Grow Room Moonijuana 3: Blue Dream Auto (Humboldt Seed Organization) Organic Grow

[TimeTraveler]

Hey all; welcome to the latest Moonijuana grow. This will be an auto Blue Dream grow in organic supersoil. Blue Dream is my all time favorite strain, so it's a natural first choice for my next grow. My previous two were two plants side by side, and I reliably came in close to an ounce with each plant. I wanted to do a single lone plant this grow, with FIMing, and see if I could get a better yield. A sativa heavy strain is ideal for this, because it has so much vertical height that can be used to recover from a FIM and to make the most of LST. I'm hoping for a quality smoke that stays true to the photo version. Coming from a known breeder and at the highest price per seed of any I've bought, I'm rightfully expecting the most from this strain of any of the four I've grown before.

The growing chamber is a large hollowed-out computer tower with a Blackstar 100W UFO LED (~50W actual) lined with heavy duty mylar and two 100mm exhaust fans and a 75mm intake fan. The plant will be grown in a custom-made airpot trough that has about an 8L/2gal capactity (give or take), with about 14" clearance from rim to light at its closest. The LED doesn't quite get hot enough to damage the plants until well under an inch, so it's easy to train them to grow taller the further out from center they go.

So, if all goes well, the plant will be planted center and get 4 stems from the FIM. Two will head each way, and be trained up and away from the center (where I usually would grow the two separate plants).

I posted my last two in the indoor section, but I wanted to see what would happen if I posted here in the micro section (as it's definitely a micro grow) where there might be more interest.

 

[TimeTraveler]

Welcome to Day 1, everyone! The seed sprouted perfectly in the cube, as you can see:

And is now comfy and secure in the soil and planting mix in its trough.

She's under the LED lights now, and thus begins her 24/0 shedule.

This is the first grow where I'll be doing just one plant, so this baby is going to be lavished with attention. It's my hope it will also have a massive root network and be able to be a very bountiful harvest. In both of my last grows the root ball was insanely dense from both plants, and both pushed or exceeded 1oz alone. With the entire 2 gallon planter to itself, the blue dream should have a massive root network to draw upon.

I use a custom super-soil mix, along with organic nutes (both dry and liquid to handle short and long-term nute deficiency), biological inoculate (to keep the soil biology healthy), great white myco fungi (to strengthen and encourage the roots), and the odd addition of unsulphured molasses. I water with rainwater when I can get it, RO when I can't.

So, my goal as said before will be to try and get the absolute maximum I can out of this plant. Being a sativa heavy strain, I'm guessing she'll actually benefit from FIMing, as any lost height will be a boon in a cramped grow, and the extra bud sites and LST that will follow will make sure she puts out a carpet of green under the lights. I like to make a prediction at the start to see how I'm doing on gauging my skills, and last time I was fairly close. I think 60-70 grams is a realistic goal for this grow; it would be my biggest harvest yet, even if only by a couple grams, but it would be twice as much from a single plant as I've pulled before (a fair tradeoff given there's half as many plants in the container this time). My hope is it will be over double, maybe 80 or 90g dry, which would mean I'm better off growing one large plant than two small ones. This grow is largely a test to see if that's the case (if not, I'll keep growing two at a time).

 

[budelee]

Good grow Karma to you,subbed for this one,will be popping 5 Humbolt blue dreams in about a month,Interested in how the Fim'ing works on this strain

 

[TimeTraveler]

Good grow Karma to you,subbed for this one,will be popping 5 Humbolt blue dreams in about a month,Interested in how the Fim'ing works on this strain

Thanks! I'm interested too; @faded187 apparently tops or fims all autos grown, and never has one stunt or suffer as a result. I'm taking the plunge with this grow, and if it works it's likely to become a regular part of my grows. If the conventional wisdom about FIMing doesn't hold up anymore, that's a big boon for micro growing. The first true leaves showed up today, so I've got another week and a half or so before making the cut.

