First Grow - BSK_Auto

Day 1 Never grown before, but always liked plants. Especially plants like these 😊 Seeds came today. Only one will be grown for now (Bloody Skunk Auto). The seed was slightly scraped (purposefully), and then placed in distilled water. Seed sank to the bottom with a little push after 6 hours. Hopefully that's a good sign :) Seed was then taken and put into rooting medium. Currently lights are on 24/0 to warm the area surrounding the seed. Tomorrow temperature/humidity measurement will be set up. Day 2 Was able to measure the temperature. It's about 22 C. Natural humidity is a bit low in the area (35%), so a humidifier is being used occasionally to increase that. Seed has sprouted now (15 hrs after being put in the rooting medium), maybe in two days there will be some real growth 😊 Day 3 Root looks like it's off to a good start. Positioning seems a bit off though. Will keep an eye on it for the next couple of days. Day 4 There was a surprise waiting today 😁 Plant pushed through the piece of sponge at the top without a problem apparently. The light has been switched to a 125W 5500K CFL, for now without any reflector. A bit worried that this might be too strong, especially for a seedling. However there aren't other 5500K or higher Kelvin value lamps available, so going with this one for a couple of days. If there are problems, will go back to just a collection of 2700K bulbs and hope the plant survives haha. Got a heating pad, so now the temperature is being kept around a comfortable 73-76 F. Night temperatures should drop to around 66-68 F. Lighting schedule has been switched to a 20/4 schedule, to allow for better plant development. Will probably stay with this schedule for the first couple of weeks. Could also see the taproot poking out of the Root!t sponge. Not sure if that's going to bad for this root to be exposed to light at this stage. Once (if) the leaves start to get wider than the Root!t sponge the plant and sponge will be transplanted to a small 1 Liter pot. If the roots continue growing but the plant stays stunted then it will also be transplanted. Andddd....got nervous about the 125W lamp. Decided to switch it out for the previous lights (two LEDs, two CFLs, all at 2700K). Total lux value is about 10000 measured by the seedling. Seemed also like the seedling might have been craving some water, so gave it a few drops. It hadn't been watered since being planted. Hopefully not over-watering here... Day 5 Seedling has grown by another centimeter. Leaves haven't really changed that much. Nevertheless, decided to put the seedling in a slightly larger container. The cup was taken and filled with some potting soil (Compo Sana Anzuchterde) and the Root!t sponge put into that. Did this because the tap root was poking even further out of the sponge and didn't like that. Gave some more water, mainly in the lower section of the soil. Will not water again for a few days unless it seems really too dry. Don't want to over-water 😑 Day 6 Seedling doubled in height. Starting to get concerned about stretching. Read conflicting information about the optimal humidity for seedlings, but most seemed to say that less was better, and a humidity dome not necessary after sprouting. One source suggested that seedlings stretch when under a humidity dome. So that's been removed. Switched to the 125W lamp as well in case the seedling was stretching because of not enough light. Added a fan for a breeze to occasionally move the seedling...hopefully this will make the stem a bit sturdier. First set of leaves has begun to develop a bit more..but it seems a bit slow. Might just be being impatient 😄 Day 7 Not much has changed. Soil is getting to be dry enough where watering again should be ok. So that will be done tomorrow morning, with a small amount of BioBizz RootJuice.

Day 8 - Watered today with a medium amount of Root-Juice. The plant's roots have already begun to develop decently. Unfortunately the previous container was tipped over accidentally today🙈🙈...so that's been re-potted to a 1 Liter container. Hopefully there's no shock to the plant the next few days. Day 9 - Seems to be doing alright. Day 11 - Watered again today. The leaves seem to be taking their sweet time to develop, but at least the roots seem to be building themselves up well. Already noticed a root poking out of the bottom of the pot.

