PEx auto--runnin it back

Day 1: She sprouted and threw off her shell after four days in the Happy Frog-coco-castings medium. This strain germinates fast--last one was four days too. My goal with this grow is to go lighter on the training--just LST and defoliation. I FIMed my last PEx out of an abundance of caution, never having grown before while trying to deal with a strain that I heard had a reputation for being lanky... in a very small tent. That ended up with a super-short plant with some dense colas (still growing). Now that I have a general sense for the scale of a plant overall (which is a lot smaller than I had in my head), I'm gonna let this one do its thing a bit more. Day 2: Compared to the last plant, she stretched a lot. My other didn't stretch at all. I figured that was possibly the cup I was using for humidity, so I ditched the cup. Day 5: Made the decision to try a 20/4 schedule with her and see how it goes. Last grow was 18/6, and as healthy as that first plant was, the yield's looking to be a bit more modest than I'd hoped. Also been feeding at a fairly high frequency--trying to utilize the high-ish ratio of coco to my advantage. Top feeding lightly 3 times a day, and soaking in some water through the bottom to keep the lower roots happy Day 7: Same as above. The new light schedule definitely picked up the pace a bit. Based on the longer and kinda scraggly leaves, she looks like this is the sativa pheno--last grow was definitely the indica pheno.

Day 8: Humming right along. She's liking the fertigation method and the light schedule. Day 9: Using the last bit of the Week 1 nutes now. Next mix will include the Grow Big. I'm not afraid of pushing her nutes since her big sister's been doing great with the FF soil schedule. Day 10: We had some unschedule downtime today, which is to say, Chicago got fucking BODIED by a derecho last night and we lost power right at the start of the light cycle. She still grew a modest bit. I started her on FF Grow Big, and she's already been on Big Bloom. Day 12: I did a oopsie. Having her miss a day of light kept the medium wet for a long time and did a number on her growth. I didn't spot that until she started really shriveling. So she got cut off water today and I chopstick-aerated the hell out of the soil to try to dry it up. Kinda white-knuckling it with her and hoping she isn't toast. Day 14: I threw a Hail Mary today and supercropped her at the base. She's half-dead anyway, so I figure maybe I can spike her traumatic acid production and get her healed up. How's that for some biochemistry?

Day 15: We're back on track. After my oopsie last week, a good four days off water and feeds brought her back from the brink. I took her first true leaves since they were dying, and she started bouncing back Day 14. A few more leaves are looking sketchy, but we should be out of the woods. Big time scaling the water back for the next few days. Good thing I wasn't planning any HST this go-round. Don't wanna put her through that now. The next couple days progressed about the same way--I started watering bigger doses once a day. She's been taking fertilizers every watering and doing well for it, so I'll keep that up a bit longer before I give her some pure water. Day 18: Oops. I. FIMed it again. I had a run-in with a stiff bowl of Sour Pebbles, decisions were made, and now she has a new haircut at the fifth node. Day 19: She's recovered and growing again. New growth sites have stretched a bit. Still taking a lot of feeding.

Day 21: Well fuck me. This is the same plant that was laying half-dead two weeks ago. She's doubled her height and foliage over the past two days, and her lower branches are starting to stack up nodes. She's still guzzling nutrients and really showing them off at this point. She has the growroom all to herself for the next few weeks, so I'm sure she'll love the attention. Gonna let her grow up a little more before I tie her down rather than changing her LST setup daily, like I did with her now-chopped older sister. Oh also I did end up FIMing her, and I think it's helped her throw a lot of growth stems. I went at the fifth node rather than the third and I'm not lollipopping her nearly as intensely this time. Trying to update less on a day-by-day basis as I feel like that enabled me as a helicopter parent... so overall, here's my rundown for the week. She's been taking full waterings and feedings all week, and responded really well to it. She kicked into preflower on Day 26 and started stretching pretty noticeably. Still not showing a ton of pistils, but her new fan leaves are starting to alternate. I introduced Open Sesame on Day 27 at the full dose on the FF feed schedule. No issues with nutrients yet--my experience with this strain is that it'll handle fertilizer just like it's a photoperiod. All good so far!

The Open Sesame looks like it's cracked her wide open. She's throwing out a ton of growth stems in the past couple days, and a couple branches are even reacting like I topped them, with two branches starting to grow from each node. She's been stretching for two days, but still not showing many pistils. Hopefully a sign that she'll have a nice long stretch and flower phase. Day 33: Oh my. She's been taking water every two days, feeding every four days at full strength on the FF soil feed schedule. Absolutely no signs of burn and a huge amount of branching. She grows noticeably every few hours, and she's still only showing 2 pistils per bud site. This seems like one of those slow, huge burners that Fast Buds PEx is kinda notorious for. Hopefully I don't have to figure out how to fit her into 48 inches of vertical space, but there are worse problems to have. I initially wrote this week as a flower week, as based on my last grow, I figured she'd start flowering right after showing her pistils. That was not the case, as she never started fuzzing out.

