Wildwood Weed, My First Grow (3 Trees)

Alien_Beelzebud Week 1: 7/26/2020 I started from a jar with a bunch of seeds that I saved from, ahem, prior adventures in smoking, plus a very few that were bought from some site in Amsterdam years back. Every seed from this jar, except for the 3 Amnesia Haze fems that are actually labeled, will be called "Wildwood Weed." Not all of them are viable. Of the first 12 I attempted to start, 6 never made it into germination using the paper towel technique, and 4 that were started in soil failed. There is one that is growing well, this is it. The other one, I don't think will make it, and it'll be my fault, which is fine. The entire reason I'm doing this is to learn all the wrong ways to do things so I can start doing them right. These essentially 'throw-away' seeds are perfect for this. So this is my first experiment in cannabis growing, and honestly I'm shocked that anything grew at all. I'll name this one "Steele," because it seems pretty hardy under the circumstances! ______________________________________________________________________________________ Planted seed in starter soil on 7/26. First growth started to show on 8/1. Today 8/6/20 it has grown 2.25" since 8/1. So far, steady growth from unknown seed. Plant looks good but stalk seems a bit taller than it should be. Will lower light to improve this. UPDATE: 8/6 pm: Upon turning the light back on (cycling manually 18/6 while waiting for timer to come in), I decided to use an existing rig to lower the puny (probably) 100W light to around 20". I hate seeing a thin stalk, I feel like the plant is suffering.

Alien_Beelzebud Week Starting 8/3/2020. Disheartened by the very slow growth of the plant, I started neglecting the diary. The plant didn't look great. I started germinating more seeds this week. They are in sprouting stage, so no photos of them, either.

Alien_Beelzebud 8/10/20: I'm REALLY unhappy at the progress I'm making. It is time (past time) to get rid of this damn Giixer 1000. Turns out it only produces about 450 PAR at ... wait for it ... 30cm or 11.81" above the plant canopy. Since everything is growing for crap in terms of speed, I'm keeping a close eye and starting to watch Amazon for deals on good quality LEDs. Yeah, I learned what a PAR is. Seems a hole-in-one or a birdie is preferred, though I don't see how a bird is going to help. I have been VERY neglectful about the diary. I'm therefore "resetting" it with no more laziness in documentation. SHORT WEEK, 8/10-8/13! THE NEXT GROW "WEEK" WILL BEGIN 8/14/2020. ================================

Alien_Beelzebud This week's grow journal start date is 8/17/2020. Very little incremental improvement. Still working with light height, light color, and feeding schedule. Stalk is weak and growth is abnormally slow. Seedlings are clearly not making it. There's the one (dead?) one alongside the "good" (weak) one. 3rd germination/sprouting effort got me two more surviving sprouts that are making nice seedlings. UPDATE 8/18/2020 The Giixer 1000W light currently in use is getting replaced ASAP!! According to the manufacturer, getting a PAR level in the 300-500 range requires putting the light 30 CM (11.81") from the top of the plant canopy! While the heat isn't a concern, the fact is the available light is nearly only good enough for ONE tree, much less the THREE I'm growing now AND the others I plan to grow in the future (10-20 plants). If this light were used according to its capabilities, it'd need to be in a 2x2' tent. AT LARGEST. Bottom line: the Giixer 1000W light is insufficient to use as a grow light in anything larger than a bathtub, and that's pushing it. Maybe a 55-gallon drum grow. :-/

Alien_Beelzebud This week's grow journal start date is 8/24/2020. No real improvement. I've experimented with light height, light color, and feeding schedule. Stalk is weak and growth is abnormally slow.

Alien_Beelzebud This week's grow journal start date is 8/28/2020. No real improvement. I've experimented with light height, light color, temperature and humidity, and the feeding schedule. Added a couple more seedlings because wth why not. Stalk is still weak and growth is still abnormally slow. I'm attributing this to the crappy Giixer 1000 being used to veg the plants.

Alien_Beelzebud This week's grow journal start date is 9/4/2020. The first successful seedling (named her "Ciel") started off this week looking like she was going to be dead at any moment. What to do? I nursed her along but she kept looking worse and worse. The other two seedlings have been hanging in there. By the end of the week I realized that perhaps the medium the seedlings were in were just not cutting it. At the very beginning of Week 8 I transplanted all three of them, which completely paid off. One of next week's photos is placed beside the beginning of THIS week's photo for comparison. Wow, what a recovery! These plants are hardy!! Light is down to about 28cm from the canopy. Light has been switched to 'Veg' to give more blue light to strengthen the stalks. Added a MUCH better fan to keep the stalks in light motion, strengthening them. Feeding schedule is once daily (after soil moisture check), lightly watered to keep the soil damp at the top and to keep it draining downward for the roots.

