First Grow - Widow, GSC, Gelat.OG

No nutrients first week. Kept in rapid rooters in a tray under a dome on a heating pad at 80F. Took dome off once they started bumping into the dome. White Widow had yellow tips, but I attributed this to the fact that it was stuck in its shell. I had to put a drop of water on the shell to soften it up more so it could break out. Once the roots started poking out of the rooters, I transferred them into solo cups with coco. Most of my attention this week was not on the plants, but instead focused on preparing for the coming weeks. I purchased wire shelving and split it into half to completely fit the tent with an adjustable shelf. Got humidifier hooked up to humidity sensor. Got heater hooked up to temp sensor. Lights hooked up to smart switches that monitor electricity usage. Purchased nutes.

Watered with light nutrient mix by day 7 after popping. Went with Jack's 3-2-1 schedule at 25% strength. (Part A: 1.89g, Epsom: .5g, Part B: 1.26g per gallon--then dilute with a gallon of tap water). Also included 25% strength Recharge. Tap water is about 90ppm. Came out to 365ppm. After 3 days, watered again, runoff was 60ppm/.2EC, and ph5 runoff. Upped the pH and watered again to runoff. Bit concerned about overwatering now. Think next time I will try pre-buffering/prewatering the Coco even though supposedly already buffered. What a week for learning. White Widow showing strong calcium deficiency with twisted lower leaves. The other two started showing minor signs. Created a 750ppm foliar spray of Calmag and started applying twice a day under the leaves at start of day and end of day. Lots of learning about how to adjust and monitor pH using the new PH60 meter that I purchased. Started using weight to know when to water. Small enough to place on a weed scale.

Beginning of week 3: Bumped up nutrient solution to 50% strength (500ppm) and around 5.9-6.0 pH. Transferred two of the girls into bigger pots as the roots were poking out all the holes on the bottoms of the solo cups. Bit concerned about very minor yellowing in newer leaves, but hopefully the slightly stronger nutes help. I also buffered the coco with calmag prior and then dried it out a bit with a fan prior to transferring them over. Hoping this helps with some of the issues I had in the first two weeks. Didn't water the night I transferred, but gave 50mL of stronger nutes in the morning, as well as a calmag foliar. End of week 3: Really dialing in the process and what I'm working with. Plants are growing quickly and looking very healthy. Still haven't quite settled on what's best in terms of LED strength and distance. Plants are staying pretty squat at only about 4 inches. Have been giving them 100mL a day and weighing the containers to see whether they are using it. Consumption is finally starting to reach that point. Haven't been brave enough to do runoff. They seem to be pretty close though as the bottoms are always very wet.

1/16 Week 3 is a wrap. Kicking off week 4 with a new layout in the tent, stronger nutes, and feeling like everything is getting dialed in! Plant growth is really starting to pick off. I'm still an overly protective parent, but starting to be less OCD. I still like going to look at them 100x a day. It's calming and interesting. I'm doing two daily feedings: when I wake up and around dinner time, 100mL each time per plant. The top of the coco isn't really drying out at all and has a light coating of green algae that upon researching seems to be a good thing (trichoderma) that is probably a result of the two different innoculants I have been giving the girls. I purchased all the items I will need to mainline (fine tip scissors, some hunting wire (same as the soft plant wire but half the price), binder clips). Will probably do that in a few days once they get bigger. 6th node is just popping out now. ------------------------------ End of week summary: Spent the week raising the nute PPM to meet the Jacks 321 feeding schedule. Went from 700ppm to 900ppm over the course of the week. Mainlined for the first time on Week 4 - Day 2. Gave the GSC one more day to grow before mainlining because she grows a bit slower than the other two. The growth of the girls picked up, but started bumping into issues. Initially, I was getting runoff that was about 200ppm lower than the inflow. However, then I started seeing light speckling/spotting on the lower leaves.

