NorthernCosmos' First Indoor Soil Auto Grow: 2019

Yet another night done - 12.5 hours. I'm wondering if I should defoliate this things a bit. I've pulled a couple of lowers that were damaged when watering and handling it, but all the rest are nice and green, some are real big, and therefore doing work... Is it a little too dense? Any thoughts?

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That's one week of 12/12 for the fauxto OG Kush. No flowers yet. The BCN Critical XXL over to the left is starting to pack on. Both of these got 1.8g/l MC yesterday - we'll see if they survive that... looking good so far :)

The CDB 21:1 and the Banana Monkey are plodding along in their new shared center positions. I've been speculating about fitting two more buckets in there, but no... I don't think that would go well, so I'm sticking to the plan of holding off the Jack Hair autos until at least the BCN is gone.

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OK, done with today schlepping and feeding. The fauxto keeps growing. The tops keeps stacking up, but no flowers there yet. Getting a little impatient on day 8 after flip and day 68 overall... However, today I saw the first pistils in those isolated buds on the middle nodes :D That mean it WILL flower for certain, right?

BTW, are there instances of female plants that never flowers?

Oh, and the two youngsters which sat a bit low in that last picture have been raised a few inches.

These plants drink more than my previous ones. Not only the big bushy fauxto, but the nice and fulsome BCN too. The water retention of the buckets is also greater than I'm used to. The fauxto has put roots through the speedholes (air pruning...) and the drain holes. So, is the water retention and thirst all from switching nutes, which results in bigger root balls, I wonder; there certainly seems to be a correlation between the nute-switch and the increased nute-swilling and greener growth.
 
OK, done with today schlepping and feeding. The fauxto keeps growing. The tops keeps stacking up, but no flowers there yet. Getting a little impatient on day 8 after flip and day 68 overall... However, today I saw the first pistils in those isolated buds on the middle nodes :D That mean it WILL flower for certain, right?

BTW, are there instances of female plants that never flowers?

Oh, and the two youngsters which sat a bit low in that last picture have been raised a few inches.

These plants drink more than my previous ones. Not only the big bushy fauxto, but the nice and fulsome BCN too. The water retention of the buckets is also greater than I'm used to. The fauxto has put roots through the speedholes (air pruning...) and the drain holes. So, is the water retention and thirst all from switching nutes, which results in bigger root balls, I wonder; there certainly seems to be a correlation between the nute-switch and the increased nute-swilling and greener growth.
yes, it sounds like you are definitely flowering. Some strains take up to 11 days to do the transition after the flip, so just be patient. I have never heard of a plant that failed to go into bloom after the flip. Water retention in soil is what soil was designed to do, and the stronger your rootball gets, the faster the plant will use the water. It definitely is all about the roots.
 
With this January we got an extreme cold spell. Currently there's ca 22°C with lights on and 15°C with lights out in the tent. The result seems to be that the plants' growth have slowed and even stopped completely.

The CDB 20:1 at day 52 and the banana Monkey at day 43 have grown extremely slowly, and they simply stopped growing ca. 2 weeks ago, not growing a single millimeter. Well, they're flowering if nothing else... The big ones gained their size before the worst of the cold set in, but the otherwise nice BCN just isn't packing on the buds. Don't know how the fauxto will fare - at least it has now been flowering for a couple of days, but I worry that the flowers will be miniscule.

The cold spell is set to last for some time, and it's getting even colder. Last winter was much warmer, and the tent exploded with green. So a drop from day/night @ 26°C/20°C to day night @ 22°C/15°C is apparently quite dramatic. Is such a sudden halt in growth common?

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Nice job getting the fauxto flowering. Can you maybe get a heater blowing warm air into your intake maybe?
I can, but I'm not too keen on the additional power draw, and the RH in the tent would then drop from the current 16%. Will monitor the temps to find the lowest point, and then I can run a heater for a just a few hours each day. I was not prepared for this... the room where the tent is needs a door that can be closed to keep the warmth in.

Edit: I found a heavy curtain that I've placed in the door opening to stop the worst of the draft. There's already a radiator in the room, so hopefully the temps will go up a couple of degrees.

On the bright side, here's the OGK fauxto flowering :D:



And the BCN buds, they're small with somewhat sparse trich coverage :
 
OK! The curtain did the trick. A couple of hours later the temps have risen by more than 3 degrees :)

Wish I did that a month ago now - oh well, it just wasn't on my mind then...

Edit: Up to normal temps now! The next two plants that will be started in a week or two, when the BCN is done, will hopefully grow much bigger (unless my idea of the cold stunting the frow is waaay off..(?)).
 
Is such a sudden halt in growth common?
Absolutely. Cold sends the plant into a hibernation of sorts and it slows the draw of nutrients from the soil. If you can get the low above 18ºC they'll be much happier.
I'm not too keen on the additional power draw,
Depends on what you would pay for the cannabis you would need to replace a smaller harvest. ;)
hopefully the temps will go up a couple of degrees.
Hope so...
Edit: Up to normal temps now!
Success. Well done!
 
Alright! A few hours later, and the small ones have awoken! :D

Their branches have lifted so that they're 4-5 cm taller than what they've been staying at, praying top the light- and I swear they've grown overall just a little bit too ;)

So, lesson learned - there is indeed a hard shutdown/hibernation happening at too low temps. The temps probably vary with strains, but day/night at 22°C/15°C brought my autos to a halt. The temps are even lower than that near the floor, BTW. And now, when warmed up, they came back to life in just a few hours! Let's see what happens in the coming days.

This means the fauxto will get warmer days too - that will be interesting!

I don't know how well a picture conveys the awakening, from flat and listless to comparatively sprightly - it's quite the sight in person, to see how they sprung to life:

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Here's the fuaxto ready for a stint in the dark closet. It's an IKEA item, ca. 2m tall. It would make a perfect flowering cabinet, but this is a one time affair only. The plant is bound together with a string to give it a somewhat cylindrical shape. That is necessary to be able to keep it in the tent and to do the daily schlepping x 2.

The air circulation is taken care of by two PC fans laying on the trouser rack. One is blowing upwards and one downwards to create max air movement.

The BCN is starting to fatten up a little I think, and the tiny ones are continuing to improve, but they'll never be anything but Bonzais... So, only 2 days of proper warmth and the plants are thriving again.

Here's the flowering closet. You can't really see the fauxto's flowers is this pic, but it's looking good. More flowering pics to come.

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Aye, Shed!

Strangely, its quite sparse in the middle and mostly very bushy along the lower edges. It's also a heavy drinker, and when it gets thirsty it quickly droops its branches and needs somre support, so the tie is multi functional. All in all, the airflow through the plant isn't as bad as one might think from the pics. The BCN is much worse, very dense - I have a fan pointed at it at all times! I'm taking the odd leaf off the fauxto and will do more of that in the coming week or two.

I'm also thinking... Was it really an OGK auto to begin with... 11 fingered leaves(!?), no auto flowering... hehe... well, well :)
 
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