1st grow - Stone and CBD

So, about week 1 of my grow. My babies are growing, I can say that. On the other hand, it seems they are a little bit on a smaller size (at least compared to other people's pics). They got to about 5cm now, and all have added a pair of leaves. They are nicely serrated. Some already started working on their 3rd pair. Huhu happy days. I am not watering them too much, weighting the pots and checking the simple 3-in-one meter (the one that measure soil pH, illumination, and moisture). When I do water, I simply add water until it starts dripping from the pot, wait a bit until all dripped, and then place them back in their compartment. Since one of the BLs started curling her leaves as well as turning it brown I decided to put a transparent plastic bottle over it. It might be the effect of a heater. I also added a small ventilator to the room but unfortunately it runs out of batteries fairly quickly so I will need to fix that problem and make some amendments so I can connect two Ds instead of two AAs there. It might last a few days then. If all goes well (i.e. if they reach about 10+cm) I will replant them next week and move them to the grow room with the LED lights. I want to add some nuts in their soil and give them bigger pots. And now for the sad part: - the two seeds that eventually cracked (later than the first batch I mean) don't seem to grow now. Although one, Mimosa Lemon, did manage to get out of the soil, it is now stagnating. The Northern Lights one didn't even manage that. Not happy - I gave up on the remaining three seeds (one Mimosa Lemon and two Northern Lights). None cracked so I took them off the paper towel, however, as I didn't want to just throw them away I put them in the pot. All three in the same one. None managed to get out so far so if nothing happens in the next two weeks I will make room for something else. Update: So, I've noticed the other day some yellow spots on my BL No. 2 as well as very light green colour and I suspect it is the result of a nitrogen deficiency. Of course I am not sure about it but nevertheless I decided to add some nuts into my water. I used 15ml per 4 liter of All purpose Miracle Gro Soluble Plant food with N-P-K values 24-8-16. I watered all of the plants with the solution and my leaves all turned much greener. Fingers crossed I am not wrong about this.

OK, so here we are, week number 2. Some interesting developments in the last week. As I said in my update in week 1, few of my plants developed some strange discolouring and in general all being on the light green side I decided to add some nuts in there. The result, spots remained (I think they will stay there regardless of what I do) but the colour turned darker green. I think I didn't overdo it. Unfortunately I am still waiting for my pH meter so I can check the draining and see how I stand in that regard (at the moment I am only using strips for the water pH check). ML No. 1 is developing her third set of leaves and it has five petals now. Cool I have decided to repot my girls into their final pots. 11l fabric one, and because of that they had to move out of their initial space and into their final room. I decided to have a small one because I then use less electricity to heat and illuminate everything. So, the repotting. I added vermiculite (about 5%) to my initial soil mix as well as mix in the RQS Easy Boost Organic Nutrition pallets and some John Innes No. 2 Potting compost (maybe 3%), however I have put the original soil mix (i.e. the one without the nuts) at the bottom of each pot. I recon that the nuts will flow down and get caught in that and not get wasted since there are no roots that would suck them up at this moment, but the water still dissolves them and carries them down. I also watered them to only about one third the distance between the plant and the edge of the pot in order to force the girls to stretch their legs deep into the soil. At the end I used about 1dcl of water per plant in which I dissolved the Miracle Gro plant food so they have something to eat when they explore their new surrounding. I surely hope they will like it 😃 On top of that I fimed four of my plants, all three MLs and one BL however I haven't started my LST yet since I consider them a bit on the small size. The ML No. 1 is 10cm high, The remaining MLs as well as two BLs are 7cm high, and one BL (No. 3 - the strange looking one) is 6cm high. So not much to grab yet. Hopefully I will start doing that next week. I also plan to start flooding them with the LED light as well since they are still fed with two twin batten lights each using 43W and providing 5200lm of 6500K light only. Update: 24th Feb - I guess I need to start talking in days since things are beginning to move. In that respect it is day 21 since the seeds were put in water for germination (that is before being put on the paper towel - see my G week for details). Day 21: I checked the girls today to see how they are doing after being transferred into their final pots yesterday. I must say, they are doing great. All of them look good, and they all gained some height already with ML No.1 adding 3cm in 24 hours. Nice. So, after seeing their great progress I decided to do the LST on the biggest one. She is now about 13cm tall so I did a slight bending and also provided support at the bottom. I hope it will take it nicely and deliver some good results. I will start LST on others when they grow a bit more. No watering since the pots are still heavy but that was expected.