Alien_Beelzebud This week's grow journal start date is 9/11/2020. This was the week I decided to transplant all three seedlings to 5g pots - on 9/13/2020. The worst looking plant convinced me to transplant it (along with the other two seedlings). Something was off and I suspected the growth medium. Best decision I ever made; if it was going to die, it was going to die. Looking at it that way I had nothing to lose. So now, I have continuing improvement and growth! My biggest issue is really the humidity because it's terribly unstable. I'm buying a replacement humidifier with a humidistat so I'm not dashing into the tent at all hours of the night. All transplanted seedlings turned into growth monsters almost from the moment I transplanted them and added nutrients to reduce transplant shock. And did that EVER work!! All I did was dampen the area where the transplant was to be received, with the above mixture of nutes. Made the "solo cup" hole in the dampened soil, put the baby in place and then spritzed with just a tad bit more nute solution. Just a sprinkle. Growth not only didn't slow down, it took off like crazy. Light remains at about 28cm from the canopy. Light remains set to 'Veg' to give more blue light to strengthen the stalks. New fan is doing an excellent job strengthening plant stalks. Feeding schedule and method remains steady for now.

Alien_Beelzebud This week's grow journal start date is 9/18/2020. This week we got a new light, the Mars-Hydro TSW-2000 (perfectly suited to a 4x4 tent) and a new humidifier with a humidistat (to keep the humidity in a fixed range while I'm a-freaking-sleep!). The Giixer light was so weak that even at 11" (30cm) from the canopy, the trees were -still- STRETCHING toward the center of the light. Even after I lowered it. Using the Giixer, I had to rotate the pots daily to get the trees to grow as straight as possible. With the TSW-2000 in place and running with full spectrum lighting, everything should stabilize. I got a Mars-Hydro TS-600 for the upper half of the seedling/vegetation area, and relocated the Giixer to the bottom (seedling) shelf. I love the 2-in-1 tent! Set to full spectrum vs vegetation lighting for now until the new light comes in. These trees need all the light they can get! New fan continues to do an excellent job strengthening plant stalks. Feeding schedule and method continues until next week.

Alien_Beelzebud UPDATE #2 9/25/2020: Late this afternoon I added a 34 CFM little booster duct fan to push some air through the sprout/seedling/early veg portion of the tent (which is overall 32 sq ft. That makes the 34 CFM booster fan the ideal fit - and it is. No detectable heat after 3 hours' operation. So, you might ask, where is the exhaust from the little side of the tent going? I took some 4' duct I had sitting around and connected AIR OUT from the smaller tent to the 4' x 4' main tent. This is giving even better temperature control than before, and the 6" AC Infinity S6 is even supplementing the 34 CFM fan in the secondary tent. Just as planned! Now I have a good airflow for the next round of seed to cola growth. UPDATE 9/25/2020: I'll be damned if it doesn't look like they ALL gained about 1-1/2" since yesterday morning! I was following a feeding schedule from a well-known, well-versed Youtube grower ... and it didn't match the manufacturer's recommendations. So I went with what General Hydroponics recommended and ... well, you know. Growth. Lots of it. Week beginning 9/25/2020. With the replacement of the Giixer 1000W as the main light and the installation of two new grow lights, the tent now seems to be working just exactly as I keep reading it should. I've got fair control of temperature (nothing horribly out of bounds) and good control of humidity. I think I got good recommendations for the use of the General Hydroponics nutrients. Plant growth this last week has felt exponential. New lights (3-in-1 tent): Main 4x4' Grow Area: Mars-Hydro TSW-2000 (new model with easy dimmer control and hella chain-lighting control), 18" from the plant canopy, light dimmable, providing 961-731 PAR for various stages of the bloom cycle, plus it can easily be dimmed to simulate shade for the last 3 weeks. Upper Section (4'x1'x5') for Early/Mid Veg: Mars-Hydro TS 600W @16" from the canopy, providing ~500 PAR for the early/mid veg cycle. Bottom Section (4'x1'x3') for germination, sprouts, and seedlings: Giixer 1000W that is working itself to death to provide about 350 PAR for the sprout/seedling cycle, which I hear is just about right. I originally thought I'd be throwing the Giixer away because of its horrible PAR values at even 12", but ... those same 'horrible' PAR values (350s) are just about right for sprouts/seedlings. Other factors have been stunting the growth of the plants. Next week will have a full explanation. If I've done my math right - and I usually do - I should have a complete system from seed to flower that I can rotate through based on need. Plus CBD flower. And tomatoes (at some point)!!

