Newbie: Auto Cheese Freebie

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.

Things are looking pretty good. I think I'm done with training, just going to do some defoliation as needed. Hopefully she doesn't grow too tall.

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.