Mynkeo's first grow

This is my first grow, taking advantage of the new legal growing law in Massachusetts. Using a cabinet I built in an under utilized corner of my basement wood shop. Overall the cabinet was a lot work than I expected and I should have just gotten a tent! I'm planting one feminized original skunk #1 and three each regular wonder woman, white widow, northern lights, and pure power plant. With so many plants in a small area I'll need to experiment with sexing some clones to make room for everything. I'm only planning to flower five. Using black gold soil for the seedlings, I'll need to pick up more before transplanting into fabric pots.

Continuing to give the plants tap water with no added nutrients. Very happy with their growth in the tray so I decided to transplant them on day 13. Unfortunately the trays weren't completely dry at the bottom so a chunk of soil and roots were lost during the move. The runts from week 1 are catching up now, the 2x Northern Lights runts are all caught up but the Skunk #1 is still lagging a bit despite being germinated first. The yellow Northern Lights seedling is still looking pretty sick with little or no growth. I've noticed the temperature is dropping down towards 60 when the lights are off, so I'm looking for a heater to put in with them. I'll probably start supplementing them with BioThrive Grow during week 3.

Lots of new growth this week! Some of the plants were wilting a little after the transplant last week, and the first set of leaves on several plants are turning yellow. The new growth is strong and I'm starting to see leaves with five blades. Only one watering this week on day 18, it seems to be taking 4-6 days before the soil starts to dry out, and not all plants are on the same schedule. I've got a small fan circulating air to try drying the out a bit faster. I'm also starting to add some nutrients. The soil is supposed to have enough nutrients to keep them happy for 30 days, but I wanted to start practicing so I added 0.5ml of BioThrive Grow to a gallon of water and also started testing the pH. I'm having a lot of trouble getting a good reading with pH droplets. I'll have to keep practicing. I've also got a cheap digital pH meter on order. Finally I added a space heater to the grow area to help with the lights-out temperature. Looking back on the photos today it's really noticeable how much the plants started to take off the day after watering. I'm not sure if I let them get too dry, if there was a pH issue or if they really liked the little taste of BioThrive Grow. I ordered some CalMag as well, I'll start giving them some of that next week in addition to more of the BioThrive Grow.

This week I upped the nutrients amount to about 1/2 the suggested amount and got another week of steady growth. I also ordered some CalMag to supplement as well. Near the end of the week on day 27 they started looking a bit droopy, I think it was due to under watering because I watered them in the morning on day 28 and they perked right up. The cheap pH meter I got is worthless so I'm still using drops. Getting the water as close to the 6-6.5 range as I can. The under growth is starting to pick up now in addition to the height, new branches are starting to shoot out. Over the weekend I picked up 6 cu. ft. of roots organic soil and some 2 gallon pots for the next transplant. Finally I'm also starting to read about when I should top, and when I should start LST.

Lots of activity in the grow room this week. Early in the week I noticed a little bit of nutrient burning in the northern lights plants. This happened a couple days after feeding so I decided not to flush. I'll dial the nutrients back a little for the next feeding and switch to alternating nutrients and plain water. Growth has been slowing down so I transplanted everything into 2 gallon bags. The bags are about 30 cents each and I needed to punch additional holes in them for drainage. They should make the final transplant into 5-7 gallon pots easier since I'll be able to cut the bags off. They were a little root bound but the roots were still very healthy. After transplanting each bag got about half a gallon of water. The grow room also got a little bit of an emergency upgrade after I noticed some water was stuck underneath the plastic floor. So I tore it up and replaced it with a small tarp and taped around all the edges. The silver tarp will hopefully be a little more reflective too.

Another big week in the garden, I'm finally starting to realize that I've got no idea what I'm doing. The plants are taking well to the transplant and must have grown over 5 inches this week. The humidity in the grow room hit 85% so I finally got the exhaust fan hooked up to bring things back down to 45-50% Starting to get some pre-flowers, I was able to see some pistils on two of the plants. I really can't tell the calyx apart form a pollen sack yet, so most of the plants are still unknown. Also decided to top this week, so I cut about 5" off each plant, something I've been planning to do all along. I really should have done this a couple weeks ago. Even after taking so much off the top the plants are still 7-14" tall! Really need to switch to flower soon. After topping I went ahead and planted the cuts in some peat moss along with some rooting hormone. My current plan is to switch to 12/12 in 5-7 days and possibly start some LST in the next few days.

The plants took well to being topped, I'm really happy with how it came out. Most plants have 4 colas at the same height now because the lower ones had been stretching so much. One watering and no nutes this week. One of the Pure Power Plant's is going nuts, almost twice the height of some other plants at 18". Finally switched to 12/12 today. Plants are really starting to get bushy thanks to the topping. I need them to show their sex soon before I run out of room!

First week of flowering. All but one of my plants are from regular seeds, so I spent a lot of time this week checking the sex on these plants. Unfortunately the odds were not in my favor this time. The one fem seed produced a female but only 2/9 of the regular seeds are female. One is still on the fence but 6/9 are definitely male. Lost all of my Pure Power Plant and Wonder Woman. The plants are really exploding with growth, some are over 2 feet now. Tomorrow I'll transplant the three ladies into 7-gallon pots and start experimenting with LST. The silver lining here is that I have more room to work with than expected, so I'll get to harvest bigger plants. Also I'll have an extra bag of soil for the next grow. On a lighter note I hung some cilantro and rosemary from the wall/ceiling and they're doing great.

