Jon's First Outdoor Grow: Sugar Breath Photoperiod & Strawberry Banana Autoflower

assumption alert: I have never seen a leaf so heavy and huge that it can't get lift.
Lol. Come on Em, gimme a little credit. I should have been more specific in the post. I can't get them to lift until about two hours after watering. This picture is taken right away. Oh, they'll lift. I got spoiled cuz lately all my plants get back to praying pretty much a lot faster than two hours. I should edit that post. Now I see how inaccurate I was. Thanks.
 
Leaves will high five even bigguns once the metabolism catches up with the growth spurt its going to act like you caught it red handed every time you look at it lol
Lol, I hear you, and see my previous follow up to Emilya and the edited post. I spoke inaccurately initially. I know they'll pray. I am just used to seeing it happen in a lot less time.
 
assumption alert: I have never seen a leaf so heavy and huge that it can't get lift.
Fixed the post. Thanks again. I really like (and need) your assumption alerts. I (and all of us) make many more of them than we sometimes realize.
 
Lol, I hear you, and see my previous follow up to Emilya and the edited post. I spoke inaccurately initially. I know they'll pray. I am just used to seeing it happen in a lot less time.
Mine don't always, I get busy sometimes and I neglect my plants and it shows lol but I will be taking a break from growing my own for awhile so for now there will be mercy. Your plants show that you know what you are doing, pretty plants
 
Mine don't always, I get busy sometimes and I neglect my plants and it shows lol but I will be taking a break from growing my own for awhile so for now there will be mercy. Your plants show that you know what you are doing, pretty plants
Thanks man. Mine do if two things are in play: a healthy plant and having the light dialed in. As far as knowing what I'm doing, I assure you I do not. Lol. However, I have gotten rather lucky with the plants going on in my three current grow journals, ie, the sum of what I have currently going on. 14 plants in four different locations, autos and photos, indoor and outdoor and in between. I'm a little busy sometimes. Also worthy of note is that not one of my plants would look like it does were I not on this forum and had I not met and learned from the people on here who came before me. It's an amazing resource that has really accelerated my learning curve. This three journal thing is basically my third grow lifetime, just divided into three journals. I never could achieve even this half decent grow on my own. Impossible.
 
Enjoy that 420h! :green_heart:
I really like it. It's a neat little quantum board. Like all of them, it gets hot. But no big deal that is easily dealt with. Certainly not TOO hot. And the spectrum is the whitest looking I have by far, a lot whiter to the eye than the Mars Hydro. I'm very interested to see how much the autos like it since I have done autos already with the other lights. It certainly makes for the best pictures, lol. And for the price, imho, it's an amazing light. I have it in a 5x5 space. It's really designed for a 4x4. That's why I have all the pots centered in the middle, and of course I am augmenting with the reds from 572 watts of blurples too. All told these plants are getting hit with over 1000 actual watts of light, and they are loving it. Lmao! The plants pray to it though, and they have certainly done pretty well so far. No blemishes on a single leaf and we're well into budding. In part, that's them liking the spectrum, along with a bunch of other obvious stuff. So far I'd have to give this light a big thumbs up, and if I had a 4x4 tent I would use it without reservation.
 
@NextLight Rig Autoflowers
Day 38


I tried to get down to plant level to show you guys the praying and how much these plants are loving the NextLight. Please enjoy this weird angle of the autos in full flight mode.

Autos In Flight.jpg
 
@NextLight Auto Rig Check In
BLS Focus
Day 37


Today was watering day for the Strawberry Bananas. It was also the first and only time I give the plants a non-organic "boost" despite that they're in Sohum and supposedly need nothing but water. That said, even Sohum says that depending on the strain, your plants may need a boost in early budding. I tried this boost idea on the Sour Apple that I just harvested and it worked out nicely.

