Early Lemon Berry

Potted up to Nectar for the Gods soil #8 in solo cups. I make a bunch of small holes all over the inner cup and a couple small holes at the bottom of the outer cup for runoff. Seemed early to pot up but the roots looked ready.

Potting up seemed to slow them down a bit but I want to get them up to bigger containers as fast as the roots will warrant. Some curling on the first set of true leaves doesn't really worry me. Probably just from the fans or the temperature. It's been cold. It's happened on previous grows and didn't matter. Plus, the second set looks nice and healthy and the third set is popping out now. Everything going ok if a bit boring and slow, as usual for the early weeks.

Plants were starting to claw pretty bad, and I wasn't sure if it was an issue with nitrogen, watering, temp, etc. Potted up to 1 gallon cloth pots and they actually really needed it. Roots had grown more than expected given the relatively small size of the plants. I'm thinking that these might be shorter and bushier than I had expected. Anyway, the clawing is already showing a lot of improvement in the larger pots. I went with a mix of NFTG #4 and #8 soils, along with a little bit of worm castings. Also, I put in the recommended amount of NFTG One Shot (1 tb/gal?) and relatively small amounts of Recharge, Bokashi flakes and Mykos Mycorrhizae - I've got too much stuff and just like tossing in a variety of stuff when it doesn't seem like it will clash. And we'll be up to 5 or 7 gal pots soon enough anyway. Going to water with tea a little extra to see if that helps fully get rid of the clawing. I topped at the 5th node that was just coming in tiny. Might have done that early and have to clean up later but meh. This is a patient grow with me trying to remember how everything works. Sorry, I'm still getting the hang of color correction on the pics.

They're all looking nice now. Mostly just trying to get the roots to grow, so I can get to 5 or 7 gal pots. I got them nice and dry on day 28 and then they perked right up on day 29. Day 33. Everything is looking good. Thinking about transferring them to larger pots soon. I'm not in a rush to get through veg, but I want to get to 7 gal. I'll probably step directly to 7s or go 3->7. Still thinking about it.

I potted up to 3 gal. I'm going to take this veg grow slowly since I'm trying to play around with fewer plants and maybe scrogging. I really wanted to start growing again and didn't really plan it out entirely. Anyway, it was probably slightly early to pot up for two of them, but I much prefer getting into larger pots for various reasons and the biggest one was starting to show some very minor discoloration on a couple leaves - you can see it best in the second pic on the back plant's far right leaf. I'm not worried about it. I should start some light defoliation soon. The plants are very tight and bushy, which is nice but the leaves are getting a bit dense. I have two fans blowing on them lightly. So, the airflow is good but training is a little awkward. No big deal. The only real issue is that some of the branches are almost too dense to pinch easily - need to work on my grip strength.

Tried to use staples for training but didn't like them very much and had a break. So, I switched to orchid clips to see how it would work. Trimmed some leaves and they really exploded in growth - all of the lighter colored stuff. Anyway, I'll see what they do. I'm not in a rush. Guess I'll top again soon. Day 47. I topped some more and this orchid clip/stick training seems pretty ok. The staples were a bit harsh, or rather it was hard to be gentle with them and they kinda bent the branches more than I meant to. On the other hand, the clips are big enough that there's room for the branch to grow at an angle while still generally staying bent over. It's kinda fun although I think the clips are a bit wide and obviously inflexible. So, I went with the gardening gentle ties for the next rung. It's easier to get those on since they're narrower than a clip and then twist them to a good angle. Plus, they're not going to damage leaves as easily. If the plant was stretching more, the clips would be easier, but they're mostly pretty tight. Also, I finally remembered to set the white balance on my camera.

Progress has slowed down a bit but again, I'm growing them out slowly and am in no rush. I like veg, anyway. The training feels so harsh compared to past grows where I mostly just bent branches and let them bend back with a little topping. I am creating some nice structure. Hopefully, I didn't go too hard on the branch angles, but they look ok from a side perspective - kinda hard to see the angle from the top but I"m being lazy about side pics in the tent. Blue is oddly stunted relative to Purple and Red. I don't think I did anything different with it, like extra defoliation or anything. Red with the snapped branch is beating it out. Just plant variation, I guess. Anyway, it's all going well. Nice strong stem and the branches have thickened up some. I might be a little nicer with the watering schedule, but I really want those roots to grow, so I can get to 7 gal pots.