Ok, here we go, week 3 - still vegetation stage. Bad news, I managed to bump my hand and drop watering can on one of my girl's head. It broke about 3cm from soil and the top part dried over night. Had to cut her at the break but as the lower part still seems green I decided to let her stay in the soil and room until drops dead. I watered her a bit more and I am holding my fingers crossed to see her recover. For the rest of them, they are starting to stretch. My ML No. 1 is the most vigorous one. She is closing on 20cm now and grew two branches from her fimed point. I am tying her down and letting her grow horizontal. ML No. 2 is going well, she is growing although at slower pace than her No. 1 sister, reaching about 15 cm. My ML No. 3 is unfortunately the one who got knocked so she is now about 3 cm high. Moving to my Black light girls, they are all approximately the same height, about 11 cm. Except one of the BLs they are all LS trained (I will do the same to BL No. 3 when she grows strong enough, she seems a little bit on the weak side). I have also changed the lights in the room now, moving from FL to COB LEDs. The illumination jumped very much now and that might be the reason why they started to grow much faster now. I have finally received my 3-in-1 pH digital meter so I can asses the watering pH as well as PPM (EC) of the overflow (i.e. the water that comes out of the pot after watering). I see I didn't get my watering pH just right, instead of 6.4 (as I read on my pH strips) it is actually 6.6. A bit on the higher side so I might consider getting it more acidic. I will see what I'll do). On the other hand my PPM (EC) are very high. The EC reads 3.5 and my PPM 2630, and after watering and good overnight sleep it now dropped to 1805. My run-out water also lower pH than the watering one does, it stands at 6.1. All in all I can say that my babies are growing nicely, they are stretching by the day and gain about 2 cm in 24 hours. I have no idea if that is high or low but for now I am satisfied with that. And the big news (at least for me) is that I am starting to smell them (it). I think my ML No. 2 is starting to have that heavenly scent. I just noticed it the other day when I moved them around and when I came closer to smell it was mostly gone, so I guess there is not much of it yet, but HAHA, going in the right direction. Any other news to report, oh, ok, Until yesterday (i.e. day 31 from putting them in the pots) I used 176kWh of electricity and spent 30.85 EUR for that. Better be something at the end. To get to this number I ran lights, heater, fan, and extraction fan. Lights are on 20/4 cycle, heater runs when needed, fan runs constantly, and extraction fan is on 3 minutes and off 20 minutes 24 hours a day. Update, Saturday, 6.March 2021 - Now two of my BLs (1 and 2) are also emitting a slight smell however, ML No.1, the biggest and most vigorous one is still without one. Waiting :-)

So, here we are, fourth week of vegetation, fifth from start of germination. The ladies are doing great. ML No.1 is the biggest one, reaching 38cm in height with many branches. Though thin they have lots of tops coming out. My general impression is that she is very willowy looking, thin and high. I have to tie all the branches down so that she isn't too high compared to the others. ML No. 2 on the other hand, reaching 17cm is less than half her sister size, very stocky, having one main stem whereas other branches are short. Her leaves are also relatively wide compared to her sister's which are very thin. I might have two phenos here so she might not be No.1's sister but maybe half-sister 😉. Nevertheless I love them both very much 😍 BLs on the other hand, look very much the same. They are 16, 18, and 17cm high, very stocky with lots of leaves. Their appearance looks very compact. The smell also differs between the babies. The strongest one is coming from ML No. 2 whereas ML No. 1 has almost no smell, it actually smells more like regular grass. BL No. 2 has the strongest one among the BL family, however it is still less than the ML No.2's. The remaining BLs have weak smell. If I check the tops with my microscope, there is a lot of bright white hair on all of them, the most pronounced one would again be ML No.1. Although I don't know if that means they are entering the flowering stage I would say that if they are not, it is coming. ML No. 1 also has some white hair coming out of her tops, so fingers crossed. I have problems making a microscope photo (or even focusing on the top, but I guess that has something to do with my inexperience, so will keep trying and eventually there will be a proper photo of them). They are starting to drink more taking about 0.7 liter of water a day. I am watering them every two to three days so I put something like 1.8l in each and very little comes out. I don't give them any additional nutrients apart from the one they already have in the soil (Easy Boost Organic Nutrition) and I only added a bit of N to BL. No.2 since she started to have some yellowish streaks down her leaves. It worked the first time so I thought it might help (and it did). As I said in one of my previous posts I am doing the LST on ML No.1 because of her height. Her central stem is getting thick (about 1cm now) and looks relatively woody so not much to do there, but her side branches are thin and I can bend them easily. I am also LSTing the others but since they are so short there is no real need for that. I fimed BL No. 1 and 2 and ML No. 2 so will see how it goes. I am also removing some leaves, mostly the ones that are blocking the light to the rest of the plant but otherwise I am not doing anything drastic. I might do the lollipopping on ML No.1 since it seems she might want that and also allow me to do it whereas the others, unless they develop some longer side branches will not permit it. Sadly ML No.3 is gone, nothing came out of the remaining part so I will get rid of the pot.

