Spotless Mind Sub-Irrigated

MrKen —

MrKen Not much to report here. Now that the 3rd week of veg is starting it should get interesting.

MrKen 3 weeks done. Plants seem to be at a good growth rate. Looking in at this tent after the 4AM is always underwhelming but soon Spotless Mind shall steal the show. Foliar feeding is beginning, I will use my Kelp,Fulvic,and Silica mix along with Deep Breath. Application of beneficials is once a week. Not much training I can do without the girls getting a bit taller.

MrKen I could have sworn that I posted the nutrients haha. Totally, spaced that I didn’t update that section. Anyways, this was a good week, both plants are starting to veg with the right one taking of in stride. Foliar feeding Humboldt’s Own Deep Breath every two days with Snow Storm Ultra and doing the third feed with my usually foliar feed of fulvic/kelp/silica. The Migro Array is nice 120watt and the veg so far looks comparable to the HLG tent. Good shit as always and good shit coming with a couple of monkeys about to get chopped...don’t tell PETA. 🤫

MrKen —

MrKen Great week of veg growth. Plants are responding well to defoliation and let. Lateral branching is starting to pick up and the plants are developing a nice bust stature. Ran out of Fish Shit and Photosynthesis Plus, will try to pick up more. Really enjoying watching the veg. The strain is Super Sativa so I don’t expect to see pre flowers anytime soon. The Octopot system seems to take after hydroponics and increases the length of plant growth. I’ve noticed most strains running for longer then usual. My 4AM are taking forever to ripen. So with that these fuckers will probably be running for a while. It already looks like they will fill out the tent if I continue to bush them out. I don’t beend the main branch until flowering sets in. There’s that small window of pliability when the buds start to develop where you can bend the main cola down to the internodes with buses developing. Really interesting. I did that to several of the 4AM and the colas form into a nice dense bouquets. I guess it could be considered super cropping but I don’t break the skin and it doesn’t feel like high stress for the plants. I’ll try to post some pics in the 4AM diary but it will probably be easier to show once they’re harvested. Even though the apical growth isn’t directly controlled the stimulation of lateral branching through defoliation and lst of existing lateral growth has shown to inhibit the apical dominance. This is also obviously easier achievable with autoflower genetics since they’re is no separate veg period rather a straight transition to preflowering. Also the main purpose of most of these beneficial bacteria products is to control internodal growth, so then the more I bend the more will sprout forward. Since no topping or high stress is done to the main cola I believe this allows more internodes to sprout foliage for low stress training and defoliation. Of course this all just observations but so far I have noticed a pattern with how the plants react to my training and it’s been pretty interesting. There’s been several times I wanted to top but I find myself wondering if I could force the plant to work harder by emphasizing lateral growth without any direct severance of apical dominance? With the training and foliar feedings it appears evident so far. But still easier said with autoflowers I suppose. 🤔

MrKen It’s been a great week of vegetative growth. Pre flowers are starting to emerge so hopefully we will see some buds start to develop and further stretch. Harvested two of the 4am and golly gee what a fucking treat. Tomorrow I’ll include pictures in that diary but truly wow, the lst clips I used worked great. Really helped keep the shape of the plant and just overall bush. In this diary the last picture is an example of the Spotless Mind adapting to the training. There were multiple branches that formed a U shape. Really fun 🤩. The goal of this tent is to hopefully exceed the 120w light with the two plants. A lot of factor play into that but the Super Sativa genetics at play should really give an advantage to that. The fact I’m getting pre flowers after 7 weeks shows how long this plant will probably go for (8 more weeks I estimate) and that just means I have to do everything to make sure the structure can is wide but stable. Interestingly, once I took the two 4AM one of them began to collapse on itself because of lack of support and it wanted to branch out more. With that I now know what to avoid when training wide. Have to make sure there is consistent light penetrating the lower canopy strengthening the stems. The Alchemist Stout should help as well since the Spotless Mind have been receiving it through foliar feedings every 2/3 days. Very exciting, enjoying the growth and really can’t wait to see what these girls can put out compared to the 4AM and 150w difference.

