Nirvana Aurora Indica

This is the start of my first grow. Both Aurora Indica's were started in rapid rooters on 11/11/17 and transplanted into plastic cups on 11/18/17. Moved both ladies into their final 3g smart pots on 11/22/17. I didn't want to mess with dealing with nutrients for my first grow so I decided to go with an organic water only system using Kind Soil. No additional nutrients used at all. Just soil and water. I followed the Kind Soil instructions of 1lb per gallon of pot using roughly 3lbs of Kind soil for my base and filled the rest of the pot with FoxFarms Coco Loco. My grow light is a the Timber Grow Lights Redwood VS 600 Watt LED fixture with 6 Vero29 Gen 7 COB LEDs. First week running the light dimmed to about 10%.

Week 2. Gave 500ml of water to both ladies. #1 plant has started to lean slightly. I'm thinking I may have transplanted into the 3g pots a little early, not sure the roots were developed enough. Humidity has been kinda low. I put a humidifier in the room. Lights still dimmed to about 10%.

I wasn't liking how Aurora #1 was leaning from last week. Further inspection revealed what I suspected her roots weren't developed enough and she wasn't able to hold herself up. I used some gardening tie to stand her up straight while her roots develop some more. I also decide to go ahead and top both plants this week. By the end of the week there was lots of new growth so I started to LST them as well. This week I also lowered the lights down to to about 38 inches away and bumped the dimmer from 10% to about 20% or so.

Start of week 4. I continued to LST both plants. Both ladies are getting pretty bushy. Also built my scrog this week using pvc and string. I made the screen 9 inches above the base of the plants. I want to keep them nice and short. Both are getting 1 liter of water every 2 to 3 days.

Week 5 and both ladies are looking healthy.. I'm giving about 1.25 liters of water every few days. Kind Soil recommends you saturate the whole pot without going to the point of having runoff. So far so good, We've had pretty mild weather so temps have climbed a little bit hovering around 82F. I have my 6 inch fan going into my carbon filter turned off for the most part. To this point the small desk fans and humidifier have been providing enough airflow along with bottom and top vents open on the tent. I'm turning the fan on in little spurts but it sucks all the humidity out of the tent really fast. I'm going to buy a fan controller which I'm hoping will allow me to run the fan at a slower speed so I don't drop the humidity to far..

Week 6 and everything is going great. Aurora #1 is growing quite vigorously. This week she started to grow into the trellis net. Aurora #2 is growing a little slower. I think I may have been underwatering a bit after reading more on the proper way to water using this Kind Soil. I tried to correct this and accidently overcompensated. I had one hiccup with Aurora #2 and overwated giving about 2.5 liters causing a small amount of runoff. Both ladies are now getting about 2 liters of water and the smart pots are now feeling completely saturated but without any runoff. I'm going to monitor the amount I'm giving more closing from here on out. This week I also continued with some LST and I did some light defoliation on larger lower fan leaves.

Week 7 everything is going smoothly. I am continuing to train both along the trellis net. Aurora 1 continues to grow at a faster rate than Aurora 2. Aurora 2 is also showing a little bit of nute burn at least as best as I can tell. I'm guessing this is do to the slight overwatering it received last week. From reading online I've seen many different opinions given on how full you should get your screen before switching. I've seen suggestions saying to wait from 70% to 100% full before switching. Aurora 1 is already almost filling up her entire space and I'm afraid if I go to much longer before switching she will outgrow her space or at least make the canopy difficult to keep even. Kind Soil says a 3g pot with 3lbs of Kind soil will feed a plant for it's entire cycle with a 2 month veg time. I have two other Nirvana Wonder Woman ladies in the tent that are a week ahead of the Auroras. Taking all of this into account I'm planning on switching to 12/12 the end of this week. My hope is that I will be able to fill in the rest of the net during the stretch and I'll be able to keep the canopy nice and even.

Week 8 and the start of week 1 of flower. The night before I switched the lights to 12/12 I defoliated both ladies removing most of the big lower fan leaves so light will penetrate all the way through the canopy. I only removed fan leaves and left the lower bud sites instead of lollipoping. My hope is that by doing this lower bud sites will receive a good amount of light and develop instead of being larf. By the end of the week Aurora 1 has grown like crazy and is incredibly busy again. Aurora 2 has been much slower to respond to the defoliating. Now that both ladies are maturing I'm beginning to think I have two different phenotypes. Aurora 1 seeming to be more of a hybrid with Aurora 2 showing more of the strains Afgan dominant traits. Aurora 1 is now getting 3 liters of tap water every 3 days. Aurora 2 is only needing about 2.5 liters.