So all four Strawberry Bananas got watered and they all got the following frothy brew, measurement by the gallon. For the record, I took a shot with the Sour Apple completely flying blind on this. So now I'm one plant removed from flying blind. In other words, still can't see where I'm going. Lol.

- 2 Tsp Tiger Bloom (Fox Farms)
- 1/2 Tsp Grow Big (Fox Farms)
- 2 Tsp Big Bloom (Fox Farms)
- 1/4 Tsp Beastie Bloomz (Fox Farms)
- 1 scoop Easy Weed Soluble Seaweed Supplement
- 1 scoop CalMag Pro Formula with microbes
- 1 Tbsp. Blackstrap Molasses
- 2 Tbsp. Terpinator
- 5 ml. PK 13/14 (Canna Nutrients)

All that got ph'ed to 6.3. We'll know soon enough if I get a few yellow tips or worse. Heh. They'll be fine.

Anyway, so rather than show all the plants, I decided to show you the Strawberry Banana BLS today. That is @Backlipslide's dedicated plant, and in his spirit, the goal of this plant was symmetry. I could see early that the center cola would come directly straight up the middle, and that left me five colas to mess around with. I tried to get five equally spaced colas around the center cola, and for them to all be the same height. The picture below shows how I'm doing on that so far. This strain has thick, almost greasy leaves. The indica pheno, which I think I got one of, is the most pronounced in this regard. Even the lower fan leaves feel thick and greasy. The most sativa like pheno, which I think I also have one of, is only a little less greasy feeling. This is a good thing, so don't confuse my use of the word greasy, that's just how they feel. The other two SB's I think are the hybrid phenos, BLS is one of those two. Also greasy, and the two hybrid ones seem to be forming their buds faster than the other two. Anyway, that's my uneducated take on the phenos of the four SB's.

Here she is, BLS, in her almost symmetrical glory, lol:


-

BLS October 19.jpg
Interesting thing about this plant and how she's budding. Number the buds 1 to 6 starting with the one at 12 o'clock as #1, going clockwise to #5, and #6 is in the middle. Got that part? Ok, now, check out the buds you just numbered in the following order: 5 - 2 - 4 - 1 - 6 - 3. If you look at them in that order, what you see is basically the history of a bud from just starting to legit. #3 is by far the largest bud on the plant, #5 is by far the smallest. In every other plant I have ever grown, the buds form pretty much at the same rate on the same plant. Not like this, where it looks like each individual branch decided on it's own when it wanted to begin to bud. Very odd.

Anyone see what I mean? Weird, right?
 
Ooops. Damnit, I did it again. I Can't Help Myself.
New Plants and New Sponsor Addition
First Try with @Blue Planet Nutrients


Well, I accidentally opened and am soaking and popping my 3 Dos-Si-Dos and 1 Gorilla Zkittlez autos from Barney's Farm.

Heh.

It has occurred to me that there's no reason I can't keep the @NextLight rig going outside and have it as a perpetual auto rig. As mentioned in the beginning, I am also getting ready to move in the spring, so I'm winding down on growing. This was to be my last before the move, thus so many plants between the three journals. 14. Heh.

But there's plenty of time before the spring for a few more autos in the NextLight rig. So I'm a'popping. Lol. There will simply be too many plants to officially add these girls to the grow journal, so I am going to summarize them here now and then just post check ins here from time to time.

So these autos are going to go like this:

- Sohum living soil for two of the Dos-Si-Dos
- Fox Farms Soil Blend for the other Dos-Si-Dos and the Gorilla Zkittlez (40% Happy Frog/40% Ocean Forest/20% perlite #3)
- All four seeds are soaking in water and Great White mycorrhizae, when they break soil I'll label Day One for them. They will begin in Dixie Cups and up pot to fives before Day 20. The Sohum plants will be transplanted into fives that are setup as per the auto soil mix with Sohum and FF buffers as described in this journal at the beginning - the same way the ones currently in bud were done. Only I will add this time the Soil Activator a few days before transplant.
- All four will be grown in the sunlight from sunup to sundown and then moved back into the NextLight rig to augment their light time to a full 20 hours, so the light cycle start to finish will be 20/4. This gives them about 12 hours of sunlight and 8 hours of the 420h per day. This is what I have been doing with the Sour Apple in the Spent Soil Journal using the Mars Hydro FC-E6500, and the results speak for themselves.
- The Dos-Si-Dos and Gorilla Zkittlez, in the FF soil, will get @Blue Planet Nutrients. I have decided to use these guys as the test run for this sponsor's nutes rather than the Fast Flowering Strawberry Banana photoperiod currently in seedling phase as planned. I will focus on the nutes as such to try and hopefully highlight fabulous performance and plant response. THANK YOU BLUE PLANET!!!!!!!!!!
- So...........a 20/4 light cycle between sun and LED, outdoor environment, ie, around 85 by day and around 68-70 overnight, and usually in the neighborhood of 55-60% humidity. Consistent rain, but rarely a douser of a storm, just a ton of little ten and twenty minute cloudbursts. That's pretty much how it is here in the winter. It doesn't suck.
- The very first autoflower I ever grew to completion was a Barney's Farm Gorilla Zkittlez. This exact seed. That one turned out okay, but only yielded an ounce and a half. I had no clue what I was doing, I had never before grown an auto. Now I have a half decent handle on them. So I'm taking another shot at her, cuz she was gorgeous, grew very quickly, finished in around 70 days or even a bit less, and the weed was perhaps my favorite of all the autos I've grown. Smelled like pink and blue cotton candy and tasted like sugary sweet dankness with tons of fruit. She'll be a beast outside is my guess. Awesome strain, great genetics.
- Never grew the Dos-Si-Dos, but many here have, both autos and photos. Even Barney's Farm's versions. I will have an easy time finding reference points and people I haven't met yet to pepper with questions as soon as we pass the hello stage. :rofl:


Anyway, that's what's up. I have so many seeds. Wonder how much soil I will have left after planting these four? Hmm.......
 
I really like it. It's a neat little quantum board. Like all of them, it gets hot. But no big deal that is easily dealt with. Certainly not TOO hot. And the spectrum is the whitest looking I have by far, a lot whiter to the eye than the Mars Hydro. I'm very interested to see how much the autos like it since I have done autos already with the other lights. It certainly makes for the best pictures, lol. And for the price, imho, it's an amazing light. I have it in a 5x5 space. It's really designed for a 4x4. That's why I have all the pots centered in the middle, and of course I am augmenting with the reds from 572 watts of blurples too. All told these plants are getting hit with over 1000 actual watts of light, and they are loving it. Lmao! The plants pray to it though, and they have certainly done pretty well so far. No blemishes on a single leaf and we're well into budding. In part, that's them liking the spectrum, along with a bunch of other obvious stuff. So far I'd have to give this light a big thumbs up, and if I had a 4x4 tent I would use it without reservation.
To me that's the Holy Grail of lights in that footprint today Jon! I'm smitten :laugh: !
 
How Are Our Photos Doing?

- Raspberry Parfait Grow Day 39/Flower Day 3 100% outdoors
- Pineapple Upside Down Cake Day 28 Veg in the @Mars Hydro rig (photo from yesterday, Day 27)
- Strawberry Banana Fast Flowering Day 10 Veg in the Mars Hydro rig


RP in the sun.jpg


PUC oct 20.jpg


FFSB.jpg
 
Friday Photoperiod Check-In
Raspberry Parfait Grow Day 40/Flower Day 4
Pineapple Upside Down Cake Day 29 Veg

