Lumi Learns to Grow

[lumiloop]

Hello! Newbie grower here. I just started growing in July and while it’s possible it might be my ADHD talking, boy do I think I’ve found a new lifelong passion! I love seeing everyone else’s grows, so thought I’d document my own.

First, here’s my current (and also first) grow - Blueberry Muffin by HSC on day 29 of flower. Plan on seeing more of these! Growing media is Coco/Perlite/WC.

And here’s my second grow that has already been harvested - Purple Lemonade Auto by Fast Buds. This thing has been through it! Grew it in a random soil mix and definitely over-watered in the beginning. It also spent half its life outside with temps in the high 40s and got spider-mites at the end.

I don’t think many would consider that one successful, but I do! I learned so much from it.

Now to start my third grow - Rosetta Stone by Brother’s Grimm Seeds. Hopefully I won’t regret starting these too soon before harvesting my Blueberry Muffins, but I’m really trying to minimize any downtime I might have. I have 100 seeds, so I figured I’d pop 5 and keep the best 2 when time to transplant comes. They’re currently germinating and I plan on planting them later today.

Going to be growing in a Coco/Perlite/WC mix and thinking of A/B-ing Grow Dots vs Bottle but still not sure, yet. Anyone have experience with Grow Dots in coco specifically? I could save it for when I do a soil run instead.

What’s in the pipeline?
Well, I definitely have enough seeds that I’m set for more than a few grows. Here’s currently where I’m at for unpopped seeds, so expect to see some of these in the future. Would love to hear anyone’s experience with any of these.

Current Inventory:
——————————————————————
Blueberry Muffin (Humboldt Seed Co) - 2
Purple Lemonade Auto (420 Fast Buds) - 4
Strawberry Blue (World of Seeds) - 2
Critical Neville Haze Auto (Delicious Seeds) - 2
Cinderella 99 by (Brother’s Grimm)- 100
Rosetta Stone (Brother’s Grimm)- 95
Ice Princess x Gluey (Brother’s Grimm) - 15
Junky 99 (Brother’s Grimm) - 15
Cinderella 99 x Riddle OG (Brother’s Grimm) - 15

I’ve been enjoying growing in Coco, but I will be looking to experiment with different medias and watering methods as well. I just don’t like the idea that I can’t leave town for more than a few days as things stand right now, so I might end up moving to soil, DWC, or trying some auto-watering devices like blumats or autopots. No idea!

I look forward to keeping you guys updated on my journey. Thanks for reading!

[Foreigner]

Looks good man

[gedLang]

Having a hundred seeds is so great - takes the pressure off and gives you material to experiment with. I don’t have any experience with grow dots, but I think it’s a fine idea to try things out until you find what works for you.

Your current grow is looking really nice! Healthy leaves.

[hddeuce03]

Welcome, those are looking really good!

[lumiloop]

Thanks, guys. Thinking I’ll skip the grow dots for my upcoming grow and use it on my next Purple Lemonade one instead.

Blueberry Muffin - 32F
Top bud and some trichome pics below. Hoping HSC’s 45 day claim is pretty accurate. I was surprised to see so many amber, but it is mainly on just the buds closest to the light. Gotta try for a more even canopy next time, I guess.

Rosetta Stone
I planted the 5 Rosetta Stone seeds last night and was surprised to see #2 by far and away leading in growth. Gonna keep an eye on that one! #5 is just starting to break the soil, but the others are nowhere to be seen so far. I am probably gonna skip the paper towel for future grows. I just feel like it’s one more step for me to kill the plants.

[Illicitmango]

Your grows look great! I’d call it a success, especially if you’re learning and enjoying the ride. Happy harvests!

[gedLang]

Harvesting in two weeks from when those pics were taken sounds about right to me, they are looking good. It does seem like a fair amount of amber in that top right pic, but there are still fresh pistils and the other tricrome shots do not have much amber.