MrKen Buds are really starting to show flowers and stretch. Been doing a lot of defoliation to make sure the light penetrates the lower canopy. Really enjoying this strain, so far the tent has been almost completely filled. Very interested to see how big the buds can swell under the light. Can probably continue foliar feeding for one more week and then will cut it out. Finally ran through my bag of MegaCrop I picked up last year and got the new formula. Threw me off a bit because the new formula does not smell sweet and it looks just plain as shit. Still need to pick up the Fish Shit and Photosynthesis Plus but with the holidays and other shit coming up I’ve been putting it off. Anyways this was a good week

MrKen Really coming along nicely. Tent is filled out and plants continue to stretch. Buds are developing and the frost has begun. Defoliation is much more stricter after experiencing one of the 4AM having weaker lower stems and not supporting the weight of the colas. The Migro Array is impressive and for only 120w I got to say the growth is about as comparable to the HLG set up. Shane at Migro just wished a happy New Year on his YouTube and hinted at a new fixture other then the Array that Migro will be releasing....so yeah haha next year is looking fun. Hopefully he keeps it like the array and has multiple layout configurations for different tent setups. Picking up a Black Dog fixture, going to toss it in a BudBox and really put quality to the test with everything I got. So far the HLG has been great and I’m enjoying the Migro so let’s see what one of the supposed big dogs can accomplish. Really wanted the 5w chip and the Kind LEDs fixture at the comparable price of the Phyto 200 was less then appealing. Anyone outside of the Americas should check out FatPharm LED. There Spectrum is comparable to Black Dog but way more affordable! To get it in the states your going to have use a service that provides a UK address to have orders sent to and then shipped to the US. It will still be cheaper then the BlackDog. Maybe should’ve done this but if the Migro fixture Shane releases next year doesn’t improve upon spectrum then I’ll probably opt for picking up the FatPharm. The growth of the Spotless Mind is incredible but I feel like I’m missing out on the UV aspect. Rapid LED has there UVA pucks that run at 30w I believe, and picking up two to round out the UVA would bump up the wattage used to 180 with an overall improvement to quality. HLG has their UVA, which I added, that is supposed to be used during flowering but one thing I believe about Spectrum is it’s better to have a consistent spectrum rather then change it during any point of the grow. The only exception would be UVB because of how it damages the plant. You could actually begin acclimating plants to UVB towards the end of the Veg at low doses then slowly build to the required duration for max terps and thc. Kind of diverged from the point...plants are doing great can’t wait to see them fatten! Happy New Year!

MrKen Well here we are and about as far out as I expected from harvest. Truly impressive genetics at play. The frost that is starting to develop is very appealing and starts from the steam and ends at the base of fan leaves. At this point is mainly defoliation to get rid of fan leaves from the smaller popcorn buds at the bottom. If the plant has branches and bid sites that absolutely have no chance of light then I will chop it off. The 4AM monkey that toppled over was was evidence of why maintaining cleaner center cluster is important. Nice yield but if I had maintained defoliation through out the grow cycle I believe it could’ve been much more. I haven’t had any plants react negatively to the defoliation. It seems like the more I pluck the more they grow and that’s been the case leading into week 11. These girls have potential to push in week 16 and 17 so it should be interesting to see how much I can keep up with it. When buds really start to fatten I hope to have a cleared enough leaves to just cluster the buds together. Spotless Mind is already starting to impress and I must say that despite the length of time I am thrilled for this grow. Come March I will have been growing for 5 years and I started in a tiny Space Bucket with bag seeds. This shit is humbling as hell to come and see that even now I’m still pushing past what I did before. Growing is fucking blast and I remember fucking up my first Mephisto Bean and being less then impressed. Struggled with cramped spaces and never getting consistent results. I bounced back and forth from small plants to large plants, photos to autos, super soil to hydro, and fuck man I still feel like I barely scratched the surface. Still have never grown outdoors, and still feeling like there’s a vast amount of shit I’m missing. I might not like a lot of diaries on here but trust me it’s cause I’m often inspired and sent down my perpetual rabbit hole of passion filed research. Just the shear amount of diaries started on here is mouth watering and fuck man I hope in the coming here’s growing continues to take off. Like fuck I accident discovered Night Owl, who the fuck is Daz?!, this shit is crazy. US autos are fucking all over the place from 5 years ago. I can order seeds in the states and not worry about customs. Maine, Colorado, fucking all over the place with this shit. Green Work Collective I just fucking found and it’s like holy shit, the shear accessibility of being able to just buy some seeds and grow is intense. Hahaha anyways Got lost in my thoughts and typing. Yeah grooooooooow weeeeeed it’s fucking fun.

