Using this grow journal to keep track of but also to remind myself to ‘take chances, make mistakes, and get messy’ as Ms. Frizzle would say! And especially enjoy the ride of my first indoor grow after almost 15 years of smoking while dreaming of being able to grow my own. Harvest or none! I tried two of these autoflowering plants outdoors this past summer but lost the very stunted plants in flower due to bud rot and pm/maybe bugs. The seeds were purchased from crop king and rocket seeds as I did just enough research not to realize they can’t really back up their genetics and autos generally are pretty challenging to grow for beginners. Since I had a lot of bottled nutrients and some seeds left over and learned a bit from my summer failure I decided after doing lots more research I should just go all in and clear up some space in my spare closet to grow inside so I bought an ac infinity cloudlab 422 and Topsun TS-1000 LED I know eventually it will be worth it! Lately it’s been hard to find good quality bud. I had three seeds left but because they were autos I figured I would go one at a time, just in case I got lucky and one plant was going to max out the tent space if it made it to flower. Because it was the last one left I decided to pop the crop king “Bruce Banner” auto seed I bought last march. I have learned since through the Dark Horse Genetics Live podcast that these are fakes but I didn’t want to waste a perfectly good seed and am just hoping that it will at least be a fun strain to grow hahaha. I only soaked this crop king seed about 12 hours and just planted right into advanced nutrients sensi cal mag buffered coco coir perlite mix January 11 as I wanted to save some time and skip the paper towel method. After 3 days in the dark tent it still hadn’t sprouted so I moved it to my windowsill located above a heater and kinda just kept watering it with distilled but didn’t expect it to ever grow and soaked my last two blue diesel auto seeds from rocket seeds that day (same email for money as crop kings so maybe also crop kings blue diesel?) then used the paper towel method for a day. They both developed really nice taproots and I planted them in the buffered cocoperlite and kept them on a heating pad on low in my dark tent til one sprouted a day later. The other one it germed with didn’t but cool thing was the windowsill one I thought was a dud did too! So I had a ‘Bruce banner’ and a blue diesel auto to start my grow with. I moved them both under a LED t5 I got for my spring seedlings about 3 inches away with 24 hour light and watered them with a spray bottle twice a day until their cotyledons were opened 24 hours, at that time I started them on a half dose of the bottle recommended advanced nutrients calmag, micro, grow and bloom and watered them twice a day with bottle cap sized portions for about a week and they seemed to have good growth until I think the Blue diesel got a calcium deficiency
4 days: Crop King Banner on L, Blue Diesel R
I figure it was probably caused by only going half dose with the nutrients considering the growing media I’m using, and around January 26 started giving full nutrients and cal mag twice daily and foliar spraying calmag on the leaves and I believe I’ve seen some slow correction of that on the diesel and the banner has seemed to stay consistent after starting it on the spray as well. I moved them into the tent to go under the TS-1000 for 18/6 schedule on Thursday Jan 27 about 22 inches away and Sunday I repotted them from their solos to nutrient and calmag buffered coco perlite mixed into 1.86L recycled tubs and they are looking even better I think. The last picture is from February 1 at about 14 days old, rocketseeds blue diesel is on the left and crop kings on the right.
So that’s pretty much it for my first entry in my journal! I have been measuring pH with a pretty cheap pen so I don’t know how reliable it’s readings actually are and chose not to include those and same goes for my humidity and temps but any tips or tricks are completely welcome as is criticism! Thanks and have a great day!
I’ve decided to make a second post today, less of an update and more wanting to get some input and advice from anyone reading along! I’d love to get any tip or method anyone may think would work better than what I’m planning too
So first although I haven’t run into any threats yet some growers I see online tend to be proactive in the seedling stage about pesticides by spraying or soaking their seedlings in something. I could be wrong but I think I have seen this a lot. Over the summer I had purchased a 1L spray bottle of Safers End All II, could this be something I can begin to start using to get proactive about bugs? And how best to treat the plants with it in the water I am watering with or just spraying? Or is this pesticide something I should avoid if I’m interested in getting a good taste from my potential yield?
Next is a question about sucker buds: I’ve tried to figure out what they are with research but am having trouble recognizing what is a sucker and have heard that it can be good for the plants structure to remove these around the three week mark of vegetation, below you’ll find some pictures and I think these smaller leaves I’m could be suckers? If they are should I consider removing them now?
I wouldn’t remove any lower branches yet, they are collecting light for the plant. It depends when you are going to flip them to flower.
I usually remove sucker branches about ten days before putting them into flower or earlier if they are very bushy and need more airflow through the bottom part of the plant. It’s a judgement call on plant height and bushyness. Tall plants will not get as much light lower down so its not worth keeping those branches, same goes if the plant is shorter but bushier as the top leaves block the light from the lower flowering points.