Ha, now I know why I should write three (well two actually) diaries. ML No.1 is now flowering whereas the others are still in their vegetation cycle. Well, we all learn all the time and next grow I do and if there are more than one strains I will write separate diaries 😊 But, let me focus on this one first. So, as I said, ML No.1 is now flowering, its branches are no longer coming out of the main stem symmetrically but alternating. As I read (remember I am a novice and have no idea) this means the plant is officially flowering. She has now reached 60cm in height, still very thin branches (apart from the main stem) allow me to do the LST, bending her down since she is overgrowing the others and I have problems keeping the lights at some kind of equal distance from the plants. I did a bit of a defoliation last week on the girl although her leaves are very thin and didn't actually block too much light from lower laying flowers. There are many branches coming out of her, and my fiming (a few weeks back) resulted in two main branches (and not four as I have hoped for 😒). Thin branches allow me to bend them and spread them around so everyone gets enough light. I have also used 2ml/l of BioBizz Bio-bloom organic fertilizer on her to give her that extra boost during this (at least from my point of view the most important) period of her life. ML No. 2 on the other hand is now 23cm high (just over one third of her sister's), looking quite stocky with less branches and wider leaves. I also performed defoliation on her since her leaves were blocking a lot of light from her inner parts and I was afraid that the air circulation wasn't that good. Apart from that I didn't do anything else with the girl. BL No.1 is the tallest of the three BLs. She is now 25cm high, stocky, with broad leaves so I did the defoliation on her as well. The process revealed that she has a few thick branches which are still springy enough to be bent. So I did LST on her, tying the branches down and opening her up to the light and breeze. BL No.2 and BL No.3 are both 20cm high, with BL No.3 being somewhat tinier. I took some leaves off of both of them to allow for some air circulation but otherwise didn't do anything else. They are getting a bit more thirsty, especially ML No.1 which now drinks about 1l of water a day. The others have increased their consumption just slightly to about 0.8l per day. I guess from now on I will only be watching them and supporting their growth with whatever they want or need (i.e. water and nuts) and I will not do any more defoliation (at least any substantial one). I will be, though, tying branches down and spreading them to allow for better illumination as well as air circulation. If needed I will also add some support for the babies, especially ML No.1 since she looks so thin, and if she develops some serious buds, this could merit such a step. So this is it for now, if something happens during this week I will be of course updating the post, otherwise, see you in week 6. Happy St.Patrick day Ireland 😍😎 and to the rest of us, grab a Guinness so we can all relax and wait for the smoke. OK, update, still week 5, two days after my initial post, some developments need to be put in here. So ML No.1 grew another 10 cm and is now 70cm high. Although in her flowering period she is still stretching, and she is stretching a lot. Love it. I am spreading her branches as much as I can to give them equal light but since the main stems (two after fiming) are so long they need to be tied to their neighbors' pots 😊. Although I find the textile pots very good I see their drawback in that they give when I tie the branches down and whenever I move them around, their shape changes and I have to re-tie. Ohhhh, sweet problems 😇. ML No.2 stretched from 23cm to 28cm, BL No.1 didn't add anything, but BL No.2 4 cm and BL No.3 3cm. And that in the last 48 hours. I hope they keep going. Still no flowering. I am also spreading branches of BL No.1 and 2, and ML No.2. They are all stocky and short and spreading them gives their inner parts some lights and fresh air. BLs again showed N deficiency so yesterday I added a bit of Water Soluble All Purpose Plant Food containing 24%N. They seem to like it. I didn't measure them yesterday but if N caused the stretch (I will again measure tomorrow) then I will keep feeding them with it. I am a bit worried with the drainage where PPM shows very high values (2000) but I will adjust if needed. Another update, today (+2 from the update) I noticed that two more babies, ML No.2 and BL No.1 started developing branches on one side only. So hopefully, if I didn't miss the opposite one on both of my girls, they are entering their flowering stage. That would be day 45 from putting my seeds in the water for germination. I must say, I didn't expect it to take that long, but better late then never 😌. If my observation is true, then only BLs No.2 and 3 remain vegetating. A quick observation on the appearances of my plants. As I stated a few times already, ML No.1 is tall but very thin. After yesterday's watering I think her inner branches grew and she became bushier, I have an impression there is a lot of her around. All the rest are very stocky and bushy and compact but as with the ML No.1 I have an impression there is more of them now. Kind of they are getting more full. Now, that may be the case because of my spreading them a bit, tying their branches down to give more light to their inner parts. If correct, I will have a problem now because I can't spread them more. Their side branches are short and I can only bend them so far and if their inner ones start coming out they will again be very bushy and full, just a bit wider. I probably should do something about it (I don't know, cutting some branches out) but I don't know what. I will have to check other diaries with similar looking plants to get an idea and drink from other people's experiences and knowledge.

