ILGM Wedding Cake Autoflower 3gal hempy

Set up for a 5 plant ILGM Wedding Cake Autoflower grow using a hempy pot growing medium and 2500w LED lights.. The Hempy pots are predrilled with two holes at 1" and 2". The hole at 2" is covered with gorilla tape until the later end of the flowering period when they start to take up more water. Under the buckets are 16" saucers to ensure no spillage. Hempy pots will be watered every 2-3 days depending on the amount that has been absorbed. In the tent I have used a 6" controllable exhaust fan connected to a carbon filter. For intake I have included a 4" fan with brings in air from a nearby open window. Using a larger exhaust fan creates an excellent negative pressure environment which is optimal for controlling temps. Hung in the tent is a passive CO2 canister placed above the fan and a small passive air vent so it is disbursed evenly. Because CO2 is being added, I've adjusted day time temps to 82-85F. Also in the tent is humidity controller linked to humidifier and dehumidifier so that humidity is monitored automatically. RH is set to 55% during veg and will be lowered to 45% for the first half of flower and 30% for the second half. All equipment is plugged in using smart plugs to give me access to them remotely. The smart plug app allows you to schedule on/ off time so you don't have to mess with old timers. _______________________________________________ After watering with 5.8 ph nutrient solution at 550 ppm and 1.3 EC, plants were observed for any signs of deficiency or toxification - none were noticed. (I've used this nutrient regimen before with great success). Water with seaweed and a low dose of humic and fulvic acids was given two days later (ph-5.8 ppm-150) Plants are happy and loving the negative pressure environment. Leaves are a healthy dark green (normal for wedding cake) and waxy with no signs of pets deficiency or toxicity. Growth has been steady but minimal since germination meaning the roots have not all reached the reservoir. Certain daily spikes in temperature prompted me to adjust the intake rate two approximately 50% during the day and 25% at night.

All things remained constant through second week except nutrient concentration. Plants are heavy feeders and doing really well. Doubled grow solution raising EC to 1.6 and switched to two full feedings followed by one light (150 ppm) using only water, humic and fulvic acids, and seaweed. Roots have touched down into nutrient solution and growth should be increasing as they become ready to flower. This is good timing because I expect to begin to see preflowers develop over the next week, and would like the root mass fully formed before they begin stacking flowers.

Note* I germinated the remaining two wedding cake seeds and planted them in a single hempy bucket. I just ordered cannatonic and gelato photoperiod seeds for my next grows. 50-50 grow/bloom nutrients for the heavy feeders now showing preflowers. There seems to be two phenos presenting.. One being slightly stretchy and the other being very short and branchy, more characteristic of an indica leaning plant. I will be rearranging the buckets after this post to account for height differences- this is why I always run two lights. I watered using 1 gallon per container (double) to ensure reservoir is completely changed out with the new bloom nutrients. I'm hoping feeding schedules will be synched by next week. Grow nutrients from week two (except 950 ppm) was used for non preflowering plants. It looks like the branchy phenotype is a week behind the other. To simplify the feeding process I mixed full strength grow nutrients along with additives and watered the non preflowering plants. I then added bloom nutrients to the solution and rebalanced EC and PH to water the rest. I used LST on a few of the branchy plants but will not train the others. I removed some lower vegetation that was getting damp during watering to sure no mold forms. I chose to not LST the preflowering plants since I want them to expend their energy stacking flowers rather than creating several new colas. If I grow using autoflowers again I will LST week one and again during veg as needed. *Update 10/15* Had to do an emergency feeding last night as I found out the plants in preflower used up the entire reservoir in just a day and a half. I'm going on 4 heavy feedings in a row (currently at 1050ppm and 2.3EC) with absolutely no sign of any sort of toxicity developing. Given that these are autoflowers and wedding cake is an predominantly an indica, I never would have expected to see this sort of growth rate, even during flowering. I've been watching closely for signs of a potassium deficiency which could explain the growth, but I haven't seen anything. Unless I see some indications of a potassium deficiency I'm going to credit some slightly sativa leaning genetics and the time I spent developing their root systems for the high growth rates. This grow I decided to double down on microbials and humic/ fulvic acids while they were seedlings and had roots poking out of every face of the rockwool cubes by the time they started on their second leaves and were ready to plant. Three of the four original plants' root systems had reached the reservoir by week 2, allowing for 2 full weeks with major growth capabilities. The branchy, indica leaning phenos are still looking great and growing at a rate that I'd expect from an indica autoflower. They seem to spending a lot of time developing their side branches, stacking leaves with almost no internodal distance. They should be reaching pre-flower any day now. I will water one more time with veg nutrients tomorrow and then line up flowering feedings for the beginning of week 4.

