Cheesy Moments

First grow. I decided to start this diary half way through the grow, so my apologies for the lack of info/pics in the early weeks. 5 x Dinafem cheese auto XXL in 3 gallon pots. I'm using the biotabs starter pack and followed their directions exactly. Two tabs per pot + mycotrex, startrex and bactrex. Soil got a soak with the orgatrex/bactrex solution then sat under the lights for a day before planting. Planted directly into the final pot, all seeds popped within 3 days. All looked healthy except one which was showing some issues (see pic). At the time I thought this was fungas gnats, then I thought it was a PH issue. Now I'm thinking that this plant hit both biotabs in the soil too early and was over fertilised, as it has since recovered OK. I've since seen recommendations to wait until week two until adding the biotabs when using them with autos. I'm not sure about though - as aside from this one small issue they've all had very rapid growth, so I think in future I'll add one biotab to the soil before planting, and add another at the end of week two.

Looking nice and starting to get stinky! From around week two I set them up in a 'SWICK' setup - the 3gal fabric pots sit in larger 5gal pots with about 5inches of perlite in them. These 5gal pots sit in reservoir trays. It seems to be working nicely, growth is exploding almost too much... I think I should have gone with 4 plants instead of 4, but there we go... live and learn! Been LST'ing fairly hard. So hard in fact that I broke them main stem on one of them around week 3, it was hanging by a fingernail's thickness of stem. Taped it up and used a bamboo skewer as a splint and the plant carried on as if nothing happened. They seem to love the training, seeing multiple top site popping up now. Started showing signs of hunger around week 3, so made a weak orgatrex/bactrex solution and top fed them with 1l each (trying to avoid run off into the perlite reservoir below).

WOW! These are smelling SO lovely. Cannot believe how fast they have grown! Probably should have pulled one early on as it is really cramped in here now - very concerned about mold! I'm trying to defoliate as much as I feel is possible without shocking the plants, just to make space and keep humidity under control. Gave them another top feed but added some bio pk 5-8 in with the orgatrex. They seemed to like it. Definitely seems like I've got two different phenos here. One short, wide and bushy, lighter leaves and pistils with LOTS of tops and LOTS of trichs (could just be further developed than the other pheno though in terms of trichs). The other pheno seems a lot taller with a handful of main tops, darker green with slightly greener pistils, and these ones seems a bit behind the others in terms of progress. They all look and smell beautiful though! Already seeing some orange pistils, I'm assuming this is OK, and I don't need to start scouring the undergrowth for balls? Most others who've grown this strain seem to take it to 11 weeks - do these look a month away from being done? We'll soon find out I guess! I'm seeing some yellowing of lower leaves but from what I've read that's nothing to be worried about.

Overall, looking great and stacking nicely! Touch of defoliation as usual. The 2 stockier pheno new growth was getting pale, one in particular has very lime green new growth and same yellowing at the bottom... seemed like mag or sulfur def. I gave them all a feed, and added some dissolved epsom salts to the bottom feeding tray. I know they already have a bit of slight nute burn, but that's actually been there for a couple of weeks, I think it was from the slow release biotabs giving out their last bunch of nutes (I've seen similar things on other biotabs grows, and the final product seems to be unaffected so I'm not too worried about the nute burn as long as it doesn't get worse). I have hard water and I'm wondering if the calcium is being deposited on the roots (which at this point seem to be filling up the perlite pot BELOW the main pot) causing nute lockout. That's why I skipped the calmag and just went with some epsom salts I've also ordered some amino acids, which will help turn the unusable form of calcium in my hard water, into a usable form for the plants. If I don't see an improvement from the feed then I'll probably flush those two. It's tough though as I've only got a 2-3 weeks left on them, and maybe the stockier pheno is just an earlier finisher. They did all seem to go into flower a week earlier than most other growers I see running this strain (they were showing preflower by the end of week 2!).

Seeing some deficiencies, mainly much lighter growth around the top - thought it was sulfur or mag so added epsom salts, then wondered if they were just generally hungry so gave them another feed with some PK 5-8 and orgatrex, and burnt them a bit. The lightening on upper growth may have even been light burn - I checked with a LUX meter and some spots were getting upwards of 110k Lux, so I backed the light off a bit. I think the soil PH may be too low, affecting the uptake of nutrients. I've been trying to avoid flushing as it's not recommended with biotabs, but if they get dramatically worse then I expect that's what I'll do. I think they only have 2-3 weeks left anyway, so it's tough to tell whether issues are just natural colour change and fading, or nutrient uptake issues. Despite all this they seem to be filling in nicely, and getting frostier by the day. Super sticky, super stinky!

The yellowing got worse, after a soil slurry test I realised my soil PH pen was no good, and my PH was far too low (around 5), so I flushed them. It fixed 3 of the 5, but 2 of them returned to an acidic PH, so I flushed them again with a good 8 gallons of water each. That seems to have done the trick and they are now all sitting at the right PH, and the one with the worst yellowing has finally started to green up. I can see the weight packing on the buds, I think I've got 1-2 weeks max until harvest. Smell is ridiculous. Even with a new 6" rhino carbon filter there's still a bit of smell coming through the exhaust. Had to get some Ona Block and put it in the exhaust duct. Now my whole garden smells like a doctors waiting room. Plain water from here on out I think.

Interesting week. Got them back on track after the PH issue. I planned to go with the plain water until harvest, but since the flushing they've been very hungry and they are still not showing amber trichs on the buds, only on the sugar leaves. One of them in particular has been starving and it's cannablised a bunch of it's fan leaves. I figured this was fine as there were only a few days left, but now I think the three taller pheno plants are going to need another week or so, so I gave them a very light feed. I can see the calyxes swelling nicely now. Weather has been a nightmare - VERY hot, and VERY humid. Peak lights on temps have been up to 30, and around day 70 it got up over 70%RH at one point during the dark period, This got me panicking about bud rot, as the tent is packed. The plants are technically ready to harvest (majority cloudy trichs, a few clear, some amber trichs on sugar leaves) so I harvested the most 'done' looking one. This helped create more room and airflow in the tent and reduce RH a bit. I'm planning to wait until I see some amber trichs on the buds before I harvest the rest, as I do prefer a heavy stone. This will also give me a chance to compare the smoke from the different harvest times and see what I prefer.

650g of sweet, sticky buds and around 250g of trim/popcorn. 1.4g per watt. Very pleased! Dried over 10 days, already tasting very nice, no hay smell or taste. Smoke is lovely, would definitely recommend.