Hi fellow growers, so week No.6 has just began now. Three of my girls are in flowering stage now. ML No.1 and 2 and BL No. 2, the two remaining BLs are still in veg stage although I have an impression they are moving into flowering now. ML No.1 has stopped growing for now although I think her branches are still getting longer. There is a lot of them, very thin, internodals between her leaves are long, leaves are very thin. She looks a lot like sativa with her bushy appearance. She is about 70cm high but that is hard to say since she is all twisted and bent down. The number of her flowers is steadily increasing and they are getting larger as well. She is drinking a lot, about 1.5l of water per day to which I add 2ml of BioBizz Bio Bloom flowering fertiliser. Other than that, and of occasional snap of her leave which is shadowing too much of her interior I am just watching her. She does not have any strong smell for now. ML No.2 on the other hand is small and stocky, looking like a pine tree with short internodals between her leaves, not many branches, and wider leaves. She definitely looks like Indica to me. She is now reaching 32cm in height and looks gorgeous with her branches spread and tied down. I do a bit of defoliation on her since her leaves grow big where the light penetrates her inner part thus shadowing more inner parts. I think she doesn't mind that. She is still being fed with water and a bit of Water Soluble All Purpose Plant Food to give her a bit of N. Her flowers are getting bigger and denser and as you can see on the zoom-in picture above, her trichomes are starting to get that lovely balloons at their tops. For the next feed I will start adding the Bio Bloom to her water though she is nowhere near her sister using only about 0.8l of water a day. BL No.1 is the smallest of the lot reaching only 26cm. She is not yet fully flowering although I can see she is starting to. For now she is only being fed with water and N. BL No. 2 is the the biggest of the three BLs gaining a few cms since her last measurement and now standing at 30cm. She was the first of the three BLs to enter her flowering stage and looks gorgeous. I haven't given her Bio Bloom yet but I will with the next watering. She is not as thirsty as ML No.1 only taking about 0.8l of water a day. BL No.3 is also on the smaller side having only 27cm. She is (like her two sisters) pine like with short internodals between wide leaves, and definitely looks like Indica. Just like BL No.1 she is entering her flowering period. Water wise, she is consuming approximately the same amount as her sisters are. The inner leaves of all BLs grew bigger after defoliation and LST-ing so I have to take some out here and there to allow the light in. I haven't taken zooms of the rest of my crew simply because it takes ages to do it with any hope of getting it OK (still learning) but in time, I will do that as well. I reduced the temperature in the room a bit since they are all flowering or nearly flowering. I also reduced the humidity to try to avoid any mold when they (start to) grow thick and dense buds The smell is getting stronger now. I think the most smelly one is ML No.2 with BL No.2 close behind whereas the others are whiffing only very discretely or not at all. I know there is a mix of BL and ML smell so I can't really tell you what the proper, individual smell is (with the fan on the smells get mixed even if I put my nose close to the flowers) but my impression, when I open the door, is that it smells a bit of coffee and chocolate. But there might also be some fresher, more lemony, smell present there somewhere.

Week 7 - not much going on here except some slight defoliation and tying the branches down a bit to enable more light and air to penetrate the inner parts of my girls. ML No.1 - the biggest of them all, to rule them all 😀 - She grew a bit in the last week adding another 5cm to her height, however that is very approximate measure. As I have stated in one of the previous weeks I fimed the girl and she developed two main top branches which I then LSTed to opposite sides. Now they are all willowy and have plenty of side branches that are of course growing upwards (which I again tie down so they don't go too high and come too close to the lights). So 75cm is something I get if I measure along one of the main stems and try to follow it as close as possible. She is getting more buds now, and if this is any indication she might turn in some serious colas. Fingers crossed. I took some fan leaves off of her so she is not throwing too much shade to herself and her roommates. ML No.2 - her half sister with a strong indica appearance, is also getting some nice buds. She is 34cm high, and she needs a bit of defoliation to get the air ad light in. She is still very stocky and I think she will remain that way. Her main stem is very strong so I think she will not need any support even if her main cola grows big. BL No.1 is the same size as BL No.2 - 32cm. They look very much the same (as does BL No.3 however she is shorter standing at 28cm). They all require some defoliation, and their leaves grow back within 24 hours. I don't want to defoliate them too much since I don't want to stop their development because of it. ML No.1 drinks about 1.5l of water a day. ML No.2, BL No.1 and No2 on the other hand drink about 1l a day. BL No.3 is the least thirsty drinking about 0.7l a day. I am adding Bio Bloom to their water as well as about 1ml of Water Soluble All Purpose Plant Food (i.e. N) per liter of water (except the ML No.1 where I stopped doing it about a week ago) - I am slowly reducing that amount and will stop giving N this week. As per the smell, I can definitely smell them when I enter the grow room however, if I want to smell them individually there is hardly any detectable whiff. I guess the fan drives that away (I should probably turn it off when I do the smell test 😜). The smell itself is a mix, when I take them out of the room for watering, MLs smell fresh, maybe a bit lemony but also some mint. I guess the lemon is in her name so no surprise there. BLs smell more dark and sweet, like chocolate or coffee. It is very alluring smell, I think I like it more than the MLs' one. But we'll see when the real test comes. So this is about it, there are some pics up, with whole plants as well as tops only. And a few with the bud sites which, as I said, are filling. Yay, happy day. I will probably start my next batch shortly. I intend to do two actually. One will stay indoors, and join the crew. I expect the first batch to come to fruition within the next 7 weeks, and as I have some space in the room I will probably put a few more in there so they grow alongside the older girls (and maybe learn a bit or two about growing, and hopefully wanting to be better than this lot). Additionally I will do one batch outdoors. Weather is slowly improving and since we have best months May, June and maybe half of July, I want to use that and grow a few of them out in the fresh air. I hope there will not be too much rain though. Anyway, my friends, keep well and enjoy your grows

