week I will do whats called topping. Which is just cutting the main growing tip after your plant has grown 4-5 nodes. The hormones (auxins) that where causing growth to happen in the main stem, will disperse to other branches, allowing them to grow bigger. In this way, you will have less of a Christmas tree shape, and more of a bushy canopy, so your grow light can reach better the majority of the plant. There are many different growing techniques but topping and low stress training (LST) are my favorites because they only take some minutes each week to shape the plant, so I will demonstrate them in this grow. 01/07/2020. I cutted the growing tip before the 6th, but after the 5th node. Be careful not to damage the side branches growing on each fan leaf of the 5th node, those branches and the ones below will be the main structure of the new canopy.

So, we are on week 4, technically you could most likely switch to flower (light cycle 12/12) by the end of this week, specially if you decided not to transplant to a bigger pot. However, the more time you veg your cannabis plant, the bigger the yield ( depending on how good you are on keeping the plant well fed and in a decent environment). My plant recovered from the transplant by the next day, but try to not switch to flower if your plant is under any stress (battling diseases, pests, nutrient deficiencies or harsh environment). In my case, I will veg until I am happy with the size of the plant, but be careful, as many strains tend to stretch once they enter the flowering stage, so the size of the plant can get out of control pretty fast! As a rule of thumb (specially for beginners), grow the plant to a third or up to half of the size of the available space, to avoid any issues and keep your grow as convenient as possible. I am still keeping the same environment as before. I still feed once, then tap water (ph to 6.5) on the next, then feed again, etc. <Training> Depending on when you topped, you would have about 6-8 tops branching directly from the main stem. After the plant recovered from the topping, I did low stress training on it to expose the growing tips to direct light. You will see in the picture that before the LST, the big fan leaves were blocking the light, but after the LST all of the plant tops are exposed. LST is done by GENTLY bending the leaves/branches into a flat canopy and pulling them in place with a thread clamped to the side of the pot with a clothespin. It takes a few minutes every week, depending on how fast your plant is growing. You can make your plant have any kind of crazy structures, but as long as you keep the canopy flat to get the most of your growing lights, you should be OK. If you are following along with my grow, here is an explanation of the structure that I've planned for the plant. (From figure) Basically there will be 8 branches coming from the different nodes on the main stem. All will be bent to be kept at the same height. I will be careful to keep each branch (future cola) away from the others to increase airflow. Its better to have a slightly less dense canopy for beginners, as you avoid having to deal with mold and budrot. Depending on how big you want the plant to be, you could top each branch to have 16 medium colas, instead of 8 medium/large colas. <Homemade CAL-MAG> Most nutrient solutions will have some calcium and magnesium, along with other micro-nutrients which are needed just in trace amounts. Also, most municipal waters also have calcium, magnesium, zinc and iron, so as long as you keep a correct pH, and a healthy soil, you shouldn't have to worry too much about these elements. However, some cannabis strains are known for being heavy feeders and requiring extra calcium and magnesium. If you notice slow growth, yellowing on the newest growth, deformed growth and brown spots on the leaves you might have a micro nutrient deficiency. If you want to prevent this problem, or you know that you have a Cal-Mag hungry strain, you can supplement calcium and magnesium into your regular watering or spraying the leaves directly. If you dont want to pay for an expensive bottle calmag, you can make your own. Here is the recipe: 1. Calcium-> crush calcium carbonate (eggshells, chalk, etc) as finely as you can, then add vinegar, let it sit for a day or two and voila you have your calcium ions floating in water (yes pH should be neutral now that the chalk and vinegar have neutralized each other) (from wikipedia of calcium carbonate : CaCO3(s) + 2 H+(aq) → Ca2+(aq) + CO2(g) + H2O(l) ). Finally, check the EC of your water and add the calcium water you made until you increased the EC about 0.875 mS/cm more. 2. Magnesium + Sulfur-> just check the EC of your water and add Epsom salts until you increased the EC about 0.875 mS/cm more. Add it to the water you will give your plants until you have 0.16 mS/cm of homemade calmag... In my case (0.25 mS/cm tap water + 0.875 mS/cm calcium +0.875 mS/cm magnesium and sulfur) the mix turns out to be 2.0 0.875 mS/cm. So it takes about 100 ml/liter to get to a 0.16 mS/cm concentration of calmag.Now I am not an expert on calmag either, but this is what works for me. This mixture "revived" my first plant and I've used it on other crops too (peppers and flowers), even directly as foliar spay. You could use a higher EC if you have any deficiencies showing. *** Update *** I accidentally overbent one branch (It cracked but remained attached to the stem). Oops ! If this happens to you, don't worry, you have 2 options, either you simply tape it back where it belongs (and you could add some aloe Vera or honey to help it heal) or you just take your cutting, place it in water, next to the window (adding rooting hormones makes the process faster and more reliable) and wait for it to develop roots for planting it to the ground. Initially I fixed the branch, but later I decided that having 2 plants instead of one from my mistake could be a good thing. You will be amazed at how forgiving cannabis plants are, search for grafting cannabis plants and you will see how people are able to just tape a bunch of branches from different strains to a single cannabis plant with little more than tape, honey and some patience.

