My First Grow..Sort of! Big Bazooka

Hello Everyone! This is the start of my first grow, sort of lol. Ive helped out a couple buddies, even had one let me grow my own single plant inside their grow on 2 occasions and Ive been studying cannabis growing since I was in high school. But, I finally got around to building my own grow cabinet in a heated shed and this is my first grow all on my own in my new grow cabinet. Im still working out the kinks and heating/AC etc. but its coming along nicely now. Im actually in the 4th week of flower right now, but Ive been keeping track and taking photos all along, so Im going to post a couple weeks at a time until Im caught up with my current status. A couple things to note: - All 4 plants come from the same mother grown from seed, and were started as clones near the end of Sept - Im calling this week 1 of veg as it is the first week I had them under my MH/HPS lamp - Prior to this they were in a 7inch humidity dome, which they grew out of and I had to make a makeshift grow cabinet out of a large plastic tote - At that time they were under a 24w florescent -They were actually fimmed prior to being under the HID, so already had 2 main branches when i started this week - I had to transplant the starter cubes into the 3inch rockwool cubes initially because I didnt have the room for 6 inch cubes and was still in the process of building my grow cabinet - The first photo was taken the first day they were put under a MH light running at 600w, although the ballast is actually a 1000w iPower ballast and hood I think thats it for now. Stay tuned for more updates and I hope everyone likes my photos. Cheers!

On this week I decided to switch my bulb from a 1000W MH to my 1000W HPS. Most of the people I know who grow use only the HPS and even though Ive read the MH is better for veg, my understanding is also that the HPS is more efficient for the wattage so I switched it out to HPS. Unfortunately, I forgot my glasses at a friends house so the last couple photos are unfiltered and therefore yellow. I apologize and can assure you, most of my phots are shot through a filter (grow room glasses) and have much better color as a result. Not much else to add on this week other than to clarify that my nutes are actually being weighed and not measured by the teaspoon. Unfortunately there was no option for grams on the dropdown so I chose tsp. So 1.5 is actually referring to 1.5 grams of each part and not 1.5tsp. Im also adding 10ml of Cali Magic to each "gallon" of water. Also, Im mixing in 4L jugs, so its 1.5grams of each plus 10ml Calmag per each 4L jug. IIRC I was watering about once every 3 days with each plant taking approx. 2L per watering. I water to runoff and wait until the cubes are light before watering again.

Continued with same feeding schedule, feeding as needed and also continued to use heavy duty gardening wire to pull down branches.

I believe this is the week I underwatered the one day. The plants were starting to drink more and I thought theyd make it through the night(day), but they did not. Not too droopy but one thing Ive noticed is that this strain seems to take a while to come back from a mild underwatering, although Ive only really seen it a few times so maybe this was normal. One plant in particular took longer to perk up than the rest after watering. I also continued low stress training using the garden wire. Im just guessing at this point as to the height,. but I kept them pretty low. the 2 or in some cases 3 main branches that formed after fimming were continuously pulled down until the canopy was as even as possible with all the newly forming branches at relatively the same height to encourage more even growth.

Bad photos this week, I know. Forgot my glasses at a friends house again, lol. No major changes this week. At this point Im considering increasing my nutrients a bit. Also turned the power up on the light this week, now running on 750W. Still using the garden wire heavily for keeping the branches even. With the current setup getting a trellis net installed at lower heights in veg was a problem so I decided to wait until stretch and install a single higher net for the plants to grow into. This was less for training and more for holding the branches up in later stages of flower

Well, the time had come. Second week of flower, I think theyre ready for defoliation. I wasnt sure if I might be a bit early on this but it was the end of week 2 and I based my decision to go ahead with it based on the bud site development. It seemed a good time so I went for it. On previous grows Ive done similar lolly popping and defoliation, but not to this extent. I wanted to go full out this time to see the difference. The plants did seem to take it well, but they did almost stop drinking for a day or so from the shock, but it was kind of expected.

Seems like we're getting towards end of stretch and the bud formation looks very good to me. The nodes are stacking very nicely with the still very long white hairs already starting to merge with the bottom of the nodes above them. Trichome formation is also starting to ramp up with a nice coat of crystals covering the sugar leaves and even the lower edges of the upper fan leaves. Even the smaller lower bud sites are getting pretty coated. I turned up my lights to 1000W near the middle of this week. Still not much smell though.

