First run of autoflowers 1/2

This seed was the first one to pop out of two seeds. I ended up starting an Early Miss at the same time because my 2nd seed hadn't sprout yet and that's when TW#2 decided to show her face. For the purpose of this diaries, I may refer from time to time to the first seed that sprouted as TW#1 and the second one as TW#2, even though I call her my late TW. I may also refer from time to time to my Early Miss or EM#1, since I started it just 1 week after I had planted my TW#1. Sprouted using the folded paper towel technique recommended by King Crops Seeds. I feed it with only distilled water as suggested. TW#1 started to pop out of the soil after the first week. I will try to do a better job at taking more pictures as we move forward. TW#1 went into the soil on June 22nd 2020. TW#2 was late to the party going in on June 26th 2020. Although, it wasn't too big and the leaves were still in the seed shell. I may have to compensate at crop time for this, we'll see. :) Being totally new to growing auto-flowers, I opted for a 24/0 light cycle and since I had previous experience with Advanced Nutrients' Jungle Juice line, I went with their PH perfect sensi grow/bloom line. While this is my first grow inside destined to harvest product, I did lots of tests in the past with cannabis clones and soil didn't seem to work out too well for me. At the same time, hydroponic brought quite an overhead, which is why I went with coco coir. I feel it gives me the power to fine tune everything, while not needing as much work and maintenance as hydroponic setups.

June 29th week. At this point the TW#1 was showing very good signs of being healthy. Since TW#2 germinated pretty late and only went into the soil at the end of week 1, at this point it is still in the very small coco seedling pot I had put them in after germination. The picture I posted on week 1 could have been from this week, so I just reposted the same. I didn't have much setup, so I did not feel the need to take journal other that go and feed the nutrient water every day. All my equipment was also brand new stuff that I had never used before. All I had to work with at the time I put in the order was the reviews from the items on Amazon.ca.

3rd week of vegetation was time to cut on the Voodoo Juice and get the nutrient solution to full strength (used 25% first week and 50% on the 2nd). I tracked when each one went into the soil and fed them accordingly, so at times I had multiple of solutions mixed for different plants that were in different stages. Yeah, I know... I tend to over-complicate things sometimes. I went with a Raspberry Pi to monitor everything from humidity level, light monitoring at the canopy, temperature and soil humidity. I also have two web cams in the tent giving a live feed over the web, so I can see what's going on even when I am not at home. For the timers, I didn't over complicate things too much. I bought a 3-pack of smart switches and plugged the lights, fans and dehumidifier on them, so I can have control from my phone. I eventually plan, to give control to the Pi over all them smart switches so that the Pi can do a things on its own if needed. Not sure if I buried seeds too deep or what, but the leaves seemed to be pretty close to the soil, even for TW1 which was starting to get bigger with its 4 leaves. As per TW2, I was not even sure if it was worth keeping it, but I opted to keep on going since it could only be a learning experience.

I apparently don't have any pictures of my crop at this stage, so I figured I would show the rest of the equipment that isn't mentioned in the diaries and how everything was wired. I used two cat5e cables tied together, one as a power line and another as a data line. I kept the environment pretty stable until this point and only fed the plants once every morning following the chart provided on Advanced Nutrients.

From here, I started a new clock since the moment the plants showed signs they were in flower, I figured thats from where the countdown to harvest also begins. I was very excited at this point has my test subjects in the past had all died before this stage. I am sure having the right equipment and taking the time to attend to the plants actually helps a lot too. TW2 had not completely caught up growth but the plant was showing signs of being a healthy plant. I did not kick the bloom light until all plants were into flower. I might have done more harm, I guess we'll see. So, with all that, came the change from the Grow formula to the Bloom formula and make this flowering season officially open for business. I also got convinced from reading and watching videos to drop the light cycles from 24/0 to 20/4. At this point I still somewhat consider this to be an experiment.

First, let me say sorry for the pink photos, it gets better later on. Now that all the girls in the grow tent are in flowering state, I started the blooming light. At some point, I also removed the soil sensors since they were not really good for what we're doing and to be honest, these were not too good. I will eventually replace them with better ones that do not corrode in the soil. TW2 is pretty much caught up with TW1 it seems at this stage. Not as much height, but seems to be showing the sames "bushy" aspect.

As we start 3rd week of flower, they started to show some pistils and the sex of the plant became apparent at this point. However, the plants still looked somewhat small for this stage. I am almost wondering at this point if I did anything wrong. As I haven't prune, top or trim any of the plants so far and they seems to grow not as fast or as tall as I would like to. This plants did grow bigger than last week, but somehow, I may have expected more. So far, still sticking to the same routine as the beginning, nute water in the morning everyday, One day it was pretty warm so I figured I would give more water to the thirsty plants, turns out that wasn't as good of an idea as previously thought. The next day, the tent had humidity built up on its walls. So, I turned the dehumidifier on to suck all that moisture, I had it on for about 2 half days. Between the fans from the tent, the networking equipment, the computers and servers running in my basement; I thought I didn't really need that extra noise when we're alseep.

The buds are starting to have quite a bit of white hair on them. The plants seems to have gotten pretty tall overnight for some reason. The legs on them girls too.. lol ;) The lights were too close to the canopy, so I had to improvise a bit in order to solve the trouble. I have included some photos of that in this week's pictures. Overall, things are looking good. I am feeling better as far the how big that plants were, I am over that now. I just wish they would stop getting bigger now, haha.

I think I could have burned my plant while trying to pull moisture out of my tent.

Week 10 has started, I will post updates as they occur.