Soooo, week 8 (week 9 if I include the germination/seedling part) First, I had a bit of a problem this last week. Very soon after watering my plants I discovered BL No.3 started to behave a bit strange her leaves started curling and their tips turned brown and within a day they became very dry. So, I figured that one of two things happened,either I overdid my fertilisation or there was a salt buildup in the soil. I am highly doubtful that I overdid the fertiliser since I only add about half of the recommended dose, so I am guessing the salt buildup occurred (I didn't do any flashing from the start). Regardless of the cause, I did a thorough flash used about 20l of water and cleared most of whatever it was out. I also did an extensive measurement and came up with the following table: Data of my watering solution (i.e. what goes in): pH = 6.1; EC = 0.7mS; ppm = 523 Data of my outflow solution (i.e. what gets out), per plant: ML No.1: pH = 6.4; EC = 2.0mS; ppm = 1330 (no problem with this girl) ML No.2: pH = 6.2; EC = 2.8mS; ppm = 2040 (almost no leaf curling, didn't flash it yet) BL No.1: pH = 6.0; EC = 6.5mS; ppm = 4560 (extensive leaf curling, brown tips, crackly), after flashing: pH = 6.0; EC = 1.2; ppm = 862 BL No.2: pH = 5.7; EC = 1.8mS; ppm = 1312 (no problem with this girl) BL No.3: pH = 6.3; EC = 6.5mS; ppm = 4540 (extensive leaf curling, brown tips, crackly), after flashing: pH = 6.3; EC = 1.0; ppm = 741 I hope this get the girls back to their correct path. I would hate to see them die, and it hurts me see them suffer 😥 And now back to my normal reporting, ML No.1 - the tallest girl in town, a model, all skinny and sexy has retained her height, and is staying put at nice 75cm. She is developing lovely buds filling the gaps between bud pops. I think I will end up with a few pop corns but that is OK. No problem there only a bit more work cleaning them. Ha. Otherwise, she looks healthy, is very low maintenance, I feed her with Bio Bloom at the lower recommended dose and she seems OK with that. She might be a bit on a paler side compared to the others but nothing drastic. ML No. 2 - as I wrote could have some salts in her soil that will have to get out. I will do that when I do the next watering. For now she seems OK, no major problems with her leaves, has great green colour, and is developing her buds nicely. The main one seems to be a decent one when this all ends. She is 35cm high. BL No.1 - she had some serious soil issues, and although she didn't show it immediately, she started to curl her leaves and browning their tips. She got a flash treatment yesterday and I hope she recovers well. She is 35cm high, nicely structured, and her buds (although not as full as ML No.2's) are growing nicely. BL No.2 - is also 35cm high. She looks healthy without any salt problems so I didn't treat her to a bath. I only watered her (with fertiliser included) and that was it. Her buds resemble that of her No.1 sister. BL No.3 - was the first one to show problems. She is the weakest of them all (reaching just over 30cm). Her buds look OK though. She got her water flash yesterday, and I hope that cures her ills. So that is it for now. If something develops during the week I will of course let you know, otherwise, I will talk to you next week.

