1st Grow Ever

Started seeds by soaking in water for about 18 hours. I had the three stains in different glasses so I could identify them, however my cats got into the grow tent and knocked over the table I had them on. Saved the seeds but now I have no idea whats what. After soaking planted them in 3" CowPots with FF Happy Frog potting soil (no amendments to soil). They all popped in 2-3 days, however one needed help getting the husk off itself and opened very low the soil (maybe planted too deep?).

OK this week was a little tough. I think I nearly killed them. I was not paying attention to PH of my water so I got some up and down so I could PH my water. The bottles give no indication of how much to add, since I was mixing up a gallon of water and starting with 8.4PH water I would splash some in. Bad idea, that caused PH to plummet to sub 4. So what did I do?? I of course splashed some of the UP into the pot, now it was back above 8. Then I decided I might want to be a little more measured with the dosing so I grabbed a straw to use as a pipette and added drops at a time. I eventually got the water back down to 6 and watered. Fast forward a few days and my plants have been drooping. Was not sure why. I was not over or under watering. Thinking the likely culprit is that water with a ton of PH up and down in it, I decided at the end of week 2 to flush with DI water and repot a little early in the 3 gal smart pots.

Middle of week three. Plants have recovered from their flush. Still have not watered after re-potting (day 4). Not sure if I am beginning to see signs of deficiency in one plant, leaves look a little pale and maybe even a bit yellow. Will watch, with luck the roots will get some food from the organic soil in the new pot once they branch out. 4-12 Watered and fed - 1qt each plant, Canna Veg 15ml/gal, Canna Rhizotonic 10ml/gal (added as I think I might have burnt roots last week). PH adjusted 6.3 Plants overall finished the week in much better shape than they started the week. My little plant seems to have gotten a little LED burn ( It tried to lower the light and put in on full spectrum instead of leaving it on Veg mode, I was trying to compensate for the slow last week, hindsight, bad idea.)

Getting to the end of week 4. Plants are doing well now, really starting to develop. I believe I can figure out what strain is what now (cats got in my tent and knocked over my labeled glasses when soaking seeds). Looks like a watering plan of 1qt every three days is working. From checking others grow logs, its seems I will need to start looking for signs of flowering on these autos.

Noticed my first signs of pre-flowers at the beginning of this week. Shifted the LED light output, was at full blue, now turned on the reds at 40% strength. Time for a watering. I picked up some Cannazym and Canna Boost to try and maximize what I will get out of these babies since I screwed up week 2 and basically lost it from a growth perspective. I will have to water again toward the end of the week, will wait and see how they take this feeding to decide if they get food in the next watering. Getting to the end of week 5. So far I only see flowers developing on two of the four plant. Given that these are autos, I am going to move forward and continue with the light on full power, red, blue and full spectrum. I have been feeding at this rate twice at week now. Three of the plants seem to be happy with it, however my dwarf showed signs of nutrient burn so I had to flush it mid week. The dwarf will only get PH water from now on as needed to I see some good recovery than maybe some food at half the rate of the others. The tent is starting to get a slight smell when first opened 😁. Pictures for this week are beginning and end of week (I rotated the pot clockwise one spot so I can keep a close eye on my best two.)

Mon. Start of week 6, watered the dwarf with Cannazym and Rhizotonic at 8ml/gal each (1qt of water added). This is an attempt to treat the nute burn she is dealing with, lets hope it works. I hope to get something from her. The rest of the group got fed per the nutrients list. The two tall ones are growing at almost an inch a day now. Tent temp is down from last week as I added some ventilation to my room the grow tent is in, the heat from the tent was building up too high room now that the light is at full power. Temps seem more manageable now. Wed. Watered all plants with plain PH 6.1 water. 1qt. each. Plants are growing strong. Measuring them all daily, anywhere from .5 to 1.2 inches a day. Fri. All plants are growing fast .5 inch to 1.5 inches per day. Fed everyone today. Upped the veg food to middle of what Canna recommends. The others additives are all on schedule. As I understand the schedule I need to keep the veg nutes up until the stretch stops than switch to the Canna Flora. I have done more research into the spots all over the dwarf plant and while inspecting the other plants I noticed some of the same spotting, All of it seems to be from around the time I PH shocked the roots during week 2. I now suspect that the event is passed. The spots are not spreading and the growth from the last couple weeks has no signs of deficiency due to the PH issue. The dwarf took longer to recover but even its new growth does not seem to have any spots, it has also grown a bit in the last week. 😎 Sun. End of the week. This has been a good week for growth, they all stretched nicely. The tall one went from 13 to 21 inches, the other tall from 11 to 16, the middle child went from 6 to 10 bushy inches and the dwarf still small went from 4.5 to 7 inches. This really makes me wonder how things would have gone if not for week two and my PH screw up. Now I am waiting to see when the stretch stops so I can switch to flowing nutes.

