Purple Punch #1

Welcome back to my Purple Punch grow! Week 1 underway, things are a little quiet, but you know, that's just how it is with seedlings. Day 3 - Height: 2" Day 3 from sprout and she's coming along. This seedling hasn't tried to stretch up all crazy which is good. I had a seedling last time try and launch itself into the light which was just frustrating and I had to re-bury, but no problems with this one, she's staying nice and stocky and firm. Otherwise, just a quiet week watching her grow little by little and waiting for those first couple of nodes to pop out so I can relax a bit and not feel like I'm going to break things, which is always how I feel with seedlings!

Welcome back to the Purple Punch grow, things are starting to take off a little now and should be moving into veg growth towards the end of this week. Day 8 - Height: 3.5" As always in this early seedling stage, nothing much to report, no special care or nutrition going on as yet. All I've really been doing is watering about 2" around the stem with a dash of water every couple of days, but that's about it. She should hopefully be kicking on in a few days and we should see some proper growth towards the end of the week where I can think about training and nutes for next week. Day 12 - Height: 4" Going really well now, she's starting to shoot out nodes and is looking lovely and healthy. I've added 1ml/l of Alg-A-Mic to her latest water, getting her ready to start taking on nutrients from next week. I'll probably begin training next week too, once she shoots out that fourth node and it's a little more developed. Looking good though and I'm excited to start real growth from next week now we're finally leaning out of seedling mode! Thanks for reading, grow well! x

Welcome back to week 3 of the purple punch! Interesting week ahead... First week of feeding, so nutrient solution was very low with 367 PPM in and 489 PPM in the runoff. (Note: my water sits around 350 PPM out of the tap.) Day 14 - Height: 3" I think I maybe made a bit of a mistake this week by training her perhaps a little bit early. She bent over just fine but hasn't seemed to bounce back very fast and has had droopy leaves for a couple of days now. I'm sure she'll figure it out but probably I went in a bit strong and 3-4 days early. Still, what's done is done so now just take care of her and hope she comes back strong as she hits veg growth proper! I introduced the first low dosage of Grow nutrients this week, with 1ml/l so that's another thing to keep an eye on. I'm enjoying this grow, it's a little bit different, definitely have to keep a little bit of a closer eye on her over the next few days. Day 19 - Height 4" She's finally starting to come into her stretch I think and is growing out a little more from the heavy training. Things are still a bit slow and I think I may have stunted her somewhat, but we'll see, she might come up trumps yet. I've got her general position set now though, so I can pretty much leave her alone at this point and just adjust the ties now and then but the side stems are nicely spread out and the small side shoots should be nice and open to the light. The next week is probably going to give us a good sign of if she is stunted at all, so fingers crossed she continues to shoot up and things turn up okay! Otherwise the grow is good, she seems to be taking nutrients totally fine and all the leaves are nice and green and looking healthy!

Welcome back to the Fastbuds Purple Punch grow! Finally working into a good spot this week I think! Nutrient solution is basically following my feed chart right now, though the runoff was a little high this week, 993 PPM in and 1232 PPM in the runoff. (Note: my water sits around 350 PPM out of the tap.) Day 21 - Height: 5" I feel like the training is about done now, I'll have to touch it up here and there as she stretched, but I'm going to let her go at this point now the branches are about where I want them. She has started to stretch up a tiny bit, but I'm hoping she's going to launch up now that she's all set. Nutrient-wise, she's good as gold, has been taking on nutrients just fine with no detrimental effects so I'll start pushing them up a little this week, following my usual feed chart. A very easy going plant so far! Day 25 - Height: 6.5" This plant seems to be working with the training and is starting to fill out and shoot up now, so I think she'll be okay and not stunted like I feared. I'm still a little concerned about how thin the branches are, but hopefully they'll fill out as she starts to stretch up. Really nice plant to grow though, she has taken on nutrients like a champ and is looking nice and healthy. She's started to show sex about Day 22-23 ish, so we should get some pre-flowers over the next few days, which should put her on a pretty normal timeline despite the heavy training, maybe half a week, to a week behind, but no big deal. Interesting week ahead I reckon, where we should get a much better idea how she'll turn out. Thanks for reading, stay healthy and grow well x