I agree with skipping the paper towel. I would use a paper towel for a germination test to check how viable a large lot of seeds is. But otherwise I just plant directly into soil and if a seed doesn’t come up I would just plant another in the soil. Many experienced growers seem to use paper towel germination still, so I expect it is a personal preference thing.

[lumiloop]

Thanks for the insight, gedLang! You’ve cemented my decision of skipping the paper towel next time. I did plant directly when I grew my auto and that worked well. It had problems, but germinating was not one!

Blueberry Muffins
I noticed something happening on the upper fan leaves. I had been going very light on my nitrogen (grow bottle) and just cutting it out completely on most feeds lately because I had been going so heavy into flowering, so I’m hoping it was just from that? Not entirely sure. I bumped it back to the recommended amount based on the high yield chart (5ml/gal) and haven’t noticed any progression since. I also lowered the light intensity from 8 to 7 and raised the light up a bit. Current PPFD is around 700 for the most part with 900 at the uppers and 500 at the lowers.

I tied some of the outer branches down in an attempt to spread things out a bit and get more light/air to the lower center buds. I’m not thrilled with being pushed against the grow tent now, but I did notice a new growth green on the lower buds the next day.

Rosetta Stone
All of the seedlings have sprouted and are doing pretty well. #5 did have part of the seed’s husk stick to the leaf that I had to pull off with tweezers, but other than that no big issues. Seedlings started out at 175ppfd and I just raised to 230ppfd for a ~15 DLI.

I’m trying to keep humidity high, but it has been pretty difficult in the current room since I’m running the dehumidifier 24/7 for my blueberry muffin grow. I’m trying to find a nice equilibrium but have been unsuccessful so far, so I’ll have huge swings both ways. If I can’t manage to get things settled, I’ll probably just buy an AC Infinity controller to make things easy.

For watering, I’m giving them a varied PH from 5.8 to 6.2. The HW plants are getting run off every day. RW plants are just how I would water normally, so I’m picking them up and if they’re heavy I’m leaving them alone and if light I’ll water till runoff. LW I’m trying to keep light but moist.

Current Nutrients: Blue Planet Farmer’s Pride Line
2ml/gal Silica
4ml/gal CalMag
1.5ml/gal Grow/Micro/Bloom
1.5ml/gal VitaBlue
1/4 tsp/gal of Great White myco
TDS @ 312ppm

[lumiloop]

Blueberry Muffins
My first grow is officially complete! To get straight to the details, I harvested a total of 642g after drying and trimming with about ~100 of that being shake. I really could not have asked for a better first grow! I was really thinking I was only going to get 4-8oz this whole time, so for me to get 1.4LBS just sends me over the moon!

For the drying process, I really tried to keep it to as close to 60% humidity as possible but it ended up staying in the low 50s the entire time. I hung some in clusters, and used mesh for others. Going forward, I think I will only be hang drying. The mesh just dried too fast, and left flat spots.

It has since been a couple weeks since bagging everything up and in the last couple days I’ve started to dig in. This stuff is just amazing! I have simply never smelled weed like this before. Just like the name, It smells like someone just baked blueberry muffins. It’s very much on the sticky side and leaves a great taste in the mouth after smoking. I’m left feeling relaxed and care free, but I still have all my energy and notice almost no couch lock effect. It’s a really good daytime weed!

I still have 2 seeds left of this one, so I can’t wait to revisit it once I have a few more grows under my belt. Pictures below!

Rosetta Stone
Boy have I been having troubles with this grow… With harvesting the Blueberry Muffins at the same time, I was not prepared at all. Right out of the gate, I was having issues maintaining a reasonable humidity. I would usually check on things the next day and either I’d be at 99% with a pool of water in the tent, or 30% with the humidifier not going off at all. With all the frustration, I ended up getting an AC Infinity humidifier and I liked it so much that I bought another one when it was on sale during Black Friday.