Mon - Start of week 7. Just watered and fed the plants. Finally got around to leveling the plants off so they can all share the same level of light. Last week was the first full week of stretch, they almost doubled in size. They now are about 22", 16" 10.5" and 8" It will be interesting to see how much more they grow. Wed. - Noticed a bit of yellow and brown spots on leaves of all plants, none in newer growth, all in the bottom 1/3rd of the plants. I suspect that the PH recommend by the CANNA feeding schedule 5.8 - 6.2 might be a little low causing PH lockout. I suppose this could be an actual Mag or Cal deficiency but as I use tap water left out for 48+ hours, and my water has a moderate hardness I do not think I need to add anything, just get PH up to the 6.3 - 6.8 range. I watered today with no nuts just with PH 6.5 water. Will keep an eye out for new spots. I am photoing the plants and studying them to see if there are any new ones. Friday - Fed with nutes in 6.5PH water. Plants still growing at 1 to 2 inches per day. Not positive but it seems the signs of Calcium deficiency are still there, noticing more brown/ yellow spots. I believe the PH is under control at this point, so I can only assume the issue is an actual calcium deficiency. Will add some Cal/Mag at next watering. Sun - End of the week, watered with no nutes, only Cal/Mag at 1.3 tsp per gal. Fri - Did not notice new spots, plants are still growing at about an 1 - 2 inches a day. Fed with PH 6.5 nutes per schedule.

Cut hole at top of door to room where tent is located so I could put a window fan in it, I have this blowing out the hot grow room air to try and fight off the rising spring temps. Sun - Added about 1 1/3 tsp of cal/mag to todays PH 6.5 water. Tue - Watered plants with 6.5 PH water, also checked PH of effluent water, it dropped about .2 from each plant. Water may still be a little acid, which could have been my problem with leaves. Next watering I will bump the PH up to 7 of the feed water to try and pull it up a little. I trimmed the dead leaves from the plants so I can watch the progression better. Thur - Fed plants per schedule with 6.5 PH, going light at 1/2 Canna's chart since saw signs of burn after feeding last week. Two tall plants looking strong even after pruning damaged leaves. Bushy one had 1200ppm effluent, may need some extra water on next watering to help push more of the salts out. The dwarf is now as tall as the busy one, seems to be recovering although still needs some TLC. Sun - Water with plain tap at 6.4 PH. Stretching seems to be coming to an end, they are down to 1/4 to 1/2 inch per day. 1/2 nutes may have been pushing it a little, I see some barely noticeable burnt tips on upper new growth. Will drop to 1/4 feed schedule on feeding days.

New week, plants are doing well, flowers are progressing nicely. Guessing I still have about a month before harvest, will be interesting to see how fast these autos race to full bloom. Wed - watered with 6.5PH water. Thur - noticed what I believe is a Cal deficiency on my plant this morning. Picture from 5-21 shows no signs, I need to pay more attention every day for this stuff. Added 1/2 tsp of CalMag in a qt of water, hope that fixes it. Don't want anything messing with these nice flowers that are developing. I had similar signs on leaves a couple weeks ago, CalMag seemed to fix the problem. Even though I am using tap water, I think I need to add a regular weekly does of CalMag to my food.