Welcome back to week 5 of Purple Punch, kind of a middle week it looks like... Nutrient solution is quite high in and out this week, which is probably due to the added CalMag, but worth keeping an eye on over the next week as I might need to bring the runoff down a touch. PPMs in are at 1062 PPM and 1238 PPM in the runoff. (Note: my water sits around 350 PPM out of the tap.) Day 28 - Height: 10" This plant is shooting out pre-flowers now, but hasn't quite got into full flower just yet. I would've thought she probably will by the end of the week, however. She's still a bit leggy in the stems, they're not looking very fat to me and the inter nodal spacing seems a bit long, but hopefully they'll chunk up a bit as she goes into flower. Looking really healthy though and coming along well now she's bushing up properly. I'm hoping by the end of this week she'll fatten up on her stems and put on some size all-round really. Day 32 - Height: 11" I added a small amount of CalMag to the watering schedule as I noticed a few very tiny brown spots on some of the leaves. I probably would have done so anyway as it's usually about week 4-5 that I add CalMag once a week for a few weeks just to stave off calcium issues. Otherwise, this plant is starting to come along, the pre-flowers are starting to show proper now and she should start working on producing bud from next week, which will be interesting to see, as her internodal spacing still seems a bit lanky to me. We shall see very soon! One thing I have noticed with this plant is that a lot of the leaves have only three fingers, which may be the phenotype or it may just be a mutation. I doubt it's anything to worry about, but it looks quite weird though! Thanks a lot for following along, grow well x

Welcome back to the Purple Punch grow, coming along well, transitioning nicely into flower! Day 35 - Height: 12" This plant is already starting to show some cool colours, with pinks and purples coming through in the flowers and in the veins on the leaves. Quite excited to see where that goes, hopefully she's going to be a good looking grow. She's also started to smell this week, it's a pretty sweaty feet funk, which is promising! Everything healthy otherwise, I'll start bumping up bloom nutrients from this week and reducing the grow nutrient at the same time. I currently have one leaf with a small brown spot on, which I originally thought might have been a very early sign of a calcium deficiency, but since it hasn't spread at all and looking at how round it is, I'm wondering now if its not just nutrient burn from where I maybe splashed some nutes onto that leaf. Either way, I'll feed a touch of CalMag once per week for this week and next, just to fend off any Calcium issues that may arise during the transition into flower.

Welcome back to my Fastbuds Purple Punch grow! Really into flower now and gosh, they're pretty! Day 42 - Height: 14" Vertical growth has pretty much stalled at this point and this girl has stayed really short and bushy. She's started really throwing out buds now though and seems to be piling them up, so I think she'll do well in the end! The flowers are a lovely, really dark purple and have started to throw out an amazing smell. She has a really odd, dirty berry scent, which might not sound nice, but it really is gorgeous and seems quite unique. I love the actual structure of the flowers too, very compact wit those long pistils, makes it look all very alien. As far as care goes, everything very easy, I'll continue to up the bloom nutrients this week and also give it a last dash of Calmag at 1ml/l this week, just to help fend off those transitional issues with calcium that can arise. Other than that, everything good and hopefully it'll be coasting through the bulking up of the flowers from now on.

Welcome back to the Purple Punch grow! Starting to move into the final stage now, so shoul dbe looking forward to seeing her fatten up the buds she has right now this week and next. Day 49 - height: 14" She has stayed very stocky and low, maybe from early stunting I'm not sure, but has started to bulk up and become really bushy and fat now. I really like her structure though and she should be really interesting by the time she finishes and be all stocky low colas. The dark purple buds keep coming which looks amazing and some of the pistils starting turning orange this week which made for a beautiful contrast to the flowers. She also started smelling more and more strongly these days and it's really a unique and weird scent. Very pungent, black pepper and fruits, really looking forward to how that is going to develop! Care wise, things are going okay, she still has the rust in her leaves which she had from week 2, but it doesn't seem to get worse and is very different to anything I've seen before. For a long time I thought it was a feature of the strain, but it's definitely coming out as rust now. I have no idea what it is though and it seems weird that it came out so early, doesn't seem like a deficiency thing, so I wonder of it's not just some kind of disease or something. That might also explain why she stayed so stocky, who knows. Otherwise though she looks healthy and looking forward to some progression in the buds this week!