MrKen I have officially lost control. The height is insane and now we can truly test to see if light can be hung 6in from plants. There’s not much else to report. I love the Gorilla Shortys but I clearly should’ve picked up a regular one. Spotless Mind is a true space maximized. With the buds still barely developing I don’t see this done til closer towards the end or mid of Feb. Picked up more Photosynthesis Plus and Fish Shit, got bigger sizes so hopefully the Karmic Connection gets a full run. Pumping them full of highly concentrated bacteria that makes my room smell like death even the next day and then you realize that because you have opened containers that smell is not fucking going anywhere!...been real fun. The octopots do a great job utilizing the bacteria. No run off and no waste. All the water put in is used and with only one top watering the capillaries become even more crucial for water uptake. This is where mobilization and utilization of the bacteria that’s ruining the smell of my weight room plays it’s important roles. The capillaries are the primary paths that bacteria will use to traverse to the roots, top watering can often confuse a plant leading it to send roots in multiple directions and this can cause inefficient root growth. Obviously, it’s not detrimental since most gardens incorporate some sort of air pruning pot now as well as trays for water run off. It does make me curious as to whether the bacteria are more mobile or not. The draw back that can be compared to the sub irrigation set up is that I don’t add the bacteria with every water top off, I merely fill the reservoir to the top after a week and dose with full strength according to gallons in reservoir. The cost of including doses with every top off is high but one of these grows I would love to see if the kind of growth from constant inoculation. 🤩 Anyways, the Spotless Mind runs the room and I’ve lost control of the space. Should be interesting 🧐

MrKen Ordered the extension for the tent. While I was defoliating I noticed the girl on the left shot pass the light. The defoliation was insane as well, most of the trimmings was covered in resin. These two have far exceeded my expectations and now it’s just about bud development. It’s a trichrome forest every time I open the tent. There was a slight pepper smell but after trimming I could smell a sweet undertone almost candy like. My forearms were covered in resin from trying to defoliate the back part of the plants. Really need to get the tent boosted so I can have more even light distribution. I think they’re done stretching but fuck who knows.

MrKen Boosted the tent to get more space between the girls. Light damage was done but look at these tall ass girls. Bud development is nice and steady. There’s a funky smell with a pepper undertone? I don’t quite understand what I’m smelling 🤔. The frost development is still as lovely as ever. Had a cricket kill two my seedlings in the 3x3 and really wish they decided to come snack on these tasty girls instead, or even the Karmic Connections. When these two girls are finished I’m going to use this tent as a mother tent. Replacing the seedlings with some photos and going to let them ride until sexed. Should be good timing, I see these Spotless Minds finishing mid Feb. Oh and Shane at Migro did release his new fixture. It’s a pro version of Migro Aray + Red. So yeah a bit disappointed but mainly because I would’ve opted for that over this Aray. Anyone looking at investing in new grow lights needs to go check out his YouTube Channel. He gives great reviews based off of actual testing. He has done products from HLG, Gavita, ChilLED, Viparspectra, Mars Hydro, and many more. There is obviously a huge emphasis on efficiency but also a in depth look at the spectrum. Shane at Migro seriously knows his shit but at what point do we have to sacrifice efficiency to reach a higher quality. My problem with BlackDog is that they do not have a clear efficiency rating as opposed to these newer high efficient full spectrum LEDs. Buuuuuuut I’m getting UVA and Infrared included in the spectrum so does it equate? Only way to know is the quality and yield comparison. I guess those crickets understood the rumblings of madness and realized I needed to take my growing in a different direction. It’s hard to keep speculating what results I’m actually achieving when running autoflowers. Especially these incredible F1 hybrids which can encompass a vast array of genetic variabilities. I need to know what is working and what isn’t.

MrKen These monstrous plants are done with stretch officially. Now it’s just waiting for buds to fatten and finish ripening. Not much to report for this week. Making sure airflow is optimal is the top priority. Can not reach deep enough to continue defoliation where it’s a necessity. Nutrient feed will slowly be dialed back over the next several weeks. Yep yep, fucking hell of a journey with these two girls. Not sure how long this can go on for but could be several more weeks. Fuck February for being a short month! If these girls go into March ill be fucking impressed. Since these girls stretched so much they might benefit from having the top colas harvested and then allowing the rest of the plant to finish flowering. Will give them a bit longer maybe a week or two before I attempt that. Evidence of the top colas hairs starting to change color attribute to this idea but there’s still plenty of time to observe and see how they ripen.