Lesson learned last week, underfeeding is bad. I think I underfed and shifted to flowering nutes too late. All plants seemed to be suffering from P deficiency maybe low calcium too. I am still not too good at reading leaves. PH control is good. I am adjusting feed/water to 6.3-6.5PH, effluent water is 6.2-6.5 so I think any issues due to messed up PH are behind me. I think feeding and then not feeding for one or two waterings may not have been ideal. I believe the same food spread out all the time is better, getting the plants a constant supply of food. Instead of 10ml/gal in one feeding, than none in the next, 5ml/gal continually would seem to make more sense. Sadly due to trimming most of the fan leaves that were damaged from the PH issues weeks ago, when the nutrient deficiency hit the upper leaves suffered, or due to an immobile nutrient deficiency, now way to tell now. Mon - Fed with nutes per schedule at 6.4-6.5PH. Wed - Fed with nutes per schedule at 6.5-6.6PH. Thur- Hard to tell but plants seem to be still suffering from nute issues. I noticed yesterday that the effluent water was low, at about 6.0. Maybe the issue is PH problems with the soil again. Will not feed on next water with just 7.0 PH adjusted water and check effluent again. Fri - water only, adjusted to 6.9PH, checked runoff PH and PPM. One plant was a bit low at 6.4 which leads me to believe that one could be suffering from PH lockout. The PPMs of runoff were all a bit high (water in at 350ppm). I was 650, 950, 950 and 1250. I think I will flush on next watering to get that down. Sun - Fed with nutes (10ml/gal Terra Flores, 10ml/gal Cannazym, 10ml/gal Boost) pH'd to 6.0. Talked with my local grow shop guy, I may have been PH'ing my feed water wrong. I was aiming for 6.8 as from what I have read that is the proper PH for soil. However, according to the Canna schedule I should be shooting for 5.8 to 6.2. Seems counter-intuitive, but this is my first grow so lets see how it goes.

I checked the tricomes this past weekend, they are still clear but I am thinking based on pistils and time from seed these will be ready for harvest in a week or two. I am thinking I will give one more feed and then water to the end. That seems to be the majority of the wisdom I have found on the net when using chemical fertilizers. Tue - Watered with 6.4PH adjusted plain water. Fri - Watered with 6.4PH adjusted plain water. Sun - Fed the two tall ones with a light feed, they had lost most of their fan leaves when I trimmed them due to damage from PH fluctuations. I was not sure if they would make it to harvest without something. 5ml/gal of Terra Flores PH'd to 6.3. Plain water for the other two PH'd to 6.4 I have been checking the Tric's, some are cloudy lots of clear still (some plants are more clear than the others), no sign of any amber yet, except on damaged tric's. I plan to harvest when vast majority are cloudy, I don't want to wait for Amber since I am not sure how potent these plants will be do to the rough life they have had.

This is my last week of flowering. The crop is ready to harvest at the end of the week. I stopped feeding at the end of last week, only PH'd water from now till harvest. PH problems have showed up again and are difficult to control and was hard to spot due to all the leaf damage from the last time. Can't figure it out, this soil pulls low. I wont use FFHF again. I think I will try Canna Terra soil, that stuff is made for my nutes, on my next grow. Wed. - Watered with 6.7-6.8 PH'd water, runoff is still a few points lower than added water. Fri - Watered the two tall ones, the other two did not need water. PH of water 6.9, PH of runoff 6.5 and 6.2

Hard to judge the genetics on this one for two reasons. 1. This is my first grow so I have no other experience to draw from and 2. Even more of an issue, I had some difficulty keeping the PH is zone. The PH kept dropping in all my pots. This led to lockout at various stages and as they are autos, had no time to recover. Still have a few more seeds, hopefully as I get more experienced I will be able to learn more about this plant.

This was a tough grow, I experienced major PH issues with the soil. No matter how I tried to correct this, it always pulled low. I am guessing the FF Happy Frog did not have enough lime added. This plant was pretty hardy however, it stayed fairly small, only getting to about 16in tall, but was quite bushy and got one respectable cola on top. Really like this strain. It's a great way to unwind from a stressful day.

Those who have followed my grow know I had many issues keeping PH in line. I believe the soil lacked enough lime to buffer for the life of the grow. I also shifted to flowing nutes a little late as these were autoflowers therefore my experience was needed to judge when the flowering phase had started. Sadly, being my first grow, I was lacking in the experience department. Excited for my next grow given how well even this screwed up grow yielded bud.