So three pics today

1. Raspberry Parfait at 7 am
(first light pretty much) where she lives once the sun goes down. I move her around a little during the day to max out her good sun time...this is the dark side of the house between ours and the one next door, no windows on either house on that side, tons of landscaping from the road making the plant impossible to be seen once the sun goes down. I will soon need longer bamboo stakes. Lol.
2. The same plant a few hours later once the sun is actually up, and this picture shows something I'm just learning for the first time is a very cool thing to watch - the way the plant bends as the sun moves across the sky to follow the precious source of life. It's fascinating. I sit there for an hour at a time hoping to see movement but you never do, it's way too subtle. Duh. I had to find out for myself, lol.
3. Pineapple Upside Down Cake as she wakes up in the morning in the @Mars Hydro rig. The stake is to keep her supported against the constant breeze that hits her always on the one side only.

Raspberry Parfait upon wakeup.jpg


Following the Sun.jpg


PUC upon wakeup.jpg
 
@NextLight Autoflower Rig
Day 41
Feeding Supplement Time


I found on the Sour Apple I just harvested, which was grown in Sohum living soil, that it doesn't hurt, and may indeed help, to give her a semi-chemical budding supplemental feeding about three weeks into flower. I know Sohum says (as do most of these type soils) that water is all you need. Maybe so. But I loved the results on the Sour Apple, so I decided it was safe enough and today, with their watering day, I gave all five autos the following supplement:

Per Gallon of Water:

2 tbsp blackstrap unsulphured molasses
2 tbsp Terpinator
I scoop CalMag Pro Formula from Blue Planet Nutrients
1/2 scoop Easy Weed Seaweed Supplement also from BP Nutrients
1 tsp Tiger Bloom
1/4 tsp Beastie Bloomz


That's it. One shot deal. The microbes will take them home after that. I just watch the CalMag necessity under powerful LEDs, as in my experience LED makes them go through those faster. I will continue to add molasses and Terpinator, and an every other watering seaweed supplement. All of those three seem to very much agree with the plants in budding. And I may give them one shot of Cha-Ching in another few weeks.

Heh. Mad scientist stuff. I know it's just basic crap, but I like the fantasy. Lol.

So check out the autos in the group photo. The one on the upper right, the little short, squat, bush, is the Strawberry Banana that is unquestionably my most indica phenotype of this strain. You can see how it compares to the other three, which at this point I believe all are the hybrid pheno. (Gelato in the middle, SB's all around it) Doesn't appear to my eye that I got a heavy sativa side pheno. What's cool is that this little bush leads the way in size of buds forming. Her tops are bigger and rounder than the others. An indica quality I guess? You can also see how the leaves on this strain are thick, greasy, and very covered in oils. I had to pull a few leaves to expose this little bush to more light and air (she's so damn bushy inside, don't want bud rot), and I didn't even want to pull them once I felt them. The leaves on this strain seem like they'd smoke and waste you. You may have seen when I announced the strains that this auto is considered one of the world's highest thc autos. I can't wait to smoke it. One of my all time favorite strains, up there with Super Silver Haze, Jack Herer, and many others.

The Gelato is by far the largest plant, and she's going gangbusters. Very pretty plant, the Gelato. Meanwhile, all four of my new autos, the 3 Dos-Si-Dos and 1 Gorilla Zkittlez are popped and going into Dixie Cups today. All four of those are Barney's Farm. They'll make their grand entrance soon enough.

They all seem happy enough for now! Happy Saturday guys.

Autotown Feeding Supplement Day.jpg


Closeup SB Indica pheno.jpg
 
The Late Autoflower Additions are Ready to Hit the Pots

Soil/Pot Prep and Planting of Sprouts
Direct to Final Pots
Lots of Experimentation
3 Dos-Si-Dos Autos
1 Gorilla Zkittlez Auto


Enough people have grown these strains that I won't waste time and space with descriptions of them, but they're from Barney's Farm. All four popped perfectly in 48 hours and today are ready to hit the pots. I was going to start them in Dixies, but guess what? I'm out. And lazy. And I want to test my skills. Particularly my watering skills. So that started me down the thinking train, often trouble, and here's where we ended up for this highly soil experimental grow portion of the journal.

