June 28, 2023 Day 50
Zkittlez One:
Height: 24.5"
DLI: 52 mol/m²/d
Light Height: 22"
Zkittlez Two:
Height: 28.5"
DLI: 55 mol/m²/d
Light Height: 18"
This week will focus on Zkittlez One and getting her thinned out properly. I hope to have that finished by the end of the week. I've also raised the light again to keep the distance at 22" above the canopy. It's also helping Zkittlez Two. As she is a 28.5" plant, she was definitely a bit too close to the light. The other plants in the tent may not have enough light from the higher light height. I'm not sure for good or bad.
Zkittlez One has hit the 24" plus mark! She looks fantastic. I definitely need to thin out the foliage a bit. I'll wait for her to finish up. But I'll just pull a few here and there as needed. However, I don't expect much more stretch out of her. Maybe a couple more days? We shall see. Water looks great. The stacks coming off this lady are, IMO, fantastic. The whole canopy is covered in tops and shoots still reaching. Honestly, if she was alone in the tent, I'm pretty sure I could have trained her wall to wall. Alas, I have 3 other plants in there who also need light space. Lol.
Zkittlez Two is also looking great! She's filling out a bit still and building up those buds. I have a bit of confusion with her top. The buds are very skinny at the top and get fatter in the mid range of the plant. Around where the side branches grew to. Happily, they match the height of Zkittlez One. Or just a bit lower.
Grow System Environment:
Temp: 74.6°
RH: 62.3% (still super humid here)
VPD: 1.07 kPa
June 29, 2023
Zkittlez One
This plant has been a beast the whole time. Now she is getting too big for the tent and way too big to accommodate 4 plants as I have in there now. The canopy is super deep and needs a good thinning out. Speaking of thinning out, I decided to remove the outer leaves to open more space for the other plants. I'll be doing this over the course of the next couple days. She also got a full reservoir refill today. Cleaned up the reservoir as well.
Zkittlez Two
This lady needs absolutely nothing. Just hanging out and showing me what I should be expecting for bud production out of Zkittlez One.
Honestly, I think I need a bigger tent already. I've had this 3x3 for 3 grows and I'm discovering the disadvantage of a smaller tent.
Plus the thing people seem to think is best is compact plant. I don't need mine compact. I can grow in my state without issues.
The humidity is still super high. So far I haven't found a solution. I have 2 dehumidifiers in there. That didn't work at all. It's the main room the tent is in. It's super humid in there due to the weather. Tent door has been open for days.
I'll ask what to do. Maybe someone has an idea.
Update: So I was looking over Zkittlez One this afternoon and realized taking the tie downs out made the plant compact, but a bit too compact. So after some testing I figured out that I needed to tie down the lowest 4 branches to open up the center of the canopy. It worked WONDERS! The 4 branches along with all of the tops from each one spread out perfectly, completely opening up the whole canopy. She is seriously huge now. See pic. Just WOW I've also added a video to show her mass.
Grow System Environment:
Temp: 74.6°
RH: 62.1%
VPD: 1.08 kPa
June 30, 2023
Zkittlez One is the boss of this grow. She'll need another watering tomorrow morning. I snipped off some outside leaves today. And a couple blocking bud sites and more tops. A quarter turn made a bit more room for the other plants in the tent. Well, except Zkittlez Two. She is in the way back almost engulfed by Zkittlez One.
Zkittlez Two has some awesome bud production going on. She may need a watering soon as well. Anyway, the whole plant is covered as I thought it would be. The buds haven't even started to swell yet. It's just going to be that much bigger.
Grow System Environment:
Temp: 73.9°
RH: 64.4%
VPD: 1.01 kPa
July 1, 2023
Zkittlez One looks absolutely amazing. Massive and still growing. She's nearly 30" wide. 24" deep. She is also 25.5" tall. I don't know if this is big for an autoflower, but I assume it is. It's the biggest I've ever grown. She doesn't need water yet, but at her rate, she may need another gallon tomorrow. I snipped off just a couple more leaves today, just opening air flow and bud sites.