Welcome back to the Purple Punch grow! My new grow space is seemingly dialed in now after a few alterations on the fly to get things comfortable. for a week or so I think the plants I'm growing probably suffered low temps, but hopefully they wont be slowed down too much. Day 60 - Height: 14" Care for this plant is basically non-existant at this point. She's just coasting to finish, so I'm dialing back on nutrients and getting her ready for the chop! There is something very strange going on though, her leaves have gone very hard and brittle and the buds themselves are tock solid. It seems like whatever was causing the brown rust in the veins that started around about week 5 is maybe causing this, but I'm convinced this isn't a deficiency, as the plant would not have needed for much of anything else at that point. I wonder if it is a disease of some sort, or something just genetic. Of course, it could be a deficiency, but it doesn't seem to square up with any pictures or description of anything I can find. I'm really not sure. Anyhow, the colours are looking great and the smell is a cheesy funk, so although the yield is going to be low, partly due to whatever is going on I think and partly due to me having to move the grow mid-flower, I think its going to be a good smoke.

The end of the Purple Punch is here! This plant came down on Day 67 from sprout, which is a little rapid, but for the past two weeks this plant has really done nothing in terms of growth. In fact, she's been really weird. I mentioned in an earlier entry that she had started to get really dry, brittle leaves that seemed to come from the same thing that was causing the discolouration in the leafs veins. I'm still not sure if that was genetic or a disease or just a deficiency, but it seemed to make the plant stall completely eventually and feel almost like it was dead on the stem, drying out. Really odd. I still don't think it can have been a deficiency because it started at such a young age, but I'm open to anything. Not gonna worry about it too much. >> HARVEST AND TRIM << Not a massive yield, though 110g wet is not as bad as it first seems and I'm not as disappointed as I might otherwise have been because I don't think this plant has a lot of weight to lose as it was so dry already. There's obviously going to be the stem weight, but I think there's still going to be around 2oz in bud here after drying which is better than I was expecting after the weird end of its life. This plant was super easy to trim, not an overly large amount of fan and sugar leaves. I trimmed it quite tight from the start because again, being so dry already, the leaves aren't going to protect teh bud very much, so I may as well just lop them off. Now it's all hung up to dry in temps of 22-24c and a Relative Humidity of 45-50%. >> DRY BUD REPORT << The dry took about 5 days, which is fast but about average in my environment. The buds went into jars with Boveda 62% packs for a good cure before I smoke properly. Yield-wise, not too bad, as expected I didn't lose that much weight in the dry, only about 50% as opposed to the more usual 60-75%. The final weight is okay, not bad for a plant with such a small size I think. The final buds themselves are really frosty and have a great scent once dry. When I open the jars, you get a really concentrated blast of a fruity, really quite sour smell that is pretty sweet overall and I love the colours, though a lot of the red/purple faded out with the dry, they're a great mix of bright orange pistils, green flower and tiny red hues. >> EARLY SMOKE << Bit harsh, but I'm 100% sure that's down to no cure and they'll smooth right up after a week or more of cure and only get better from there. The high was pretty much a body stone, quite relaxing, one for pain relief and sleep I'd guess. A little mellow, nothing that would blow your socks off, which is perfect for me as I'm quite a casual smoker. >> FINAL THOUGHTS << Funny little plant. I'd like to grow it again because the smell, colours and final bud are worth the journey, however, I am not super impressed with how the grow panned out overall. In future I will train much more lightly, as I think going a bit heavy handed might have had something to do with its small overall size. I'm curious to grow another just to see how a grow might go without the weird necrosis growing throughout the leaf veins, which I'm still convinced was more genetic than anything I did wrong. I enjoyed the plant though and will grow again definitely, maybe in a grow or two I'll pop another seed and compare her with this grow. And that's about that! I hope you enjoyed following the grow and it might be useful for someone in future. Thanks for reading, stay healthy and grow well, until next time, which I think is going to be a pair of Strawberry Bananas once my Orange Sherbet finishes up. Cheers!