New Grower Gren's First Grow

[olegren]

Today (Day 13) was the day. I have been looking forward to transplanting out of that solo cup and into a proper home, and her leaves finally surpassed the cup's edges. Transplant to her 3gal smart pot (final) home went pretty well. I gave her 50ML PH'd water this morning thinking I might do it tomorrow, but I decided to go ahead since the soil's been drying out relatively quickly. Didn't manage to snap any photos through the process (Hard enough doing that without juggling a phone) - But I think it went okay. Virtually no lateral root growth from the leggy stem I buried last week, but the bottom was coiled up and gnarly. I think she was ready.

Post-transplant, I gave her some 6.4 PH'd water - around 32 oz. First 16 oz. had myco in it. Watered around the perimeter. Gave the second 16 oz. later and was PH'd only (no myco). Gave this closer to the plant itself; hoping to ensure none of those transplanted roots have a chance at drying out. Including some before & after photos from today. She was stretching a bit, so I've upped lighting to 23000 lux (~340 ppfd) at about 16".

Also, my NL seedling made an appearance. She sprouted yesterday morning with a helmet on. I removed that around the afternoon. Cotyledons have since adjusted, true leaves are showing (but drooping), so I gave her 50ML PH'ed water today around the cup's perimeter. Will keep an eye out, but having one well under way makes it a lot easier not to freak out or check in on her 30 times a day.

 

[olegren]

Quiet day, but figured I'd share some updates.

This is day 14 for my main girl. The transplant has clearly taken a toll. She was drooping this morning. Not being familiar with transplants, I realized I had not thoroughly soaked her home-to-be before transplant. Fearing I didn't ensure the roots were nice and settled into their new home, I gave her 64 oz of water today -- Just enough to get a little leeching out the bottom of the smart pot. That was since soaked back up.

She's still looking pretty sad, so I'm going to leave her alone and let things dry out for a few days -- And hope I didn't do her any harm with that second watering. I've heard these pots dry out fast, and she's right in front of an oscillating fan to keep things moving.

The new gal is on day 2 and seems to be progressing fine. No love needed for her, but I did snap a quick photo illustrating some growth and the appearance of two more tiny leaves.

 

[olegren]

Pretty quiet week with the virus craze, but the plants are still doing well. I can tell a big difference in my newer seedling and its predecessors. She's coming along quicker and thriving despite a few mis-steps.

Grow 2 updates (Bastilla)
For my second grow (3 Bears - Henceforth known as Bastilla because why not?), this is day 18. I'm pretty sure I've stunted her a fair bit with too much light. In addition to the mis-step with lighting back in week 1/2, brought her down to around 360ppfd (~15" from light on dimmest setting). While she's growing fine, I think this is keeping her very low to the ground and bushy; which is delaying the LST that I wanted to undertake. Today I raised the lighting back up to around 20" (~280 ppfd) in hopes that I can encourage her to stretch a little bit. She's a whopping 3" tall right now, but I'm encouraged to see new nodes popping up down beneath the larger upper leaves.

The last watering was Tuesday - when I gave her that additional 64 oz. I should have known better. While the top of the pot is nice and dry, it's still heavy, and I can imagine those roots are sitting in plenty of moisture. I'm going to get it really dry out this time. In order to accelerate that and minimize the damage my heavy watering did, I've disabled my humidfier temporarily (I'm down to 2 jugs of distilled water anyway - Can't find it anywhere lately) and enabled exhaust 24/7 for a day or two to help the soil dry out. She was really unhappy for a couple days; as you can see from the photos. I was just worried that I'd botched the transplant and wanted to make sure she was packed in good.

Grow 3 updates (Guadalupe)
The little Northern Lights auto seedling (Guadalupe) is doing great. I've pretty much left her the hell alone which I think speaks volumes. Last watering was 5 days ago and that 60ML I mentioned in my last update. Cup still has a bit of weight to it, so I'm gonna let it ride for now. I had her sitting in a weird angle to the light, and I think this is why her second set of leaves started twisting in such a weird way. I have since re-situated her directly beneath the light and gotten rid of the heat mat. I'm hoping the drop in RH (She's sharing a tent with the other; and thus is having to deal with the 24/7 exhaust + no humidifier) doesn't bother her too much, but 14 hours in she doesn't seem too upset about it.

 

[olegren]

Hard to believe it's been 4 months. I've still been here lurking, but the apocalypse on top of normal life stuff - and this new hobby - had me too slammed to really focus on fine tuning things further.

Since my last update, both plants have been chopped. A few notes:

• My little 3 bears never went much further than in those last few photos. She gave me about 7g dry. It's not the most potent stuff I've ever smoked, but it smells fantastic and I think I did pretty well on the cure. This was from my first grow, and she went through a lot; from water that hadn't been PHed to a lot of drastic fluctuations in light + humidity as I tried to fine tune things.
• The Auto NL ended up taking forever. I ended up observing some problems similar to those I saw in my 3-bears - The strange rust spots, signs of too much light, etc. Further, she went a long damn time. I ended up chopping her at 18 weeks. I know this sounds crazy, but I was keeping a close eye on those trichomes and they never did start to approach amber. They were nice and milky though. As far out as week 15, I was still seeing new white pistils forming. I stopped this by dimming my lights a fair bit more. Edit: Final weight on her is 32g of perfectly decent weed. :smoking:

I just started a new grow today. I'll provide details on that later, but for now here are my lessons learned:

1. Going to practice leaving the plants alone a lot more in future grows. I think everyone goes through it with their first grow or two: That need to constantly check and adjust. I know I did more harm than good with this on the 3 Bears, and the Auto NL suffered from it a bit towards the end.
2. Going to work more towards fine tuning my environment. Specifically:
   1. Emphasize proper VPD. As I approached 50%-80% dimness on my QB, temps got out of control (As high as 90 F) - and humidity dropped too much. (~30%) I have a humidifier in my tent, but it just couldn't keep up - and I couldn't keep distilled water in stock as shortages hit with the pandemic.
   2. I'm going to try and get the driver for my QB outside the tent. Will try mounting it on a board or something and just rewiring so that it's external. It'll still be in that closet, but with it mounted high and the tent intakes are low. I think this should help when I do need to raise light intensity. I'm also going to try a few water trays in the tent. I may have to break down and get a larger humidifier for my lung room but am treating this as a last resort given that keeping the thing full of distilled water will continue to be a PITA.
   3. Monitor PPFD closely. I invested in a lux meter and found that my issues with new pistil growth seemed to persist far too late into flower over 400PPFD. Going forward, I will set a tentative ceiling of 400ppfd once I hit flower. If anything, I may slowly increment by ~1k lux or so/day and monitor for any negative signs. I observed, in my Auto NL, that the lower leaves were nice and green while the ones up top were fried and mostly brown by the end.
3. Medium: I grew with 2/3 HF + 1/3 OF this go-round. (Mixed in ~25% perilite as well) Others pointed out OF is a notoriously unstable soil, and I was not feeding any nutrients. I'm not positive it wasn't part of my issue here. I did invest in a good soil PH meter and took a few runoff tests. They suggest I was sitting right around 7.0PH for my soil. I watered with 6.2-6.5PH'd water.
   1. Going forward, I'm going to use HF since it's light and readily accessible - And feed. I'm also going to mix in a bit of peat moss to help acidify just a little. Not quite ready to do a coco mix, but I may do that in a future grow.
4. Nutes: I didn't give any nutes for most of my first two grows. I was following another guide that suggested OF + top dressing was plenty of nutritents. Not convinced.
   1. Going forward, I invested in some Prescription Blend at the suggestion of members here and think it did help with my Auto NL. She fattened up nice with ~10 weeks of their flower formula. I'll give these from seedling onward with my next few grows and see how it performs.
   2. I'll also give roughly half a dose of cal mag going forward to see if that helps my spot issues.
5. Watering: I think I did pretty good here with all stages prior to flower. However, under-watering seemed to be a contributor to my issues in mid-late flower.
   1. Going forward, I want to water more liberally in flower. Still don't want to over-water; but not going to wait for them to get bone dry like I was doing the first few times. Will continue to PH to ~6.2-6.5.

That's it for now. I got my tent cleaned up just yesterday and prepped for four new seeds to go in today. They're now germinating in their solo cup homes, but I'll cover that in a separate update. I really appreciate everyone's help over here. I have learned a lot and hope that by contributing my experience I'll be able to save others a bit of time.

 

[420Forever]

Hard to believe it's been 4 months. I've still been here lurking, but the apocalypse on top of normal life stuff - and this new hobby - had me too slammed to really focus on fine tuning things further.

Since my last update, both plants have been chopped. A few notes:

• My little 3 bears never went much further than in those last few photos. She gave me about 7g dry. It's not the most potent stuff I've ever smoked, but it smells fantastic and I think I did pretty well on the cure. This was from my first grow, and she went through a lot; from water that hadn't been PHed to a lot of drastic fluctuations in light + humidity as I tried to fine tune things.
• The Auto NL ended up taking forever. I ended up observing some problems similar to those I saw in my 3-bears - The strange rust spots, signs of too much light, etc. Further, she went a long damn time. I ended up chopping her at 18 weeks. I know this sounds crazy, but I was keeping a close eye on those trichomes and they never did start to approach amber. They were nice and milky though. As far out as week 15, I was still seeing new white pistils forming. I stopped this by dimming my lights a fair bit more. Final weight pending, but she nearly filled two mason jars dried.

I just started a new grow today. I'll provide details on that later, but for now here are my lessons learned:

1. Going to practice leaving the plants alone a lot more in future grows. I think everyone goes through it with their first grow or two: That need to constantly check and adjust. I know I did more harm than good with this on the 3 Bears, and the Auto NL suffered from it a bit towards the end.
2. Going to work more towards fine tuning my environment. Specifically:
   1. Emphasize proper VPD. As I approached 50%-80% dimness on my QB, temps got out of control (As high as 90 F) - and humidity dropped too much. (~30%) I have a humidifier in my tent, but it just couldn't keep up - and I couldn't keep distilled water in stock as shortages hit with the pandemic.
   2. I'm going to try and get the driver for my QB outside the tent. Will try mounting it on a board or something and just rewiring so that it's external. It'll still be in that closet, but with it mounted high and the tent intakes are low. I think this should help when I do need to raise light intensity. I'm also going to try a few water trays in the tent. I may have to break down and get a larger humidifier for my lung room but am treating this as a last resort given that keeping the thing full of distilled water will continue to be a PITA.
   3. Monitor PPFD closely. I invested in a lux meter and found that my issues with new pistil growth seemed to persist far too late into flower over 400PPFD. Going forward, I will set a tentative ceiling of 400ppfd once I hit flower. If anything, I may slowly increment by ~1k lux or so/day and monitor for any negative signs. I observed, in my Auto NL, that the lower leaves were nice and green while the ones up top were fried and mostly brown by the end.
3. Medium: I grew with 2/3 HF + 1/3 OF this go-round. (Mixed in ~25% perilite as well) Others pointed out OF is a notoriously unstable soil, and I was not feeding any nutrients. I'm not positive it wasn't part of my issue here. I did invest in a good soil PH meter and took a few runoff tests. They suggest I was sitting right around 7.0PH for my soil. I watered with 6.2-6.5PH'd water.
   1. Going forward, I'm going to use HF since it's light and readily accessible - And feed. I'm also going to mix in a bit of peat moss to help acidify just a little. Not quite ready to do a coco mix, but I may do that in a future grow.
4. Nutes: I didn't give any nutes for most of my first two grows. I was following another guide that suggested OF + top dressing was plenty of nutritents. Not convinced.
   1. Going forward, I invested in some Prescription Blend at the suggestion of members here and think it did help with my Auto NL. She fattened up nice with ~10 weeks of their flower formula. I'll give these from seedling onward with my next few grows and see how it performs.
   2. I'll also give roughly half a dose of cal mag going forward to see if that helps my spot issues.
5. Watering: I think I did pretty good here with all stages prior to flower. However, under-watering seemed to be a contributor to my issues in mid-late flower.
   1. Going forward, I want to water more liberally in flower. Still don't want to over-water; but not going to wait for them to get bone dry like I was doing the first few times. Will continue to PH to ~6.2-6.5.

That's it for now. I got my tent cleaned up just yesterday and prepped for four new seeds to go in today. They're now germinating in their solo cup homes, but I'll cover that in a separate update. I really appreciate everyone's help over here. I have learned a lot and hope that by contributing my experience I'll be able to save others a bit of time.

congratz & u now have a shiny lil badge to help celebrate to display it, jus go to profile > badgez & click on the lil megaphoneicon beside it and btw, don't feel bad, NL is a notorious long runner...me own first grow was two NL autoz that took 167d, so... ppp

 

[olegren]

congratz & u now have a shiny lil badge to help celebrate to display it, jus go to profile > badgez & click on the lil megaphoneicon beside it and btw, don't feel bad, NL is a notorious long runner...me own first grow was two NL autoz that took 167d, so... ppp

I had no idea Auto NL could take so long. Thanks!