Again, just keep an eye on the leaves health and the moisture of the soil and you are good. Also, if you think the branches are growing too close to eachother again, just pull them apart a little bit more with LST. In my opinion it's better to do just a little work every now and then than trying to shape the plant in one shot, which might take your girl a lot of time to recover and it's more prone to snapping branches. Day 29. I see what looks like a nitrogen deficiency in the lowest leaves. Also a magnesium deficiency. Before upping the nutrients I checked my runoff to make sure it was not too much higher ( no more than 0.8 mS/cm above the EC of the water that came into the pot).** I am no expert on EC, but this has worked for me to keep the plants from getting a nutrient burn (you want to avoid overfeeding your girl)** In this case my runoff seemed ok (and there are not any burnt tips or any sign of a lockout), so I upped the nutrients and gave it a bit of extra magnesium (through Epsom salts). Day 34. Yesterday I noticed the leaves' edges starting to point up, which suggests light/heat stress. Today I see the symptom more pronounced, so I raised the lights to stay 40 cm away from the top of the canopy. This is why it's important to always pay attention to leaves, so you can notice when something is wrong.

I am holding off flowering until my cutting (the branch I snapped) grows stong roots. I can see the roots starting to bud out of the stem already. This way I can keep the genetics for longer without having to buy more seeds or reveg (done that, it's ok have a decent second harvest, but seems too stressful for the mother plant, and there were some herm seeds staring to form). *This is going to be a HOT weekend and I won't be home! So I made sure that the lights are 40cm and I will install a second fan to help her cope with the 35C! She wi probably stress a lot, but you would be surprised how much a cannabis plant can tolerate, specially if you keep it properly fed and watered. P.s. amnesia haze is a bit more tolerant to heat, so if you are growing in summer, choose strains that do well in hot days! Update day 39. The clon rooted well, my girl is happy and strong. I think I will switch light cycle to 12/12 next week. I will prepare her for flowering: a short LST session to separate its branches a little more,I removed two massive fan leaves that were obstructing a lot of light and took two cuttings for clonning. I generally try to mess with the plant the least possible, and when I do (like LST) try to make it as soft as possible, and to achieve an specific outcome. I use : 1. Topping only once around week four, just to definitively break apical dominance of main stem. 2. LST to flatten the cannopy, increase the efficiency of indoor lights and control height and width of plant. This I do once or twice a week depending on how crowded the plant looks. 3. Defoliation is a very debated topic, I tend to try to avoid it, and if I need to, I cut the least amount of leaves possible. Think about it this way, each leaf is effectively a solar panel which gives the plant the energy to grow, if you cut a lot of them, your cannabis might survive and grow, but you are starving her of some useful light. So, just cut the solar panels when you are willing to sacrifice them for something useful. As a noob, it's way too easy to cut too much. You can experiment and 'git gud' with time, be patient. If temperature and humidity levels are a concern, I would pluck a few leaves to let the air flow better and avoid humid pockets where mold and mildew can form. Sometimes I cut some of the lower branches to give better access to the soil while watering, separate the cannopy more from any soil borne pathogen and because I like having extra clones to preserve the genetics and to give away to my friends. .... Anyhow, give your plant a few days after defoliation and training to recover before switching to flower. .... We will see how I decide to do it at the end. You know, I like to have a plan to keep a sense of direction, but to do as I feel in the moment to have fun and enjoy the unexpected.

This week I switch the light cycle to 12 hrs ON and 12 hrs off. My dollar store nutrients come in "bloom" version which is 15-30-15, which is what we need. However to make the change a little bit gradual, this week I will use half of the 15-15-15 and half of 15-30-15 to average on a 15-22.5-15. Tip. Dont mix the nutrients before adding them to the water. Fine tuning the amount and ratio of nutrients you feed your plant is something beginners dont really have to worry about, you just feed it a reasonable amount of vegetative or flowering formulas, up the nutrients if it shows deficiencies (according to manufacturers indications), unless you check the run off and it is too high. If this is the case, just flush the soil and restart the process. I won't increase the nutrient concentration (to 1.5mS/cm) unless I start to see some deficiencies. ***Update Day 46: I saw some signs of nutrient deficiency in the lowest leaf. However, as always, before upping the dose of nutrients, I checked the run off.Indeed, the water going in was EC 1.8 mS/cm, but the runoff came a around 5.0 mS/cm!! I am not a runoff expert, but that sounds like a lot of minerals were left on the soil since the last time I checked the run off. So, the symptoms are more probably because a nutrient lock out due to high nutrient concentration in soil, instead of a deficiency. Here is where the EC meter comes in handy, cause otherwise, I would have upped the dose of nutrients, worsening the problem cause I still didnt get any visible signs of nute burn or nitrogen excess or anything, so you are able to catch nute excess before it affects the plant morphology! Instead of upping the nutes, I flushed slowly with about 24 lts of 6.5 pH tap water, 8 liters at the time. I stopped when I saw the EC on the runoff get to about 2.0 mS/cm. I will feed with 1.0 mS/cm instead of 1.8 mS/cm until I see the run off stabilize at no more than 1.5 mS/cm above the water that goes in the pot. I guess if you flush it all the way to 0.5 mS/cm you dont need to do this, but I wanted the flush to be gradual, try not to shock the roots too much. After all this is just my second growth, so I need to fine tune how many nutes this strain needs... This happened although I was following the RQS guide to nutrients, I guess that as I noob, I didnt have the perfect environment for the roots to uptake everything I fed them. Anyhow, on next grows I am going to experiment with different EC (600 for one clone, 900 for another one, and 1200 for the last one) and see how each one behaves, how their runoff varies, etc. But that is a whole 'nother story, experience is a good teacher. {{ My cloning technique}} I had to develop this very special way of cloning because of the first pheno I got, it was a blueberry cannabis which was very very hard to clone. I tried rockwool, dwc, cup of water, aloe Vera, honey, rooting hormone. So in the end only this combination of techniques was able to reliably clone every cutting. On the picture: 1 is a shot glass and a powdered rooting hormone (IBA 0.4%). 2: A transparent plastic box with a lid. 3. DIY dwc buclet I use for clonning. Basically a 2lt plastic ice-cream bucket (painted black to avoid algae growth) filled with water. I also cut some holes in the lid for the cuttings and added a 3 liter/min aquarium airpump and airstone). I also have a clonning ritual that works for me. First I place my cuttings in rooting hormone and leave them in small water shot glasses in lowlight inside the plastic box to increase humidity. It's only after I would see roots start to pop out of the stem, that get them into the dwc ice-cream bucket. It works everytime! I've run some experiments (although, only with two strains) and it seems to me that the higher concentration of IBA makes them start to root faster in the cup than in the dwc (where the rooting hormone gets diluted in the solution); but once the roots are out, they grow like crazy in the oxigen rich water of the dwc.

