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First time grower in any kind of medium. After waiting forever for Girl Scout Cookies seeds from Amsterdam that never came, I ordered some Humboldt Apple Blossoms from DC Seed Exchange and had them within a week. I can't say exactly why I chose this strain other than my head hurt from trying to figure out what I wanted and I just wanted to grow something. I wanted fresh seeds from a known to be reliable house, so here we are.
I ordered 12 of the blossoms and also received 4 freebies of Nap Time by Copa Seeds. I couldn't find any info on the strain, but I decided to try to germ 2 of those as well 4 of the apple blossoms. As a first timer, I wasn't sure what the success rate would be for germinating 6 seeds, but I hope to have several candidates to choose from when I whittle it down to 2 plants in a 2x4 tent for the vegetative phase.
I will be following the coco growing process and nutrient feeding schedule of Dr MJ Coco of CoCoforCannabis.com
To begin the germ, I lightly scuffed the seeds in a 240 grit sandpaper tube. Then I gave them the bath in individual solo cups with distilled water. The cups were placed on a seedling heat mat set to 84F in the dark tent for 4 hours. At the end of that time, only 1 had sunk. I put each of the seeds in their own once-folded, wet paper towel and put all six inside a sealed Pyrex container, again on the heat mat (set to 78F) in the dark tent. I also optimistically placed 6 Jiffy Pellets in another sealed Pyrex on the heat mat with an inch of water filling the container.
24 hours later I checked the container and 2 of the 6 towels were almost completely dry. I think I took too much water out of them before placing the seeds. I remoistened with a spray bottle and sealed it up again.
Day 3, 36 hours in, I check again and one of the Nap Time had a tiny sprout. Several towels were dried out this time, I resprayed them all and closed it up.
Day 4, 48 hours in and after several remoistenings (I don't think that Pyrex is exactly sealed), I have 1 Nap Time with a damn near 2 inch tail and 3 Apple Blossoms with nice beginning sprouts. I remoisten again and seal up, hoping for 2 more sprouts in the AM so I can transfer all 6 to jiffy pots. If the last 2 don't germ overnight, I'll move on without them. Its no surprise that one of them, the 2nd Nap Time hasn't germed. It's towel has been dry every time I check the container. Really poor choice in a germination container.
Day 5 and all 4 Apple Blossoms have sprouted. The dry Nap Time seems unlikely to do anything and the other one that germed first has a 2 inch sprout and should have been transferred a day ago. I carefully transfer all 6 touching them only with the paper towel. I try to make the holes long enough for the sprout so that the seed head is flush with the top of the pellet. I was a little shaky during all of this, with the strong feeling I was going to fuck something up. The transplant stages make me the most nervous looking ahead. At any rate, it wasn't too bad except for one sprout that wove itself into the towel fibers. Hopefully I didn't damage it pulling it out. The Nap Time with the huge sprout was a pain, I feel like I definitely hurt it getting the root in.
All 6 jiffy pots go on a seed tray with a humidity dome, on the seedling warming mat set to 73F. I finally get to kick on the light, hung at 24" above pot level and dialed down a little under 50% intensity keeping them at 1000-1200 lux. I have several thermo/hygrometers and I'm trying to keep the humidity high at 80-85 and temps at 76-78.
Day 6 and I've just been keeping an eye on the RH and adjusting the dome vents, and applying some light spray watering. I've never grown anything before and I'm a little uncertain about how wet I should be keeping the jiffy pot. By the end of the day, 2 Apple Blossom seedlings have their cotyledons open and 1st tiny serrated leaves are showing. 3 other seeds have their helmets completely lifted up and are just struggling to shed their seed casings. The last seed, which was the Nap Time that never showed a sprout but I planted in the Jiffy anyway, is still showing no signs of life. Worse, I might have drowned it after letting it dry out repeatedly back in the Pyrex. I moved to drip watering with a 60 ml syringe and when I went to water that one, the syringe gave me resistance. In overcoming it half the syringe water shot out, turning the center of its jiffy pot into a pond. Poor guy can't catch a break. Even if it starts growing I can't trust it, I've already put it through too much. I'm keeping it around for now though just for shits and gigs, and in case I fuck up all the rest.
I'm really struggling with environment control. Probably not a surprise given the ambient around the tent in my basement is 66F with 8% (fuck!) relative humidity. I'm trying to keep the dome around 78F and 75RH. Humidifier for the tent is inbound. For now, spraying water around the jiffy pots on the seed tray and also along the inside of the clear dome then keeping the vents closed to a sliver is getting the job done. I'm relying on heat from the LED driver inside the tent to keep the temps up, along with the seedling mat.
