First grow ever: micro Hindu Kush Auto

(Due to an technical problem, I cannot connect anymore to my account Gaias_Gift, which is not gonna be updated anymore... This is a "saving" of my journal, which was at week 7 when I encountered this issue. This grow was started on September, 10th, 2020.) 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.

This have been a very struggling week... I've been encountering a lot of difficulties and due to a technical problem, was unable to connect to my account to post in the grow questions... I started the week with a flush. After some research, I saw that the thin fingered pale top leaves and the beginning of a Cal-Mag deficiency I was observing were most probably a result of too much PK. It has been confirmed by some burnt tips on the leaves, so I flushed the soil right away. Unfortunately, this resulted in a cascade of deficiency I had a lot of trouble identifying... Leaves were falling down at a concerning rate, some with what looked like Nitrogen deficiency, other with burnt aspect... Meanwhile, buds were not fattening, or really really slowly... I gave nutes in a light dilution again to the plant and she seems to be getting better. Buds seems to be fattening a bit more now. But I guess this week has stunt the plant a bit. She's not producing much trichomes untill now... If I had to guess where I did wrong, I think I overestimated the development of my plant: Even if the biggest colas stopped stretching more than a week ago, some lower colas stretched quite a bit this week. I guess she was still needing more of a vegetative mix than what I gave her last week... Too few nitrogen and too much PK must have done some damages... Even if this is my first grow and I obviously need to learn a lot, this has been a really stressing week full of culpability. I'm glad she seems to do better now though.

Another stressful week this one and I forgot to take many pictures... I was loosing leaves at an impressive rate. Some were showing signs of P deficiency and what looked like nute burn... So, panicking, I flushed the medium. But after some reading, it appeared that the burnt tips were most probably due to a K deficiency (with the rest of the leaf turning yellowish from the burnt area). I waited until the medium was dry again and started to feed the plant again. She seems to be doing better now, slowly but surely. She is looking very pale, but I guess this is normal since I flushed her a lot. Buds are now fattening, slowly but at least they are. I made so many mistakes it's not surprising that she seems to be late like this. I had planned to start the final flushing at the end of this week, according to the planning provided by the breeder, but she sucked so many nutrients out of her leaves, I think I'm gonna do at least one other feeding and see where it goes. This grow had started so smoothly, so I'm pretty pissed at myself for the many mistakes I've made... I'm still hoping to have a decent yield for a first grow, even if I definitely hurt it. At least I will have learnt a lot from this grow, and my next ones can only go even more smoothly! Thanks to Igrowneil and Loco1074 for their help during the week!

Things are getting sticky, things are getting smelly, things are getting really interesting... This week has been pretty nice, mostly watering when dry and taking care of dying leaves (just a few, every other day). Overall, even if the plant has a lot of damaged leaves from the problems of the last couple of weeks, she seems to have recovered well and the deficiencies are no longer spreading. She's not consuming much water anymore and the buds are fattening really nicely (some of the buds seem to have doubled in size since the previous week). I'm optimistic again about the yield. It's not gonna break any records but seems like it can be really satisfying for a first grow ever. And we should know pretty soon: a little amount of the trichomes (about 5%, maybe less) are turning cloudy, so I finished the week with what I think will be her last feed before flushing. I don't want to flush too much in advance since so many big leaves are already really yellow, but you can see in one of the last pictures that the lower canopy is still really green! I dont really worry about this part though. It's mostly really small buds and I dont think it will give interesting smoking flowers. I think I'll use it to make hash or edibles (and I will be able to let it cure longer than the big flowers). Really excited to see this plant going well again. Can't wait to harvest!

Didn't get much time this week to take many pictures and I'm sorry about that. The good thing is that the plant has recovered really well from all the problems and I just had to water when dry. I stopped feeding her with nutes in order to flush the soil. At this point, I would say that around 95% to all trichomes are cloudy, with some really really REALLY rare amber. So I guess harvest is around the corner! That's exciting. The smell got stronger this week and it's leaking a bit from the grow tent, even with a carbon air filter in it. We can smell a hint of the plant from time to time in the room but nothing punching... until I open the tent! I think some of the upper leaves are getting light burnt. They started turning really pale even with the feeding, but I can't put the light any further... So I'm relieved that harvest is coming. I guess I could have managed LST a bit better right from the beginning. I also think I would have controlled the plant's size more easily with a smaller pot and I'm gonna test a 4L fabric pot on my next run. This grow tent being really small, I think this plant lacked some beneficial space resulting in some really small buds getting nothing of light, with no possibility of getting more leaves out of the way. Overall, this grow could have been much worse, and I'm already super happy with this experience, whatever the result will be!

Harvest is... now! On the last day of this 12th week, after a last check of the trichomes, I came to the conclusion it was ready to harvest. So I cut the light to begin a last cycle of 48 hours of darkness before harvest, which will be on the second day of week 13 (on day 86 after germination which means it took exactly 89 days from the day seed was put in soil to harvest). Other than that, the week has been quiet. Watering when dry with plain water, managing the few dying leaves falling from the flush... The flush is going well and the plant took a nice yellow/fall color. Some buds seem to have fattened a bit more. Most of the pistils are brownish now and some buds got a pretty nice frost in some places. It was pretty hard to evaluate precisely the right moment for harvest though as some of the buds already have a lot of amber trichomes and some have none or really little... But overall, I think we got to the "10% of amber" moment, which I've read was the right time to harvest. Pretty excited and impatient to see how much I got from this grow. I'm gonna update the harvest really soon.

Harvest done on day 89 from the day I put seed in the soil (D86 from germination). A good amount of decent size buds and a really nice 'wet' weight so I expect a really good amount for a first time grow! I put the branches to dry upside down with just a light wet trimming on the bigger leaves that were the most 'dead'. So I guess I'm gonna have a pretty impressive reduction in dry weight. The smell was really nice while harvesting. Really strong MJ smell, with something of a citrusy aspect and sweetness to it. I hope it's gonna develop into a nice bouquet while curing.