SO, week 9 In the past few days I did a thorough measurement of all my plants pH, EC, and ppm levels. You may know previous week's log and saw that a few of my plants showed stress. I came up to a conclusion, that it was the salt build-up in my soil causing the problems. For that reason I did a fresh water flush on the most of my plants and reached acceptable levels of the water run-out. Most of my plants which showed problems are getting back to their normal state however, one plant, BL No.2 still showed stress signs. Eauderay made a comment that it might be due to light stress pointing out that the stress signs are concentrated to the top part of the plant. Although that is not completely true (there are some leaves yellowing/browning throughout the plant) I raised the lamp another 15 cm (from the highest plant) just to be on the safe side. Worryingly though, I have discovered a very low pH levels in its run-off water (pH=5.5). As is known that might lock out some essential nutrients so I used pH-up yesterday and did a double flush, using about 20 l of fresh water. Into went: 20l of water, pH=8.9, EC=0.3 (ppm=264), and out came: pH=5.7, EC=0.9 (ppm=654). Although pH was still low I decided to stop the flushing for two days, and then (if the reading still shows too low values) do it again. The readings for the rest of my babies were: In: pH=6.5, EC=0.7, ppm=506 Out: BL1 - pH=6.6, EC=1.2, ppm=882; BL2 - is described above; BL3 - pH=6.1, EC=1.9; ppm=1337; ML2 - pH=6.5, EC=2.4, ppm=1686; ML1 - pH=6.4, EC=1.5, ppm=1123 So, considering the numbers I still have some problems with BL3, and both MLs however neither is showing any serious problems so for now I will let them be. Hopefully with some slight adjustments I hope it will sort out slowly. Update I did some close check of my buds and happy news, there are some milky trichomes visible. I didn't do any magnified pics yet, but I will do them for my next week's diary. Yay, coming close now. Also, there are some colouring of my pistils.

Here we go, week 10 of my grow Girls are looking great. BL No.2 which had some problems for the past two weeks is doing nicely, getting green leaves again. I don't know what was the root cause of her problems but I did a few things that might have improved her condition including, flashing her soil with plenty of clean water (getting rid of the nuts overdose),raised the lamp (now approximately 1m above her), and added crushed egg shells (I am using rain water and I think she was lacking Calcium). Regardless, she is in good health now, so in that regard all good. On the other hand, I have learned a few lessons here: i) I have to use less nuts (at least for Black Lights Auto CBD strain), ii) even though I have three plants of the same strain it doesn't mean all want the same condition, iii) use broken egg shells (or maybe Cal-Mag) for my babies because of the rain water (I am not sure that even using tap water would do since our water is very soft). Now to the all important thing. The girls are getting some colour. Brown hair or yellow or even white ones are getting all over their buds. Their trichomes are filling, and some are even getting milky white (in that regard, BL No.2 (the problematic child) has the most of it). The smell in the room is getting stronger, and besides lemon I can now smell black pepper and earth. Unfortunately coffee and cocoa smells are now mostly gone 😒, hopefully they will return after curing. The buds are filling up nicely, getting denser and thicker. Happy days

Week 11 Slowly coming to the end of this grow I think 😄. The buds are slowly filling up. In this regard ML No.2 is the clear winner. Her main bud is about the size of a Red Bull can (0.33l). It feels full and tightly packed. Her other buds (she has a fair number of side branches) are equally full and dense however they are a bit smaller and thinner, but not for much. She might deliver a fair quantity, hopefully of good quality weed (assuming nothing goes wrong in the meantime of course 😏). She is 35 cm high and she looks all frosty. ML No.1 on the other hand shows a much less density in her buds. There are many branches (I should probably have cut them early in her development) and some of them have relatively large colas but in general they are not as dense as her sister. There may be bunches that are quite packed but there is no constant one. Maybe she will fill some of them in the future. Regardless I think she might also produce a fair amount of cannabis mostly because of her size (75cm). In stature, all the BLs resemble ML No.2. They are short, with fair amount of side branches. BL No.1 is 37cm high, her main cola is thinner than ML No.2's and also a bit shorter. She feels a bit less dense but nevertheless she looks OK. Her sweet leaves look frosty a bit, and her pistils are nice brown colour. BL No.2 is 35 cm high, her main bud is quite empty, having a few bunches here and there. She was the one who had a huge problem a few weeks ago (I think she was way over nuted and probably had a Ca deficiency as well). I managed to solve the problem, she is now looking healthy, but the problems either slowed her flowering or caused so much problems that she will not gain any more weight (that would be a real shame). She has plenty of side branches. BL No.3 is 37cm high. Her main bud is relatively big (similar to BL No.1) and equally relatively dense. She looks frosty, and her pistils nicely coloured. She has plenty of side branches and could yield a good amount. Hopefully of a good quality. The smell in the room is normal, not too strong, but also not weak. It is a mix but the first impression is of citrus fruits. The BLs add a bit earthy note to it, maybe forest berries as well. I am guessing a few more weeks and it will be done. I am building a small room where I will dry them because I have another batch coming up (they are in week 1 as seedlings) so I can't dry them in the same room. Anyway, this is it for now. If there is any development in the meantime I will of course let you know otherwise I'll report again in a week. Update: Today I have discovered a strange, pear shaped things under my bud on Mimosa Lemon Auto Feminised plant. I don't know what they are and I am afraid it is something bad (like bananas) developing and that I will need to take some action (like removing the plant from the room, cut and dry it immediately) or (preferably 😀) none because I am just paranoid and these are normal parts of the plant. I posted a question in that regard, and would like to thank anyone that takes time and answers it. Another update: I have decided to do a thorough smell test and here are the results: The most fragrant of them all is ML No.2 (that is the short pine looking one of the ML family). Her smell is a great mix of bubble gum, lemon, strawberry, and grapes (actually the strongest of them all). It is also very sweet but normal in strength, definitely not very strong. Her sister ML No.1 (the willowy looking one) has a much fresher smell, again full of citrus, and again is very sweet. But at the same time it is weaker than the other one. In the BL family, No.1 and No.3 have equally strong smell which is nevertheless weaker than the MLs'. The smell is not as sweet but resembles more freshly cut grass. No.2 on the other hand has almost no smell. The buds of all the girls are sticky with MLs No.1 and 2 being top of the class here. If that is any indication of how potent they are (will be) then I can say they will rock. BLs, although sticky are nowhere near the two girls. So there you have it. If all well, talk to you the next time.