By the end of day 7, 4 of the 6 have their cotys open and their first sets of serrated leaves developing. 1 seed is struggling with helmet head so I spray moisten the shell to help it along. The 6th seed, that I've abused with drying out and overwatering, has its sprout finally coming out. Unfortunately the sprout is growing upward and visible above the surface of the jiffy in direct light, which I've heard is bad. I help it out with tweezers and get the head above ground.
Week 1 is done and I'm well into seedling. Just keeping an eye on things and waiting for roots to show through the bottom the jiffy pot. Time to start thinking about preparing the coco. Let's grow!
I started week 2 by moving the Jiffy pots to prepared coco. We lost our first two contestants, as I decided to only prepare containers of coco for the best 4 seedlings. 3 Apple Blossoms and 1 Nap Time.
I soaked the coco in feeding solution diluted to 450 EC (measured in microsiemans), which is what the first watering will be. Ph is about 6.0-6.1.
Waterings began 24 hours later with incremental increases in the EC strength of the solution (chart below) each time, by 50 to 75.
I have two small fans in the tent. A 4" up high directed at the driver of the LED and an 8" on the floor pointed away from the seedlings so there's some movement of the seedlings but they're not blowing around heavily. Temps are on the cool side. It can get down to 70 during the day when my house heat isn't running as much, and tops out around 74-75 at night. I've begun running a space heater outside the tent at times but I'd like to avoid it as much as possible.
With this my fist grow, I was wondering if I'd be paranoid about signs of problems and maybe be too quick to jump to treatments of problems that don't really exist. So I'm trying to be patient and relax. But it does seem that at the end of week 2 I may be having an issue.
2 of the 4 seedlings are displaying some slight curling and twisting. Very slight, but seems to be progressing. I've heard that this can be a sign of CalMag deficiency in coco grows, but I've also heard that some growers are too quick to make that assumption. I didn't want to wait for discoloration to confirm there's a problem so the last 2 days of the week I began to apply a light foliar spray a couple times a day. I mist all 4 seedlings but the two showing twisting get a little more. I turn the light off for a few hours or drastically reduce it for 20 mins after applying foliar CalMag.
The 2 seedlings with twisting were the two in the middle of the setup, so light intensity could be an issue. I swapped them with outer ones and slightly reduced intensity of the light to about 30%, hung at about 20".
Other potential causes could be the lower than desired temps, an overwatering/root oxygenation issue since I'm in plastic containers and don't have a feel for watering yet, or a coco issue.
A clue could be that the runoff EC has been consistently much lower than the inflow EC. I used prebuffered coco that I tested and then presoaked at the same dilution of my first watering. I don't think I'm overwatering and when I do water, it always has nutrients in it. I water slowly to 10-20% runoff.
By the end of week 2, all 4 are showing a root out of the bottom, and all are working on their 3rd node. It just seems like things are running little slow.
EC chart (in microsiemans per cm3)
Inflow/Runoff 444/485, 474/435, 563/410, 612/390, 689/395, 755/410, 817/410, 895/450, 974/485, 1050/510, 1014/565, 1029/600
The third week from seed is in the books and and it feels like I'm on track. Not to say perfect or without mistakes, but I expect that for the first time.
The week started with me a little worried about the first set of serrated leaves curling on a couple of plants and majorly concerned about the abnormally low runoff EC from my coco.
I think I figured out what I was doing wrong. I had been eyeballing the runoff amount I was generating and what I judged to be 20% of the amount was more like 80-100% when measured. I had also been diluting my full strength 1000 EC seedling mix with pure distilled water to hit my EC inflow targets. Now I'm using 800 EC CalMag water to dilute my mixes when needed.
The plastic containers made my overwatering problem worse, so my goal of the week was to transplant to 1 gallon fabric pots. I spent the 2 days before transplant letting them dry out a bit, then hitting them with full strength seedling mix.
I began to prepare my new coco for transplant 24 hours before, letting them get a good soak in a plastic container in the same full strength (1000 EC) seedling mix that I had been giving them.
Transplant made me pretty nervous, I've never transplanted anything before. In fact, I haven't grown anything but fat and bald since 7th grade biology. I watered the seedlings to try to keep the coco around their root balls together just before filling the new containers with prepared coco. I used a spare seedling container to make a same sized hole in the coco and gently hand-loosened the seedlings from the plastic containers. Then it was time to turn their world upside down.
