New Grower Complete first time grower. 20 days in. Advice/comments & help welcome on my setup and grow.

[c0reforce]

Looks like you're rollin now dude. Your girls are filling out nicely.

Yea the bud sites are starting fill out and starting to pack on weight. But overall the plants seem like dwarfs in terms of vertical height and I don't know how much that will affect final yield. Perhaps I should of let them stretch a bit more during the grow stage but then again I don't know how much of a difference extra height will actually make to the yield considering its just a lot of stem.

Its a learning process and I have definitely already identified what I have done wrong with my first grow and have been taking notes on it so I can remember everything. I think my 2nd grow will already be twice as good

 

[c0reforce]

DAY 47 - SINCE SPROUT

First of all I would like to note that the AutoXtremes are really stinking now The growtent absolutely reeks of sticky bud.

I have now starting feeding the 6 AX with full strength General Organics Bio-Bloom and full strength BioBud. The girls have stopped showing new signs of deficiency's and I'm not seeing any nute burn symptoms. So I will continue with this full strength feeding until I start to see problems. Been making sure I get a good amount of run-off just to make sure nothing nasty is building up in the medium that could ruin the final stretch. It's also becoming a pain to water the plants at the back of the tent, having to do a lot of juggling to get to them right at the back. Its all a learning experience.

The main cola's on the shorter plants are really starting to get dense now and feel real heavy to the touch.

I got a new humidifier running in the same room as the tent to try and keep the RH to a level of about 50% because winter has already started here and we are getting a lot of cold, dry air. Also put a new bigger desk fan into the tent to make sure that the air is moving enough between the dense buds to make sure I don't get any kind of mould or bud rot.

Pics of the AX:



Now for the 3 AutoMazar's. These babies are about to start flowering, another 3-4 days or so and I suspect they'll be in bloom. These 3 girls are bigger than any of the AutoXtremes, although they did stretch a lot in the beginning due to the height of the lights. I have a feeling they are gonna be massive and I hope the bud is gonna be just as big Still feeding them with full strength grow nutes and I depending on the girls will be probably switch over to bloom nutes in the next 5-6 days or so. They are also looking a lot healthier than the AX's did at this point in time with nice dark green leaves throughout and no yellowing or spots to report as of yet.

AutoMazar Pics (3 taller girls in the front of the tent)



Having a lot of fun righting this grow diary/blog and I will definitely write a complete diary for my next grow.

What do you guys think? any advice for this stage of the grow because this is all new territory for me!

 

[c0reforce]

Day 55 - Since Sprout

So this week was a bit of a disaster for my grow. I was called away on an emergency and wasn't able to get home to water the girls for 5 odd days. When I finally got back home they were realllllyy dried out and really looked like they were on the brink of death. I gave them 2L clean tap water each in a hurry to get them drinking and again after 12 hours to really get the soil soaked again.

The 3x AutoMazar's have recovered 90% with just a few leaves lost to drying out and falling off. The 6x AutoXtremes had a really hard time without water for 5 days in full flower and have turned 50-60% completely yellow everywhere (see pics) The leaves make the plant look like its ready for harvest but @ 60 days since germination that simply isn't possible and the bud still has plenty of fresh white hairs coming out of it. I am still following the nute schedule of full strength bloom nutes and bud booster, and I really hope the plants will make it another 2-3 weeks so that I can chop at the proper time.

Any emergency advice on how to nurse them through the last couple of weeks? They are really yellow!

 

[GodAmJT]

Damn man, that sucks!! I hope everything is okay in your personal life, first and foremost, because after all, these are just plants in the big scheme of things.. As for advice, I would say keep an eye on your run-off pH, and make sure the plants aren't really on the verge of death.. I'm thinking the leaves that are pretty beaten won't recover, but now that you've watered them, I bet they will begin to perk back up quickly!!

One of the problems I've seen in my grows, being a form of soil-less medium (rockwool), when I neglect to water them for a couple days, the pH gets crazy and drifts in either direction for a couple days until the medium is flushed out of the residual junk from the days of neglect.. I know soil is a bit different in that respect, so take it with a grain of salt.. I think you caught them just in time since the buds still look pretty decent and it looks like only fan leaves took the hit..

 

[c0reforce]

Damn man, that sucks!! I hope everything is okay in your personal life, first and foremost, because after all, these are just plants in the big scheme of things.. As for advice, I would say keep an eye on your run-off pH, and make sure the plants aren't really on the verge of death.. I'm thinking the leaves that are pretty beaten won't recover, but now that you've watered them, I bet they will begin to perk back up quickly!!

