First grow--Pineapple Express Auto

Germinated the dry seed straight in Happy Frog soil with bottled distilled water--struggled some with humidity the first two days, but a Vicks filtered cool humidifier and a cup over the wet spot dialed it in. Woke up at the 84-hour mark to a leafed sprout, completely popped out of the shell. Surprisingly easy first week!

Shooting off leaves like crazy... definitely was not expecting so much foliage yet. This thing may well be a monster... wasn't planning of a FIM, but my 24x24x48 tent may not leave me much choice. Might have to brace the stem too at this point! Idunno what FastBuds did to this thing but it's growing like its family's being ransomed.

Started this week off with a hurrcut on Day 14. Lots of advice said to wait for four nodes, but she's been healthy so far and I wanted to give her as long a veg stage as possible after the FIM. We'll see if this blows up in my face I guess. Following up on that... she recovered enough to start growing again after one light cycle. Smaller fan leaves added another ridge overnight, and bud sites showed some progress too. Looks like the early fim paid off... rad. Once I felt good about that I tied her up at about 50 degrees to start easing her into low stress. Also learned a bit about mutations, so I know now that some of the funky leaves I'm seeing are ducksfoot mutations. Fun thing to get on my first grow! And finally, I was kinda paranoid about the purplish stem, but looks like that's just normal to this pheno. Ending off the week, put her on the FF soil feed chart. Will be keeping an eye on her to make sure she's happy, but from everything I've read, PE's supposed to be able to take a fair amount of nutes. As far as the LST goes, the main stem is basically resting on the soil, so basically ended up with a light supercrop-ish situation. The early FIM is giving her a crazy-thick canopy with branches on branches already showing, so I'm gonna let the canopy stretch for a few days before picking training back up

Coming into this, I was definitely a bit put off by how the Internet felt about FIMing autoflowers. But I still tried it, and I'm glad I did. 23 days out from seeding and only 19 out from sprout, and she's showing tons of bud sites. I've been pushing her LST pretty hard too, and that's only helping her even more. Her branches have branches. Day 26 update: Ope flowering started. As of day 23, the only defoliation I've done is on the FIM site--I took off the ugly leaves since they were covering maybe 10 bud sites. I have the lower leaves garden-stapled down below everything else, so I'm leaving them while they're still getting light. They're not getting in anybody else's way. Starting the week with the FF trio and sticking to their feed schedule. No concerns yet. Probably not going to flush outright since she's in amended soil, but I may skip a feed heading into flower to help get some of the salts more spread out.

Day 28: After a month of her staying pretty squat all things told, she's started stretching big-time the past couple days. Again, the early FIM and pushing her low-stress is looking like it's set her up for a lot of colas. The main stem is basically garden-stapled to the ground so she'll have a strong base to grow on. I noticed a couple very light browning spots on some lower leaves along with some tearing. I think that can be chalked up to a combination of overhandling and light deprivation, and maybe some local burns from getting fertilizer on her leaves. I gave her a full feed on Day 30 (per the FF feed chart) and she's taken it in stride so far, so I'm feeling pretty good about that guess. Every other diary here shows her thriving on nutes, so I'll stay the course for now. She also got a very light defoliation on Day 30. I want to leave her lots of green to work with, but she was lookin messy. The haircut uncovered two pretty prime sites and a third that could thrive if I keep it clear enough. Day 31: I took off any hidden branches that weren't going to grow into anything but popcorn, including two that I was giving the chance to grow into top sites... they couldn't compete. I'll take eight colas on my first go! Day 34: Scratch that, 7 colas. She got lollipopped on day 32--I picked the branches that were showing noticeable growth day to day and snipped the rest. She's been packing on height and mass already. With 15-20ish days left of stretch, I'm pretty optimistic about the yield I'm looking at. She responds to training like I'm talking shit about her. "That'll show 'em," she says after each snip.

