Dinafem Dinafem Cheese Auto XXL - Day 43 - Frosty!

[Life_On_Mars]

Checking them today against a pic from a few days ago I could see the yellowing had progressed a LOT, so I decided to go ahead and give them a flush and pull them out of their perlite 'swick' pots...

(I don't know if I mentioned - the main fabric pots containing the soil and plants are inside a second, larger fabric pot with 4" of perlite, and those larger pots are in individual trays that get filled with water up to an inch below the perlite, so there is in air gap between the roots and water, and the perlite wicks the water up to the roots)

WELL... I'm glad I did, as the one that was looking particularly pale was actually starting to get a rotten stench right at the bottom of the perlite pot! I could smell it as soon as I pulled the roots out of the perlite. LUCKILY the rotten smell was confined to the VERY bottom of the perlite swick pot, and was nowhere near the main pot/soil. I checked the roots underneath the main pot carefully, and they didn't look unhealthy at all, but judging from the smell I'm sure it was only a matter of time before root rot set in.

Of course I pulled all the others out of their perlite pots, and happily all their roots smelt and looked fine, but the rotten smell of that first one sufficiently scared me enough to abandon the swick system and chop off the extra roots that were hanging off the bottom of the main pots.

The soil PH in all the pots was still around 5 so they did all need a flush. I flushed them all thoroughly then watered them to run off with low PPM water PH'd to 6.7 that had a 1/4 strength dose of orgatrex (a balanced organic feed). They're back in the tent now and I'm going to let them have a good dry out.

I sprayed the bottom of the pot where the roots are exposed with some weak H202 solution, and I'm not going to put them back in the perlite swicks. The roots all look creamy white and they're not overly matted together, so I think they're fine, but the smell of that ONE has slightly put me off this swick method. It's a shame as I think this method is partly responsible for their hefty growth. There were a good 2" of healthy bushy roots underneath each pot that I chopped.

On the plus side - RH has dropped a couple of points in the tent since taking the swicks out.

Having said that - I don't think the swicks or the rot was actually what was causing these issues, I do still think it was the soil acidity. I think the rot definitely WOULD have caused issues if I'd let it progress up to the main pot without flushing, but hopefully I've caught that in time and stopped any potential spread. I'm not sure it was even root rot yet, just some stagnation in the water at the bottom of the perlite. There is a heater blowing into the tent on cold nights, and it's pointing right at this one plants water tray. That would explain why this one alone was stagnating and the others were fine. The water certainly wasn't being left to sit, they would drink a whole trays worth every day and the trays would be dry the next day, so it wasn't that. Even when I flushed them I could see the water saturated the soil and flowed through to the bottom of the pot quickly, so they don't seem waterlogged or lacking in drainage. If I decide to stick with swick for the next grow then I'll need to fix the heater situation so it's spread more evenly round the tent.

Another thing I've learnt from this - those soil probe PH testers with two prongs are NOT accurate, at least mine isn't. I'll get dramatically different results from multiple readings of the same pot depending on the depth or placement. According to slurry tests with a calibrated PH pen (which do seem to be reliable), they are ALL off. My soil probe was telling me my soil was over 7, when it's actually around 5!

Anyway - the buds are still looking beautiful despite my errors and even if I lose a bit of final yield weight from this setback, it still looks like it's going to be a very healthy harvest. Hopefully they'll perk up in the next few days now. I'll recheck the soil PH tomorrow and see where it's sitting.

Trichomes are still more clear than cloudy, with a very occasional amber -

Plus they're still throwing out a lot of fresh pistils, so it looks like they've still got some time to go, but at least I know if it all goes tits up now I could chop them and still get a decent smoke :smoking:

 

[Life_On_Mars]

Another user commented on my other thread and confirmed that the initial pale new growth was just light burn. I can't believe all this could have been potentially solved by raising my lights 6-12 inches!! I kept feeding different things thinking I was seeing deficiencies, this caused my grow medium to drop to a very low PH. I'm still surprised about this as my water is very hard (350ppm) with a lot of CaC03, but I wonder if all the PH down I had to add to bring it into range was accumulating in the soil. Either that or the organic feed I was giving was too acidic.

I know 100% it is a PH issue now, because there is one plant that is unnaffected - ironically because that plant got stunted around week 3 when I snapped the main stem almost clean off with some overly enthusiastic LST (it was hanging by a thread). It healed fine, but has been smaller and slower to grow than all the others, which means it was drinking a lot less too. This plant is still green and healthy, chugging along as usual (just a little behind others, and with a couple of mutant leaves that it threw it when I snapped it) I checked the PH of THAT plants soil with a slurry test - it was 6.5. All the others are showing much lower PH. The worse the issues - the lower the soil PH.

I flushed them a couple of days ago, it took literally one day for the PH to get back down to 5!! Gonna flush them again tonight, but more thoroughly, then dissolve some dolomite lime in water, and water that solution in for the last couple of gallons.