It went pretty well until the last container. That seedling's root ball partially disintegrated while trying to flip back over into the new container. I think I got it in with minimal damage, but I also didn't fill the container with enough coco. The leaves barely make it over the rim. Also a couple of other containers have a gangsta lean. I might have to learn how to train my pots before I train the plants.
The first water after trans was at seedling strength, but after that I moved to the above listed early vegetation schedule nutes (1100 EC). Runoffs started in the acceptable 1300-1350 range but have since increased into the 1500s. Figures I'm running high after running low. I'm not going to panic, just continue twice a day watering at around 1100 EC, 6.2 pH to 10-20% runoff and see how it goes.
So far they've taken to the transplant well, even the one I moved too soon whose root ball wasn't fully developed. There was slight droop early but nothing major and now growth is kicking onto the 4th and 5th nodes. I'm pretty happy, what a great hobby.
Other than that, I've done a couple light CalMag foliars before a 3 hour lights out period. Hopefully there's no harm to it even though I'm not seeing deficiencies, they just seem to respond well to it. Or maybe its just the lights out time I'm giving them.
Also, it occurred to me that the packaging on the freebie Nap Time seeds didn't specify whether they're regular or feminized. I hope I didn't bring a male in. It definitely is the highest riser, but its also a different strain than the feminized Apple Blossoms that are around it that are maybe just bushier. Have to keep an eye on it.
Theme of the week was trying to figure out when and how much to water. Let's just say I didn't exactly nail it.
I started out overwatering again, giving 3 cups total among the 4 plants and ending up with 1 cup runoff in aggregate. Runoff EC is good at least. I tried to go a little longer between watering for a couple days after that, which I hoped would promote some root growth.
I made some changes to the environment this week, starting with dialing back the humidity from 70-75 RH @ 74F to 60-65 RH. My LED light had been at 22" set to a little over 25% intensity to get lux values of 11-1200 at the start of the week. By the end of it, I was hanging it at about 30" above canopy at 100%. I also brought a couple more smaller fans in the tent to break up and humidity layers, cool thr LED driver, and get some movement among the plants to thicken their stems.
I did some light defoliating in the middle of the week. I took the 1st and 2nd growth tips from 2 plants that I plan on topping and left all fan leaves alone. I took the 1st only from another plant that I plan on LSTing and left the last one alone that I'll also LST. This opened things up a bit for the squat bushy girls.
By the end of the week, I have some concerns. All of them are showing some droop, clawing or canoeing of leaves, and even discoloration beginning at the leaf margins of one of them. Diagnosing the issue isn't easy for a beginner. Possibilities include over or underwatering and the related nutrient deficiencies/toxicities, or lockout, a pH issue, root issues, light intensity, or environment issues.
As the week closes, I'm hoping to get a handle on it quick.
Started the week by whiplashing too much between overwatering and letting it dry out too much in between. Got busy at work and then sick, which led to laziness in checking runoff EC. Some waterings didn't generate any runoff that I waited around long enough to see. This led to stress in 3 plants as you can see.
I think I got too fixated on the plants drooping and lost focus on providing them the right amounts of what they needed. Also by midweek it was apparent they'd outgrown their 1 gallon containers and needed transplanted.
Transplant to 3 gallon went well, all 4 plants had well-formed, filled-out root balls but not to the point of root spiraling at the bottom. I didn't get any pictures but they were impressive root masses. I'm hoping 3 gallon containers will suffice for their final move. It will probably depend on if I can keep the containers from drying out too much, especially when I go to flower.
They responded well to the move. New growth emerging without signs of distress and the older growth doesn't seem to be getting worse. I'm keeping the ugly leaves on for now, they don't want to come off with a slight tug.
I'll be looking to do some light training early in week 6, assuming they keep doing better. I need to get a move on it and flip to flower a couple weeks after that at the latest. Hopefully my new grower hijinks haven't set me back too much and I've gotten it all out of my system before flower.
I'm feeling the need to wrap up the vegetative stage ASAP and get to flower and throw some buds on there. First these plants need some training.
I'm pretty sure most people train all their plants using the same method, but I'm going to try a little of everything. Some of them are more damaged than others and the Nap Time strain seems to be more of a tall grower than the bushier Apple Blossoms. So I figure each plant can use its own tailored training.
For the Nap Time, the tall grower, I chose to supercrop the main stem and then bend it about 90 degrees. The stem was thick AF and not squishable until above the 5th node. There was some slight skin splitting which I wrapped with grafting tape. Afterward, several of the lower bud sites ended up higher than the main top, so hopefully growth will be promoted to several nodes instead of the main central one.
The middle two plants, my best two Apple Blossoms, I topped at the 6th node. I also spread them apart and exposed lower growth to the light. I also did a small amount of defoliating and elimination of the lowest node growth.
