Purple Gorilla Auto #1

I planned to start two beans again a Brooklyn Sunrise and a Purple Gorilla, I got them mixed up and then the one that popped early got eaten by something over night, after some forensic work on the seed pods, I have determined that it was the Brooklyn Sunrise bean that survived, so I planted another Purple Gorilla, but because I wasn't 100% sure, I picked what looked like my worst seed it was very tiny. I didn't expect it to pop but it did and that's this grow you're looking at. Usually I go for the best looking seed but this was the smallest weakest looking so it will be interesting to see how she turns out. Pretty standard 1st Week in my Shallow Water Culture technique and a ChiLED veg puck and later I will move under a couple of QB96 Elites running at 180 each when on max. Using General Hydro Flora, but I'm currently changing over to GP3. No other additives or supplements other than pH rebalance.

This is growing with a similar structure to my last Short Stuff Auto Jedi, which is quite open, she appears to be less vigorous and slower than the Dutch Passion Auto Brooklyn Sunrise, but that's just a deceptive appearance. As you can see the shoots on the fourth node are just visible on day 14, which is really the same pace as the Brooklyn, which is currently growing. So this could be topped tomorrow, but I'm going to wait a few more days before topping at the fourth node. This is supposed to be a bushy plant and I can already see that is going to be the case, EDIT: end of day update, turned out that since this afternoon she has grown out at the top enough so that she was so easy to pinch out with my nails that I just did it rather than wait. Even though she looks small and slow she's actually developing quite rapidly.

Quite a surprise this week this Short Stuff, is taking to topping really well and has overtaken the Brooklyn Sunrise nice and easy to work with too. The Brooklyn Sunrise is the opposite. Everything looking pretty good, kept the pH higher than I usually do at 6.3 then keep bringing it up as it drifts down. Very little defoliating at this stage just enough to get light into the lower branches to stimulate growth.

All growing well, I rearrange the plants and they are both under the QB96's now running 350W. She's growing nice and open. Did the first major defoliation yesterday everything is getting plenty of light and she is in the process of flipping to flower, so next week will be the first flowering update. I am trying to do away with creating a net as long as I can grow enough till the next batch! As usual my Shallow Water Culture method is going well. No aeration, no added supplements, just the basic micro grow bloom.

Looks like next week will be the first full flowering week. She is spreading out nicely and I've done a few big defoliations plus continual removal of leaves, plus I've gone in and had a good look at the structure and thinned out a fair bit of stuff. Hopefully by next week there'll be some flower tufts.

Finally she's definitely in flower should be nice and tufty by next week. The whole weeks has just been continuous defoliating and then two days ago I went in for the big understory clear out, took quite a lot of stuff off. Bent a couple of branches but mainly just relying on spreading it all out. Not a very exciting update, but I'm sure this will start showing her potential by next week.

Lots of pruning defoliating mainly this week, nothing very exciting to see, for a couple of weeks. Otherwise everything proceeding as expected. I am changing over from GH to GP3 nutrients due to availability issues. First time I'm using a product like Massive. Let's see if there's any difference. I'm guessing not.

She is developing pretty slowly but still growing and developing bud sites. I had to go in and do a very large tidy up of the considerable undergrowth as she was getting way out of hand. The actual flowers looks a bit under developed so now I'm a bit nervous but I've been here before. At 33 inches she is the tallest auto I've grown.

Finally we're getting some action happening. I have to say I've been a bit disappointed at how loose the buds are, but she is finally starting to pack on the weight and the trichomes. She's very difficult to photograph but she'll get easier as the leaves die off. I was so concerned about the flower structure that I bought a large 800 x 600 mm 77T silk screen to do a dry ice sift. I still might do that. But there's enough trichomes on her now that I can stop worrying, however I have to say that if these heads were really compact I would be in some bother with a plant this large it would be a bud rot candidate. A fair bit of change since last week, so I'm happy again. I can't really tell how she smells because the Brooklyn Sunrise next to her has overtaken the whole house with dank, spicy, caramel, diesel. Update: Added some flash shots...

Just a bit more bulking up this weeks, pistils still mostly white, buds still fairly loose so I might take advantage of that and try a dry sift on this plant. However while the buds are loose they are very sticky with lots of resin. this could be another two weeks or even more!

Not a lot of change again, still mostly white pistils, a bit more bulking. I went in and did a bit of a clean up but that's about it. Just waiting now. Hopefully we'll see some more orange pistils by next week. Trichomes looking good.

She's still putting on some bulk and most of the pistils are turning, although trichomes are still 50/50 clear/cloudy. All the flowers over the entire plant are a collection of natural foxtails, which should work really well with the 73 micron silk screen I have obtained specifically for this plant. She is a raggedy looking girl with lots of very untidy leaves and very many of the flowers hiding from sight. Because this is all for my own consumption, I don't need to worry about 'bag appeal'. Give me intact trichomes over bag appeal any day. So all I have this week is the best attempts I can make at trying to photography these elusive girls. I suspect that she will get the chop sometime in the next week.

I've just been letting the nutrient run down the past two weeks, trying to see if the buds are still growing, hard to tell sometimes, new pistils coming up and still a lot of clear trichomes, but I also need the space in the end I began chopping some of the smaller branches down early in the week and spent four days harvesting the whole plant finishing on the main cola. I quite like the way these buds form, like all foxtails, but covered in trichomes, and much more solid than I expected, I think these will dry up nice. Next week I'll get the harvest Information up. Main Cola was 280gm wet, so prolly close to 2zips. I've been sampling some early chopped product and the smoke is quite fruity and piney.

pretty huge harvest and everything absolutely covered in sticky long buds, very bushy, needed a lot of experience to deal with this one, it does drive me mad a bit, but cannot complain about the quality of the weed. Even the lowest quality spindly flowers had plenty of resin so I put a couple of ounces of that through my slug33 fat mac. Then there's 10 zips plus what I already smoked as well as the two I turned into 10 grams of resin.