Week 2 of flower. Both ladies are starting to show signs of flowering. Aurora #1 is getting about 3L of water every 3 days. Aurora #2 is drinking less getting 2.5L every few days.

Week 3 of flower ladies are going strong. I'm continuing to water every 3 days. For my next grow I think I will bump up to 7g pots so I won't have to be watering so often. When I started this grow I was taking picktures andt racking my grow in another app on my phone but unfortunately the app received an update that broke it and I was not able to get photos of the Aurora Indica #2.

Week 4 of flower. Both ladies are really starting to form nice buds. Both smell very sweet and almost tropical. Aurora #2 especially has a sweet pineapple smell with a hint of skunk. Beginning of the week I did one last light defoliation.

Week 5 of flower. Aurora #1 is starting to show some signs of a mag deficiency. I mixed in a small amount of epsom salt with the last watering. Aurora 1 is now drinking close to 4l of water per watering. Aurora 2 is still not drinking as much she is getting roughly 3l per watering.

Week 5 of flower, week 13 overall. Aurora #1's leaves are starting to yellow slightly. I'm assuming she's not uptaking as much N the later in flower it is. Nirvana says this is a 7 to 9 week strain so she might have only 2 more weeks to go. I'm keeping an eye on things but I don't plan on adding anything from here on out. Kind Soil says there should be enough soil in there to last through the full harvest so I'm just going to trust that and live with the results. I tried taking some pics with a bic lighter to try to get a sense of the size. Aurora #1 is a bit taller. Most her buds are about twice as tall as the lighter but not as thick. Aurora 2's buds are shorter but getting pretty fat.

Week 6 of flower. Aurora 1 is definitely getting close. In addition to yellowing leaves her pistils are starting to go in and are turning orange. I've been looking through my 120x microscope at the trichomes and they are starting to get cloudy with still some clear and no amber. Aurora 2 is fattening up but more of her trichs are clear than Amber.

Week 7 of flower and both ladies are getting really close...at least I think so lol. It's kinda hard to tell being my first ever grow. Aurora 1 is really close. There is quite a bit of amber now and her buds are plumping up. I really want to cut her down but I'm doing my best to be patient and really let her ripen. I'm think mid next week she'll probably get cut down. Aurora 2 is getting some really nice thick buds. Not as much amber on her trichs yet. I think she is at least a few days off from her sister.

Week 8 of flower and I've decided both ladies are ready and it's time to cut them down. I snipped of a couple small buds from both and tested and enjoyed the high from both. Aurora 1 made it to day 58. She has kept her sweet smell from early in flower. Very fruity with a hint of skunk. Her buds are smaller than her sister but they are pretty dense and she was my biggest plant of the 4 I grew (other two were Nirvana Wonder Woman). Aurora two lasted 4 more days. She was chopped on day 62. She was actually much sweeter smelling early in flower but she has lost of lot of her sweetness and become much more pungent and skunky. Her buds were much bigger than her sister though they aren't as dense as Aurora 1's. I'm very curious which lady will win out weight wise.

I ended up with 151.6g of dry weight from the two Aurora's combined. Aurora 1 came in just shy of 3 ounces at 84.3g. Aurora 2 had the thicker buds but she was a smaller plant and came in at 67.3g. Both the Aurora's yielded more than the two Wonder Women I had in the tent as well. Including those two I yielded 274.4 total grams. Overall for my first ever grow I'm very happy. Yeah in retrospect ideally I would have vegged for a bit longer to fill out my trellis a bit more but I didn't have more Kind soil to transplant again and I know now for next time. Next time I will likely bump up to 7 or 10 gallon smart pots and fill up the entire trellis before switching to 12/12. I would definitely use Kind Soil again. The entire grow I didn't have to worry about anything other than watering. No nutrients to worry about. I had a few speed bumps early on with determining the right amount of water to give but I got the hang of it as the grow went on.