First Grow! (NL Auto Fem)

1/29 She broke soil! So excited to start updating as she grows :) For now she's just on water. 2/3 Started her on CalMag. She seems to be slowing down a bit--I haven't seen much change or growth since the 1st. I'm hoping a good watering and starting the first nutes will help her get going again. 2/4 I'm getting a bit concerned about the coloration and curling of the leaves. She seems paler than she should be. I'm worried that maybe the bucket is getting too hot inside, so I've lowered the temperature of the room. I am fairly sure it's not a watering issue, but I suppose I'll see if the temperature adjustment helps.

2/5 The tips of the new leaves are showing signs of what I think might be nute burn or light burn. I may have started the CalMag a bit early. I am removing two of the four CFLs to lower the wattage to ~80, and I will flush once the coco dries out a bit more. 2/8 I have switched the light schedule from 20/4 to 18/6, and lowered the wattage to 80W of only daylight white. After purchasing a thermometer, I also noticed that the bucket was reaching temperatures of ~90 degrees F, but this has gone down to ~80 with the removal of the two soft white lights. The combination of that and more sparse watering so far seems to be slightly improving the seedling's health. I will maintain this for several days to see if it continues to improve. I may try giving it a small amount of nutes toward the beginning of next week. 2/9 Her leaves really grew a lot today! I am very excited to see her showing positive signs under the new watering schedule and decreased wattage. I will be keeping these conditions as-is for now while she recovers. 2/12 I think I've noticed a slight darkening of her color over the past two days. I am hoping this trend continues. Unfortunately there are no pictures for Day 14.

2/12 First day of Week 3! The cotyledons are yellowing so I'd like to start her on nutes, but the coco is still a bit moist an inch or so down so I will wait until tomorrow. Aside from that, things are only looking up! The growth I've seen the past few days has been very nice. I'm hoping that once she gets some nutes it will only get better. 2/13 First dose of nutes! Fingers crossed that she takes it well. 2/15 This morning I added a wet towel into the bucket to raise the humidity. That and the nutes seem to be working--she's growing a lot! :) 2/16 Holy crap, look at her go! This is so exciting. I do see that little bit of brown on the tips of some of her leaves, but overall she's starting to return to a deeper green and growing like a weed (haha, get it...), so I'm not too worried unless it gets worse. Though any advice is welcome! 2/17 YAY 2/18 Loving the progress! I'm seeing what might be a bit of either nute deficiency or burn. I'm going to keep to my schedule and give her plain water either tomorrow or Monday--whenever the coco dries out a bit more--and see how the symptoms progress.

2/19 Start of Week 4! Her color is so much darker than it was. I am so pleased. I think during her second feeding, which should be toward the end of this week, I will up her nutes. 2/23 Just biding my time until she dries out so I can give her a second feeding. Definitely upping the nutes, but not sure by how much yet. Recommendations are welcome! 2/25 Didn't have time to take pictures yesterday, Oops! She's still got some moisture in the soil so no more watering yet. I'm thinking tomorrow or Monday I should finally be able to. ONWARD TO WEEK 5!!

2/26 Welcome to Week 5! :D She was definitely starting to look deficient today, so I decided to go ahead and water her with the nutes despite the soil still being a little bit moist down lower in the pot. I increased them a bit too, I guess we'll see if she likes that. I hope they cheer her up! 2/27 The color is starting to return to the base of those lower leaves, so that's pretty cool! I'd like her to grow upward a bit so I added a spacer today. We'll see what happens! If she starts going upward a bit too much I'll throw in another bulb. 3/1 Suddenly, growth! Up a CM. I'd like to see more.. Let's go, Planty, let's go! 3/2 Growth spurt! Definitely noticing a bit of nute burn. Though I'd rather her have this nice dark coloration with a bit of burn than go back to being pale and malnourished. I intend to stick to this amount of nutes once a week, or every other watering, and see what happens as she grows! :) It looks like her first set of full fan leaves have come in, too! :D 3/4 So proud of my little girl :')