The plant on the right, Apple Blossom #1, took the most damage in the early stages, so I went the easiest on it. I bent the main stem over without supercropping it and exposed the lower growth, with the goal of making some of them higher up than the main top. I also removed a large fan leaf blocking them from getting light. Node spacing is extremely tight on this plant.
The rest of the week, I did some light defoliation almost every day. Most of this was at the bottoms of the plants to open up airflow. I also continued tying down and spreading out side branches to utilize space, and the tops to try to keep the canopy level.
I'm aiming for one final week of veg. Maybe even a mid week flip if things are going great. Right now they're growing like crazy. I'll be looking to set up a scrog net soon and and try to get the canopy and full and even as possible with 4 plants crammed into a 2x4 with misfit saucers.
I'll also be setting up an auto watering system, and probably an auto drainage catchment too. I'm spending too much time with the watering, not getting it consistent or even, and my old ass body is taking a beating crawling around all the time.
I've been busier than hell so I'll post this week and the next at the same time.
I was able to get an auto watering system set up which has saved my back and knees and really helped the plants I think. I can't recommend it enough and it wasn't hard to do. Cost was under $100.
It took some time to dial it in as far as the best flow for each plant but I've got it going 4x daily with a little hand water supplement every few days, mostly in the areas that the hydro rings don't cover very well, especially the outsides.
With the watering under control, the only other work I've been doing in the grow is some defoliation to open up airflow through the plants, some low stress straining to pull the growth tips away from each other, and at the end of the week set up the net. They're working their way to nicely filling out the canopy.
Flipping to flower now, so I'm making sure any light leaks are eliminated and covering any equipment lights with tape.
Not a ton to report as I switch them to flower. The first day they went to the 12/12 light schedule I chopped the shit out of them, taking probably 100 fan leaves from the 4 plants all together. They're just too bushy and I feel like I'm asking for problems letting them grow into each other. Of course when you try to grow four plants in a 2x4 tent, that's an expected problem.
They looked blended, bomb-out and depleted when I finished chopping leaves and pulling the main growth tips apart from each other and through the scrog net. I was a little worried that I overdid it, but 12 hours later they had more than bounced back. I'm a little leary of hard defoliation in flower, but pistils have hardly developed and the plants clearly need and respond well to it. I'm sure I'll take about the same amount from them a couple more times.
A couple concerns: small amounts of white mold growth on the top of the coco of a couple plants and the sides of a couple bags. Very faint and not growing much. Also no signs of it on leaves or stems of the plants themselves. I've been spraying with a water/hydrogen peroxide mix.
Also a few leaves here and there on a few of the plants look chewed up or torn. There are no signs of pests, so I think they're from some minor abuse during training or from the fan blowing. Will definitely be keeping an eye on mold/mildew and pests, especially going into spring locally.
Pretty easy week, didn't have to spend too much time in the grow. The time I did spend was on some supplemental watering to flush the areas of coco that the hydro rings don't hit. Also some more defoliation, almost every night. With 4 plants crammed in there, constant defoliation is a must. The gaps are filling right back in as soon as I open them up. Hopefully that will be slow down soon and they will concentrate on bud development.
The stretch phase is real. The fastest grower is doing a inch or more every day. 2nd level of scrog net will go in soon.
I think the yellowing of the tips of the plants on the left are from light burn.
I've been adjusting the light every day or so to help. I've been flushing to runoff more often as well, some of the EC measurements of runoff have been really high. But they all seem to be doing pretty well.
I added Recharge to the rotation, applying it mixed with RO water only, after the last watering before lights out twice this week.
Pistils are out, all plants are female. Time to put some buds on them.
Mostly a week of daily defoliation, mixing up nutes and raising the light. The tallest grower is exploding with over a foot of growth this week. Bud sites went from just beginning to form at the start of the week to noticable daily growth by the end.
I let up on the defol as the week went by, taking less each day until only taking a leaf or two the last couple. One more decent one at the start of week 3 and then I'll pretty much leave them alone the rest of the way, promise.
I put up the second layer of the scrog net this week. I use it mainly to space out the nodes, not tucking or tying down to it.
There's some noticeable nutrient burn on many of the leaf tips. I think I started the flower phase too hot, around 1350 EC. I'm dialed back to 1150 right now, going up to 1200 next week. The burn seems to have stopped so I'm not concerned.