Zkittlez Two looks great as ever. I decided to finally pull some fan leaves. Just the main stem ones and a couple that was completely covering another branch or facing inward. She'll need a new reservoir tomorrow. My major concern is how much she is squished in the back. With the 4 plants in there and that one massive Zkittlez, the 2 vegging plants need all the light they can get, which puts this lady in the corner. I was honestly considering moving her to my dry Tent and popping the light back in there. Something else I noticed is the bud structure. They seem quite wispy maybe it's just how they form for now. But they are also really skinny. Especially the main cola. I'll have to keep an eye on that and see what I can do about it, if anything.
Grow System Environment:
Temp: 74.5°
RH: 63.3%
VPD: 1.06 kPa
July 2, 2023
Zkittlez One is now officially in the flowering stage. I'd say 2 days ago, but now the buds are really forming. The top of the canopy reads out at an impressive 26.5" tall. 29" in diameter. More bud sites and tops that I'm willing to count. Just a lot. She's going to need more water first thing tomorrow. Maybe later this afternoon. She's super thirsty and that's a great thing. I've also managed to thin the whole plant out. Not a full defoliation, but a few leaves here and there for about a week. Now she looks near perfect.
Zkittlez Two looks great! Still buried in the back and the buds are still pretty wispy. At least the ones up top. Lower bud production is fantastic! Big fat buds. I might have to drop the intensity very soon to save the main cola. She's definitely not as thirsty as Zkittlez One and I am still a bit concerned about that. She did however finish stretching at 29" tall.
Grow System Environment:
Temp: 73.5°
RH: 62.2%
VPD: 1.05 kPa
July 3, 2023
I dropped the light intensity down from 90% to 80% last night. Zkittlez One was drooping about 4 hours before lights out. I read somewhere that too much light can cause that. So we shall see how it looks tonight.
Zkittlez One needs more trimming I think. She looks great, but she has an 18" deep canopy and I'd rather give light to the whole thing. The top 5" are fine, but below that is a thick floor of foliage. I trimmed some of it away today, it I'm gonna need to continue for a bit. At least some for next 2 weeks. Every other day. Healthy is an understatement with this plant. She is really tall with the whole setup with bottom reservoir. 40" from floor to top. Impressive.
Zkittlez Two is so stuffed in the wall, I feel bad. I might have to take her out and put her in my dry tent with a 100 watt light. That is still up for debate. It's an extra 100 watts of power I'd be using. However, the extra space will certainly give the whole plant more light coverage and produce better buds I think. I'm going to try and maneuver them in the current tent and see what I can do.
Update: So Zkittlez Two was really squished in the corner. So I removed one of the smaller plants and moved Zkittlez Two diagonally to Zkittlez One. I also got to pull the 4 main side branches out for better light penetration.
Grow System Environment:
Temp: 74.2°
RH: 62.7%
VPD: 1.07 kPa
July 4, 2023
Zkittlez One is still growing a bit I think. The grow light is only 18.5" above the canopy now. Where it should be at 22" I'll have to see what I can do. Doing great on water and healthy as ever. I did start a bit of pruning. The popcorn buds on the bottom of the canopy. I'm not cutting the longer branches though. I feel like that might cause more stress. But I'm going to pull off popcorn buds for the rest of next week and of course remove fan leaves as needed. Every leaf is super healthy, just in the way of air flow and light.
Zkittlez Two is much better in the front of the tent diagonal from her sister plant. Much more space. And with the side branches pulled out, I expect to see much better bud development. She's still a slow drinker, but I'm starting to think it's the humidity that's preventing her from drinking more.
This is an entire week or more of humidity and lack of the right equipment. So I'm really hoping I don't end up with bud rot or mold. I don't think I'll get mold because of the air circulation. But bud rot later on is very possible. Maybe not probable though. I don't know. I don't have much experience with it, so yah. Either way, the grow tent door will be kept open to keep the humidity at a kind of reasonable level.
Grow System Environment:
Temp: 73.6°
RH: 65.9%
VPD: 0.95 kPa