Probably just gonna go up to 7 gallons for fun now. It's so hard to tell when they're ready for this move, but I see roots poking out of the cloth pot, so it should be ok. I assume that I don't have fully formed root structures down there but I'm getting antsy to get to the final pot size. Plus, I'm trying to run through my existing soil, so I can justify getting fresh stuff. Anyway, training is going alright. I think that the grow has been slow because of how much defoliating I was doing. I dunno if this was really a mistake though. I'm happy going slow and training is a lot easier with slow growth and less crowded leaves. If I had a nice scrog setup, I could do things differently, but the tent sides are pretty blocked off, so options are sorta limited. I might try to string up a net haphazardly once they're in the 7 gal pots, but it depends on how it goes. My desire to get to 7 gal pots is currently competing with my desire to just get to the next grow. Flowering weeks are fun for photography but also kinda boring. I don't really want to adjust the various nute numbers (I like NFTG but it's so fiddly). Anyway, I'm just following the middle option (Greek) on their regimen charts

Talked myself out of pushing to 7 gal pots last week, so I'm gearing up to do it this week. They're drinking all of their water very quickly now. Kinda looking forward to flower after this long veg. Just have to read up a bit and refresh my memory on best practices for flowering. Still haven't had any significant problems. It looks like the broken branch area has finally filled in, and I think the plants are more or less the same size now.

Well, my next experiment in veg is a very lazy scrog setup. I have plans for a better one and was thinking about setting it up - no grand plans or anything, just a nice enough basic one - but then I got lazy and remembered that I had some spring clamps. So, I guess I'll see if that actually holds up. My extremely slow veg is finally wearing on me. I'm just gonna let the screen fill up if it will and if not, whatever. The plants look nice. I don't think I'd recreate too much about what I did in veg on this grow, but it's been fun and I think I learned some things about working with the plants for training. Definitely feel back in the swing of growing at this point. I still need to figure out how much water these monster 7 gal pots take. I gave them about 4-5 gal total, which is less than expected. They're definitely kinda small for the pots still, so I'll have to be patient with that. At least I don't have water very often right now.

Whoops. Thought that I had already posted this week. I'm still not really sure what I'm doing with this scrog. Kinda glad that I'm doing a super low effort janky screen for my first time. Not really sure if it will hold up but it's giving me a better idea of what I'd like to build in a good screen. These standard squares seem a bit too big and the net has a little too much stretch. I also should have placed the plants a little differently. However, part of that issue is just that they aren't stretching as much as I expected and the most stretch came from the least full plant. You can never really tell what's gonna happen, I guess.

Scrogging is still pretty odd but I guess it went better this second week of flower. I got out the longer lens for some closeup shots, which is like half of the fun during flowering for me. Looking forward to the flowers developing more and showing some fun color and whatnot. I feel like the flowers are developing quickly, at least compared to my past grows. Should be fun.

Flowers are coming in nicely. I stopped tucking branches into the screen right at the end of week two. This strain is supposed to flower relatively quickly but who knows. I'm enjoying taking pics, although white balancing could still be improved a bit. The screen with its janky clamps has held better than expected. I hooked some weights on to it to keep it from pushing up so easily. I'm looking forward to building a hopefully decent one for later grows, but this has gone ok. It would be nice to have a second screen layer but oh well, I've learned some lessons from it and it hasn't caused any problems. Flowers are coming in nicely. I'm keeping them fairly moist now, certainly more than during veg. Edit: The nutrient numbers are still not updated (I'm just using the NftG schedule) but I added in Aphrodite for flowering, as directed. Edit2: Updated the nutrient schedule. I think the numbers are even right-ish.

I feel like I messed up the flowering day numbering by one but whatever. Anyway, flowers are coming in nice. I realized that I hadn't done enough defoliation, so I tried to clean them up a bit. And they are cleaner but still awfully bushy. It's incredible how much these plants grow. The less fun part of this period is my perpetual nervousness during flowering. During veg, problems are almost fun because they give you something to fix, but during flowering, I'm just praying for smooth sailing. So, I tend to take a lot of photos and then fuss over them, looking for issues, wondering if small sugar leaves are actually bananas, etc. However, I think everything looks pretty ok so far. I threw in a super zoomed-in shot at the end to start staring at the trichomes, another thing to worry over - still have a ways to go, but I think this strain is supposed to finish flower relatively quickly. Anyway, I guess I should collect and organize gear for drying, trimming, curing and whatnot. Also, the buds have started to smell great. Strong, sweet tangerine aroma with some gas-ish stuff going on. Looking forward to it.