Hello happy people, a bit late with this diary (it should be out on Friday) but still here it is. So happy news from my girls, I started flushing one of the girls (BL No.1). But lets take it easy. Starting with Mimosa Lemons, ML No.1 has about 30% of her pistils brown and curled whereas the rest are still white and pointing upward. About 10% of her trichomes are getting milky and the rest still clear. I guess she still has a few weeks to go, which hopefully will result in some additional bud formation. Not that she doesn't have them but there seems a lot of space not used and I am NOT happy 😜 She should do better. ML No.2 turned all her pistils dark and curled, however she doesn't have any milky trichomes yet. BL No.1 has all her pistils and curled, and about 40% of her trichomes are milky. In addition, some trichomes are getting brown caps. I started flushing her and I did that for three days using all together about 40l of fresh rain water. On the first day, my initial outflow ppm was 696, and I stopped when reaching 475, on the second day, my starting ppm was 435 and the end one was 33, and on my third day I started with 176 and ended with 38. So from now on only pure rain water for this girl. In about ten days she is going into a dark room for two days and then drying. She also developed a very cherry like smell but more like a cherry bubble gum. Delicious. BL No.2's pistils are all brown and curled but only about 20% of her trichomes in the main bud and about 5% of the bottom ones turned milky. The rest are still clear. I will leave her for another week and then see how it goes. I would probably start flushing her in about a week but her buds are fluffy and not fat at all. She was the on with a few problems for a couple of weeks which might have stopped her flowering for a while. I want her to get fat and curvy. BL No.3 has dark and curled pistils in the top bud, but on those below there are still some white erect pistils. All her trichomes are also clear. So yes, happy days ahead for me, finally getting some reward. And now a little about harvesting. So, first of all, I am not that big fan of couch-lock high that you sometimes get (including that narcotic effect). In that respect I am more into energetic, uplifting, and definitely active high. That doesn't mean that it feels nice to get down and relax in my couch sometime but in general no. So what I decided to do is harvesting at different times and also not going through bud specific harvest. As you know early harvest gives that active high (and also nervous sometimes), whereas late one brings more narco effect to the high. So, if I go to the two strains I have, Mimosa Lemon has high THC content (27%) whereas Black Light CBD has about 15% of THC and 9% of CBD. I am afraid that early ML harvest would bring nervous, fidgety activity so I decided to try the early harvest with BLs. If I find BL No.3 appropriate I would flush her when she develops about 25% of milky trichomes in her main bud. That would then bring her lower buds to be early harvest types and her main bud somewhere in the early to middle window. BL No.2 on the other hand (i.e. the one whose buds are not very fat) I could leave for a while to keep flowering and start flushing her when she develops a fair amount of brown caps in her trichomes. That would put her somewhere to the end of the harvest window. BL No.3 would then be somewhere in the middle then. For the ML, I will probably go with the middle to late harvest, with BL No.2 having been faster in her flowering and also having decently fat buds being in the middle of the window and ML No.1 being harvested towards later stage of her h-window (and having time to fill that wasted space a bit more). So, for now that is it, will let you know when something new happens. Her buds though are nice and decent size so I might go and do her flushing when about 25% of her trichomes start getting milky. I would like to see how her CBD mixes with early harvest (which produces more energetic high)