After getting my humidity issue solved, I got too complacent and somehow raised the PH without realizing it. All my plants started to yellow on the edges of the fan leaves and start to curl. At first I thought I was over feeding, then I thought I was under feeding. It wasn’t until I measured the runoff PH that I realized. I put in 6.2PH but got 7.4 out… Fuck. So, I mixed a new batch of nutes and PH’d down to 5.6 and watered all of my plants until I got a runoff of 6.2. Seems like they responded decently, as there was no continued yellowing & wilting, but they definitely got stunted quite a bit.

During all of this, I decided to restart my Rosetta Stone grow. I’m still going through with my Coco run for now, but I’ve just constantly been thinking about trying living soil instead. I want my plants to do all the work, not me. So, I got myself some Happy Frog soil and some Gaia Green amendments. They’re about 15 days in now and they actually look like I know what I’m doing! Doing 2Tbsp of 4-4-4 per gallon of soil and just staying relatively hands off. Trying my best not to over-water so I’ve only watered them a few times and it has been a nice change from the coco.

Miscellaneous
What else is going on? Well, with the success of my Blueberry Muffins grow, I decided to celebrate and add a 3x3 tent to the mix! It’ll be a little while until I can really take full advantage of it, but I can’t wait! I’m pairing it with an HLG Blackbird for the light and have it ducting into my 4x2. Ultimately, I’d like to do 1 really well trained plant in there, but for the first grow, I’ll probably do 4 of the soil Rosetta Stones.

Aside from that, I’m currently dealing with overnight temps dipping down to about 58 degrees. I’ve got a heating mat, but that’s only doing so much. Unfortunately, just the nature of having the tents in the basement in MI. I am toying around with the idea of running the lights 24/7 for veg just to keep temps stable, and thought about flipping the lights to be on at night instead of during the day, but haven’t really decided on anything. Honestly, I might just have the plants deal with it for now.

And that’s it for now. I have no idea how the tents will be looking in a month - I might just get rid of all the coco plants, but I’ll make that decision once space is really getting tight. Until then, they’ll at least be good to experiment on and I would love to get more comfortable making clones.

Thanks for reading!

[lumiloop]

Had some time today, so transplanted the soil run to 3 gallon pots.

[lumiloop]

All the plants as they sit today

[methodanon]

Looking great man, everything looks healthy. When are you thinking your going to flip to 12/12?

[lumiloop]

The coco ones are gonna get flipped real soon - in the next few days for sure. Soil ones in about a month - Going for an 8 week veg on them. They’re on day 24 right now.

[methodanon]

Nice right on. You going to try taking some clones? Nothing to lose right, grab a few while they are still in veg and stick them in some media of some kind.

Anyways nice log bro, I’ll be following.

[lumiloop]

I am experimenting with cloning off camera! No idea if I’ll have success - I have had horrible luck with ones I’ve tried to take before. I’m just pretty close to my state’s 12 plant limit and already have 11 plants going

[methodanon]

I’ve had good success with using little hempy bucket solo cups filled with perlite. I typically use an aerocloner but I always throw a couple in solo cups as a backup just incase. Details are in my grow journal but it might be tough to find, holler if you ever want to try I’ll provide a little tutorial.

[lumiloop]

Nice, I’ll check it out!

[methodanon]

You might really like hempy buckets in general since you’re trying different stuff, not as touchy as coco, super easy.

[lumiloop]

holding steady

[lumiloop]

Really messed up last week and accidentally gave my flowering plants 24hrs of light. I proceeded to give them a day of darkness before getting them back to 12/12. Hopefully I just stunted them a bit. I haven’t seen any real negative signs yet.

Here’s how they’re sitting today. I’ve been experimenting with super cropping on them, so you’ll see signs of that. It’s amazing to see them rebound so quickly! Really just trying to maintain a somewhat even canopy.

For the soil run, things are going great! I’ve been training them somewhat, but I’ve really just been trying to focus on getting the watering down. Seems they’ve been getting droopy around day 5, so now I’m watering around day 4 as long as they’re light enough.

For feeding, I top dressed them w/ 6 tbsp each of Gaia Green 4-4-4 about a week ago, and have started including easy weed with the watering.