First grow

Sprouted seeds from Jiffy pellets placed on plastic container lid and container over the top like a dome. Seeds sprouted well with Candy Kush lagging about 12 hours behind Speedy Chile since sprouting. Roots were popping out of the Jiffy pellets within 12 hours of sprouting, so they must have been looking for air. The Jiffy pellets may have been too wet. Because of the fast rooting, I wasn't able to properly soak the BioBizz AllMix soil before potting in 500ml pots. The soil got about 10hrs of soaking before receiving the JIffy pellets. Kept the plants moist with a spray bottle for the first few days, but changed to adding 100ml of water plus a light spray along the edges of the pot to keep everything moist on day 5. The soil was initially a little bit low, so some properly soaked soil was added to top dress the pot and cover the stretchy stems and the slightly exposed Jiffy pellets. Temperature has been an issue this week, occasionally reaching as high as 33C in the tent. Outside temps have been in the 30s Celcius, so it has made it difficult to control the heat. I added a wet rag to the intake port on my tent to cool the incoming air a bit more and it has helped a lot, lowering temps to as much as 2.5C below lung room temp. Putting the extractor fan out of the window was another major help as well. Finally, I had my best night's temp yet by leaving the tent door open with the interior fan running during the lights on time. This won't be ideal at later times, but it does the trick in this heat wave as we go into fall. All in all, after a week of dialing in my setup and understanding the mechanics of it all, I'm feeling a lot more confident about the grow and the seedlings are looking happy.

Currently in 500ml pots with BioBizz AllMix. Now that the set up was dialed in and outside temperatures were more favorable, I've been able to focus more on the plants themselves. Both have grown quite steadily, but I ran into some issues with Speedy Chile. The edges of the leaves were lighter green and the first and second true leaves had some serious hooking. The leaves of the second set were stiff while the first set were wrinkly. I had been using plastic bottles to raise humidity around the plants and noticed that it was taking water in the pots a long time to dry up. I had only watered a very small amount up to this point aside from the initial soak, but it was looking more like over- than underwatering because of lack of evaporation or developed roots. Added more holes to the bottom of the pots and used a chopstick to lift up the soil and aerate it a bit as it was looking very compressed. I also cut some ventilation at the bottom of the upside-down bottle domes to promote more even soil evaporation. A day and a half after those changes, I noticed that the Speedy Chile was showing what may have been some mildew on a first leaf and the Candy Kush was beginning to touch the insides of the dome. I clipped off the leaf tip that had the maybe-mildew and took the domes off both. I also began to use the circulation fan in the tent because I decided to soak the medium to get both plants on a more pronounced wet/dry cycle and I suspected that water was uneven within the pots. At the end of the week, both are looking much healthier with more even coloring on the Candy Kush and the stiffness of the leaves all but gone on the Speedy Chile. Strangely, Candy Kush has grown two sets of three-pointed leaves before working on the five-pointed ones. Both have also begun to develop secondary leaves at the nodes as they begin to grow outward. Next step will be waiting for them to be big enough to plant in my 7L fabric pots where I'll be using topping and LST. Also considering a SCROG setup, but I'm undecided. It may be a lot to take on for a first grow.

This week was pretty smooth. I noticed some strange things happening with the leaves this week, but it turns out they just needed a pot up. I've been keeping up with a good wet/dry cycle with my watering. Just using tap water for now, no nutes or anything else. I'll be topping in week 3 as soon as they recover from the transplant. Candy Kush has packed the nodes on very tightly so far whereas Speedy Chile is starting to stretch with a lot more space between nodes. So far, so good. Excited to see how they react to potting up.

Just cruising this week. Started off with LST on Candy Kush on Day 24. The upper fan leaves pulled up after topping at the end of last week, so I tied them down to allow more light to the topped node. This has been a very bushy and dense plant so far. Because of this, it has been difficult to get wires in to tie down the new branches, so I continually tucked the upper leaves to keep the lowest growth coming up. This worked out very well for me. Aside from tying down the two fan leaves, I got the canopy almost level in four days with tucking alone. The top node was finally tied down today. I found a possible branch buried under the canopy, so I threw one of the patches provided by my tent manufaturer under the canopy at an angle to reflect some light on that branch and see if I can get it to grow out from under there. Speedy Chile has a lot more space on the inside. I waited a bit longer to start LST on it, but I was finally able to tie down 6 branches to get them growing out into a star shape. It's growing very steadily with a nice amount of room between nodes on both the stem and the branches. Both of the plants are starting to build their knuckles as well to keep gaining strength. I'm feeling very good about the grow so far. Just going to keep them growing until they get to be 20cm or they go well beyond the 7L pots, then flip. Should be in a week or a week and a half.

Pretty easy week. Just had to keep up with LST on the plants. I had to keep constantly tucking leaves and adjusting ties, but it was pretty simple. The canopy isn't perfectly level, but at the end of week 5, it's pretty close and the branches have just reached the edge of their pots. The branch that I was trying to reflect light on and bring out on the Candy Kush at the end of last week finally got clipped. It just wasn't growing fast enough and Candy Kush already has 8 strong branches. I'm feeling pretty good about this week. The plan is to flip some time next week, possibly as early as Monday depending on how fast they recover from this most recent round of LST. If anyone has any tips regarding when to best flip to flower on an LST'd plant like this, I'd love to hear it. Defoliation, too. Yes? No? How much and where?

Things are going super well! The plants seem happy since they're growing like crazy. They're getting watered every two days now with 750ml each. I was about ready to flip at the beginning of this week, but I'm very glad that I was advised to wait a bit longer. The change in this week has been amazing. They look like much more mature plants now. The horizontal space is almost used up in my tent, so I've stopped training them. I know I have plenty of vertical space, so I don't mind if they grow upward a bit more in the last week of veg before the flower stretch. I'll start feeding BioBizz nutes next water to get them used to it before flowering starts by the end of week 7. I'm pretty excited for the next step!