Everything is going fine, this week I will finally use the bloom formula that I have (15-30-15) and a bit of the homemade calmag, a total EC of 1.0 mS/cm until I see the run off come closer to this value. I took two cuttings from close to the base of the plant, to have as backup clones. You never know when you might accidentally kill your only plant! This strain is a long flowering one, it takes about 11 weeks... So 10 more to go! Update. Day 53. As could see in the picture of day 51, as the canopy filled the grow tent, the humidity went up to 70%, also it's been rainning a lot and there has been a lot of humidity in the air for the last couple of days. I've mentioned before that I don't like to defoliate if possible, but this time I had to, as the strain (amnesia haze) is very prone to pest and diseases... So I took off as little as possible, but enough to allow good airflow between the leaves of the different branches (fungi love moisture!). I also added two more PC fans to have three times as much airflow in the room! Caution is best. Update 2. Day 56. Had to raise the lights again, now the plant has reached about 58 cm tall!, Luckly the canopy still looks pretty much leveled. I hadnt have to LST again. If I see some branches over take the others, I will LST them back to height. Look at the white mark on the back wall to see how much it grew from the first to the last day of the week!

Well, everything is fine so far. It's stretching quite a lot, it's about 63 cm now. I will LST it a little to flatten the canopy more. Same nutrients as last week, 15-30-15, with calmag to an EC of 1.0mS/cm. Small buds are starting to form ;) Update day 59. I LSTed only the tallest branches, as they were about 70cm tall! This leveled all of the branches back to about 60 cm tall.

Well, this strain is surely flowering for a long time, it's still stretching. I wonder if it will stop stretching and start fattening the buds this week... Anyhow, one of the reasons why I don't defoliate much is because the plant does that by itself. When the lower leaves receive almost no light (because all the light is blocked by the thick growing canopy) they start to send their nutrients to the top. When they are donez they just fall off on their own. You see, leaves are like solar panels AND nutrient reserves! Just make sure this process is slow and the leaves that receive light are still very healthy and green. If many leaves are falling or if they fall really fast you gotta make sure is not a deficiency or nutrient lockout! ... Again just water your plant with bloom formula (and a bit of calmag) to an EC that allows you to maintain the plant heathly and the runoff not to high (in my case 1mS/cm). Remember to alternate nutrients and pHd tap water. That's pretty much all left to do from here to harvest. Obviously if you see something wrong try to correct it. Day 66 update. I dropped something on my plant. It bended one branch very badly and severed some leaves and a bud :( Well, accidents happen. Luckily cannabis is a very very resilient plant, one might be surprised at how much this plants can take. Anyhow, taped everything together loosely, pulled the most bent branches upwards with a thread and I will wait for it to heal... If everything goes well, this branches should be even stronger than the others. Let's hope that's my fate! Update day 69. Although I have been feeding with 1.0 mS/cm once, then pHd water then feed again, the run off from today measured 3.0 mS/cm ! It's climbing still. I flushed again, until the runoff was at 1.5 mS/cm. I think I understand what happened, my theory is that the plant needs a lot more water now, but not as many more nutrients. So it takes the 2.5 daily liters of water, but it might only eat the nutrients in 1lt of water, so the rest stays on the roots and accumulates, raising the EC of the soil. So far, by checking EC on the soil once every week or two I have avoided nutrient toxicity and lockout. I think there are two options, either lowering the concentration of nutrients I feed it (so 2.5 lts a day will contain less dissolved nutrients), or spacing out the feedings with more intermediate waterings of plain water. I think I am going to go with the former, next week I will try feeding an EC of 0.8 mS/cm on 3L then tap water and so on from next week on. I prefer to underfeed than to overfeed, which is what I recommend for other boobs, it's better to have some yield than to risk killing the plant. We will get better with time...

