First Run on Blue Dream

Welcome to my first grow journal! This will be my second grow of the year following a very successful three-site RDWC system, growing Girl Scout Crack and yielding about six ounces of bud and two of useable trim. I elected to simplify my grow significantly, making it a two-site standalone non-recycling DWC system in 12 gallon totes instead of three five-gallon buckets connected with a reservoir. This allows for a lot fewer opportunities for leaks, guarantees equal spacing for maximum light absorption and equal nutrient access. I'm running a 4" air stone on a Hygger 10 watt, 2-port pump and it's very quiet. Also have an A/C Inifinity Cloudline S6 fan and I'm SO happy I spent the extra cash on it! It's super efficient, light, comes with an adjustable remote and it's extremely quiet. Currently the loudest piece of my tent are the fans in the Bestva LED. Now onto the actual grow. After months of false starts and bad genetics, I finally landed on some winners from Original Harvest Seeds and they happen to be all the rage right now: Blue Dream. I'm extremely excited to get to run a new strain and know it will be a real crowd pleaser! (Side note: If you've never tried Girl Scout Crack, I cannot recommend it enough. Perfect amount of positive energy for the first 30 minutes and then a nice, relaxing chill that won't leave you couch-locked.) As of right now, we're just at the tail end of the seedling phase, so I transplanted her to her final site today. My hope is that I'll get some great clones from her and be able to use my second site in a few weeks. From there, I plan on mainlining for 16 colas per plant in a Scrog. Of course, no plan is ever executed exactly, so I'm leaving every option the table for now. In any case, I'll keep y'all updated as she grows. I could use a bit of help coming up with a name for her. Is that something y'all do? Name your girls? Thanks for reading!

Between when I posted last week and the subsequent Friday, there had been absolutely no growth. The leaves had yellowed a bit but not to a concerning level, so it was really clear that the roots were not finding the nutrient bath below and therefore I made two changes. 1.) I backed the lights off a bit to 24 inches above canopy rather than 18 inches, thinking the light was causing a bit of burn on the cotyledon leaves. I believe this was proven correct. 2.) As part of my attempt to simplify my grow overall, I hadn't planned on creating any kind of drip system. I was having a difficult time finding the connections I needed for my pump and 1/4" drip lines, so I elected to leave it out completely. However considering the lack of growth (but clear strength of the seedling), I figured that her roots could use a little guidance in finding the water below, which drips are ideal for. I sunk a small 60 gal/hour pump, cut a hole in the lid, fitted it with a rubber grommet and 1/2" L connection, then after some trial and error with different sized lines, decided to keep the drip line at 1/2". As you can see in the pictures above, I cut the line at a steep angle so the water would release gradually instead of spraying across the lid. These two small changes have yielded significant results. Between Friday and today, the plant has only grown 1/2" (not really surprising given the genetics), but the number of sets of leaves have exploded from 1 set to 5. I'm thrilled that she's coming alive and I'll save myself the headache in the future and include a drip system from the beginning. Getting closer to a name, now that she's stronger and fuller. I was originally thinking about naming her "Blue", based partly on the genetics but also on the completely blue-tattooed stripper that cons the Animals out of all of their money in You Suck. But now I'm thinking that "Jody" might be more suitable given the character is slightly more altruistic, let alone strong, scrappy and adaptable.

Overall, Jody's doing fantastically. No nutrient or light schedule changes this week. As of today, I'm switching to 18/6 since we're clearly out of the seedling stage and just this morning I started to see some curling, most likely due to heat/light stress. Nothing is burned, but she's clearly showing signs that she needs more rest. She only grew about an inch and a half in height, but she grew about six inches wider! Her lateral reach is super impressive. My eventual plan is to turn her into a main-line/manifold after cloning, and given her horizontal growth, I'm excited about the potential benefit of that style of training. Our little family is growing!

This has been a pivotal week. Jody continued to grow out (about 12 inches in diameter) and not up (never above 6 inches - full tuna can), showing that she is a fantastic candidate for a manifold. She grew seven healthy nodes, so I cut her to the third node and made clones from the cuttings. I gave her two days to recover, then I shaved everything below the third node and tied down the two stems. Gave her another day to recover and then took out the second node from each stem. She's thriving. The clones are not doing so hot, but I just removed them from the grow tent after seeing a good deal of yellowing leaves. This is my first time trying the manifold/mainlining training technique and so far the plant is responding very well to it. Just keeping my fingers crossed that the clones don't die!

Vegetation exploded. She grew at least a foot in diameter and only grew another 6 inches in height. Bent back some of the growth to make an even canopy and will be setting up a SCROG shortly. Added another light - Mars Hydro 600 "watt" white LED. It's covering the second plant that I pulled from my batch of clones and was the only one to survive. For now it's still rooting but has grown an inch. Going to flip to 12/12 either tomorrow or Friday depending on how much she grows in the next 48 hours. The normal colored pictures are actually form last Friday night. The blurple colored one is something I took last night -- you can really see how much she's flourishing! So far, I'm significantly more proud of this run than my last one. The growth is better than I expected - she's reacting positively to every change and modification I'm doing. Blue Dream FTW!

This is the end of week 2 of flower. There's a LOT of stretch happening, but they're looking really healthy! The clone is looking really adorable and happy.

Tragedy struck poor Jody and her clone. I left for a week on vacation and they kept growing a lot faster than I thought they would (they grew 18 inches in 8 days). They ended up growing into the lights and suffering a significant amount of light damage. I had to cut a lot of the tops off. I wanted to cut everything down and start over, but I thought I'd just top what I needed to and hope for the best. SO. FRUSTRATING. I didn't take many pictures because they were the saddest looking plants ever. The manifold base is still looking happy as hell!

End of week 3 of flower. Since topping the burned leaves, I've re-positioned everything I needed to, with one clear outlier that didn't get burned (it's the really long, thin stem curling around the front). My beautiful canopy is pretty much ruined because of the damage. In happier news, the plants are still looking happy and healthy. They're starting to bud! I'm changing the nutrient to a different line from Advanced Nutrients and I'm adding Big Bud, Bud Candy and Overdrive. We'll see how they look at the end of the week!