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This grow is all about early returns while waiting for my photos to finish in the fall. I'm starting these girls a bit early for a Mid-Western outdoor grow and will really be putting Nirvana's claim of this being a resistant strain that can handle hot/cold swings to the test.
The plan is to start them inside for their first few weeks and finish them off outdoors. I'm also staggering my grow by starting with one seed, starting 2 more 2 weeks later and starting the last 2 two weeks after that. That way I can still get early returns and the ones I start later will get at least a little longer days.
This is also going to be my first grow using Nature's Living Soil. I've always used the General Hydroponics Flora Trio in the past but if I like how this performs I might try composting my own living/supersoils for my outdoor grows in the future. The bottom 1/3 of my pots is a mixture of the living soil and regular potting soil with the rest topped off with potting mix, no extra amendments in the soil.
Starting in my final pot, 5gal fabric. After soaking the seed overnight I popped her in a Rapid Rooters plug and planted it. Topped it off with a classy soda bottle humidity dome and we're off to the races.
Temps might have been a bit low even inside, might have slowed germination a little. 6 days to show first serrated leaves. Will use a heating pad for the others if temps haven't improved.
**Critical failure on batch two. Forgot to add my insulating layer between my heat mat and propagation tray and "cooked" this batch. Oops lol started batch 3
***Glad to report that I didn't murder batch 3. Torn if I want to call these GSC 2 & 3 or GSC 4 & 5 in remembrance of the fallen.
The shop light I am using isn't all that powerful for plant growth. It's a LED that claims to put out 5000 lumens, "250W"but it only pulls about 90W and looses much of it's intensity beyond a couple inches when I measure with my cheap lux meter. Since I don't plan on finishing indoors anyway I'm just utilizing as much sun as I can then move it indoors overnight under the light. After about the 2nd or 3rd week of veg this one will stay outside to make room for other seedlings.
As of now my watering schedule is pretty light. Only giving about 2 cups of water every 2-3 days. No sense drenching a pot of this size while the plant is still this small plus I don't want a bunch of runoff anyway using the supersoils. Since I am not adding additional nutes there are no salts to build up and I don't want to accidentally wash away some of the more available nutes of the mix in the run off. My tap water is a bit on the hard side so I'm going to hold off on any sort of Cal-Mag for now. Never had to in the past but this is my first go with this stain so we'll see. The pH of my tap is a little out of range at about 7.6 but my soil tester is reading a nice 6.5 so I'm just going to keep an eye on it for now and maybe add some powdered citric acid to the water to bring it down some if the soil eventually swings a little too basic. I'm watering a ring a few inches away from the base of the plant to encourage those early roots to seek out the moisture.
**Early growth indicates GSC2 is outpacing GSC1. Might be a good candidate for a FIM in a week or two
Steady growth, even with spending a good portion of time under a weak light each night. I would like to try FIMing one or two of these, but will probably just LST this first one once it gets a little more substantial. Once my photos finish germinating I will start the next 2 seed batch of GSC. I'll just edit previous weeks to insert them in the journal.
As the roots expand I'm slowly upping the water, 3 cups every 3 days this week. Honestly between the super soil and it being an auto it feels more like taking care of a houseplant so far. =)
Everything developing nicely. Branches beginning to show up at the leaf nodes. Watering about a liter every 3 days at this point. After a recent frost risk passed have begun leaving this one outside to make room for my photo plants under my light at night. Will keep an eye on my overnight lows but she should be ok at this point.
She just keeps on trucking. So far absolutely no signs of any deficiency or burn and still just adding plain water. I'm pleased with the rate of growth too considering it's not getting 18-24 hours of light like autos typically do. Definitely want to give the next batch a go with topping/FIMing since I believe it will handle it ok. Gonna stick with LST for GSC1 as a control so I have a good idea when it will flip.
Have had a few days of decent rain so it's saved me from watering much this week.
** Growth after my FIM attempt on GSC2 is returning. Hard to tell what my results will be on that one. GSC3 is a little behind the pace of GSC1, little smaller and not showing prepistols yet. Might take a little longer.
Growth of the main tip has slowed since my last tie down, maybe 2 inches of growth, but the other branches are catching up nicely. The main stem is a bigger diameter at the midway point than it is at the base. Think it's broken most of it's apex dominance though it could just be preparing itself for flipping and the flowering stretch. This week might be more of a transition week than a true veg week, guess we'll know by the end of the week. It's faintly beginning to smell like bud when you're nose is close.
* Seeing some signs of nute burn in the tip growth. Tap root must be dipping into the hot mix zone.
