Royal Dwarf Auto #1

Growing very slowly. 1 baby leaf curled down and has a white circle on it. I guess that circle is from coming out of the seed? First set of leaves looks healthy to me though, I guess :) I have the IKEA 15w LED at 25cm above the leaves and the 150w UFO 55cm. No stretching I guess. 5 days after germination above the soil the youngling is now 2,2cm (was 2cm at 3-4 days). 6 days: 2,6cm Day 8: second leaf pair grew a bit, height at 3,2cm Since the seed was planted in soil without nutrients I watered before day 8 with 60ml water with bio grow (1l water with 0,6ml biobizz grow, ph 6).

Week 1 ended with photos on day 7, but that’s after planting seed - not after actual germination. Photos of this week start with day 7, probably skipping 1 day of slow growth. Plant is looking good, no stretching, very stocky with a thick stem. Day 7: 3,5 cm Day 8: 3,9 cm I switched from the IKEA 15w growlight at 28cm (supported by 150w UFO at 50cm - just for the heat at light cycle during cold nights, I’ll definitely look in to an actual heating solution) to having only the 150W UFO at 32cm) Temp at light cycle around 24C with 65% RH on avarage. Since this is my first proper growth in a tent with a dwarf autoflower I’m still surprised how short and stocky this plant is. That’s why I lowered the UFO LED to 32cm from start of this week and keep an eye on problems. Might even lower it a little bit more. Since the seed was in potting soil surrounded by Light Mix I started with a very light nutrients addition to the water on end of day 6 (when the plant had 2 sets of normal single finger leaves). A quarter of the recommended feed for Biobizz Grow for week 2: Bio Grow 0,6ml / liter Feeding 50ml water every other day for day 6, 8 and probably day 10. From day 12 I might give more ml; weighing the pot after cycles to see when the water is gone. Day 9: Too busy measuring pot weight and pondering whether or not to water. Pot weight was still increasing, I think it sucked up some water from the drip dish, or it’s incredible root growth, haha. Morning day 9 (end of light cycle): 1310gr. Evening day 9 (3hrs after dark cycle): 1359gr. I don’t think it can grow 49gr. of plant and root mass in 12 hours, or? I stopped using the drip dish for humidity (i kept some water in there at a certain height so to pot’s feet would prevent it being sucked in to the pot). Hung up a tea moist towel for humidity now, in addition to a mini usb humidifier. Day 10: 4,2 cm Day 11: 4,9 cm Day 12: 5,5 cm ~ 6 cm Day 13/14: 6-6,5 cm I ended up slowly increasing the watering amount (day 12: 70ml, late day 13: 80ml and day 14: 100 ml.) in a way that the pot dried out in about 24-48 hours. The soil on top was completely dry to a light color, and 1 to 2 cm in it was a darker color soil; ever so slightly moist I figure, but not leaving wetness behind on my finger. Even up to day 14 the 100 ml. of water didn’t reach all the way to the bottom of this smallish 6,5 L pot. I one time sprayed the bottom with water (d 14) and later even let the bottom soak up a tiny amount just so the soil down below got slightly moist. Of to week 3 of vegetation with my very first attempt at LST, as a bonus: performing it on a very short and thick-stemmed auto dwarf!

Week 3 of vegetation: growing, noding, branching out, LST and more growing (ever so slowly). So far my adventure is slowly continuing, and I can’t resist looking at my plant every hour or often. Since my set-up if very manual and simple, the constant checking up is sometimes actually required. - because of very cold weather the temps dropped much lower than usual at dark cycle during the day (16-18 C) and even with the lights on in the middle of the night it affected the temperature negatively (only 22 degrees C or even lower). So I added a warm water jug/bottle to the tent (the blue thermos seen in day 15). - also, my plant has finally started to emit a faint noticeable light smell around day 15 and continues getting stronger. Very green smell at first, but getting more distinct already with no flowering in sight, great :) Day 15: 7 cm. Day 16: 8,5 cm and LST - upped the watering amount to 200ml on day 16, still not reaching bottom of pot. Next watering after that was on day 18. - LST on day 16 I’m glad it’s only one plant because I sure took my time doing my first ever LST (30-60mins, but with preparing and reading/watching in to the subject). It was quite challenging since the plant is so short and thick-stemmed, but it did have 3-4 internodes and already leaves and shoots or however you call that armpit growth every where. So much was already covered in shade I figured to just LST carefully and see what happens. Day 17/18: 9 to 10 cm, adjusted some LST wires and 200ml at day 18. - light height Since the plant slowly grew, the distance of the LED to the plant got to be 27 ish cm. Could the short distance maybe stunt the growth? I raised the light to 32 cm on day 18. See day 18 photos with comments. Now halfway at week 3, I’ll update this when the week is over in 3 days. Edit: 3 days later and it grew more and more bushy. On day 21 the smallest sing of flowering was visible.