Day 35: Not a ton to report. She got fed and some branches got lowered a bit to keep the canopy even. Things are gonna be low maintenance for a bit until fan leaves start getting too bushy again. Day 36: She's really getting stretchy now, and some frost started showing up on her sugar leaves. She's bushing up pretty quickly day to day, so I took off a couple lower leaves that were lookin at me cross-ways (after her Day 36 photoshoot). That'll basically sum up the rest of the next couple weeks--water, trim, feed, trim... Day 37: Did you know Chicago was originally a swamp? That said, the humidity outside shot up to over 80% the past couple days, and the tent, after being dialed in for weeks, is now sitting in the mid-50s. Not fun. Emergency dehumidifier is on the way. Still at the tail end of preflower, so at least this didn't happen later on. Other than that minor crisis, she's still stretching and in no need of defoliation for today. Day 39: Fed her and tied down all but her shortest branches this morning. She's lovin life. Humidity's more under control, partially cuz I bought one of those EvaDry E333 situations. I also treated her with some lightly-mixed baking soda and soap foliar sprays since the humidity outdoors will probably spike again soon. I would scream-cry if she started getting moldy after all this effort. Day 41: Humidity's back under control, hovering right around 45% day and night. Thanks, EvaDry! She's getting thirstier and taking a watering every other day. Aerated the soil today with a chopstick before watering her. Also, the SMELL ON HER. So fruity and a hint of diesel.

Day 42: No updates today... had to take the dog in for some dental work, so the plant baby's watching herself today. Please send some good thumpies and scratchies, and maybe some peanut butter if you have any to spare. Day 43: The dog's recovering well. The plant got a feeding today, and I chopstick-aerated the soil right afterward. She's packing on resin and them sugar leaves are lookin nice. Day 45: Today was a big day because she got a new neighbor--another PEx auto. Watered today, and it looks like the stretch is slowing down a bit. Flowers are starting to beef up, and juuuuust a few pistils are going orange. Day 47: Raised her about 6 inches closer to the light, in part to put her on a colander to make the runoff process easier, then fed her. I'm happy with her training, so at this point I'm letting her go until harvest time. Day 48: Only news here is that her neighbor popped up today.

Day 49: Watering day. She's starting to fill out and get real pretty. FB estimates the THC on this strain somewhere around the 20% mark, and this is passing the eyeball test at this point. Day 50: Been doing a 2-day cadence, but she's already dry and thirsty after a day and a half. Feed day it is. Day 51: Nothing special today, just thought she looked pretty. Buds on the main cola are getting chubby. Day 52: Second time in a row she's been thirsty in 36 hours. Plain watering. More and more pistils are going orange/kinda pink? Day 54: Feeding. Day 55: Last day of Week 8 and her pistils are getting super-red. Cutting off the Grow nutes this week to help juice her up, then tapering off the Flower nutes. I've heard so many different and angry opinions on flushing, so I'm going the middle route and weaning her off. A lot of signs showing that she's almost good to chop, but I'm gonna wait for autumn leaves.

Day 56: So I've killed a bonzai tree, a peace lily, and a cactus in the past few years. Needless to say, I'm surprised and relieved to be in late flower. She got fed today. I swapped out the 2tsp of veg nutes for an extra tsp of flower nutes, just to lower N and boost P and K a little. Over the next few days, I'll start cutting back nutes gradually--going for a slow, relaxed flush rather than going in full starvation mode. Other than that, we in Chicago got our collective ass handed to us yesterday by a derecho (the closest the Midwest has to hurricanes) and we lost power for half a day. The humidity got all the way up to 80 for a couple hours, but dropped back down once power came back. She should be fine after the baking soda and soap sprays, but I'm keepin an eye on her. Not a ton of updates on the daily for this week. She's looking fantastic. I did in fact start weaning her off nutes. She got her last feed today, so this week will be a short flush. All signs are pointing to her getting the chop on Day 69 (nice), as probably about 70% of her pistils are shriveled--the top buds could get cut right now. I am HYPE

Harvest week! She's been asking for water every 36 hours, so we'll keep that up until Sunday (today's Tuesday) when she gets the snippy-snips. She's getting chubbier by the day, and the pistils on the underside of each cola are frizzling up. The buds getting light are basically 95% colored at this point. Again, not doing the trichome method just because I don't know that I buy it at this point. To the naked eye, they aren't translucent anymore and that's enough for me. A few waterings later... Day 69: Chop chop! Very few white hairs left and nice frosty triches all around.

So not quite the yield I was hoping for, but what I did grow is awesome--super-hairy and super-frosty all around. So what did I learn here? One, I think I overdid it on the defoliation. I took off a looooot of fan leaves toward the end of the stretch, and in hindsight I think that likely stunted both her height and her buds. I'm not going to totally skip the training next time, but I am gonna give the next grow a bit more space to do its thing. For another, I learned that I'm probably not an 18/6 grower. I think I'm sticking with 20/4 from here out. Third, I'm adding Open Sesame and Beastie Bloomz to my next grow to see if the added P and K helps juice things up during flower. Finally, this was fun as shit. What I did end up with is some good ass medicine. I have a new hobby for life, and I'm looking forward to learning so much more about how this is done.