Pretty good week again. The plants have been cruising along pretty well and are now adjusting to the flip to flower on Wednesday, day 47. I did some very light defoliation between Sunday and Monday. Tried to take only the weakest-looking growth that looked like it had no chance of catching up to the rest of the plant. I also thinned out any fan leaves that were overlapping or twisted under the plant from tucking. Started feeding on Monday with just Bio-Grow to ease them into the nutes. On Wednesday, since they were still looking good, I went ahead and fed with both Grow and Bloom and finally set the lights to 12/12. As a newbie, I'm pretty happy with the growth so far and looking forward to seeing what blooms.

What a week! The stretch is really taking hold and pistils are finally showing. I missed a watering on Day 49, so when I went to water on Day 50, they were both looking a bit worse for wear. Speedy Chile wasn't bad, but Candy Kush had a main branch completely wilted down and was showing some nitrogen deficiency on the lower leaves. I pulled the deficient leaves and gave them some nuted water and they were back to standing up tall in three hours. Aside from that one little hiccup on Saturday, they've been cruising this week. I measured 2cm of growth in 24hrs on Day 53. I have been doing some defoliation here and there after talking with some other growers and getting a feel for the basics. I find that, if I trust my intuition with it and err on the side of caution, it's not as daunting as I thought it would be. Once a week, I've just been pulling the growth sites that have no chance of catching up to the rest and a couple fan leaves here and there that were either blocking nodes or simply overlapping each other. With the first week down, week 2 of flower should be very interesting as they really settle into the stretch and start getting some legs.

Solid week this week. The stretch is continuing nicely. I'm watering every 48-60hrs with 1L of nuted water each. I pour about 2/3 of the water through the top, then put the rest on the plate where the pot sits so that it can be soaked up from the bottom as well. Made one small change in the tent by adding a small cardboard light baffle to the inside of the passive intake. It fits nicely over the intake and is held in place by magnets so that it can be quickly and easily removed and reinstalled as needed. As humidity levels begin to rise, the oscilating fan is not staying on in the tent 24/7. Though I live in a very dry area, we typically get some rainy and humid weather in autumn and I don't want to take any chances with mold! There were several days this week during which the plants were growing 2cm a day! I did my last bit of defoliation this week as they finish off their 3rd week of flowering. Just snipped off any fan leaves blocking bud sites that weren't able to be tucked back and pulled any shoots that were buried under the canopy with no chance of growing up by the end of the stretch. Speedy Chile's roots were starting to show on the surface of the soil this week. I also noticed some strange white stuff on some bigger chunks of medium at the surface, so I pulled those pieces out, top dressed the soil to cover the vulnerable roots, and clipped a couple extra fan leaves down low that were affecting airflow. Hopefully that doesn't return. I'm very excited to see how the roots look when I harvest. I can hardly get my finger into the soil to test for dryness because of so many fine roots all through the soil. I'll definitely be moving up to 10L pots for my next grow. I unfortunately lost the even canopy, so I have about a 10cm difference between the level of the main stems and the level of the secondary branches in the middle. I waited about a week too long to flip, so the main stems, which weren't able to be tied down anymore due to space restrictions, got ahead of the other potential sites before the flip. Live and learn, but I'll definitely be flipping sooner next time now that I understand the limitations of my tent. Either that or I'll do a different style of LST. Fingers crossed that the luck continues through flower though!

Not such a smooth week this week. Started off with a pretty apparent Mg deficiency in Candy Kush. I determined the cause of the issue after I had already watered on Monday morning, so I had to wait until Wednesday evening to water with the new CalMag nutes. Around Wednesday night I noticed a small insect flying around. By Thursday evening, it became apparent that I have fungus gnats in Speedy Chile. I see very few gnats flying around, so I think I may have caught it early. I rolled down the lip of my fabric pots to allow more airflow to dry the topsoil. I also needed to water this evening, so I used only 750mL instead of the 1L that I have used in the last few weeks and I watered from the bottom only to allow the topsoil to stay dry, hopefully killing any larvae. I'll follow the same procedure for the next week or so until I stop seeing adult gnats. In spite of these couple setbacks, the plants seem like they're doing ok. I noticed the first trichomes on Sunday on both plants and the buds are starting to grow together on Candy Kush, so I'm hoping for some nice fat buds off that one. Speedy Chile is pretty leggy with a lot of internodal space, so I'm curious to see how it will finish up. Fingers crossed that these little hiccups go away over the next week. I'm hoping for a mid-November harvest to be done curing by the holidays.

Both plants are doing pretty well this week. Candy Kush lost a few more leaves from the Mg deficiency, but the CalMag seems to have helped. There are no new yellow leaves and the ones that were already yellowing haven't gotten any worse, so I think the worst is behind us. Speedy Chile has been doing very well. It started to show a bit of yellowing on one or two leaves, but nothing too bad. I've gone back to watering like normal and I've seen very few flying bugs of any sort, so I think we're doing ok there too after the fungus gnat scare last week. The plants are definitely focusing on getting fat now. The flowers are starting to connect together on the main branches and are beginning to look like proper colas now. Jack Frost has visited as well. Speedy Chile in particular has been looking very frosty with some trichs even starting to appear on a few of the uppermost fan leaves. Candy Kush has a pretty good layer of frost too, so I'm excited to see how it progresses. At this point, I'm crossing my fingers for a harvest before the end of November so that they'll be mostly cured if I end up going away for the holidays in December.