I think I just read the watering units on here correctly for the first time. Whoops. They're each taking 1 gal every other day right now. I feel like I should maybe increase this a bit and give water daily, but that feels like a lot. Anyway, things are going a little faster than expected. I'm already starting to see the stray brown trichome, although the percentage is still very low. The strain is described as selected for finishing flower quickly, so I guess I'll just keep a close watch on things. The aroma is very good. Strong candied tangerine rind with a hint of diesel. Very sweet and punchy. Can't wait for harvest. Also, I'm kinda amazed that this janky scrog net has worked so well. I removed some of the weights that I had attached, and it's really hanging in there. And I'm starting to dial back nutrients a bit, probably going to go by the late flower schedule from here on out. Edit: just updating some numbers that were off

Getting very close. Lots more brown pistils. Trichomes are coming along. Leaves are showing some yellowing - hopefully as a sign of late flowering rather than anything else. Anyway, it's all looking pretty good. It seemed like they started to mature quickly a few weeks ago and then everything slowed back down. So, I'm feeling pretty calm and just trying to think about how much I want to flush. NFTG folks seem less stressed about flushing than most. I've got my harvest setup ready to go. I know that I've got a fair amount of popcorn from my laziness with late trimming but it's ok. I can just throw some small stuff in my little hanging mesh drying rack, although I wish I'd bought a smaller one. Tons of pictures this week. My photography isn't all that great but for the sake of recording stuff, I'm using a D750 with a few Nikon lenses: 200mm F/4 AF-D for close-ups; 50mm F/1.4G, 35mm F/2D and 24mm F/1.8G to get some different perspectives on wide shots. It's fun to play with lenses during flowering. I've used flashes in the past mostly to correct the grow light color but I'm just getting close enough with in-camera white balance and light photoshop balancing.

Sorry for the delay. I haven't abandoned the journal. Just a bit slow with my photo editing. Week 7 was a bit frustrating. Some of the buds were showing signs that they were basically ready for harvest but others definitely were not. The plants were definitely a bit overcrowded here and I tried to do some light defoliation to address that. However, I can only access the tent via one side, so it was very difficult to reach some areas. I was sliding under that net, like I was working on a car or something. The level of aroma definitely amped up during week 7. I started to flush at some point during this week, per best practice recommendations from NFTG folks. I also ran into an issue with the watering schedule. I think one gal every other day was good when the plants were too dry, but it eventually turned into an overcorrection. I added an extra dry day and it seemed to even out ok. I did have some light leaf rot, but I think it was more from the crowding than the watering schedule. Ultimately, the roots looked fine.

I had to harvest a couple days later than intended (right after this flowering week 8 ended) but within a decent window. I feel like I usually err on the slightly early side when I'd really prefer this. Anyway, it looked about right by the percentage of darkening trichomes throughout the plants. Most of the buds that I've taken pictures of are further along than others. Decent amount of yellowing in the leaves, as the nitrogen and whatnot is getting low. Surprisingly, I only found one tiny spot of possible bud rot, just a single yellow area on one of the larger buds. I cut it out and it didn't even penetrate to the center of the bud, so no spread and maybe it was something else. Regardless, I definitely should have defoliated more earlier on in flowering. After looking up advice from other NFTG folks, I flushed for about a week and a half. Buds filled in and ripened nicely. I liked the scrog a lot, but it would be a lot easier if I had access to at least one more wall of the tent. Also, the janky scrog setup was totally fine. It still would be nice to have a better setup with a second level and whatnot, but no problems on this grow at least. Great aroma. Strong citrus, sweet tangerine rind with some gas. I trained them fairly hard, but they kept a nice low bushiness and a good even canopy. Also, lots of decently sized secondary buds from the scrog. Anyway, everything is drying now, so I'll post a harvest week soon.