A bit behind but still within the running week with my diary The girls are going nice. Not much happening at the moment. They all seem healthy and happy and approaching their time when their ascent will lift me as well :-) ML No.1 lost most of her leaves. As per other growers, leaves start yellowing and eventually brown and fall off towards the end of her life. In that respect, she is following others. However, and looking at @Ganjagrandaddy, mine lacks that gorgeous pinkish colour. Hopefully she will develop it (his did in the last week so fingers crossed). She has about 30% of her trichomes milky and some are even turning brownish but that is not spread around the whole plant. Some buds still have all their trichomes clear and some of the pistils are even pointing straight up. This can of course be expected since not her parts get the same amount of light but then one would expect that to happen from the top down and outside in whereas here it seems it is just happening wherever it is. So, not really sure what to think of it, I might have to wait another few weeks to see her finishing. ML No.2 has a gorgeous cherry sweet smell. Her leaves are also yellowing however due to her stature that ends up differently. They are still very much on her but just turned yellow and are not browning. Her buds are denser and firmer than her sister's but are not rock solid. I think it is in their genes to have them a bit more airy. I will check her trichomes for my next week's diary but I suspect she might be in lock-step development as ML No.1. I have put a Red Bull can next to her so you can see her size and girth. I mean, she is not a big plant but her buds (not just the main one) are impressive. BL No.1 is a late one. She had some problems along the line and will be left to flower a few more week. Her buds are not very big and I am hoping she will develop them in the meantime. BL No.2 has been flushed last week and I will move her to the dark room for two days later on today. She has spicy (black pepper) smell with a hint of skunk and in addition some sweetness, bubble gum, and dark chocolate and coffee. I hope that after drying and curing she will smell delicious. BL No.3 is getting some nice dark colour on her bud leaves. I guess it is in the name (Black Lights) and it just looks amazing when a light bounces off of her dark leaves covered in frost. If in addition she develops some nice smells she will be amazing. So, this is it for this week, and hopefully I will come back to you tomorrow when we enter week No. 14. Happy growing to you all.

So, week 14, 10th week of flowering, and, HAPPY NEWS, I cut my first plant and hang her. BL No.1 spent a good two days in the dark room last week. I cut and hang her in a home made drying tent. There is a small fan running all the time and a dehumidifier set to 60%RH. Since I decided to do a dry trim it is useless to provide you with a wet weight but I will do that so you know = 376g. However, in essence that means the whole plant minus the root system. So truthfully, that doesn't do any good to anyone, but the dry weight will give more information on how I did in my first grow. When I opened the dark room (which in my case was actually a large cardboard box, I noticed a very strong black pepper smell mixed with dark chocolate and coffee. After three days in the drying room, the buds are drying but are still pretty wet, however, and I would be lying if I said I didn't, I took a small bud off of one of the side branches cut it very finely, and dried on the lowest setting of my stove (I put the pieces on a paper towel), and just moved them around once or twice. i didn't dry it much, but enough so the joint didn't die. The effect was amazing, she gives a fairly strong high however, the most amazing thing was that it lasted for hours. In about four hours I had a glass of wine, and I think that I just got lifted back up. It wasn't couch lock high either but active. Gorgeous. I will wait with the description of her tastes and smells until after she is cured for a few weeks. I hope I will start that in about 10 days. I have also flushed BL No.3 three days ago, and reduced her ppm to 42 (my rainwater has ppm of 28). I will put her in a dark room in the next 10 days. She had 90% of her main bud's trichomes milky and 10% brownish however her side buds are a bit behind having no brown ones yet and about 60% milky ones. There are also some white pistils (or maybe again, I don't know) present. The ML girls are going along with the rest. I think I started noticing some rosy colours on the ML No.1 but will check again tomorrow and let you know. If that is true, she is starting to enter her last few weeks. She also has about 20% of trichomes on her main bud and <10% on her side buds milky. No.2 on the other hand, still looks as she did for the last month. Her leaves are getting brown but to be honest it doesn't look bad at all. She is not yet turning her bud colour to that redish hue, but it might happen in the next two weeks. Her main bud has about 40% of trichomes milky and her side buds about 20%. Oh, BL No.2 is, as I said, still growing, Her main bud has about 70% milky trichomes and her side buds a bit less. So for now that is it, I will let you know in an update how everything is progressing. Until then, be cool my friends 😍

So, what can I say that will make this as honest as possible. First, growing this strain was easy. Apart from some minor problems during early weeks of flowering, when BL No.2 showed some minor N deficiencies, I had no problem with the girls. No pests (well, they were in a closed room 😊) or diseases throughout the grow. They are short in stature, pine shaped but yielded 189g dry weight all together which I find relatively good results considering this was my first grow. All in all, estimated 270g/m2 is a decent result. During their grow they required modest amounts of water (about 0.7l a day). Their smell was normal during flowering phase, hinting at dark chocolate, coffee, spices, sweet, and bubblegum. The colours at the end of their flowering were very dark, especially around main buds where sugar leaves turned black (very dark purple). The high: a) it doesn't come with one or two pufs and like a brick, this is a slow coming, gradual high, which lasts for hours. b) the high is not debilitating but good for thinking, creating, reading, talking, etc. definitely not for an exam or a test. All in all, I really love this strain. It was a joy to grow and it is a joy to smoke.