One of the problems I've seen in my grows, being a form of soil-less medium (rockwool), when I neglect to water them for a couple days, the pH gets crazy and drifts in either direction for a couple days until the medium is flushed out of the residual junk from the days of neglect.. I know soil is a bit different in that respect, so take it with a grain of salt.. I think you caught them just in time since the buds still look pretty decent and it looks like only fan leaves took the hit..

Yea had some issues to sort out and I am really annoyed with myself that I let it happen. But you've gotta do what you've gotta do.

I watered them again today with full strength bloom + bud booster. Measured the run off and it averaged @ 6.6 between all the plants which is pretty much the same as what I'm putting in (6.7) The yellowing started really early though and I have a feeling that because I was scared of overwatering/nute burn that I didn't give them enough Nitrogen early in the grow and now they are really feeling the deficiency. This was then obviously exacerbated by the fairly high temps and 5 day lack of water. The yellowing seems to perfectly match the symptoms of N deficiency. The BioBizz Light Mix I used is a really nice medium but obviously it doesn't contain any nutes and I think I really underfed them during the first few weeks.

Anyway its all a learning process and after all this is my very first grow. I'm really glad that I started writing this grow journal/blog because its a written document of all the issues that I ran into and the problem solving process I used to fix it. I can then keep referring back here for my next grow to make sure I don't make the same mistakes twice.

Now I'm just really scared that because the girls are really not looking to healthy that the bud is gonna start degrading. I now can't really rely on the leaves to tell me when its harvest time (following Muddy's guide) and I really want to get the timing right. Is there any other reliable ways of judging when its ready to chop without only looking at the leaves? I know trichome colour is not a reliable on automatic plants.

 

[c0reforce]

Here are some bud photo's for you all. What do ye think?

 

[AnanKofan]

Thats look nice

 

[GodAmJT]

Maybe it's the pictures or the camera, but those plants don't look that bad!!! Now that you're back onto feeding them, you should see them come around within a week or so, sometimes longer, depending on other conditions, but as long as your temps are good and your pH runoff is good, then I think you're fine!! So long as it doesn't get worse, I'd keep doing what you're doing with the understanding that some of the leaves may never look normal again, so check the new growth for signs of improvement, as well as bud growth and development.. My first grow went nearly perfect.. My second grow, eeeeeeeehh.. Let's just say anything that could've gone wrong, did, but I was able to salvage 1 out of the 2 plants, and with 2.4oz of dried bud to boot, so I think you're doing fine!!

 

[c0reforce]

Maybe it's the pictures or the camera, but those plants don't look that bad!!! Now that you're back onto feeding them, you should see them come around within a week or so, sometimes longer, depending on other conditions, but as long as your temps are good and your pH runoff is good, then I think you're fine!! So long as it doesn't get worse, I'd keep doing what you're doing with the understanding that some of the leaves may never look normal again, so check the new growth for signs of improvement, as well as bud growth and development.. My first grow went nearly perfect.. My second grow, eeeeeeeehh.. Let's just say anything that could've gone wrong, did, but I was able to salvage 1 out of the 2 plants, and with 2.4oz of dried bud to boot, so I think you're doing fine!!

Yea I think the camera are doing the ladies a few favours (just like in RL) They look terrible in the tent, an ocean of yellow

But in all honesty the bud is still looking pretty good. Its still putting out new white hairs so I assume that its still developing and packing on weight (I hope)

Now that I don't have the leaves to tell me when its time for the chop, do you know anyway that I'll be able to reliably tell that they are ready?

 

[derek420colorado]

C0re, your plants really don't look that bad, in fact they look just about exactly where they should be. I haven't read through the thread but based on those pictures you should be getting ready for the flush and the leaves that are yellowing should be at this stage. Also if you don't want to go by the color of the leaves the Trichromes are the best indicator of when a plant is fully mature. Do you have a jewelers loupe or a handheld microscope to check your trichromes? If not they are only like 15 or 20 bucks I think. Take a look at your trichs and see what color they are.

There are 3 different colors of trichromes the first is Clear the Second is Cloudy and the third is Amber. When it comes to autos some strains do not get all the way to amber, so you want to Harvest your plants when they have all or mostly cloudy and some amber. If the plant seems to be going too long and no amber then it might be a strain that the trichs don't turn amber so you will only get cloudy trichs.

If you have any other questions feel free to PM me and I will try to help if I can, sending good grow Karma your way