Anyone know if I need to adjust PH after adding the lime to the water? I'm assuming it's going to cause the PH in the water to skyrocket? I don't really want to be adding more PH down into my water right now if possible as I think this may be part of the problem? Seeing as the soil is very acidic, is it an issue to water them with quite an alkaline water (say 8 or 9, or even higher)? Will this help 'offset' the acidity of the soil and bring it back into the range, or do I need to make sure the water is at a max of 7 to avoid issues? @Waira?

Also - starting to wonder if cut time is sooner than I thought - seeing some amber trichomes -

Zoomed -

Other pheno (this is the plant that is struggling most) -

zoomed in -

Any thoughts anyone? Another week maybe? It's indica dominant,. I like a heavy stone, but I don't want to go TOO heavy on the amber trichomes/couchlock effect.

 

[Life_On_Mars]

I checked the soil PH of all five, it turned out the initial flushing fixed three of them, but two of the pots were fighting hard to return to a low PH.

I flushed those two with plain tapwater (which is about 7.8 from my tap). This was a thorough flushing, 8 gallons through each pot, then another 2 gallons of water PH'd to 7 with a VERY weak addition of some seaweed tonic.

This worked. I've checked the soil with a slurry test today and it's in the correct range. I can also see the worse effected plant is clearly greening up again.

Those fan leaves with pale patches were completely pale all over a couple of days ago.

With all the flushing they probably need a feed, but I also managed to give them some nute burn last week while trying to fix this issue, and I've only got a week or two left, so I think I'll give them plain water from here on out.

Here's a couple of bud pics, they're packing on some weight now -

 

[Life_On_Mars]

Harvested one of the plants around day 70, trichs were mostly cloudy with a few ambers. RH and temps were getting way too high even with aircon and a dehumidifier, and I needed to make some space in the tent. This one seemed pretty much ready to chop, so down it came.

Hung the whole plant untrimmed for 8 days, then gave it a rough trim and into a jar with a hygrometer where the RH rose to around 68% - telling me it's still a tiny bit too damp for jarring, so the buds are in a big brown bag now, slowly drying out a bit more at the bottom of the tent.

WEIGHT - 140g of lovely top notch buds plus around 40g(ish) of trim, and around 40g of 'inbetween' buds, not loose and airy enough for shake/trim, but not quite dense enough to make the 'main' jars. Those are being smoked now while I wait for the cream of the crop to cure :smoking:

MAIN BUDS (this is a large 20" x 22" paper bag, for reference)-

Lazily Trimmed Nug Close Up -

Cut the other four on day 76, and they are hanging now. This high RH is finally working in my favour. It's sitting around 60%... perfect for a nice slow dry and cure. If all goes to plan these will hang here for at least 10 days, hopefully more. I'm wondering with this 60% ambient RH whether I can just leave them hanging for a good 2-3 weeks and they'll just start curing 'on the vine'? The only airflow is passive exhaust, temps are consistently between 20-24C, so I think it'll be difficult to actually over dry them.

In terms of the smoke - it's early days to be testing I know, but I can already tell it's high quality. I've got a fairly high tolerance so a big concern for me with growing autos was would the potency be up to scratch? I'm glad to report that the answer is a resounding yes.

Whilst I have zero growing experience, I have plenty of smoking experience. I work in the music industry and travel for work a fair bit, so I've had the opportunity to smoke top grade stuff in places like L.A and Amsterdam. I only bring this up to reassure anyone considering this strain based on my review that whilst I'm a growing newb, I know a good smoke when I find it, and this is most definitely a good smoke.

Buds are not super dense except for the very tops, but they're not soft and airy/fluffy either, they slightly crispy and SUPER sticky and resinous (gums up the grinder after two joints). When you give one a squeeze it gently springs back. The effect is powerful, not mind bendingly strong, not question-your-place-in-the-universe-and-come-up-empty strong, but a nice smooth high, exactly what I'd expect from a decent cheese.

It STINKS just like it did when it was growing, which was mainly that classic cheesy skunk smell mixed with a strong smell of sweet berries (and a slightly odd hint of baby sick that thankfully doesn't come through in the taste, and is fading away since drying!). No hay smell.

The taste is lovely - it tastes like good quality UK cheese with a bit more of that berry sweetness, and a bit less of that 'choking' cheesiness that you typically get with the classic Exodus cut. I do like that absurdly strong flavour that good UK cheese typically has, so I'm hoping that will come with the cure, or maybe it will be more present when I try the top of the main buds, or the buds from the plants that were left for longer before cutting.

It still has a bit of that fresh weed 'bite' to it. That's to be expected though as it's uncured, and technically not even totally stem-snapping dry yet (although it's pretty much there). I expect in a few weeks the taste will have developed appropriately. Even as it is right now, if I received this in a street deal I'd be asking for more... so all in all, very happy.

Assuming no major issues with mould, then it's looking like the total yield for all five plants is going to be around 20-30oz of high grade sticky buds, and probably another 10-15oz of trim/popcorn buds, which I'll make into hash.

That is for 5 plants in a 4x4 tent with 450w of LED lighting.

At the start of this grow I bought 2x 2l glass jars for storage, and I remember thinking 'wow... if I grow enough to fill both of these up to the brim then that would be pretty awesome'.

It's looking like I'm going to need to buy another eight of those jars, maybe more.

:smoking: