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I'm a little late starting this journal, but it's my first one, and I figure better late than never. This was a freebie seed from Seed Supreme. It is in a first round of what I hope to be a no-till system. I have been successful with no-till in outdoor pots for vegetables, so hopefully some of that experience transfers. My tent is very small, 30inx18inx36in height, so I need to keep my plants short. I am using a Viparspectra 300W LED, plus I have a 100W 5000K CFL, which I will change to a 2300 at or before flower (the LED is heavily biased in the blue spectrum). I have 2 3-gallon smart pots in there, each with a blumat junior. I mulched with a straw/hay mix that contains some clover and grass seeds, which I consider to be an added bonus.
There was a 00 Seeds Sweet Soma Auto in the other pot that didn't germinate after 2 weeks. I planted a 00 Northern Lights Auto in there, which is in another journal. This is technically my second grow, the first one being a complete disaster, from which I am hoping to get literally one bowl's worth: https://forum.grasscity.com/threads/first-grow-stunted-with-deformed-twisted-leaves.1490298/
I am basing my grow off of this thread: https://forum.grasscity.com/threads/automatics-make-good-organic-sinse.1477069/ but I am adding in some compost tea + fish hydrolysate, recharge, and when I get to flower, Mammoth P.
I want to follow the training technique shown on the Lucky 75 youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzg5yUoBDK1hpw7oyWWf1TQ) - mainlining/fluxing + heavy defoliation - except I did not top this plant since it is my first grow, I wasn't sure exactly what genetics I had, and therefore what timeline it was on, and it it has incredibly compact internodal spacing, making it nearly impossible to get snips in there.
Thanks for checking out my grow!
Edit: Day 1 was 3/11/18
I am basically doing a non-topped or one-sided mainline. I plan to do a mainline technique in general so I wanted to practice, but since this is my first plant I was following recommendations not to top on the first grow. Also, the nodes were so tight I couldn't get my clippers into the third node.
She is looking good. A few of the leaves have really tiny, minor imperfections, but I thank that is do to me fumbling and damaging them slightly when they were tiny growth tips.
We started preflower this week. She filled out since the last defoliation and is looking really healthy. There is a bit of damage on a few of the leaves, but it's from where I was a little rough with the tiedowns around the growth tips. She has some damn tight spacing, making it hard to get the wires in there. She has a nice aroma. I wouldn't say it smells like cheese exactly, but has a pleasant sour note to it.
I am going to be adding some VMC and ground Malted Barley this week, along with some Ful-Power. Probably another defoliation, too. I will try to take before and after pics.
Update: When I added the VMC and Barley, I discovered that both pots in my tent were extremely light weight. I had been underwatering big time, slowing growth and causing some deficiencies. Since then things seem to be correcting themselves rapidly.
Continuing with my plan, things are looking good. I don't know if she'll get much bigger before she starts stretching. I plan to let her leaf out a little more before the next defoliation. It's just tricky because she is packed so tight. I might also take off some of the smaller lower nodes coming off the sideshoots.
She seems to be a slow grower. I started a northern lights that's 12 days behind her, and it is growing about 2 weeks faster than this cheese. Wish I knew the breeder.
I swapped out my smaller light, a CFL for a new LED, hence all the pictures are purple. Sorry about that. The smell is getting stronger. It is a sour, horseradish-y smell, and she is developing some trichomes. They are really short and small trichomes, but they are already turning milky.
She still has quite a ways to go, but is making steady progress toward fattening up. She's covered in trichomes, but mostly the tiny ones that form right on the surface, not on stalks. This week her aroma really changed to a nice mature cheese smell. Prior to that it was a sharp/pungent/slightly skunky smell. Now it is like a nice mild aged cheese.
She's looking a bit pale. May be due to my water being too acidic, therefore restricting iron uptake, not sure. There isn't much I can do about it at this point, but will try to address it for the next grow. Otherwise she looks pretty good. Maybe 4-5 weeks to go? She stinks really good.
Well, she fattened up considerably over the last week. On my last update I thought there might be 4-5 weeks to go, but she's actually ready now. She has about 15-25% amber on her upper sugar leaves, all the rest of the trichs look cloudy. 1 or 2 of the buds are a bit behind the rest, and I also want to get above 50% amber, so I will give it another week or so before I harvest. Once she's done I'm changing up my setup a bit. The new container has some time to go before it's ready, so I'm not really in a rush with this girl.
These are pics right before I chopped her. She's drying now. I will update once I get it cured. On a break waiting for a new job, so it might be a little while. She smells and looks really good. I like that she has a slight purple blush. Not incredibly frosty. She sure took her time.
Good tip for "blurple" LED pics, tho sometimes I just CBA: Turn the lights off, use flash, get a good distance so the flash isn't overwhelming. It's not great, but it's much better.
Glad to hear about your light upgrade! It's a bit late into the cycle for this crop -- though they may well benefit more than a little from this light increase -- but especially going into your next crop you will see the difference =)
28 is hot. If you can get it down to 26 max or 24. As they further go into flower they will become more sensitive to light and heat. Watch for the leaves losing fingers, that's a sign of stress -- often temperature/light stress.
Any level of heat, but particularly "hot" makes plants much more susceptible to light strain as well, and once they hit the tipping point... I've lost 2/3 of a plant's probable yield before.
Light stress takes several days to actually show up as yellowing and can easily be misidentified as nitrogen deficiency.
The easiest way to alleviate heat stress (though 28 isn't ridiculous) is to raise the light. It's like the same type of stress. You may have the new LED too close to the plant for 28C.
@toaster37, I haven't ever heard that about sugar leaves being 3 fingered.
If anything, I'd speculate that it's because a lot of people don't raise their lights when it gets later in flowering. It's not catastrophic, only stresses them a little if they're not super-close. However, it puts them in a precarious position depending on your environment.
I might be in a hard position to judge what's going on, though. You should be able to tell with your manufacturer specs on the light, your new updated temperatures, etc.
Different plants seem to show heat and light stress differently, but it always seems linked. A little bit of one makes it real senitive to the other, in my experience.
For the full scoop:
https://www.growweedeasy.com/heat-light-stress
@Jaindoh,
Thanks for the help. I will try the flash next time.
I am updating the temps. I wasn't really being accurate with what I was recording, and Iwas going off of a probe that was kinda high inside the tent. I have lowered it to canopy level, and I am taking records from a different thermometer that sits on the top of the soil, which gives me min/max readings.
I did notice some splotchy bleaching of a few leaves, so I moved the new led to the top of tent. Hopefully that clears up that issue.
Most of my newest leaves are 3-fingered. I thought that was typical for sugar leaves?
Thanks again
toaster
I would not worry overmuch about the training or defoliation on this one; her size indicates she was probably stunted during some of her rooting.
For best results, I suggest you let her go from here and see if she still has a few weeks left to develop the roots she needs.
First grows are scary, but exciting; liked and followed... just let us know if you have any questions!
toaster37