Day 15 - Watered again today. Plant grew quite a decent amount and the stem has finally begun to thicken. Will need a bigger humidifier for sure, and then one that can automatically keep humidity at a certain % Day 16 - Growth is definitely starting to take off. Stem is finally getting thick enough to where LST seemed to be a good idea to start. Smell is getting stronger, but still can only be sensed when holding the plant to your face. Will probably need to plant into the final container in a week. Going to also add another light (105 W) by the end of the week. Day 18 - Watered, got new humidifier. Just using that for now in the whole room, since it gets too dry in here anyways with the heating. Day 19 - Transplanted to what should be the final container today. Was a good time to transplant too, the roots were beginning to bunch up at the bottom of the previous container. Using Atami Bio-Growmix as the soil now. Accidentally damaged one leaf during the transplant. Stopped with LST for today to let the plant recover a bit from the transplant. Then will resume it tomorrow. Might be trying out SCROG...but first will read more about it. Also thinking of FIMing soon...but also going to read a little more and let the plant recover more from the transplant first. Have another lamp now, the 105W. However, didn't realize that it has a low kelvin value. So getting a couple of new higher kelvin lamps soon. Will just use the 105W in combination with a 125W during flowering. Smell is increasing, but not noticeable outside the tent. Day 20 - FIMmed today. Not sure if it was a great idea, the part taken off seemed to have possible beginnings of flowers inside. Not certain though, so yeah...will see what happens 😅. The third set of fan leaves turns out to be 7 leafed, so she went straight from 3 leafed for the second set to the 7 leafed. Is that a good thing...? Also resumed LST. Day 21 - Seems like the plant might be recovering from the FIMing. Temperatures got way too low last night though, at 60 degrees. Since two 125W lamps (5500K) are being used now, the temperatures are getting a bit warmer, from 78 to 80 degrees. So it's important that the night temperatures don't get that low again. Was thinking of eventually doing three 125W lamps with the 105W for blooming phase, but that will probably be too warm even with an extraction fan (the 105W, being older, produces more heat than the 125W). Not yet sure what will end up being done for the blooming phase lighting. Tomorrow is week four...flowers will probably start appearing soon by the end of the week. Hope it's been able to fully recover from FIMing by then.

Day 22 - Well, instead of continuing to vegetate for a week, it seems the plant decided to start flowering 😱. So the lights have been switched once again back to the 105W and 125W. The 105W is in the reflector. Could also smell it pretty decently this morning, it's definitely gotten stronger, but as the day goes on the smell tapers off. Lighting schedule has been made to have the 105W light on for 19 Hrs. The 125W will be on for 17 hours, turning on one hour after the 105W and going out one hour before the 105W. Have absolutely no idea if this is a good/bad idea, but just trying it out. Seems like it would mimic the patterns of the sun outside a bit, since the initial/ending light of the sun is more reddish and weaker than later in the day. Still having issues with heat generation. It may be due to the oscillating fan blowing air towards the passive intake, so will try switching that around tomorrow and see if things improve. Also will water tomorrow. And start a second grow :) Day 24 - The plant seems to be recovering well from FIMing. There now appear to be 4 flowers instead of one main cola. Switching the position of the fan helped for heat problems, but still not to a satisfactory level (temperatures stabilize around 78 degrees but sometimes spike to 83). Also temperatures dropped again briefly to 60 last night. Tomorrow will get a couple of things for temperature control, so hopefully these issues will be taken care of then. Other than that, the plant seems to be doing well. Have counted in total 10 flower sites so far, but perhaps there are a few others not yet spotted because noobishness. Day 26 - Plant seems to be doing great. Temperatures have gotten under control now, not exceeding 78 degrees at all in the day, and last night it only fell to 65. Wanting to get it to just be 68 though, so there's room for improvement. Only issue of concern right now is the 'rust spots' and they do seem to have started to spread to another leaf. So I will be measuring the PH much more meticulously for the next watering and try to make it slightly more acidic. Also will measure the PH value of the soil soon. As @Athos mentioned, the PH value could be causing this issue. I think @Jeff123fish and @Hellhazard are also right in that it could be a calcium deficiency. I think it might be a calcium deficiency caused by the PH of the watering being slightly alkaline, not due to a lack of calcium in the soil itself. We'll see what happens.

Day 28 - Got other nutrients today. Will be using them for the rest of the grow. Plant keeps doing well in development, although the rust spots have progressed a little more. With the nutrients I'm hoping this will stop now (CaMg-Boost). Controlled also the EC and PH values of the run-off. EC Runoff @ 1.9 (little high), PH Runoff @ 6.25 (little low). The side nodes have grown a LOT. They were sturdy enough to where it seemed a good idea to do some more LST. Day 30 - Watered again, soil was dry even past my knuckle and could see that on the bottom it was dry as well (container is clear on the bottom). Only used a bit of Alga-C and Flower-C because it looks like there might be some nutrient burn on the tips of two leaves (see photo). Otherwise the flowers are continuing to develop well. Day 31 - Starting to see the beginnings of a clear color change 😍