Saw some explosive growth over this last week. The larger two grew 2 feet since last week and put out a significant amount of side branches with a ton of really nice bud sites forming. Of the smaller two, one is preflowering and has doubled in height, the other has not entered the preflower stage yet but is showing increased growth. I've heard of some autoflower varieties not being very well stabilized, so I'm wondering if the photoperiod seeds were not bred out well. Out of hundreds of grows I've only grown a handful of autos and I'm still learning a lot about them. I've been doing nothing but heavy feeds on all of the ladies and they cannot get enough! Despite the constant heavy feeds the larger two need some extra phosphorous and the smaller need some extra nitrogen for a week, so I'm keeping the smaller on a 50/50 veg/bloom diet and bumping the larger to a full bloom. So far absolutely no issues have presented. No deficiencies, no pests.. this has been a great grow so far and I'm excited to see how these flowers develop.

Had a good week of growth and flower development. The branchy pheno that was not trained topped out at 32", just two inches shorter than the stretchy pheno. Currently the branchy pheno is finishing its full first week of flower while the stretchy's are entering their third. I switched up feeding schedules this week and fed the stretchy phenos with plain water twice and fed once after after noticing some slight burn on the leaf tips. The branchy phenos I fed once and then followed with plain water but they showed signs of phosphorous deficiency almost immediately after skipping feed. I will be syncing feeds and going with a full week 2 and week 3 feed when the reservoirs run dry. These girls are sucking up over a gallon of water every day and a half and loving it!

What looked like a slight nutrient burn last week turned out to be the beginning of a phosphorous deficiency. After several heavy feeds in a row I watered twice with plain water last week to make sure all the excess nitrogen was flushed through..it looks like these girls are such heavy feeders that even a three days without nutrients was too much! This week I started back on heavy feedings and the ladies rebounded in less than a day. One of the stretchy phenos is an early developer. I checked the trichomes (see pic above) and I'm seeing a bunch of cloudy trichs already. On the other hand I've got two girls just entering week two of flower. It looks like from here on out I'm going to have to go with three different feeding schedules to keep up with the variations in grow time. From what I can tell about the ILGM Wedding Cake genetics, they're not very stable in plant structure or flowering time. I'm really hoping the quality of smoke is consistent but I'm having some doubts based on the amount of variance I've seen already. I'm not sure if this is common with auto flowers or not, but it is a bit frustrating. I wanted to experiment with autoflowers so I'm glad I did the grow, but I will be going back to photoperiod seed after this grow. Temps and humidity have been a bit of a challenge to regulate lately. My house does not have a humidifier and with the heat on at night I've been experiencing some major fluctuations. Luckily the humidity has not dipped below 30% which is ideal for the two ladies in late flower, however it's a bit low for the slow flowering ladies. To compensate I've been leaving the humidity control at 40% to split the difference. The heat hasn't been too much of an issue so far with the CO2 I have in the tent. The only real issue I see from the temps is the inability to drop them into the 50's in late flowering with how it is now. I'm looking into buying an AC infinity fan which will control both temps and humidity during lights off, without me having to constantly refill the water tank or open half the windows in my house. Update: Just installed 2 new King 2000w and these things are BRIGHT!! Light is penetrating way below the canopy. I can see the reflection from the perlite in the light, they're so bright. The ladies are loving them so far. Can't wait to see how this harvest turns out. I'll be moving the 1500w king and 1000w mars hydro to a new veg tent. I will be starting a gelato grow in the next week with one cannatonic seed being grown as well.

It turns out that the phosphorus deficiency last week was being caused by too much copper in the drinking water. The signs of copper toxicity appeared on a few of the leaves a couple days ago. After buying a filter and watering twice, the discoloration is now gone. I'm hoping that the phosphorus deficiency doesn't affect my yield too much- so far there doesn't seem to be any effect on flowering but I'll have to wait until harvest to know for sure. The stretchy pheno is maturing much faster than the last. I checked the trichomes today and I'm starting to see some amber mixed in. I was going to hold off a week to flush but decided to go ahead and do it today.

Flushed second stretchy pheno- about 10 days left on the first and 14 on the second. Branchy phenos are looking good, busy packing on weight. The branchy phenos have this really amazing blueberry/lemon aroma that is starting to fill the tent 😵👍 Split stem and plugged the stretchy pheno- good 10-15% increase in trichome production in the last 24 hours. Main cola has about 20% amber trichomes, so a few days away from harvest. Great pink and purple hues starting to come out in response to allowing it to go phosphorus deficient. I will be moving it into the dark at 30% humidity at the end of this week for the final shock and partial dry. Flushed second stretchy pheno and will plug in a day or two and hopefully bump up the trichome production to a level similar to the other.

These buds are practically dripping wet with trichomes. The girls reacted perfectly to the splitting which means I timed it perfectly 🤙🏻 Ripening slowed down a bit in the stretchy phenos so I will be giving them a few more days. The branch phenos are looking about two to three weeks out so I flushed them today.