Pineapple Express Auto

Good first week for sure. Seed germinated very well, did 24 hr glass of water and 48 hours in a paper towel. Had a good one inch taproot and went directly into the 5 gallon pot with Nectar of the Gods #8 soil. I have watered it very little, sprinkle the top just around the seedling every few days. figure there is a ton of moisture in the pot for such a little plant. I'm thinking the roots will find the water and fill up the pot in the process. The growth so far has been better then my other grow I started earlier and it's looking very healthy.

Week 2 in the books, great week. This Pineapple strain seems very healthy, growing very quickly and filling out the 5 gallon already. Watered a couple times this week in rings around the plant, about the width of the plant, just PH 6.5ish water (200 PPM filtered). No training yet, needs a bit more height, but the branches are growing quick, so I think the LST should work well once it gets going. Likely sometime during week 3.

Another strong week in the books. This Pineapple is very health and strong, taking in water pretty quickly, not showing any discolorations, adapted to the LST very well, all in all good grow so far. I did start the LST about mid-way through the week and it's loving it with the lowest branches pretty much at main color height or close to it at this point. I watered the full container last time for the first time, wet all the way down and on the sides hoping it fills in the rest of the pot then regular waterings from there, it took that really well. I was able to get a runoff because of that and it measured ~450 PPM and ~PH 6.4 which I was thrilled to see but expected. I'm probably a week from giving early nutrients, maybe two weeks.

This week showed some decent growth but seems like the plant kinda slowed down. Showing some nitro and calmag deficiencies so I added some nutes, PH seemed a bit higher. I removed some inner fan leaves due to congestion, it was too much of a bush, was risking leaf condensation and possible mildew etc. Still a decent week, lights about to go 12-12 so lets see what happens then.

This week was a turn for the worst, so much so that I didn't post on time because just didn't feel it. In week 4 I thought I had issues with nutrients because I was seeing some yellowing leaves and some rust spots, I posted online about it and got some mixed signals. A lot of people thought Cal/Mag and others thought perhaps pests. One day this week I went to water the plant and I bring it out of the tent and get it set for runoff etc. I had seen some flies in the tent and didn't really think much of it, I guess since I'm a new grower it hadn't dawned on me that if flies are in your tent it's a problem not just a random fly. I wasn't worried because normally in the summer I'll see some fungus gnats or whatever in my basement, usually not a big deal. Well I went to water the plant this week and I saw a bug crawl up the side of the pot, flies were one thing but a bug on the pot was a major red flag to me. Essentially this whole week I was trying to identify what the bug was, I eventually saw more as the days went on, never like crawling all over it but it got to the point were if I pulled the pot out I could find a bug within a minute or so. I bought a jewlers loupe early because of this and inspected a few bugs and as I suspected they had 6 legs and looked exactly like root aphids. Pretty devastating to this plant for sure, you can see week 1-3 was a dream, perfect grow so far but it clearly got infected in the soil and started to suffer from week 4 to 5. I went to a grow store and talked to the owner about the situation and they suggested that if I'm not trying to be a total hippy about the grow that you can't fuck around with root aphids and you need to kill them immediately. He suggested Bayer Complete Insect Killer, which is a Home Depot store major insect killer, which honestly scares me but I mean I don't want to mess around with the bugs, just kill them. I used the insecticide on Day 35, gave them 5ml per gallon and fed about 3ish gallons to the plant, runoff was like 500 PPM, 6.8 PH and yea little low on the nutes so I'll feed next time but otherwise the plant hasn't died since then and I have found a few root aphids since but also have seen corpses on the side of the pot. With the further hindsight of posting this late I can say I definitely didn't kill the plant. The tent hasn't had flies in it since. I have seen a few RA's but I killed them and they are difficult to find, I mean it's been 5 days since the soil nuke and I haven't seen one in probably 2-3 days. I'm going to nuke it again because fuck root aphids but I think I'm probably in the clear. The plant hasn't fully recovered but looks a little bit better then before the nuke, just a tad bit, I figured it's probably gonna take a while to recover and with the feeding next I think it should bounce back after that.

Better week but still lacking, bugs are gone for the most part, least I don't see any and the yellow sticky paper isn't getting any, I'll keep an eye out but I think it should be fine. Grow overall is slow, it's entering flower slower then the others in the tent (and stretching a lot less), I think the roots are repairing and I have a feeling it will finish it's stretch strong. I fed a top dressing of uprising foundation and grow to get the nutes up, pretty soon I'll add the top dress of bloom probably week 3 of flower.

Plant seems better, haven't found any bugs, no bugs on the yellow stick (except one lonely dead spider). It's maturing into flowering but probably "a week behind" the other plants in the tent that started flower at the same time. Stretch seems to have gotten stunted so just hoping the yield isn't too bad. Will be adding bloom nutes this next week.

Pineapple is growing fine, it's not big but I got more seeds to try again. It's coming in chunky which is great, smells like pine which is funny cause it makes sense but I guess I thought it would be fruitier in smell. Probably 2-3 weeks from harvest. Yield guess: 1/2 OZ

Its been getting the full Aurora innovations organic line. Plant's thickening up but doesn't seem like totally healthy, some branches are good some branches not that good. Just hoping it ripens so I can pull the whole tent within 10-14 days.

Final couple weeks of the pineapple was good. It finished up well, smells piney and nice. On harvest discovered a bunch of root rot when emptying the pot which isn't nice to see but the plant still finished ok, just clearly was held back a long time.