First Grow

Seeds were placed into a glass of water and imbibed for two hours before moving into damp paper towels. After one day the Gorilla Breath had grown a long enough root for transplant to Rapid Rooter plug. After two days the other three had grown enough for transplant. Light in tent was initially too high as I was not sure how strong it was when dimmed to lowest setting. After a couple days noticing stretching I moved the light to 3 inches away. Based on subsequent measurements, the light at lowest dimness setting was essentially acting as a 24W LED. Once moving the light closer (2-3 inches), stretching stopped. The Coco for Cannabis guide is being followed at this stage with respect to feeding schedules/procedures. The Sapphire Scout's seed case stayed on for about 2 days longer than the others. I had to take a pin and work it off carefully to free it.

Plants grown out to third node by day 11, transplanted to 3 gal pots as I had no 1 gal pots.

The plants were adding nodes nicely at this point. Once I reached the 6th node on each plant I began my training, which is where problems seem to have begun. I am going for a mainline on the Sugar Breath and Sapphire Scout, and doing sort of a combo Topping/LST for the Gorilla Breath and Chemdog. With these two, I topped the plants and left two nodes. The next step will be to top them again leaving 3 nodes on each of the 4 branches, so growing out 24 colas total for the GB and CD. Problem is that the growth of the SB and GB seems to have slowed down significantly since topping. Not sure if this is due to the high temps (29-30 C avg), high humidity (~80% during the day). or possibly overwatering (was feeding 1/8 Gal twice per day per plant). The Chemdog seems to be chugging along like a champ though.

Began to notice leaf curling issues with the Gorilla Breath(GB). Node growth also seemed to slow down quite a bit. It seemed to be either some form of heat, light, or moisture stress. I reduced my watering schedule for the Gorilla Breath to once every other day by the end of the week. The leaves seemed to straighten out more as the pot got dryer. The GB had the roughest transplant to the 3 gal so I think root development may have been slowed and so it had problems dealing with the more saturated zone at the bottom of the pot. The Sugar Breath was growing the largest leaves and they were showing deformities and various weird spots on them. Growth also slowed as the plant seemed to be investing a lot of energy into those big leaves. I reduced the Sugar Breath to one watering per day, although its root development seemed strong as I had roots growing out of the bottom of the pot and they looked white and fuzzy. The Sapphire Scout had some leaf curling issues, though not as severe as the GB. Overall growth remained fairly constant with this one. The Chemdog continued to grow at a fast pace, seems to be better suited to the higher temps and humidity where I live.

This week was largely filled with me trying to diagnose issues which started to appear towards the end of the prior week. The Gorilla Breath (GB) leaves were quite curled at the start of the week and growth seemed much slower than the others. I began examining issues and root damage/ environmental stress seemed to be the most likely culprits. At this point, tent was on average 29C and 75-80% RH. I decided to reduce my watering frequency of this one and give it a longer dryback period, so I fed it every other day instead of the previous 2 feedings per day at 1/8 G each. This combined with the environmental changes I will mention below seem to have helped recover growth by the end of the week.