So the start of week 4 came with the slightest hint of flowering. Took 3 days for it to be clearly visible. I hesitate to mark this a bloom week, so it’s still marked as vegetation on this growdiary. With all the LST I’ve been doing I’ve got a nice even, full and wide canopy going. The height given for the week is only 12 cm, with LST it dropped back to 10cm mostly at the start of the week but halfway through the plant started to bloom more clearly. Halfway the week the plant started to drink a lot more and show a lot more vertical growth as well. Yellow tips also started to show up on new growth, especially at the youngest of leaves on the highest cola branches. I thought it was light burn at first, but answers to my question here said overwatering. I guess it’s not overwatering per se that it had gotten too wet, but I think I could have ended up with nute burn because I watered to a dry pot too often because of only watering small amounts. And even though I almost used the 1/4th the amount of recommended nutes. I was afraid to water too much at once because of the small plant in relatively large pot for its size. But I watered with nutes almost every 36 hours or even fewer. I should’ve watered without nutes every other watering I guess. Next watering will be without nutes, but I have already raised the light from 32cm to 42 cm. Looking forward to mark week 5 as flowering phase!

First week marked as flowering! Even though the first signs showed up halfway week 4. Yellow tips are no longer showing up in new growth: - Got a proper PH and EC meter. Probably watered with too high PH (6,9-7) Watered on day 28 with 400ml with only half of that with nutes. Ph going in 6,4 with EC 450ppm and the small bit of runoff was PH 6,65 with 690ppm. Trying to lower the PH with next watering (day 30). At the end of the week on day 34 watered 550ml with low amount of nutes (480 ppm) and got runoff with a PH 6,53. Getting there. Defoliated a few leaves (6). The dwarf grew from 20cm to 29,5 cm during this week!

Week 6, added Biobizz top max according to their schedule. Great to see so many pistils growing and the smell is strengthening. A lot of growth the past week and this week, the height went to 36 cm and down to 30cm due to LST. In hindsight (writing this in week 8,5) I should've spread the large cola stems even further outwards and guide one/the big main cola to the center, I did try a bit but couldn't see what stems to move to the center.

Another week gone by, still growing in height, from 32cm to 36cm over the week (of course LST kept the height in check). Upped the nutes a little bit, most importantly the ratio. With this small pot I have to water often though, and that makes it that I give too many nutrients - even when giving 50% of the recommended scheduled nutes. I'm slowly figuring out that I should just water without nutes in between, but I have read it's better to give nutes constantly but then with lower amounts. I'll try to do that, I wonder how long the mixed water with nutrients can be kept though, because after a day the mixture starts to smell pretty funky.. I still don't trust my cheap LED to give good rays of light, but since I'm pretty sure the burned tips back from week 3 or 4 were from nute burn - not light burn - I lowered my light a tiny bit. Still, I have the feeling that even though the light needs to be closer, if I do it'll damage my plant somehow.

Week 8: Day 50 - 56 I really wonder if my buds are growing well enough. They feel dense, but it's mostly pistils and sugar leaves it feels like. The actual buddy balls, the bracts I think they're called are really thin and/or small. Although from the start to end of this week I can see more bracts really forming. I'm just really dreading the '2 more weeks' meme, because that's what it feels like it's going to be. With the slow start at germination, with the slow and short growth, together with the stunt I probably caused with the nute tip burn halfway through veg (and probably poor feeding during flowering weeks 5,6,7 as well) I guess it'll be around 10 week when it's finished. All the trichomes look very translucent still, but at the end of week 7 and this week more and more pistils are turning amber orange. I think I have to assume the bracts stay small, and it'll be hard to use my microscope to inspect the trichomes on the bracts for coloration, since so much is pistils and sugar leaves. Just some random notes: PPM Nutes + water in was averaging from: 480 - 700