With Safer’'s you spray it on, under as well as on top of the leaves and branches. Do it just before lights out as the leaves can burn and go concertinered.
Try to keep all spraying for bugs, mildew ect in the vegging stage, I try to avoid spraying anything in flower unless it’s nessacary, but with safer’s you are good for about a week before harvest, I think it says it breaks down after 48 hours.
If you do spray in flower it’s good to wash your buds, it’s good to wash them anyway really whether sprayed or not. Hope that helps
I took these two pictures of the plants today, don’t know if they’ve gotten too much taller since last picture, but the leaves are definitely bigger on both plants!
They are still just getting the full seedling dose as directed on the bottle of calmag and nutrients, they don’t seem to be lacking in anything yet as far as I can tell and I wouldn’t want to stunt their growth since they are autoflowers. They are only about 16 and 18 inches away from the light now which I hope is ok for them being still young as the lowering clip on rig the light came with has clips that are to small to fit around the poles of my tent and I had to use the other hangers from my T5 and they are as high up as they can get.
Consider they don’t look like they are at stretch phase yet, also if they are getting alot of light due to say how close you may be hanging your that will cause them to not want to stretch as much as well.
Also for the amount of space you have unless planning on adding some more plants a repot to bigger containers will help especially if hand watering when more media equals a bigger water reservoir essentially.
Thanks @Mr.Sparkle!! I was planning to repot them in a week or so to 2 gallon nursery pots, but I do have the pots already and enough coco, would you recommend that be something I do ASAP? They would have got their first true leaves January 18 making them around 3 weeks old and they do seem to get a little taller each day, but should they be taller by now? The light is turned to about 75% and I am able to turn it down if you think that could be a good idea, I have tried to abide by their recommended height and brightness so I wasn’t too worried about it until now they have started getting taller. I want to time everything as optimal as possible, so I appreciate your advice!
Yeah at 3 weeks even on early flowering strains thats when some may start thinking to stretch so id just wait and leave the light as is.
As for repotting at this stage it wouldn’t hurt just cause it will allow more space when they start going through their stretch phase, where as if the containers are left small when handwatering the plant will be limited to how big it can get with how much water its getting.
Ok thank you this is great information @Mr.Sparkle looks like I have a fun repotting day this weekend! I am hand watering them they each get about 250ml twice a day and there is quite a bit of runoff so after reading your comment it sounds like it will be most beneficial to get them repotted before they start to stretch! Thanks again!
The plants seemed to have grown a little and may have been showing some signs it was going to shoot up so this weekend I had time to transplant them as was recommended to me
I was glad because when I started I saw roots starting to grow out of the drainage holes I cut in the tubs. It had my hopes up for seeing some cool roots but mostly they had all filled out the bottom, and nicely, but I was hoping to see a little more through the middle. I buffered the cocoperlite mix this time with 2ml per litre of calmag, micro, grow and bloom and got them into these 2 gal nursery pots.
The crop king plant is now about 13 inches from the light and got a little man handled as it was my first transplant of the day but I think it’s ok just a few torn leaves
The blue diesel had a bit better of an experience although I thought there weren’t that many roots in the middle of the soil as I was reporting and may have torn a few of its roots in the middle but I think it’s fine, and I was glad to find there may have been more unseen roots than I thought at first! Hopefully that will mean some great top growth coming although the plant is now only about 10 inches from the light now
On a side note I had the door to the tent open and left the room to come back to find my little cat had gotten in and done a bit of pruning… I was so upset with my carelessness but was so impressed how resilient the plant was it pretty much came right back from getting bent and the part he bit off has even seemed to produce some new growth since. I’ll continue to keep feeding them 2ml per litre at watering and hope they begin to stretch this week
Looks good, and welcome! I’m another autoflower guy and started my first grow diary a little while ago! Check it out if you’re interested in seeing a eyed variety of genetics grown.
so maybe also crop kings blue diesel?) then used the paper towel method for a day. They both developed really nice taproots and I planted them in the buffered cocoperlite and kept them on a heating pad on low in my dark tent til one sprouted a day later. The other one it germed with didn’t but cool thing was the windowsill one I thought was a dud did too! So I had a ‘Bruce banner’ and a blue diesel auto to start my grow with. I moved them both under a LED t5 I got for my spring seedlings about 3 inches away with 24 hour light and watered them with a spray bottle twice a day until their cotyledons were opened 24 hours, at that time I started them on a half dose of the bottle recommended advanced nutrients calmag, micro, grow and bloom and watered them twice a day with bottle cap sized portions for about a week and they seemed to have good growth until I think the Blue diesel got a calcium deficiency