After losing 7/10 plants last week I started this week off trying to make the most out of what I've got left. So I transplanted the 3 ladies into 7 gallon fabric pots and started doing some LST. The fabric pots were very convenient, I was able to poke holes in the fabric and hook the wires through it. So far it seems to be working and they're growing like crazy. They've been needing water every other day this week and I've been feeding them with every watering. They're starting to show some signs of nute burn on the lower leaves so next week I'll dial back the feedings a bit.

This was a great week, the girls are almost completely filling out their space now and the flowers are beginning to develop. The LST has really taken well, I've done as much as I can at this point so they're going to start growing up from now on. Some of the growth along the edges seemed a little slower compared to the center, so I rearranged the lights a little bit to make things more evenly lit. For waterings I'm still carrying the plants to a sink, but they're starting to get too big for that. I'm also concerned that I'll disturb the flowers. At this point I'm not really sure how to deal with it. If I use a tray how will I get the runoff out? They are still very thirsty and taking a gallon water every 2-3 days, for the third watering this week I gave them 1.5 gallons spread out over 2-3 hours to try getting more water into the Roots Organic soil. Based on observations from last week I've dialed back the nutrients back quite a bit and even gave them no nutrients for one watering, I'll gradually increase it again over the next couple weeks. Some of the lower sugar leaves are drying out so I've started doing light pruning as well.

Uneventful week. I've been giving each plant 1.5 gallons of water to have a little extra runoff and creeping the nutrients back up. The flowers are starting to get sticky and pungent when I rub against the leaves. White Widow seems to be growing a lot differently than the other two plants. The pistils are shooting straight out and the buds don't seem to be growing as quickly. It is also the densest growing plant of the lot. Northern Lights are growing much quicker than the other two, she is nearly the size of the other two combined. Skunk No. 1 seems to be somewhere in the middle. She's had strong steady growth all along. The clones I took in week 6 are also finally starting to grow. I'm not really sure why they took so long, but at least I've got 3 healthy mother plants.

Another week of steady growth. The white widow continues to look good, but not fatten up compared to the Northern Lights and White Widow. Watering every 2-3 days as needed, they're taking 10ml/gal of BioThrive Bloom every feeding with only minor nutrient burn in a couple leaves at the bottom, so I'll keep with this amount.

Another week of steady growth. The flowers are continuing to fill out. The White Widow still seems to be filling out slowly compared to Northern Lights and Skunk #1.

Another steady week. I was seeing more nute burning than usual so I dialed things back a bit by giving one feeding with no additions. They also seem to be holding water for longer now, that or I've been getting lazy. I'll probably go straight water for the rest of the grow since it's almost time for harvest. I'm at flower day 49 now and the estimates are: Skunk No. 1: 60 days Northern Lights: 49-63 White Widow: 56-70 I also ordered a pocket microscope to help.

Pretty much starting to flush. They look close, but this is my first grow so I'm not really sure. We're at day F60 now so all these plants are inside the harvest window according to the breeders notes. Trichomes: Northern Lights - clear Skunk No. 1 - mostly milky White Widow - mostly milky

Most of the trichomes are still milky and clear with a hint of trichomes on the skunk. Plants still looking nice but don't seem to be growing much. It's been busy so I haven't been paying much attention to them.

No nutrients at all anymore. They're definitely starting to turn yellow. Still very little signs of amber trichomes, hopefully they start showing up soon since these plants are all passing their suggested harvest window. The microscope I have requires me to take cuttings in order to see anything so I've been using it sparingly. I've got a loupe with a larger lens to hopefully allow me to get some better examinations on the plants. Should I start feeding them again? Breeder suggested flowering times: Skunk: 60 days Northern Lights: 49-63 White Widow: 56-70

Really busy week and didn't notice the plants dying. I've been checking the soil and still felt some moisture, but clearly there wasn't enough. The Northern Lights went 10 days without water, White Widow and Skunk went 6. The Northern Lights has a lot of damage to some of the buds and has a strong dried corn husk smell that is really bumming me out. Adding to the drought these plants have been getting flushed for harvest for the past month (thought they would be ready a while ago), so they probably have a lot of nutrient deficiencies at this point. Still very few amber trichomes, but more than there were last week at least.

Things seem to be stabilizing after last weeks fuck up. The white widow looks like it's starting to mature, her leaves are starting to turn a nice reddish purple color. The skunk lost a lot of fan leaves but otherwise seems to be doing alright. Not seeing many amber trichomes on either yet. Still not sure about the northern lights. The flowers still have some green but almost all of the leaves are gone at this point. At this point I'm monitoring trichomes and waiting. All the fuck ups have these plants trending very late, they're estimated harvest date was 7-10 weeks but they're now into week 12

Compared to the White Widow and Skunk #1 I would say Northern Light Special grew quite a bit faster. Even after accidentally breaking off 1 of 4 main colas she was almost twice the size of the other plants.

Still not seeing a lot of amber trichomes on these plants. The White Widow / Skunk #1 are finally showing a fair amount on the sugar leaves but almost none on the buds. Still seeing a lot of new growth on the flowers, so I'll just keep monitoring those girls and let them keep going until they're ready. All the leaves are turning red/yellow/purple shades now. I fed them once last week, their only feeding in 6 weeks. I'm hoping thats part of the reason they're taking so long to mature. The Northern Light Special continued going downhill so I did an emergency harvest. I hung them in the veg room for about a week before jarring them. I might have hung them for too long, the jar's started around 50% RH. One has crept up to 57%.