New Grower MIAutomatic’s Mephisto on da roof

[MIAutomatic]

First day of week two and things are going much better this time around! Its been warm, but mostly in the low to mid 80s and very minimal rain, the baby plants are really loving it on the roof. I still plan on putting a white tarp under the plants to help a little with the heat, but I can’t seem to find my box of tarps in the cluttered garage.

I am still just misting the pots to keep the medium damp, usually once in the morning and once early evening. Yesterday I felt like the pots were getting a little dry on the bottom so I bottom watered in about a quart in each pot by just letting the pots soak in a saucer for a couple minutes. For watering I am using RO, my well water is much too hard, about 1.0 EC out of the tap. Using 0.2 EC calmag and adding 10 ml/gallon of Rhizo. I will continue calmag and Rhizo for at least the next week and then go from there.

I am happy with their growth rate, I was afraid the heat would stunt them, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Pink Panama

Strawbba the Hutt

 

[MIAutomatic]

Things coming along pretty well, but by the end of day 10 I started to feel like they were getting a little heat stunted. I finally got my tarp down on day 11 and I wrapped the pots in some lightweight cotton fabric and also made covers for the topsoil on day 12. If I do this again next year I will get white rain science bags with the solar shield. Last couple days have been sort of cloudy, but they are still starting to grow faster. The fan leaves are picking up steam and lateral branches have started to form.

Gave them their first dose of nutrients today, mixed into 1 gallon RO:

7ml Biocanna Vega
2ml Dyna-gro Silica

I only gave each plant 1 quart. Before I wrapped the pots I was losing a lot of moisture to heat and evaporation, but that seems to be under control now. If they dry out enough by tomorrow morning I’ll give them each a second quart, but my guess is they won’t need any more water for at least 2 days.

Plants are starting to show their heritage with the PP growing slimmer sativa looking leaves and wider indica leaf on the StH.

PP

StH

 

[MIAutomatic]

Things starting to pick up now. After their feed, which I think was a little too soon, I gave plain water every other day and they seem to be happy. I had been giving about 20oz each watering, but they are drinking more now so I increased to a quart per plant yesterday adding 5ml rhizo and 2ml silica/gal.

My indoor grow has been coco for the last 3+ years and when I grow outdoor plants It always takes me a little while to get reacquainted with the peat based mixes I use outside. The last few years I have watered too much and feed too early the first 2-3 weeks. Only minor stunting this year, so maybe next year I will get it right.

The tarp and pot wraps seem to be making a difference, pots are not drying out as fast and the minor heat stress they were starting to show seems to be resolved.

I was planning on topping these plants, but considering their size at day 20 and how late in the season it is I think I won’t top them. I don’t want the added stress on them and they won’t hit more than 2.5-3 feet at this point anyway. I will still do some LST with tucking and tie downs, but I think that’s it.


PP

StH

 

[MIAutomatic]

The weather continues to not be ideal, still too much rain making it hard to let the pots dry out enough, but the weather looks drier for the next 1-2 weeks. We also have had a lot of cloudy days recently that combined with pre-flowering stretch have caused them to explode with vertical growth.

The StH seems to already be flipping, but the PP is still only showing pre-flowers. Unless they really pack on a lot of size during the flip these 5 gallon pots will not reach maximum size potential. I am expecting a smaller harvest already, but if I can pull off good quality I will still be happy.

I am out of town this week and these pics are from a few days ago. I watered in Bioflores and 10ml/gal with 2ml silica before I left town. I also topped the pots up with a little more Promix Hp mixed with 4 tsp of Down to Earth vegan blend in each pot. A friend is watching my house and checking on the plants. She will just be giving them RO with 2ml calmag and 2 ml silica per/gal while I am gone. Hopefully they will thrive in my absence without me hovering over them.

The weather has cooled down and it’s been so wet I removed the pot covers to help them dry out more. I hope that doesn’t backfire on me while I am out of town.

PP

StH

 

[MIAutomatic]

I was hoping to get a post in while I was out of town but all the pictures the house sitter sent me were taken at night and pretty useless. It was kind of fun to not see them for 8 days. They went from pre-flower stretch to fully flowering in that time. They will probably pack on a few more inches, but I don’t think they are going to get much taller. PP is a little over 2 ft and StH is only about 20 inches. If they fill out nicely I think I’ll still get a couple oz off of each plant.

Other than being small for outdoor plants in 5gal pots I think they are looking really great! Very healthy, no problems with bugs or nutrients, if anything they could use a bit more nutrients. The pots are barely drying out enough with the rain so planning feeding has been a little challenging. The DtE top dressing is keeping everything nice and green, but I think they could take a bit more P & K at this point. It’s looking dry for the next 2 days so hopefully I’ll be able to water in some bioflores tomorrow before the rain comes back.