Week 4 was learning about mainlining. Week 5 has now become a learning experience about plant health. Growth earlier on in the week started picking up and the plants became very bushy. Almost too bushy. It was tough to keep adjusting the LST ties because of how close all the nodes are. Halfway through the week, the leaves were looking very wrinkly, particularly on the newer growth. They were also looking quite green. I asked for feedback on reddit (microgrowery), but didn't get much response. The responses I got were guessing at overwatering or lack of airflow. I tested this by decreasing from 2x feedings a day to 1x feeding a day, and moving the fan to blow directly on them. This did not improve. Looking more into it, I started leaning towards Nitrogen toxicity, even though there are pretty much no pictures of N toxicity showing wrinkly leaves like this. That being said, after a day of researching, the plants spoke to me when a large number of them started clawing. I then started acting on my next plan, which was to decrease the PPM in the coco. I went back to 2x waterings a day because the outflow was coming out at 1100 when the inflow was 850. Once I decided it was N toxicity, I gave them a 30% flush with 700ppm. I let them spend the night with that, and then the next morning flushed with 600ppm and about 30% runoff. Hoping they feel better. I also decided the plants were too bushy, so removed the leaves from the 2nd nodes. My plan is to let the lateral nodes (1 and 3) grow out. I'm not sure if going ahead and removing the 2nd node was bad since the 3rd node is still small, but I did this on 2 of 3 to test (picked the two bushiest ones which were the Widow and the Gelato). I think this will be a good result, as it greatly opened up the canopy to the nodes that I want to grow out. Hopefully it's not too stressful on the plants since they are already coping with issues.

The growth this week picked up exponentially. The plants seemed to get over their mainlining, topping, etc. Instead of topping more, since it seemed to drastically slow down the plants and they were growing very well, I went more with a manifolding approach. I let the two main stems grow out and kept adjusting the LST to keep them horizontal. I think removed the 2nd growth nodes and left the 1st and 3rd nodes. I kept feeding at the reduced PPM of 600 and the plants seemed to get past the nitrogen toxicity. The new growth looked very healthy. Kept it this way all week and never saw any problems with deficiencies. I defoliated on a very limited basis, focusing on leaves that were either touching the soil due to the LST, or on ones that were blocking light to growth areas. The plants grew a ton over the week, but as I adjusted the LST for lateral growth, they are still short. I transplanted them from 1 gallon pots to 3 gallon pots halfway through the week. I do have 5 gallon pots but felt like that may be too big. I suspect I will finish these plants in the 3 gallon pots unless I change my mind in the next week or two. The transplant did not seem to slow down their growth at all. I finally feel that they are in a groove. Even though I am new, I think within two weeks I will flip these to flower. They are now taking up half the space in my tent and I think by then they will have filled out the tent.

Beginning of week 7 update: Week starting out well. Plants are growing fast. White Widow is recovering from losing half of herself due to the snap. They're all growing well and they recover from the LST within a few hours. I'm making minor LST adjustments daily. They are spreading laterally from this quite well. I think this week will be focused on the lateral growth and then next week will be a bit of vertical growth prior to flipping to flower. I am going to ramp up the PPM a bit. They seem to be growing fast now so I think they are past the Nitrogen toxicity from 1.5 weeks ago. I have a feeling I will be kicking the herbs I am growing out of the tent soon. ========================

Week 8 just lots of defoliation, adjusting LST, removing colas, and ramping up the nutes a bit

—

Plants were really picking up steam growing. Light defoliation every other day, nothing too drastic. Plants were really running out of space, so ordered a slightly bigger tent and some more lights! Will flip to flower at beginning of next week.

Very busy week. Flipped the schedule to 12/12 First flowers started to appear on the GSC after 3 days! I purchased a 4x4 tent and two more Kingbrite lights. Will now start doing staggered grows with veg/flower. The new gear arrived halfway through the week, so got that set up. Feeding the GSC and Gelat.og at 1200 ppm and they seem to like it. No change in the Jacks 321 schedule, but have been adding kelp, molasses occasionally. Ordered potassium monohydrate to add into the feed schedule. The White Widow is so sensitive to nitrogen. Backed down the feed for her to 900ppm as she was showing clawing still (could have been existing leaves, maybe I'm crazy, but I'm dropping the ppm regardless). The WW is so short and bushy, she's a huge pain in the ass to defol. Next time if I run her, I will not top/mainline as much. Or figure out some way to space her colas out more. I may have to still chop some off, I'm not sure. Going to need to figure out the humidity better soon. They just put off so much humidity that it's a struggle to keep it down in the 60s.

So in just the last week, the plants already doubled. GSC went from 11 to 22". Widow went from 8 to 14". Gelat.og went from 10 to 18". GSC seems to want to grow up quickly. Huge growth spurt. Flowered after 3 days. Flowers are developing well meanwhile the other two are just showing a few tendrils. Hopefully an uneventful week.