The only real worry is how to keep all these bud sites from molding or mildewing. Everything is real jammed together even now with defoliation ongoing. Once these colas thicken up, they're going to be piled up on top on each other. With auto watering every 4 hours in 4 plants in a 2x4 tent, its basically impossible to get humidity below mid 50s at 74 degrees. I have a dehumidifier going outside of the tent in a partitioned 10x10 room that the grow is in. The room is at 30 RH, 70F but the tent won't go below 55 RH and is usually in the 60s. Too much growth in too small of a space is the problem.
Loving it for now though. Its an uneven sea of bud sites, noticably thickening every day.
Quiet week for the most part. Main goal was to do a final, large defoliation to give these buds room to grow and breathe.
Humidity is a concern, it wants to creep into the mid 60s when lights are on after a watering. I added a couple more fans and decided to change my watering regimen.
Where I had been doing drip waterings for 90 seconds at lights on and then 3 times more every 4 hours, now I'll drip for 120 seconds, but cut out one watering and space them 5 hours apart. This should allow more time to dry out between waterings.
I think I've been a little overboard about keeping the coco moist. I'm getting white growth on tops and sides of containers. No smell coming from it, and it doesn't look like mold. I added more perlite to cover up the surface of the tops and hopefully keep it from growing more.
I noticed a slight mildew smell this week when opening the tent for the first time of the day. At first I thought it was related to the white container growth, but after a smell check its not coming from there. Its actually coming from some of the buds themselves.
Its slight, and you smell more of the plant smell with some skunky undertones, but there's definitely a faint smell of "I forgot to take the laundry out of the washer for a day".
This made me nervous I was experiencing some kind of bud rot before my buds were even formed. Close inspection of outsides of buds shows no rot or mold. I decided to open up one of the buds that smelled stronger than the others of mildew. I kept it growing but used tweezers to poke around. No signs of discoloration or any wispy growth.
I think its just the smell of the buds. Only comes from the three Apple Blossoms, not the Nap Time. So maybe its just the AB phenotype. Research found a couple other past references to this mildew smell on different strains, and some thought that it indicated an overfeeding of nutrients, particularly phosphates. I'm barely hitting 1150 EC though and underfeeding according the general hydroponics feed chart. Just going to keep on going.
My main concern at the start of the week was the continuing faint mildew smell. I quickly found a new problem to worry about though.
While closely inspecting buds for any sign of bud rot or the source of the mildew smell, I discovered my smallest plant had turned hermaphrodite. I found 2 sets of 3 nanners on the main cola, a couple nodes down from the top. I contemplated trying to cut them off and continue on until I discovered another 2 sets on another node. So I turned the fans off, threw a garbage bag over it, and chopped her down and took her out.
It galls me because this was the smallest runt plant that I should have gotten rid of weeks ago. I knew it wasn't going to produce much, it was taking up valuable space and it wasn't worth the effort or nutrients to keep going. But I got greedy and figured what the hell, let's see how it turns out. Now it might have screwed up the rest of my crop. Hard lesson learned.
Its difficult to say if the nanners pollinated anything. I'm sure that I found them with 24 hours of them showing, but I've heard that nanners can pollinate before they're even visible. Many of the buds on surrounding plants have some brown pistils or tips of pistils. I've heard this can be a sign of pollination, but they've pretty much been brown since they came out. So we'll see. I'm definitely continuing this on to the end. If I end up with a crop of seeds, then so be it.
I also found a fungus gnat on a sticky card, but so far its the only one I've caught. I've been allowing more dry out time so hopefully that's helping.
The buds are still piling on. I'm figuring at least 4 weeks left, but I don't know what to expect at this point, 25 days from the appearance of pisitils.
If a plant turns hermaphrodite because of stress (not a light leak), does the stress have to immediately precede the hermming? Or could the stress that causes it have occurred weeks earlier during veg, even though it seems to recover?
Light leaking IS stress.
But yes, stress induced weeks prior (since that stress isn't a single event, it has gradual, systemic effects coz it's conditional, environmental, nutrition, etc) can make plants hermi later than when the stress was induced (and the hormonal balance gradually shifts).
Its a genetic problem in theory but light leaks will not help or disturbing their night cycle that's why I fill the grow room with green light so if any light were to get in it cant stress your ladies :) though even that is not enough sometimes i had 15 plants show bananas recently it was heart breaking but I know it was down to genetics because any light getting in would of been green and not effected them in anyway so its near enough impossible but to be sure I always try and test my tent between grows by sitting in to and looking for any light I can see protuding in if i can see any I will block it with tape or block it with somekind of stuffing. thats the best you can do though growing strains that you know dont herm is a good start so basically just strains you have grew before that had a good harvest and didnt herm lol
Paulbearer1891