Day 35 - I was initially worried the bud sites were too small when she started blooming. They are still on the small side, but are definitely starting to fatten up now. The pistils have slightly begun yellowing, so I guess we're maybe in the last 2 to 3 weeks of flowering now as well. I've slowly reduced the temperature last week from 78 to 75 now. Trying to preserve terpene content with the lower temp. At night also allowing it to get slightly colder to continue bringing out the color changes that are occurring in the leaves (so beautiful 😍). Watered yesterday because she was beginning to droop. Used just a small amount of Cal/Mag and yet she got burned again. I think the stuff is too concentrated, I'll have to start measuring it with drops 😅. Although the end EC value was only 0.9. Also started with a little Bloombastic. Depending on how the leaves look, and a macro shot of the trichomes I might start increasing that dose a bit more. Overall it's still doing quite well so far I think. I plan to drop the humidity to around 30-35% in the last 10 days or so of flowering. Day 38 - Watered with pure water today. Trichomes look cloudy (or I'm still too new at this to know what cloudy looks like). Guys on a forum feel like she still has at least a few weeks to go, especially because the pistils are still so white. I kind of hope they're right, because then it gives more time for the buds to fatten. Dropped humidity to 40% today. Day 40 - Watered today with a worm tea, 2.5ml of RootJuice, 1ml of Flower-C and 1ml of Bi-Bloombastic. PH 6.3 and EC 1.3. Also slightly cut-off the top of three buds. This is a little bit of an experiment to see if this technique increases trichome production in these buds (supposedly it does).

Day 42 - Kinda crazy how fast it's gotten to be day 42 (the meaning of life - *) in the grow. Haven't watered yet. Plan on doing that with the above nutrient schedule tomorrow or the day after. And I think that might be the last time I give any nutrients to the plant. Pistils are beginning to curl, and I've seen (just a few) amber tirchomes on one bud. I want to harvest on the earlier side because I don't want this harvest to have a big couch-lock effect. Prefer a more cerebral high, although some bodily relaxation is nice too. So I think I will be harvesting at the latest by April 10th (Day 56). Of course I will continue to watch how the plant develops and if no further trichomes are turning yellow/brown in a week, I'll wait longer. The trichomes on the sugar leaves have a wonderful lemon citrus smell by the way. Not what I was expecting, but that's fine 😛 Day 45 - Made a video of the trichomes. They definitely look cloudy enough to me. No more nutes for sure, harvest in 10 days max I think.

Day 49 - Clearly she's starting to get to the end of the life-cycle. The nutrient reserves are being used up in the leaves, although I also suspect a bit of nutrient lockout as well. Today only gave PH'ed water. After taking another look at the trichomes today, I'm starting to wonder if she really is ready for harvest yet or not 😅 I guess I'll take another video in a few days and see how they look then. The pistils are curling in though now, so that's one sign that harvest is getting closer. Day 53 - Watered again today; she was a little droopy 😳 PH was about 6.05 And took another video of the trichomes...a good one this time. And what do you know...plenty of the trichomes still look clear AF, although I do notice some amber ones. Going to wait until at least next week for sure now to harvest.

Harvest starts today on Day 56. 36 Hours of darkness begins now. Watered yesterday. Don't have time to upload/process photos, will do so later. For now just the one video of trichomes. You can also see an unwelcome guest at the beginning, although I'm not sure if it's a spider mite. Not taking any chances though, and the trichomes have begun to decay anyways, so harvest time it is. I'm kind of in shock about reaching this point in the grow 😨 Day 57 - Harvest early tomorrow :) Going to control the humidity to be about 55%. Day 58 - Harvest. And oh my god that smell. Is...Grape soda, which has been sweetened a little too much. It's overpowering when smelling it, but it doesn't get the room too smelly (also have decent ventilation though). I'll post harvest and effects later, after it has dried for a few days and then cured for a week or two. Yield won't be much I think, somewhere between 20-30 grams. Wet weight with stems is around 75.

Overall this was an interesting experience. I'm honestly a bit surprised I got anything, let alone some really decent product. The plant tolerated my mistakes fairly well, like transplanting multiple times, initially just watering with tap water, and occasionally damaging a leaf or two. The final pot and soil I had chosen was a mistake as well and I think the plant began to run out of nutrients towards the end of the grow, causing the heavy yellowing it experienced. Still, in the end it came out decent and I'll be satisfied for the rest of the year as far as indicas go I think 😊 Going to continue curing it for a couple of weeks, but it's very much worth using already :)