Day 72. There have been lots and lots of rains in these past days, so the humidity everywhere is high. I decided to cut some of the leaves (as few as possible) that were to close to eachother. I cut only about 10 leaves, but they were all covering budsites and completely touching and folding within eachother. After that I separated the branches a little bit from eachother with a very subtle LST. That fixed the humidity from 70% to 55%✓ Day 73. More intense storms, almost 90% humidity outside, and 70% at the grow tent (I guess because of good airflow and the defoliation I did). I checked the weather and this is supposed to be a very humid week. So I will leave a big fan blowing gently but constantly on it. I guess I prefer to risk some wind stress than to have to deal with pests and diseases... I will also only water 1 Lt of water today, to dry it a little bit. If I see that the fan is not enough to lower the humidity I might cut a few more leaves. I prefer not to cut leaves, cause as a noob they are precious to me. If I screw my nutrients (which will eventually happen to every noob), the leaves will save me, by sacrificing themselves and donating the nutrients they can to my flowers, instead of my flowers directly being affected by my lack of feeding experience. //On adjusting nutrients// Well, on the blueberry cannabis grow that I did before this AH grow I ended up dailing the nutrients to about 1 to 2 mS/cm, but the plant drank less water (was way shorter than this stretchy girl) each day. So for this grow, now that I am watering about 3lts/day, I would decrease my nutrients back to 0.8mS/cm until the plant leaves ask for more, or if the EC on the runoff never increases past 1.4mS/cm. In a nutshell, I believe that although giving more nutrients to your plant would likely help her develop faster and fatter, it is very easy to give too many nutrients. So my advice for other noobs like me is to just give them a little bit at the time, and check EC on runoff for accumulating salts. EC on the runoff is tricky, as some people already kindly informed in the question I asked. However, it seems that it can at least serve as an indication of change, say you have a runoff of about 1 mS/cm for 4 weeks, and next week you read 5.0mS/cm after upping the nutrients, well that could indicate that you are nearing the limit of what plants can uptake on the roots, and the rest is staying as salts in the soil, or that you need to add more water in between your feeds. You name it, is just a "flag", or indication of change, by itself it wont tell you anything, but by observing it during your whole growth cycle, and specially after important changes in feeding/watering it might give you ideas of what is going on in the root zone. TLDR: Noob = feed lightly, its better than burning your plant, and easier to fix (just feed less lightly, as opposed to fixing an overfed plant). Pro= well, you are probably a pro because you have experience and have already payed enough attention to your feeding/watering and their effects on your particular setup, you keep on experimenting and answering questions of noobs like me please!

This girl has definitely stopped stretching, so now almost all of the growth is going to be located at the buds. I plant to increase nutrient concentration, but also light intensity (this one by pulling the LEDs closer to the canopy). This week it will hang at 30 cm from the top of the canopy, maybe next I will push it further to 20 cm next week... By the way, the thunderstorms are over so now I can consistently keep the humidity around 45% with just the 3 cpu fans ;) I am experimenting with trying to clone some branches even after 5 weeks of flowering. It's just for the LoLs, and to learn a little bit. I took a lot of clones from the bottom of this plant before with great success during defoliation, so I decided to up the challenge. I know you shouldn't stress the plant too much during flower, but she seems healthy enough to take it without a problem. // on the nutes of this week// So this week I decided to up the nutes again to 1.0, as the lower leaves are showing deficiencies, and this time the EC of the runoff is low (plus I've been feeding only 0.8EC or 400ppm, which is much less than people generally feed at this stage), so I'm more confident that it's not a nutrient lock out. We will see how she likes it. Remember that my noob friendly approach is that keeping my plant on a diet is better than killing it by overfeeding it.