PP

StH

 

[MIAutomatic]

Feed plants with
12 ml Bioflores/gal
12 ml Canna Boost/gal
2 ml silica/gal

Each plant got about 1/2 gallon watered in the morning of day 36. Here they are on the morning of day 37(yesterday). One day of good sun after the feeding has them looking nice and happy but rain started last night and looking cloudy and rainy all day again today. I think they are past the stretch and are moving into main flowering but they need a couple days of good sun to get them kicked them into high gear. The weather is supposed to clear up after today, fingers crossed for at least a few days of good sunshine!

PP

StH

The heritage of the plants is very apparent at this point. PP is showing its Sativa landrace heritage, tall and branching with few leaves and nice spacing. I did a little leaf tucking on her to encourage some of the lower branches to come up a bit but no other training or pruning. StH is really showing her Indica side, short and wide leaves with very tight node spacing. I tried a little leaf tucking with her, but the lower branches are so short it was only possible with one set of side branches.

I usually do much more high stress plant management indoors but I really enjoy the more hands off approach that outdoor growing makes possible.

 

[MIAutomatic]

Coming along nicely the weather has been cooperative for the last few days, mostly sunny with only a few clouds. StH has been stacking flowers for a couple days now and the PP is just about there also. On a sunny day they are drinking enough to get 1/2 gal of water in the morning, if it’s cloudy they don’t drink much and I skip a day. Currently alternating one feeding one watering, feed days they get:

12 ml Bioflores/gal
12 ml Canna Boost/gal
2 ml Rhizotonic/gal
2 ml CalMag/gal
2 ml silica/gal

Water days are just the silica and the CalMag.

PP

StH

 

[MIAutomatic]

Weather continues to be good, but the days are getting a lot shorter. When these seeds sprouted on July 15 the plants were getting about 11 hours of direct sunshine, now they are not even getting 9. I hope they get enough photons to finish before it gets too cold. These plants got started about a month later than I usually start my outdoor plants, so I knew it would be a little risky getting them to finish in time.

I hadn’t fertigated the plants since just before I went out of town about 3 weeks ago, and I felt like they were starting to looks just a little too green. Yesterday when I watered I soaked each pot with 2 gallons for a decent amount of runoff. Same mixture as last feeding but I halved the boost down to 6/ml gallon, I’ll continue to use the boost at lower dose until the last couple weeks then bump it back up to finish. Plants already look a bit less green today. I think I’ll add an additional watering before the next feed. The last thing I want to do is balls is up by over fertilizing them.

Both plants are looking good, just filling ikinda slowly with their hours of light getting shorter every day. PP is a little sparse, but there is still time for her to fill in a lot more. StH is forming a nice main cola and looks like it should fill in pretty well. The aroma of both plants is fantastic and very different, intense strawberry candy from StH and the PP has a coffee, chocolate funk with some kind of dried fruit note (figs maybe?)

PP

StH

Thanks for stopping by!

 

[MIAutomatic]

Things are moving right along thanks to the continued good weather. I decided to add a small dose (2ml/gal) of Canna PK to the plants base water and it has really stepped up the flowering, especially on the Pink Panama. The PP has 2-3x the biomass of the StH, so it makes sense it would need a bit more PK at this point in the cycle.

It’s a little too soon to really tell, but it looks like I might have hit the jackpot with the StH and got the purple phenotype from the Strawberry Nuggets side. All leaves are still nice and green but the flowers seem to be going just a little purple. It could just be the cooler nights too, the next week or so should reveal if it’s genetic or temperature related.

I was worried the PP wouldn’t fill in, but she is really stacking flowers since I added the PK. Next fertigation with Bioflores will probably be on Monday.

PP

StH

 

[MIAutomatic]

Moving right along, or at least as well as can be expected with how little light they have gotten the since my last post. We had three cloudy days and three sunny days, but since direct sunlight is down to about 7 hours a day that’s not a lot of light for almost a whole week.

The StH seems to be getting the message and is stating to wrap things up, I could see her being done in a couple weeks around day 70. The Pink Panama doesn’t seem to be switching gears at all yet, still throwing out now flowers. None of the pistil have started to change color either, which seems a little unusual. By this point in the season the early flowers have usually started to loose their hairs and color change at least a little. Mephisto described PP as a fast flowering Sativa hybrid, but this plant at least seems to have no interest in wrapping things up. I have just been giving base water with recharge this week. They are both drinking a little less as the days get shorter, the StH more so. There is heavy dew covering both plants every morning, hopefully that won’t start to cause a mold problem in the last few weeks as things really fatten up.

Thanks for stopping by!