Now theyre starting to smell :) I started increasing the nutes from 1.8 to 1.9 and then 2.0 grams per part. After 2 grams per part I started noticed what looks like a tiny bit of nute burn on the tips. I backed it back off to about 1.85 grams as that was where they seemed to perk up previously. All the tops seem to be progressing nicely, just starting to fatten up. The smell is a light lemony floral kind of smell and its getting stronger by the day. Ive also been working on a self watering system using a DIY kit from amazon and some custom python scripts to constantly monitor the moisture level of the cubes. Still in the testing phase though,.

Not a whole lot has changed since last week. The nugs are getting fatter, the smell is getting stronger and Im getting more and more impatient. 3 more weeks I keep telling myself. Started playing around with white balance settings and some different filter lenses for my phone, as well as a 20x macro lens. Wish it was just a bit more magnification, but was still able to get some cool trichome shots. There is some discoloration happening around the edges of the leaves, mostly the top ones, that I am not sure what is causing it. Im thinking it might have been nute burn so Ive backed off a bit more on the nutes to see if it makes a difference, but im also wondering if theres some salt uildup in the blocks due to them not fully saturating the bigger block when watering, due to the smaller block on top and not wanting to make a mess. There is also what looks like a lightening of the leaves directly under the light. They are still green, just not as dark as the leaves on the outer edges of the grow. The leaves have also started cupping up a bit so I backed off my light to 750W. Im thinking with my current setup 1000W at this stage is a bit too much. I plan on moving my light higher on the next grow but right now with how everything is hung it would be a PIA to try to move it higher so Im just going to leave it and turn it down a bit. I also noticed they are not drinking as much, remaining heavier and heavier each day at the same time which led me to watering later and later at night to compensate. I got to a point where I couldnt stay up any later to water them and they were still pretty heavy by 1am so I decided to try leaving one of them overnight without watering. It went through the extra night just fine so I did the same with all 4 on the next feeding. Unfortunately, my little fan below the canopy was pointed slightly toward one of the my cubes and it ended up drying out on me. Next day that one plant was droopy. It came back fine after watering, but within a couple days I noticed the white hairs were all turning red on the one plant that was underwatered. Im thinking the stress caused it to start ripening pre-maturely. Glad its only one but I just hope it continues to grow along with the rest. This is the reason Im building a self watering system using moisture sensors. It wont be ready in time for this grow, but the next one will be fully automated and I wont have this issue again. Overall though, very happy with how things are going. Already starting to think about what strain or strains I want to grow for my next run. If all goes well the next 3 weeks I should have enough bud to keep me going until the next harvest. Cant wait :)

Hello everyone, hope youre all doing well. This week was a bit of a challenge in a couple ways. Ive started dropping my base nutes, started adding a PK booster later in the week as I dropped the base nutes. My top fan leaves in the centre still look a little crispy but at this point Im not sure I can do anything about it, and overall my buds look very nice to me. They are swelling and putting on weight and the trichomes look good. The challenges were related to the fact that the weather is taking a turn for the cold, as low as -18C at night and -12 during the day. Growing in a heated shed, this poses... not a problem pe se, but a challenge as Ive had to really keep an eye on my temps, adjust the thermostat settings on my extractor fan, adjust my HRV speed, adjust the damper controlling how much air goes outside vs into the roof of the shed to heat it, all on an almost daily basis. Now, after a few days of temps below -10C. the air is getting dryer and Im having to adjust my dehumidifier as well. Keeping to my target temp has been fairly easy, but matching that with my target RH has been a struggle. Just the other night it was getting as low as 36 and 37%HR and I had to turn off the dehu almost completely for a while to get it back above 45%. Im now hovering between 45 and 50% and expect it to get easier. So long as the temps stay low and the outdoor RH stays low I can turn off my dehu and just vent when it gets too high in the grow room, but Im definitely considering a humidifier for future grows so that I can both add and remove RH as needed. That and a closed system might be worth looking into. Heading into the home stretch now though. Cant wait for harvest 😁🙏🙏!!!

Well folks, we got a few bananas :( Its ok though. The first sign of bananas came right at the end of the week. This late into flower with only flush to go, im not too worried. It is a shame though. Such a nice big plant. And, pretty too. They havent shown much sign of any color but green up until now and suddenly as the fade is coming on theyre getting an almost reddish purple tingle to the edges of the leaves, along with a nice yellowing fade. Cant wait for harvest next week 😄