Star Krunch - Night Owl Seeds 2020 Drop

Planted this Star Krunch along with a Galaxy Brain in the same 2x4 tent. I picked up Mango Sunrise, Star Krunch, and Galaxy Brain packs during the Halloween 2020 drop and wanted to plant all 3, but wasn't sure how big these gals would get, so opted to only try one of each. My last run (the Barney's Farm Glue Gelato and Fast Buds Sour D) had very little smell and taste throughout the grow. The cure also had almost no smell and taste. The buds grew huge though, so I'm hoping to match that. I assume I did something wrong last time, so I decided to change a few things. First, I upgraded my lights to the 240w QB light from Kingbrite. Second, I bought a RO filter instead of using dechlorinated tap water. I also bought Real Grower's Recharge and the plan is to use the Fox Farm nutrients when the plants need it instead of following an arbitrary schedule. The medium is the same as last time - 50/50 mix of Fox Farm's Ocean Forest and Coco Loco soils. I'm thinking that the previous grow may have had temps too high which degraded the smell and taste. The cure may have been a bit too rapid as well. With the lessons learned from last grow, I'm going into this grow with wonderful Night Owl genetics and an upgraded setup, so I'm expecting this to come out much better.

I planted her on the edge in order to have more room to train her across the pot. The last grow went WAY too bushy and I think that's partly because I planted in the middle and ran out of room to train her. Next week, I'm going to start aggressively training her so she pretty much grows horizontally. So far, just feeding her plain RO water without adjusting pH or adding nutrients.

On 12/3 (Day 17), I split 1.5 gal of RO water with 1/2 tsp of Recharge between her and the other plant in the tent. I'm hoping this starts building a microbes early. I'm also aggressively applying LST as of Day 17. I'm hoping that exposing some of the lower sites early will help with the training.

She's got a nice, light funky smell. Not quite as funky and terpy as the Galaxy Brain in the same tent, but still a great scent. This is already leaps and bounds better than my previous grow and I'm unsure if it is genetics or any of the other changes I made. She's really liking the LST and bushing out. Lots of bud sites are showing and I'm hoping she gets as big as the previous gals! I gave her a little bit of nutes to hopefully jumpstart that stretch.

Just some more LST as she fills out the tent. Really starting to get some nice funk off of her and her sister. Glad the carbon filter is still working!

Added some Big Bloom to the mix to try to correct what I thought was a deficiency. Trichs are REALLY coming out and I'm so excited to see this much this early. Apparently, I only took one photo this week of this girl. Sorry about that! I'll try to make up for it next week..

Recharge and RO water only this week. That smell is amazing so far! Since I'm not adjusting pH, I wanted to test the runoff. The runoff was around 6, so I think I'm good to keep doing what I'm doing. The aggressive LST has really came through with all of the bud sites. I feel like I'm seeing about DOUBLE the trichs from the Galaxy Brain, but the Galaxy Brain's smell is so incredible. I noticed that I accidentally had the timer on "always on" ... so now I fixed it and the lights are at 20/4.

I'm seeing some extra yellowing, so I added a slightly heavier feeding. I hope this helps her bounce back a bit and darken up. Every week, I feel like I need to comment how good this smells and looks. :D

Gave her another good feeding, but I'm starting to think she's getting close. I'm thinking about giving her plain water, molasses, and recharge only for the next couple weeks and see if she bulks up and finishes, or if she starves for more food. I pulled out the microscope and loupe. I'm seeing a mix of everything so it's definitely not ready .... **yet** ... maybe #2moreweeks?

I decided to go with water-only feedings this week. I'll check her trichomes next Saturday, or the end of NEXT week, Day 75 and we'll see if I should continue to flush or pull her then. If she's not ready, I'll check trichomes weekly until she's where I want her. I do believe the harvest window is open now, but I want to give her more time to mature. Feel free to comment if you think she needs to go more than a week or two after this week ends. I'd hate to take her down too early. The Galaxy Brain in the same tent looks about 2 weeks away from where this plant is. Last grow, I think I made the mistake of pulling both plants at the same time when one was clearly not ready. It was done mostly due to not having space to dry, but now I have a 4x4 being delivered and can separate the plants. She's looking MIGHTY frosty, super dense in some places, and I'm hoping to get 80g or more from her. Only downside is that she's about 1/3 the height of my previous grow, so I'm probably overestimating what I'm going to get. I picked up some Grove Bags for the cure since I'm not comfortable using humidity packs (they always mistreat the flower in my experience). The Grove bags are engineered to keep your flower at 58%-62% humidity and not require burping, so we'll see how well it does. I figure it can only help by dummy-proofing the curing process. The idea, as far as I know, is to take your dried flower, fill the bag, and seal. The bag does the rest (when it comes to the cure). First time trying it, so we'll see how it goes. If anyone has experience and DOES NOT recommend it, let me know ASAP before I mess up my whole harvest :D

After seeing mostly cloudy trichs and a few ambers here and there, I decided to put her in complete dark on day 73. By the end of day 75, I figured she was ready for the chop. Looking back at this, I probably could have let her go another week or two, so with that in mind, I'm going to let the Galaxy Brain in the tent I pulled her from keep going.

No smoke report yet, but the smell is FANTASTIC. Really has a pungent skunky and gassy smell. I'm really looking forward to see how it cures. She yielded about 87.5g, but 18.3g was really mostly sugar leaves and 3-4 larfy buds. That leaves 69.19g of dank smokable bud. The way I chopped her up, I didn't really get any good nugs that were good for "nug porn" photos, but I'll try to get something again after the cure goes for a couple weeks. I stuck exactly 28g into a heat-sealed Grove bag and I'm really curious to see how that comes out. I'm going to try to wait until 3/5 (TRY!) to open it and compare it against 28g in one of the jars. I'm really digging the idea that they're static free and regulate the RH without any sort of packet to steal the flavor.