So I think the supercropping Hail Mary worked lol. Fierce branching and growth at this point. Going into week 6, she's still vegging on Day 36. No visible preflowers yet... still only showing sex. I'm planning on her first defoliation soon, but gonna wait until I see some budding so I know where to pluck. Not LSTing super-actively at this point either. Until I defoliate her and get a good look at how she's structured, I'm just working on keeping the canopy even. Starting to get a little jumpy about her getting too big for the 24x24x48, so if she doesn't flower herself by Day 40, I'm gonna give her some 12/12 to help force the issue. Day 38: She's finally showing some actual flowers. 38-ish days of veg--that rules. Round 1 of defoliation went down today--round 2 should come in about three weeks. As is usual with her, she recovered and started growing again v quickly.

She's still in absolutely no rush. She started showing pistils over two weeks ago and she's still not showing huge flowers yet. She's putting on a lot of height and leaves, so she's still working hard... just taking her time. I may slowly start switching her off the Open Sesame over to Beasie Bloomz. Just don't want to cut off her stretch prematurely, as I'm very into how many bud sites she's building up. She's getting another round of defoliating this week, and a light extra round of lollipopping to catch some lower growth that came in after the first 'popping. She's obviously strong enough to handle it.

The tops are finally showing some proper tops and she's still stretching out quite a bit. The internodal spacing on the tops is still pretty tight, so she's giving herself lots of buds and loving life. Gonna have to raise the light so she doesn't start frying by the end of this. I'm happy with how much of the space she's ended up using... she's even starting to grow a little square to fill in the corners. This is a hell of a pheno. I've still been taking off the odd leaf here and there and she's about as lollipopped as I want her. She'll probably get one more heavy defoliation (hopefully) this week before the stretch wraps up. In the middle of this week, I'm switching her off the Open Sesame and onto the Beastie Bloomz so she can start focusing on getting curvy and swervy... she's plenty tall now.

The stretch finally... finally... stopped, just as I was starting to get worried about her outgrowing her bedroom. Four colas decided to shoot up above the rest of the canopy. I'm not mad about it. She's producing buds with vigor now--fat pistils and, interestingly, purple calyxes (happened with the last one I ran too... passive temp control for the win 🙃). A lot of trichomes popped up overnight too. She may finish sooner than I was expecting, which would be rad. She's grown into a real sphere of doom.

She's giving me a lot of fun with these lights. Her very top leaves started getting splotchy and crispy, so I had to rig up some BS to basically tie the light straight to the top of the tent. I'm watching like a hawk for bananas... guh. OTHER THAN THAT, she's still doing fantastic. All her top buds are firing up tons of huge white hairs and she's getting real frosty. Still a good while to go... probably another month or so? Update: Scratch that on the light burn. Changed my diagnosis to a calcium deficiency. Picked up some CALiMAGic at the hydro store and they ended up showing their CBD operation... happy accidents. Packed on some serious bud weight this week and finally started showing some orange hairs. Seriously slow burn, but with some serious baseball bats coming in and at least a month left I'm seeing a few ounces in my future.

Short of plucking the occasional fan leaf, things are in cruise control. I'm really hoping for some signs of maturation this week... so ready to harvest her. All things in due time I guess. Looks like the Ca deficiency is under control, so she should be nice and happy now while she wraps up her very long ruderalis life. She's on Cha Ching this week, since her fans are starting to curve a bit and she's taking less water. Hoping to harvest in the next three weeks, but last grow I definitely short changed myself a little weight jumping the gun. Not this time, pal.

We're getting closer and closer. She's refusing water and packing on some serious trichomes all the way out to the sugar leaves. This strain is so awesome for solventless runs--I'm planning a dry ice run with all the trim and shake. Her first set of pistils are largely orange, but she's still putting up new ones. Top colas are getting discernably fatter and some of the trichs are going white. Come onnnnn.

Still amazes me that this plant almost died week 2. Shout-out to traumatin for saving her life and blessing me with such an unexpected bounty. We have structural failure! A couple lower branches I didn't even know existed decided to sag a couple days ago. I'm not sad about growing popcorn since I'm tryna make temple balls and they're frosting up almost as well as the top sites. Speaking of, the main colas are all leaning under the weight of their top buds. Clearly the calyxes have swelled in a big way, and the white pistils are dwindling. She may finally be ready to come down this weekend, but again, not rushing it. CONTROVERSY: I'm not planning a flush for a few reasons. One, I didn't flush last time and everything still came out great. White ash, great taste, none of the issues that usually get cited with not flushing. Two, that High Times study where everyone basically said they preferred the flower with no flush over a flush of any length. Three, I think biologically, it makes sense to give the plant what it needs to stay healthy all the way through instead of essentially starving it for two weeks.