3/6 Couldn't update yesterday, too busy! I gave her a good plain watering today. Last night I added one bulb to the bucket to bring her up from 80W to about 120W. So far she seems fine with it, so I will leave it in for now. 3/8 She's gotten even taller! Up to 11cm this evening after being only 8 on Monday. Due to this rapid growth I've decided to start gently leaning her to the side. I only have two spacers right now and I've already added one so I don't want her shooting upward too quickly. She's drinking a bit more rapidly now, so I'm thinking maybe nutes on Friday. But we'll see! I'm sure she'll tell me when she's ready :) 3/9 The coco is definitely drier today, and the humidity in the bucket has dropped a lot. I still think I'm going to wait until tomorrow to water and feed her to be safe, but I will also add a wet towel back into the side of the bucket so she doesn't get too dry. I'm fairly happy with how far over she is leaning, so I'm not going to mess with that anymore. I'd rather be safe than sorry. So--wet towel today, nutes tomorrow, then we'll see where she takes us! 3/11 Fed her this morning. Are those hairs I see?! :)

3/12 I was surprised to see how over-watered she suddenly looked this morning, considering that I went 5 days between waterings and the coco was quite dry. I'm going to keep a closer eye on her and let her dry out really deep down this time around. On the other hand, she's grown a lot since yesterday, so I'm happy with that at least! 3/14 Looking a lot better! Her leaves are filling in so much that the lower nodes still aren't getting too much light despite the LST. I leaned her over just a little bit more, but I'm not comfortable pushing her any more so I guess I'll just leave it at that and hope they get enough! Now that she's in the early stages of flowering, I'm considering adding in that last bulb toward the end of the week, maybe with the last spacer. 3/16 The bucket is starting to get a bit of an aroma--not like weed, but almost fruity. It's really nice! I have some work being done on the house tomorrow, so I'm going to have to shove her in a closet for the day to keep her out of the way. Hopefully she won't be bothered too much by the restricted air flow. I accidentally hit the complaint button on my own post. Oops. Guess I know what that does now. 3/18 She took her closet confinement very well! The coco feels dry to me even pretty deep down, but I'm going to wait another day or so to water her since last time I watered too early.

3/19 Still haven't watered her yet--didn't feel quite dry enough. I pulled off two little fan leaves today--one toward the bottom that was withering, and another toward the top that was going yellow and blocking light from the lower buds. I didn't originally plan to pull any leaves off her since she's an autoflower, but it seemed like a good idea with these ones. I'm still going to avoid doing so in the future, though. Hopefully she'll be dry enough for some water tomorrow! 3/21 Watered today! Hopefully I waited long enough this time. I'm a bit on the fence as to how to figure out her feeding schedule. As it is, she's taking water maybe 1.5x a week, if that. If I give her plain water between feedings, then by the time she's dry enough to water again, she's been looking deficient for days. However, I know it's bad practice to feed every watering. It's difficult to find a good middle ground when she's drinking at such an awkward rate. I'm hoping she'll get thirstier as she flowers so the schedule can be a bit simpler. She's been taking the increased light very well, so I think early next week I will add in the final bulb. 3/23 So, just as I feared, she's definitely looking deficient today. I really feel like she needs some nutes, but the coco is still quite moist from the pain watering. So the question is--what do I do in this situation? Which is worse, over-watering or starvation? 3/25 I went ahead and fed her today--she's been looking way too pale to wait. Hopefully the nutes will perk her up! I've also put the last spacer in the bucket. Depending on how well she responds, I will add in the last light bulb sometime next week.

3/26 Hard to say if the nutes are helping any. I mean, she doesn't look over-watered so at least there's that. I guess I'll see how the next day or so goes!

4/2 I've been so busy with work and my animals that I've barely had time to give her any attention this past week. I think the time alone has done her some good though--she's actually doing very well. Her color looks decent, her leaves are perky, and she's starting to get a little sparkly and smelly. Now that she's looking well again, I'm going to add that last bulb in so she can get as much light as possible.

4/10 We just keep chuggin along. She's gotten paler since I added in that last light. I think I may remove it again just to be safe. My room is definitely starting to smell dank.

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5/2 The past several weeks I haven't had time to update--I didn't realize it had been so long! She hasn't grown much since my last update anyways. I think the difficulties I had early on had a really big effect on her. She's pretty tiny. I'm looking forward to harvesting her and starting a new grow with the knowledge I've acquired. I'm thinking another week or two before harvest, but I'm definitely open to more experienced opinions!

5/9 I feel like the trichomes aren't really changing that much. Is there something I'm not seeing? She's definitely past the time span where she should be ready to harvest based on like the guide for the seeds, but I also understand that she might be taking a bit longer thanks to how stunted she is. any advice?

She ended up very tiny, but I'm okay with that! It was my first grow, and she had a very bumpy childhood, so I'm just happy I got something viable off her. I ended up cooking most of the bud into brownies and MAN, were they good! Despite the tiny harvest, it was a great learning experience, and I look forward to doing better next time!