Ok, so it's slowly getting thicker and frostier. At week seven my girl could be ready in anywhere from two weeks to four weeks more. The light was dropped closer to the top of the canopy. I decided to try 15 cm of distance, as well four 50W LEDs are not as powerful as the 600W HID or LED panels that are usually used in grow tents. I will of course keep an eye for signs of light and heat stress, but I suspect that won't be a problem. Update Day 89. Today I decided to turn the plant around to see the back colas and their growth. Then I found some mites under the leaves after examining weird spots in a couple of leaves. It seems to me that there was not enough airflow to deter the mites from making home in the back leaves, when compared to the front leaves of my plant. Lesson learnt, rotate plant often, ensure good and even airflow. I didn't find any webs beside a really small one seen on the video (most affected leaf). So, I think I found them mites early. I only found this kind of damage on very few leaves, and each leave contained less than 8 mites (at least that I could see) and a couple of eggs. So it seems that paying close attention to my leaves saved me from an out of control infestation. Anyhow... I removed all of the leaves that had even a single mite, or a single mark of discoloration. Also, I disinfected the grow tent, top of soil and lower part of the branches by spraying them with a 1/4 tbsp of bleach per liter of water. After that was completely dry, I mixed one part rubbing alcohol with 9 parts water and misted both sides of the leaves and even the buds directly (ethanol evaporates easily, so there shouldn't be residues left after it dries completely). I got these remedies from https://www.growweedeasy.com/cannabis-plant-problems/how-to-get-rid-of-spider-mites I will apply them every 3-4 days and keep a good eye on the leaves. Prevention is key, and some aspects I could've considered before are: 1. not grow any other plant next to my cannabis 2. Don't come into my indoor growtent after tending my outdoor plants. 3. Ensure even and plenty airflow. So, I attacked back strongly. I cut more leaves than those that showed damage, to increase airflow. I will be on the watch for pests and will rotate my plant often, as well as spraying a few times every week, just to make sure they don't come back. I also am going to build a kind of metal wire cage to separate the colas further and make it harder for any pest to spread. Its only my second grow, but from what I've read online about mites, it's way more costly (time and money) to deal with an infestation than to strike them hard early. I guess that specially now that I noticed them before they even made webs. Look closely at your girls growbros ! Update day 90. So this morning I. Becker the trichomes and they seem to have gotten more cloudy. I am not an expert at that, but they are starting to be fewer clear and more milky. I will keep an eye on them, but it think harvest might be here very soon, probably closer to the 9 week mark than to the 12 week one (I'm about to finish the 7th week)...

So, to begin this week I rotated the plant to better distribute light and air. I sprayed alcohol and water to all of the leaves, while looking under the leaves for mites. I even brushed my fingers with some force to the underside of the leaves in the hopes of crushing any spider mite around. I will be doing this a few times before harvest, to make sure that the mites stay under control. On the plus side, after all this defoliation to control pests, this girl is probably going to be easy to trim on harvest day. >>On the smell<< I should've saved the "strong" rating for this week. I mean before the whole room smelled like cannabis, but this couple of days the whole apartment smells delicious. Anyhow, I wouldn't recommend this strain to some closet grow due to long flowering time, a lot of stretching and super strong smell! >>On harvesting<< I know I am close to harvest, because I can see the trichomes become cloudier. However, white hairs are still pretty white and pretty elongated (about 60%+ of them are supposed to become orange and curl around the time of harvest)... I will keep an eye on the trichs anyhow... Maybe I will chop her next week, or in three more weeks, it all depends on how fast the trichs mature... as you can imagine, I am not a harvest expert either... but we will get there... >>>>After asking for opinion on this community, they advised me to wait a bit more probably about three weeks to chop. I will keep an eye on the trichomes and hairs, and will see how long I can grow her before I see some amber trichomes (because I want an euphoric high, not so much a heavy body high).... >>FLUSHING<< Ok, so here are my thoughts on flushing. On my first grow, I searched a lot online for this topic. Many people swear that it improves smoke and taste, while others point out that decreasing the amount of nutrients available to the plant during the last part of growing stresses the plant and ultimately decreases quality and quantity of yield. To tell you the truth, both arguments sound reasonable, specially as many experienced growers choose to flush over not flushing. So, I am not sure, and because I am not sure if flushing will improve anything for me, I will save myself the work, I mean it can even end up harming the plant! As a noob, I try to avoid any extra procedure, specially one that will stress the plant, unless that I am fairly confident that it is worth my effort (and my plant's stress). After I grow more plants in the future and become better at the basics, and then try my own experiments (side by side 2 non flushed vs 2 flushed clones), is that I will be confident to determine what is best for me and my strains.

