First grow ever: micro Hindu Kush Auto

Started my first grow ever of cannabis. I chose an autoflower for obvious easy cultivation reason. I plan to use LST when she is big enough and I hope to maintain a low structure due to a lack of height. I've also planned to use some pretty simple organic liquid nutes and no complicated mix, so I do not hope to get a big record on this grow, but since it's my first one ever, I'm pretty excited about any result I can get. I started the germination directly in humid soil, without any "glass of water" or "paper towel" technique. The seed promptly germinated (it came out of the ground after more or less 72 hours). I put it in a small grow tent (40x40 cm) under a 30w blurple grow bulb to begin with (I had it for other plants and decided to use it at first to avoid using useless quantities of electricity). I upgraded the light at the end of week 1 to a 60w white full-spectrum quantum board. The conditions were globally pretty harsh for the first week. We got a heat wave where I live and it got really challenging to maintain a decent temp and RH. Some days were really hot in the tent and the strong ventilation I put in order to refresh it got the air pretty dry, with somme RH under 35% some days. But I watched carefully enough to maintain the plant in good health (especially using half a plastic bottle over the seedling for the first days in order to maintain humidity). Even under theses conditions, at the end of week 1, she is already pretty big, with already two big leaves and a top developing well and rapidly, so I guess this variety can really grow up fast under perfect conditions.

This plant is doing so well! The leaves are growing fast and it seems really healthy. Since she was growing so fast, I decided to start the feeding with nutes. I started with a light feed to avoid strong nutrient burn, but the plant took it well. I've had no burn and no deficiency so far. I put too much water in one shot though, and even if the plant didn't show any sign of overwatering, the soil took too much time to dry, resulting in some algae forming on the surface and on the perlite after three days. In order to avoid any pest of disease, I scrapped the first 2-3mm of humid soil with algae, and replaced it with fresh soil. I then waited for the soil to be totally dry before watering again. The plant showed no sign of stress during this time. The next day, the soil being dry and the plant healthy with three set of full leaves (she was about 15-16cm high at this point), I started low-stress training, and watered it again, with nutes. I was not expecting to start this early, but it seemed she could take it. And it worked very well. She is adapting well to the LST and, after two days, she is still growing fast and turning to the light again (photos next week). The plant is producing a light smell, kind of chlorophylly-pepperminty (pretty nice), only noticeable from up close, when inspecting or watering.

End of third week, my baby is still doing well. The week started strong with some really fast recovering from the LST. The main cola immediately pointing up to the light. I did notice, on day 18, that most of the fan leaves were curling a bit on the end. I first thought it was due to the growth, in the contact with the pot, after LST, but every leaves had it. Since I gave her a lot of nutes, I think it was nitrogen toxicity. I flushed the soil with some filtered water right away, and the plant recovered really well, with the leaves going back back to normal just after one day cycle (which actually surprised me... I had read that it was impossible for the damaged leaves to recover from the "clawing"). I adjusted LST on the main cola, on day 19. The side branches are starting to come out of the canopy. Now that I'm starting to see how this plant is evolving with an early LST, I'm beginning to see some cons of doing it right away: since this plant is super bushy naturally, doing an early LST just increase this characteristic. It becomes really hard to see clearly what's happening inside and it's also difficult to manage the LST, with so many leaves in the way. Also, being super bushy, the leaves are really close to each other, sometime in contact, making it difficult to have a good air flow inside the plant. So I increased ventilation in the tent and I'm keeping a good look on the leaves, in order to avoid accumulation of humidity due to transpiration. It would be sad to have some mold, with such a nice grow. The plant is starting to produce a nice smell, more and more pepperry and stronger each day, getting closer to a real sweet Mary Jane scent.

Another week went well. No signs of any pest or deficiency/toxicity during these days, so nothing really challenging. Just watered with nutes (she's getting really thirsty) ans adjusting LST on the branches. Canopy is getting really nice and occupying a lot of the space in the tent. Several branches are emerging so there is a nice potential for colas. And flowering is right around the corner. I noticed some really small calixes and pistils on the last day of the week so I'm gonna adapt my nutrients. Next week should be a lot of fun.

The plant entered flowering stage and that's exciting! Multiple calixes and pistils are now visible all over the branches. I decided to stop the LST, now that a lot of branches are pointing up. They got stronger during the week and are now too stiff too be bent without breaking. Since the plant is doing well (the leaves are droopy on most pictures because I take them at the beginning of the light cycle), I started the week with some defoliation. In order to avoid stunting the growth, I kept it light and focused on the lower big fan leaves at the bottom. My goal was to increase air circulation and avoid the big leaves to touch the soil too much and rot. The plant continued its growth and I defoliated a bit more at the end of the week, focusing this time on the canopy, where some fan leaves were blocking light for branches and bud sites. I stayed on the vegetative nutrients this week, decreasing the amount at each watering and I plan to start the flowering ones this week, starting low and increasing the concentration slowly.

The plant now totally entered flowering stage and is stretching a lot (growing almost 2cm a day...). I switched to the flowering nutrients, on a light concentration at first but I did notice what I identified as the beginning of a phosphorus deficiency right after. Since I have kept my nutes really diluted after a small nitrogen toxicity at the beginning of the grow, I excluded the cause to be some mineral built up in the medium. I came to the conclusion that I needed to increase my concentration of nutes. So I doubled the concentration on the next feeding (which was still half the recommandation from the manufacturer so we're pretty far from really high concentration). The plant seems to like it and is doing really well. I defoliated lightly (only 5 or 6 big leaves), in order to get light to some bud sites. I'm a bit worried about the relative humidity though... Weather got really wet where I live and it's becoming really hard to control RH. It is spiking at more than 70% on some days and I'm really worried that it will be a problem if I don't find a quick solution. I'm amazed by the quantity of potential bud sites this plant is producing... I'm hoping that my light will be strong enough to turn all of them on some quality flowers. Even if this is my first grow, these last weeks confort my optimism and I'm really hoping for a decent yield.

Buds are developing slowly but surely. The plant started the week by stretching another 10cm in only a few days but stopped growing in height a few days ago. Luckily for me cause it was getting difficult to move the light up! Still have problem managing the RH through the week even if I did get lower humidity more often. I added some Green sensation by Plagron into the feeding at the end of the week. I was planning to stay full organic but the small phosphorus deficiency from last week got me worried so I decided to upgrade my nutes. Overall, even if the plant seems pretty healthy, she doesn't seem to thrive as much as before: upper leaves are staying palish green in comparaison with older leaves. They also stay pretty thin when I was used to see some large fingered ones. Stems are strong, buds are developing so I'm not panicking but I guess it deserve some special attention... No frost yet, which seems to be late of a few days if I compare with other growers with the same one. My thinking is that the defoliation might have stunt it a little bit last week (or it's just a slower one), but I'm not worried about that. Even if she becomes really needy and demands a lot of attention, the grow seems to go well so far.