Crazy week in the garden. One of those classic early spring cold snaps rolled through and I had to bring all the girls indoors for a few days. You can see some early tomatoes that didn't fair so well in the background of some of my pics lol. Flower has officially begun and my branches are developing out nicely and fill in the space of the plant. Continued signs of nute burn and it's showing me some of the drawbacks of the organic method. When things are off I feel a little more at a loss on how to tackle it. Instinct tells me to flush...but I worry that could lead to depleting my soil's reserves early. I think I should have maybe used a thicker layer of soil above my hotzone layer. Tempted to try to gently correct this situation in my GSC 2 and 3 plants while they are relatively small still but GSC1 is gonna have to ride it out at this point.
* No burn as of yet on 2 or 3. I didn't add extra soil so I expect some in the next week or two. Their growth has exploded in the last few days and I had to do some training. GSC3 is almost as big at 42 days as 1 is at day 66, which has me really excited about what it might do in more favorable conditions. After FIMing 2 I haven't done anything to it, looks like I got three tops on it. Might have to at least open them up some so they got room to thrive.
The stretch is real lol. Did a final round of LST to open it up a bit and eliminated some problematic leaf on leaf contact in a couple places I couldn't tuck. While you can still see the signs of nute burn, it hasn't gotten any worse and it's still powering along. Resisting the urge to defoliate until after the stretch. It's too humid to have all those leaves crowding or I'll be begging for powdery mildew but I also don't want to slow it down any during the stretch. Will monitor closely for now.
For a plant that is supposed to be finishing around day 70 this plant still has a ways to go. I would have expected a bit more bulking at this point, it might have to run an extra week or two. I'll incorporate some molasses or organic bulking agent into my watering schedule soon to see if it helps any. It's also possible temps have stunted it some. Though my journal shows pretty constant temps, it might be 70/50 one day and 50/38 the next. Also have had a fair amount of cloudy/rainy days cutting in on my sunshine. Will be interesting to see the yield comparisons between GSC1 and 3 since three should be flowering under better conditions.
* GSC 2&3 are doing great. Flowers are much bigger and spaced closer than 1 was at this point. A month makes a big difference in spring harvests.
Smell is growing stronger and the flowers are starting to fill out some. Still think it's gonna run a couple weeks beyond the advertised 70 day claim. Weather is improving but this week is going to have a lot of clouds and scattered showers.
Discovered some areas with budrot I had to eliminate on GSC1. Luckily only a small minor stem and one bud site on the mainstem. Hope it doesn't spread, part of the risk of flowering during spring rains. Removed affected portions and did a very light defoliation in some areas holding excessive moisture.
*GSC 2&3 are progressing well. With warmer temps and more reliable light the buds are already much bigger and more dense than GSC1 finished at. Gonna try to give these another 3-4 weeks if the trichs don't go too amber
The rot is popping up some still, had to remove another minor branch. Thankfully all the largest sites appear healthy so far. This rainy weather and high humidity is brutal on this plant. I am almost tempted to chop early to cut my losses but there are still too many clear trichs for my liking, though it is probably about 65% cloudy but no amber present yet. I am gonna try to give it longer and keep my fingers crossed. With luck GSC 2 & 3 will be hitting this stage in a bit drier conditions in about a month and I'll get a better feel for how this auto does outdoors.
* GSC2 &3 seem to be ripening faster than 1. The yellowing leaves are from a combination of that and some pretty high temps. Might have watered a little more frequently the last week but they'll still finish strong.
Continued rain and high humidity has forced some drastic measures. To combat my bud rot issues on GSC1 I have moved it under a lean-to to shade it from rain. Unfortunately it's not getting nearly as much sun in this location, but the rot has slowed/stopped. Altogether I've maybe lost 5-7 grams(est dry weight) from what I have had to remove. Better than loosing the whole plant though. It's close to chop time, almost entirely cloudy trichomes except in a few underdeveloped areas. Once this next rain system rolls through and the humidity dips I'll chop her.
Did a partial chop at day 77. Left the undergrowth attached to develop further.
Chopped the rest of GSC1 on day 84. Don't forget to follow the progress of GSC 2 and 3 in the coming weeks. They are about three weeks behind plant one. I will do my harvest post once all three are done and I have a chance to sample some of GSC1 and get some scale weights.
* GSC2 &3 look fairly done. All trichs are cloudy and about 10% amber. Trying to give them a little bit longer to see if it gives a last minute swell.
Gave the girls a prechop haircut. Removed fans with enough stem to get to without digging. Trichs are 15-20% amber, will likely chop early AM tomorrow. Heavy rains have again forced me to put these under cover to help protect from moisture, but humidity is still brutal. Will get the harvest post up once I get some dry weights.
Of course I expected diminished returns on these due to growing outdoors in early spring conditions. Overall they took a beating and while they didn't really produce a bunch, it's fairly potent bud. Will definitely give these another go indoors sometime.
Scrubbyjimbob