So this is the start of week 9 of flower... According to the RQS website, Amnesia Haze should be ready to harvest next week or the one after that at most. It certainly looks like this would be the case. >Tasting the bud< I took a small bud from the bottom of the plant and dried it last week to taste how she is coming along. Even without the plant being ready to harvest and without a proper drying and curing, it already smelled delicious and got me quite high. I am pleased, and I am happy. Honestly, I am just happy to have made it this far, and that the end product will at least get me high! >Update on the spider mites< DAY 99. After the defoliation that I did on the affected leaves and to minimize the spread of the mites and the times I sprayed diluted alcohol the problem almost disappeared. Already on my second spraying there were very few mites that I could even see, no more leaves were being damaged either. I anyhow sprayed for a few more times just to be sure. Also, I kept brushing the leaves between my fingers while applying some pressure when I found any mites or signs of mites. You know you killed a mites when you look at your finger and its stained with green "mite juice" ! I keep an eye for bugs anyhow, and I keep brushing off some leaves once in a while. DAY 104. It seems that I must've missed a spot, because the spider mites came back in a couple of leaves. I cut down those leaves, and misted with the solution, aswell as manually crushing them. I am lucky that I am so close to harvest and that I only have a small plant that can easily move around and care for every individual leaf, otherwise it might have been a disaster! I see how this could be a terrible headache for a grower with more plants or earlier on the growth. I am going to try to clean as possible the room before growing here again!

She is doing great. This is the week 10 of flowering already! I can't believe that I've been taking care of her for about 4 months already! Her trichomes are getting milkier by the day. I am waiting for there to be some amber and many milky trichomes to harvest her, that's all... Same care and same nutes as always. -------> Update day 109. I decided to harvest her today. I see some trichomes going amber already in many of the buds, and the rest are mostly cloudy. I could leave her growing those buds for a week or maybe more... However, the blueberry indica that I harvested before planting this girl had a very strong body high, so I am looking to get a very head high from this girl. Actually, I've sampled this girl twice already, once three weeks ago, and another two weeks ago, and both were a decent high, very much how I remember it from this strain. Actually, the effect of the last sample reminded me much of the high I got the first time I smoked Amnesia Haze! So, a week after that I suspect the high will be on point, for what I want from it. ------> The end? I decided to try to reveg this girl just as an experiment... Actually, I am even going to try to make one of her clones produce pollen to create my own feminized seeds from this absolutely delicious genetics :)

About this diary> So I've made it to the end! This baby didnt die on me! This diary was half a record for myself, to keep improving and contrasting against my future grows in and out of this wonderful platform (growdiaries), and half a tutorial for other noobs like me. That's why I wrote somewhat long explanations about some of the things I myself found confusing during this and last grow. I also repeated myself, but again mostly because I was trying to learn while doing. I got some help from other growers in the community, which was very nice, and different from trying to figuring out everything by oneself. This girl stretched a lot! from about 30 cm at the end of flower to about 90 cm before harvest, it survived nutrient burn, an accident were I dropped something heavy on her on flower, accidentally chopping a branch during LST and spider mites. However, still yielded nicely. I cant imagine what these genetics could become in the hands of a master grower!! About the growing conditions> The idea of the grow was, not only to learn how to grow a somewhat long flowering strain (6 week veg, 10 weeks flower) but also doing it very cheaply. I think the most expensive thing I bought was the seed from RQS. I built my own light fixture (from 4x 4.00CAD COBs from aliexpress), some cardboard, wire, sticks, tape and aluminum foil. I also used dollar store nutrients (like 15% of a 15-15-15 veg mix, and a 15-30-15 flowering mix). I timed this strain to finish a few weeks before the temperature really starts dropping outside, and was always able to keep it around 20-29C without any air conditioner/heater. About growing amnesia haze> I harvested this plant on the early side, but I found it a challenge not to harvest earlier! Since many weeks ago the delicious smell has been filling the room and some parts of the house... Plus, its a long wait... However, I think it was very well rewarded :) As I said, the high is creative, giggly, energetic and uplifting, at least from the premature samples we got. I will update this once the real deal is dry and cured :) About the harvest> Well in terms of numbers, I will update this when the weed is done drying, but I can do an estimate right now... each sample I took weighted about 1.45g wet, and dried to a 25% of that (0.35 g each)... It means that what I weighted from the harvest (412.86g + a bunch of trim) would probably weight about 100g when dry... Let's see how it goes in a week or two :)