First Grow: BCN Critical XXL

Started the Seed in water. After 24 hours switched to paper towel for another 24 hours before placing the seed in a 1L Air-Pot. Soil is a standard potting mix with low nutrients and extra perlite (30%) inoculated with mycorrhizae. In order to save energy grow light is set very low and has added side reflectors so the plant gets intense light from every angle. Power draw is lowered to 15% so the light intensity is equal to the light hanging at the manufacturers suggested distance for a seedling. (Approx. 25000Lux) This is measured with a cheap Tack Life LM01 Luxmeter

Plant grows extremely bushy, nearly no grow in height but spitting out new pairs of leaves like crazy. Drooping leaves may be overwatering or the result of the intense side light.

Plant still grows extremely bushy. To combat this, i changed the light from the dimmed TS1000 with reflectors to a single 9W 2700K LED-bulb (without dome) - with great success! The leaves stopped drooping and started to look really healthy. She also started to grow vigorously in height. For repotting i decided to do some DIY. The principle is a combination of an Octopot and a hempy pot: I combined 2 smart pots to one deep smart pot. I cut slots in a cup and placed it at the bottom of the pot. I filled the bottom of the pot with perlite up to the height of the cup (Approx 3 inches / 7cm) leaving out the cup itself. Then i filled the cup and the rest of the pot with 60/40 Soil-Perlite-mix. I place the whole thing in a plastic container and feed the plants with water from the bottom now. The soil is a regular potting soil with 8 week slow release fertilizer. After repotting, i immediately started with LST.

She gets a regular treatment of 100000Lux afternoon sun. The days are hot and she constantly sweats under 28°C or more. She now produces a noticable amount of odour which gives a light hint to what is coming.

As i am a newbie grower i initially planned to stick to LST but the extremely bushy plant and the occasional wet spots between the leaves triggered my fear of mold so i decided to give her a trim. It didn´t slow her growth down one bit - quite the opposite to be honest. She developed nice side branches which are going to be the bud sites in the middle of the canopy. Speaking of bud sites i am close to switching into flower as the plant now takes up approx. 70% of the space. I also switched back to the TS1000 which is very close to the canopy and runs on 50% power now.

I gave her 24 hour darkness before i switched to a 12/12 light schedule on day 39 and placed my ScrOG-net over the plant. The lime green bud sites right after the dark were mesmerizing, unfortunately my camera oversaturates so i downloaded another camera app which gives a more neutral picture.

She exploded with growth. Bud sites are forming everywhere and my tent is extremely stuffed. I added a 15w Sansi growlight (Highly recommend this manufacturer!) to help with underdeveloped spots. I keep defoliating some fan leaves which block light to bud sites.

The plant has easily doubled her size and most of the stretch seems to be over. At least i hope so as i cannot hang my grow light any higher. Pistils are sprouting everywhere on the plant as she prepares for the bud sites to fatten up. Trichomes are forming and the smell becomes skunky and resembles what you would expect from the finished product. I defoliated many of the big fan leaves under the ScrOG-net as they only blocked airflow and some of them seemed to be dying anyway,

Week 9 starts with continued rusting. At least 30% of the upper fan leaves with light exposure seem to be affected by it now, everything below that is fine. Im suspecting a Calcium deficiency as the signs fit best to it and my tap water which i use is very soft (It comes out with PH 8,5 and only needs 20-25 drops of lime juice on 5 litres to go down to 6) so it doesn´t contain much calcium (Already ordered an EC-tester). i ground egg shells which i use to get some calcium dissolved in my feeding water until i get my hands on dolomite lime. I´m also waiting for a pack of industrial 10-30-20 bloom fertilizer to arrive so i can start feeding nutes again. Despite all this, trichome production doesn´t seem to be affected by it and is in full swing. They even seem already milky to my eyes.

The nutrient problems still persist: The fan leaves getting the most light still yellow and rust. Lower leaves getting very little light die and fall off. Together with the clawing and the tips of the young sugar leaves getting a little burnt i concluded my lady is suffering severe nutrient burn so i decided to do a thorough flushing of the soil. The first litre of runoff had an EC value of 5 (2400ppm)! huge salt buildup. After more than 20 litres of flushing with tap water i could bring the EC down to 1,2-1,4. PH of the runoff worries me too as it clocks in on 4,5. I top dressed with dolomite lime while flushing but not sure if it penetrates the soil deep enough to help.

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Horrible week as i found out that my buds started rotting away. Reason probably high humidity at the time combined with insufficient airflow over the canopy (Only two 120mm computer fans at the bottom of the plant)

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Buds are already hard and heavy and should be ready to harvest by this time. Unfortunately Trichomes haven´t really become cloudy so i let the plant live as i try to keep it from completely rotting away.

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Plant is more or less dead and i propably should have harvested long ago but i still had hopes for the Trichomes to become cloudy.

I finally cut my losses and ended this grow as the plant didn´t develop any further other than foxtailing and looking more and more dead. Buds were already brown to purple.

My first grow started very promising and went down the drain pretty quickly in the second half of bloom as the beginner mistakes i made added up and took their toll: - Overfertilisation: I used good amounts of fertilizer already in Veg although my soil already had fertilizer for 8 weeks in it. - Ultra low pH as low as 3 because of the high amounts of fertilizer. - No checking for Run-Off PH and EC which would have shown the problems before they could seriously damage the plant. - Not enough airflow over the canopy which resulted in Bud rot. - The pot construction was inspired by the octopot system. It has always water in the base which gets wicked up. This doesn´t work with soil and invited Thrips into my grow. After removing about more than 10 grams of rotten bud and at least an equal amount of popcorn buds, i was still left with 65 grams of trimmed, smokeable product, which is not bad imo. Sad that it is of substandard quality but on the postive side i learned many valuable lessones for my next grow.