Alien_Beelzebud Log starts 10/2/2020. Having some newbie problems with proper watering and nutrients. I have a learning disability that causes me to sink in details when I'm trying to get an overview of things. Learning about how to grow these plants is hard for me because I haven't learned all the plant's "tells" ... like, when are you ready for veg? Hey veg, when u ready to flower? Hey flower, when u ready for harvest. Re-flushed the plants (PPM was still too high!) until they got to the right PPM level. Made sure I got on a real watering schedule and am sticking to it. And I need to LEARN more by eyesight, not by project planning. I just got the Jorge Cervantes book and am reading it. LST start: 10/3/2020 with stress point rotation planned for every 2 days. Still working on what will be professional tools when I'm done. They will be free - when I'm done. After all, the community has given me years of good weed, I want to give back! 10/5/2020: First LST rotation is already showing results. New stalks are coming up where none were before, it's glorious! These are gonna be some very bushy tall plants with lots of colas (assuming I don't do something really stupid and end by killing the poor little trees! Alrighty, the LST setup with the trellis and yoyo training tool is working like a champ. I'm super-pleased about how this grow is going. The vegetation stage is finally getting some "legs." Sadly, by 10/7/2020 I chose to stop LST for this week. Originally I thought there was a pH imbalance problem, but ... it's nutrient burn. Nutrient burn problems need to be decisively solved first. End of week report: Ciel - 17" Bubba - 11.5" Birddog - 12"

Alien_Beelzebud Week beginning 10/9/2020. Asperger's strikes again. I was seeing trouble with the plants and had a mental fail trying to figure out what was wrong. And then, suspecting nute burn, I did some research and ... WOW. I thought it was daily feeding, not WEEKLY feeding, but there it is. One plant (the one that was my best) suffered severe nute burn and may not make it even after repeated flushing and checking the runoff to make sure it was acceptable in terms of ppm. pH was carefully checked and managed too. I got to the other two plants in time and they are back in LST along with poor Ciel, the tallest and most burnt plant. Adjusted the light upward physically. Flush occurred on Monday, 10/12. Birddog and Bubba are looking fantastic. They've bushed out like crazy. I'll be doing some HST later for more branches :) For the time being, I'm letting the plants grow more or less naturally. I just finished doing three full flushes per plant the day before the photos were taken. Ciel looked horrible before she got better, but they're all better now. Next week will be a light feeding and regular watering. Pruned off the dead growth and big, low fan leaves that weren't getting light anyway. Restarted LST on 10/11.

Alien_Beelzebud Week beginning 10/16/2020. 10/17 (Saturday) - indications of nute burn are still evident. Flushed all 3 plants this time, thoroughly, until the runoff color was light yellow instead of a deep blood-red orange. They were all severely overfed. I started watering-only and will continue this until the plants show signs of -needing- the extra nutrition. 10/20 (Tuesday) - clearly I waited too long to make sure the plants were correctly watered and healthy. Birddog was so wilted, I thought it was dead for sure. But, after a combination of root aeration and some touch-up watering, Birddog came right back to life, better than ever! 10/23 All plants are looking very healthy.

Alien_Beelzebud Week starting 10/25/2020. Continued with just watering as needed until 10/30, when I added one small cup of nutrient to each plant. Everyone looks healthy and happy!

Alien_Beelzebud Week beginning 11/1/2020. Watering only for this week, no nutrients. LST discontinued due to size of plants.

Alien_Beelzebud Week beginning 11/8/2020. 11/10: Watered. Topped all 3 plants, which must now rest for at least a week before going into flowering mode. 11/13: Watered. 1 cup of nutrient per plant.

Alien_Beelzebud Week beginning 11/22/2020. Note: I've been forgetting to measure plant growth :-/ I've updated the size of the largest plant in the tent, in inches, as/of 11/22/2020. 11/22: watered and added 2c of nutes per plant. Plants need to be flipped into flowering mode REAL SOON. Must first test for light leaks and light-proof the room. I deliberately waited until I had distilled water for the humidifier, which I now have. Everything in the tent will be cleaned of white mineral dust before flipping into flowering mode, followed by one final rinse of the leaves to get rid of the dust there. As of 11/26, getting closer to flowering mode every hour of the day. Lollipopped all trees. Growth sites are spreading out all over.

Alien_Beelzebud Week Beginning Sunday, 11/29/2020 Plants were lollipopped late last week. 11/29: Removed the girls and cleaned the entire tent. (I now only use distilled water in the humidifier. Lesson learned.) Removed the trellis as I am going to go with the traditional (free-standing) growing technique instead of ScrOG or SoG - this time. I want to make sure my fundamental skills are solid before wandering into advanced growing techniques. Performed a thorough light leak test and patched anything that was leaking. Inside the tent it is very, very dark. The final action was light watering and a very small dose of nutrients (about 1/2c). After that, I put the girls back in the tent and let them rest before plunging them into darkness for> 24 hours to initiate flowering mode. 11/30: Double-checked the ROOM containing the grow tent for light leaks and found quite a few. I spent a good half hour making sure the ROOM is as dark as possible at all times. Light can travel through the air intake vent, so it's totally worth it to ensure the plants are kept in the darkest dark possible. I know my way around the room anyway, the tent is now in total darkness. And guess what, the humidifier needed filling, so the "knowing it like the back of my hand" in the dark is a good skill to have. I unzipped the tent and BOOM! the dankness was AMAZING. They are indeed headed into flowering! 12/01: Brought the girls out of darkness and into flowering mode on a 12/12 schedule. Soil dampness was good. Upped the PAR levels for this week (early flowering stage). 😎