 

[budelee]

Fimming, lst, pruning ,and topping have been good to me on my photo plants( extreme defoliation didn't work too well),however the "wives tales" of stunting and so forth have had me a little hesitant to try them with my first auto grow,I am looking forward to the progress of the plants and the feed schedule that they will be getting,....cheers

 

[TimeTraveler]

Today is DAY 10, and it's moving along nicely:

The one fan leaf looks a little warped, and curled, but nothing alarming to me at this point. It's not entirely clear but the seedling was planted into a plug of soil cut with seedling mix (to keep the roots from reaching the hotter surrounding soil until it's stronger and bigger).

Not much to see at this point, but she's off and that's what matters so far.

 

[budelee]

So far everything is looking awesome and healthy !!!

 

[TimeTraveler]

DAY 15

It's looking great today, all. Nice, lush, and green, she's already throwing out some side sites and showing sex. Take a look-see:

She's looking strong so far, and I think it's time she got the snip for her FIM. I'm a little nervous about doing it, first time jitters and all, but I sterilized my scissors and snipped her top. The pic is kinda blurry (had trouble with the focus), but you can see the after here:

Again, it's hard to tell from here but the cut matches up fairly well to the various diagrams I've seen of how to FIM, so I'm optimistic about what's next. It's exciting to anticipate the potential harvest by combining these two techniques.

Sometime this coming week I'll get the bamboo SCROG screen back in place. Assuming that all four nodes show up and the stress doesn't hermie the plant, she'll be hitting pre-flower by then and I want to be ready sooner rather than later.

 

[TimeTraveler]

DAY 17

So, it's two days after the FIM snip, and she's recovering. I have to say I'm a little nervous about this one; in addition to what appears to be the four nodes resulting from the FIM cut, I think I see two more at least that may become major branches. She's already showing sex and I think she's shaping up to become a monster in this grow. Here's the latest pics:

And finally, a close-up of the cutting site:

You can see things are a little gnarly up there, but it's hard to show how good it looks in recovery AND take a picture without four hands. It's already dense with leaves and new growth, and you can see the numerous small white hairs of the pistils showing up already.

It's exciting to think that this could be a big grower. I'm hoping it does well in the container by itself, and so far it seems like it's thriving.

 

[TimeTraveler]

DAY 22

Well, here we are officially on the first day of Week 4. She's starting to hit her stride in vegetation, and she's looking great! Lots of nice, big fan leaves and numerous pistils and potential bud sites. I said I had high expectations with both this strain and setup this run, and it appears I'm not going to be disappointed. Let's take a look, shall we?

She's got six major branches/potential colas so far. The two on the top and bottom and the two at middle seem to be the result of the FIM snip, and the two on the extreme left and right are lower side branches that it appears the snip forced to grow quickly; they're almost as tall as the main ones and showing some serious pre-flower potential with lots of pistil hairs already.

And here's a closer look at the snipped center:

It's recovered very well, and it's clear she's losing no time growing and shooting upwards, so I'm going to have to agree so far that it seems, nowadays at least, that FIMing doesn't hurt the growth of an auto, at least not automatically. Here's the really interesting thing: I may have missed on my "Fuck, I missed" cut. It almost looks like a seventh potential site is forcing it's way out of this center mess. My camera isn't the best so close-up shots like this are too blurry to really tell, and even in person it's hard to be sure. Then again, it's my first time doing a FIM, so maybe I'm just reading too much into an otherwise normal recovery.

Still, it's very exciting. The plant is almost tall enough for the screen to be deployed, so that's probably going to happen tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm eager to see how much this will yield, and I'm getting the feeling it's going to be a monster compared to the last four plants I've had. There's lot of pistils and budding sites all over the lower branches and joints, and she looks...well, it's hard to explain how so, but she looks almost eager and ready to explode up and out. She seems very hardy and healthy at least. Here's hoping for a great ride and a great harvest.