MrKen Week 17 will be harvest time. Girls are finishing nicely. Shall start to dial back the nutrients while maintaining frequency of bacteria inoculation. There’s a real nice raunchy funk coming from the tent. The trichromes showed up several weeks ago so they kind of became gluttonous with the consumption of the plant (same for me). Beeeeeen a fun adventure. Movie Suggestion: La Casa Lobo (shear fucking trip)

MrKen Plants are fattening up. Smell is perforating the tent. They’re trying to bust out of the tent, every time I open the branches pour out. Been a great grow. Wednesday I’ll switch over to flush for maybe up to two weeks. Depends on the yellowing. These girls are just in a coco perlite mix so the flush should be somewhat quicker as opposed to the other potting mix I use. Just eyeballing these girls I think I accomplished my goal of beating out the wattage with yield. Everything that’s a popcorn bud is also coated in crystals so picking up a bubble extractor to start processing the trimming. I still have a shit ton of trim from the 4AM. Didn’t store it well enough (brown bagged) so the terms are all gone but that shit still good for dry sift. Also got some more regs from Deadpanhead and Copa genetics. Picked up a pack of Twenty20 Mendocino’s Durban Sunrise. It’s an auto and I was going to just keep to my Night Owl and Mephisto stock but I figured trying different autos would be a nice comparison of yields since I can’t clone autos. As far as I am concerned Mephisto and Daz work hand and hand together so why wouldn’t Night Owls yields compete with Mephisto? Am I the one achieving these yields or am I just accommodating the plant? As proud as I am with these girls, I have to ask myself “Is this the best I can do?”.

MrKen The girls are busting out! The flush has begun but the girls refuse to stay in the tent. Really impressed with the Migro light. I believe my goal for this grow will be accomplished. There hasn’t been much issues except for having to expand the tent which thankfully I actually did. Was not expecting these girls to stretch as much as they did. Night Owl is fucking fire and I am falling in love with their genetics. The Karmic Connections are coming along nicely in the BudBox under the BlackDog so I’m very excited to see how those girls turn out. I think I mentioned it a couple weeks ago but Migro did release a pro version of the light in using now soooo got to say tempting me to check out. Migro emphasizes efficiency and I’m impressed thus far. BlackDog emphasizes quality and I aim to fuck up Leafly’s “effortless” half pound grow they did with one plant. Maximum effort 110% of the time. I’m keep going til I burn up! 🤘

MrKen Wow, 235g! Harvested Day 128. Daz knows his shit. I am a bit hurt that these limited I waited for on Halloween ended up being casually released several times since then. Bahaha money is money right? I won’t ever believe that a release was limited. As someone who wants to start breeding It seems highly counterproductive to breed a strain then run out of seeds. They run out of seeds for us but for themselves they will always have seeds/cuts 🙃 that’s just my cynical take on it. Hahah anyways Spotless Mind is a keeper. Very resinous strain, stems from like week 9 onwards was just frosted. Looking forward to the bubble hash run. There was actually a lot of room for improvement. I lost control because of the stretch and needed up having to extend my tent so they could continue to grow. The shortys, once extended, don’t zip all the way. So this caused me to crouch down and completely neglect the upper canopy and canopy towards the back of the tent. If I could’ve defoliate more and not worry about height it would’ve been a lot more. Learning from those mistakes I have made it more of a point with the Karmic Connection to defoliate. Night Owl fucking eats Mephisto any day. But fuck the hype around both. You want hype look up the Octopot. Sub-Irrigation is the way to go. Hydro on the bottom soil/soilless on top. Low maintenance and dual root zones. If making any transition to another grow medium please check it out. Oh and bacteria, read teeming with microbes and you will understand that cannabis benefits from bacteria more so then fungi. This is even more true with auto flowers because the short life cycle. If your growing a fucking equatorial tropical Sativa, then yeah I could see some fungus maybe being worth the money. You will get more bang for your buck from bacteria and it has a higher temperature threshold compared to fungi. Look up the temp to store mycorrhizae and tell me if you think it can survive summer deliveries. Bacteria will fucking work for you. Tribus, and Zemyna’s Elixer are both products I recommend. Bacterial diversity creates a thriving ecosystem, sadly the current short coming of the octopot is that it’s incompatible with super soils. I theorized that by innoculating high concentrations of bacteria with multiple different strains I could potentially circumvent the problem. This led to me reading 😌 and I learned that bacteria have a very capable way of traveling through substrate. It was by capillaries! And what works with capillaries? The Octopot! So with the evidence presented to me I can assume that because of the Octopot my bacteria are fully utilized. I do plan on starting clones to run multiple experiments (probably for the rest of my liiiiife) to help conclude what works and actually works, well for me at least. Anyways, this harvest was spectacular, the buds are fucking frosted sticky and potent. Haven’t smoked a Sativa autoflower this good for years.