- All seedlings are being planted in their final pots. Never done this. This is the test of my watering skills and ability to develop a root ball.
- I want to see if an auto can fill a seven gallon pot with roots in soil. So I'm using three 7s and one 5 as my pots for this grow. This is also in part to use up my soil before I have to move in the spring. If I fill the three 7s with roots from an auto I will have a large auto and be a happy guy.
- I figure if I want to fill 7s with auto roots in soil, I better do something to help the roots out, so I have integrated coco into the soil mix. Specifics in the list below. This will have me watering more often, but it will also enable more air flow to the roots and in theory help them grow faster.
- Here's the specific pots and soil mix for each plant:

DSD1/Gorilla Zkittlez:
Sohum base soil. Pot set up as follows: down the middle, in the exact width of a Fox Farms round nute container (or Dixie cup width), is a cylinder, top to bottom, of my Fox Farms soil blend of Ocean Forest/Happy Frog/perlite. No Sohum, no coco in that cylinder, which is centered in the pot. Around that, in the bottom half of the pot, is straight Sohum. The top half around the cylinder is a 50/50 blend of Sohum and my FF blend. In between the top and bottom parts of the pot is a 2" thick layer of Mother Earth Coco/Perlite 70/30. This is a buffer layer between the top and bottom, which I made up to add coco to the grow. I wanted just enough to make it need watered more often, but not 28 times a day. We'll see if that does it. Then I mixed Soil Activator into the top half of the pot, just in the outer soil, not the cylinder. Then I finish topped the very top inch with straight Happy Frog. Then I top dressed a salt shaker like layer of Great White on the soil. That's the prep for these two plants.
DSD2/DSD3: Fox Farms Soil Blend for each. 40% Ocean Forest/40% Happy Frog/20% perlite #3. 2" layer of coco in the middle of the pot, as in the other plants. I used the Soil Activator on these too, even though it's not organic, cuz it can't hurt and only help. Also top dressed with Great White.
Nutes: DSD1/GZ get nothing. DSD2/DSD3 are getting @BluePlanet Nutrients, as a test run for the nutrients our sponsor was gracious enough to send me as part of the GJOM prize pack. Excited to try them.

So there you go, fun with experimentation in soil. Fun with testing the watering skills by starting in final pots. Fun with testing out another sponsor product. Fun with a 20/4 light cycle that's half sun/half Mars Hydro FC-E6500. Likely fun with extra watering and coco experimentation for the first time. And fun to see if an auto grown outside and augmented to 20 hours of light a day with LED can fill a 7 with a root ball. Or at least if I can do it. Oh, and fun for me as it's my first shot at Dos-Si-Dos, and all you guys rave about it. Lastly, a particular challenge to crush the first auto I ever harvested with this, my second ever Gorilla Zkittlez.

Sounds like a decent time. The seedlings are in the pots as described above. Whoo Hoo. Day one for these, as usual, will be the next time they see light.
 
Plants look great Jon, that light also looks and sounds fantastic :green_heart:

I agree with the Kelp additives, I use a cold pressed version in my reservoir.

I also am very interested in seeing if the 7 gallon gets filled out for the autos, and afterwards your thoughts on if a 7 or 5 gallon fabric does better.
 
Plants look great Jon, that light also looks and sounds fantastic :green_heart:

I agree with the Kelp additives, I use a cold pressed version in my reservoir.

I also am very interested in seeing if the 7 gallon gets filled out for the autos, and afterwards your thoughts on if a 7 or 5 gallon fabric does better.
All of it is harmless to the plants except potentially the Beastie Bloomz and Tiger Bloom. I went light. It wasn't really taking that big of a chance and I already tested it once. You should see them now. They took off about 8 hours after the feeding but I've so overposted lately I'm in drawback a little mode or I'd show you. Significant difference.
 
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