Jon's Experimental Single Sour Apple Autoflower Indoor/Outdoor Sunlight/LED Soil Grow

Sour Apple, aka, Sue Anne, Update
Day 43


She just got done a 9 day run in the tent with Sadie living her 12/12 schedule. I was away for six days and it rained the three since I've been home. Finally have the girl in the sun today. She's healthy as an ox. And it appears by now I was right - this plant, untouched and left to grow as she chooses with zero training of any kind, not so much as bending a leaf - is going to produce one GIGANTIC cola about as long as my forearm, and 2 side buds of some size from the two bottom side branches. That's the entirety of her from what I can see, and 43 days in she is what she's gonna be. This cola is going to be the single biggest bud I ever grew, I can already see that. It'll be impressive for sure and if it tastes like she's starting to smell it's going to be lovely. She is starting to smell of some undefined tart sweet citrusy something. Nothing I'd call apple or even a strong odor yet, just beginning. But definitely coming on strong. The important question is whether the yield of that gigantic cola and two little side buds adds up to more than when I took similar autos and trained them like nuts. Thus, part of the point of the test.

So here she is, a few full shots, and a closeup of the top. It's so bright out it's hard to get better than this at the moment. But you guys haven't seen her in a while. Sue Anne is impressive, and this plant or strain seems to be the ultimate light whore....no matter where I put her she always has her leaves praying like crazy for more and more light as you see in the picture. It hasn't changed the entire grow. In LED land she's at 1350 and asking for more. In sunlight heaven she's getting infinity par and asking for more. It's insane.

Sour Apple July 2.jpg


Sour Apple 2 July 2.jpg


Sour Apple Top July 2.jpg
 
Oh WOW! She is so proud! I’ve been waiting on this update for awhile now and it has been well worth the wait! Great work brother Jon!

NTH
I'm super surprised with this strain. It is massively genetically prepared for any conditions. It will take any and all nutes you throw at it and I'm still waiting for the first deficiency or spot or even yellow tip. The plant simply will not do anything but stay 100% healthy no matter what I do. She just got a six day run of nothing but bottled water cuz I wanted to make it easy for my helper while I was on vacation. Now back to nutes. She don't CARE, man. Best auto genetics I have encountered yet, in my limited experience. I'm SO impressed. And the cola will end up literally the size of my forearm if all joins together as it appears it's going to. Remember this is a 75 to 90 day auto. She has a month yet MINIMUM for the huge cola to get HUGE. I can't wait to see if it outweighs my previous auto attempts just by itself. I also am quite surprised this plant only produced TWO little bottom side branches. Everything else is tight to the central stem and growing into the main cola. That's as low a number as is scientifically possible. Surprising. Not that Humboldt specifically said different, I don't recall a mention of side branching so assumed it would be average. But WHOA what a cola this is going to be.

Thanks for the kind words! She's loving the sunlight after that break.
 
I'm super surprised with this strain. It is massively genetically prepared for any conditions. It will take any and all nutes you throw at it and I'm still waiting for the first deficiency or spot or even yellow tip. The plant simply will not do anything but stay 100% healthy no matter what I do. She just got a six day run of nothing but bottled water cuz I wanted to make it easy for my helper while I was on vacation. Now back to nutes. She don't CARE, man. Best auto genetics I have encountered yet, in my limited experience. I'm SO impressed. And the cola will end up literally the size of my forearm if all joins together as it appears it's going to. Remember this is a 75 to 90 day auto. She has a month yet MINIMUM for the huge cola to get HUGE. I can't wait to see if it outweighs my previous auto attempts just by itself. I also am quite surprised this plant only produced TWO little bottom side branches. Everything else is tight to the central stem and growing into the main cola. That's as low a number as is scientifically possible. Surprising. Not that Humboldt specifically said different, I don't recall a mention of side branching so assumed it would be average. But WHOA what a cola this is going to be.

Thanks for the kind words! She's loving the sunlight after that break.
That is awesome. I know what strain I’m ordering next time. Sounds like the perfect strain for my mentally challenged a$$! Haha. Have a great weekend Jon.

NTH
 
Sour Apple Update
Experimental Change By Necessity


I was noticing the edges of my leaves are beginning to curl up on this girl. Not bad or much, but enough that I noticed it visibly. She is in otherwise perfect condition and the curling has begun as the days outdoors are reaching 98 degrees. Too hot for our girl. This is an obvious sign of heat stress. I went through the other six things or so on the list of potential suspects, and this one is a no brainer I could have diagnosed on my first grow. The answer/solution is obvious, very simple, and has already been implemented. She can't do the outdoor thing anymore. The experiment is not worth burning her up. So she's going to share time from now on with Sadie and will have to live on Sadie's 12/12 for the few more days till Sadie gets chopped, in the Topolite tent. In a few days when I harvest her, I can dry Sadie in the now empty Gorilla tent and then dedicate the Topolite tent she's now in purely to the Sour Apple to finish. That'll be one autoflower in a five by five all by itself for maybe three weeks or so. Lmao. She'll go nuts. And the curling will immediately stop as she will never again see 80 degrees. So easy diagnosis, easy fix. Isn't that fricking nice for a change.
 
Hello again Jon! This journal was much easier to catch up on, for some reason I thought it was even longer than your other journal. I agree with you 100% about bathrooms, I live alone and have 2 so I've always grown in the master bathroom. How many bathrooms does one guy need?? And this way when I have company over they can still use the regular bath. It's perfect, mine happens to have cheap mirrored closet doors that maybe add a little something, and most important of all I can keep the door closed and the damn cats out!

20210703_155417.jpg


You're going to want to watch your RH very closely with a giant cola, every one I've ever grown got mold in it. I was also growing outside in a very humid environment. Try to keep the humidity as low as you can at night and keep a good breeze on her, you want to dry any moisture that might be accumulating in there. Take that with a grain of salt, that was the first 6 plants I ever grew and I was doing stupid stuff like trying to wash off bird shit and misting them for absolutely no good reason, it was already 70%= rh. I then grew maybe another 8 full sized plants inside, they had no mold problems and pretty good colas but not massive. After that I switched to clones, so that's the full extent of my experience growing from seed to harvest.

Sue Ann looks great and is definitely flowering. I'm so glad you're leaving her alone like this, I've been training all of mine just to keep the heights consistent. It sounds like in running our lights so much it did the opposite of what we wanted, instead of increasing the growth during veg cycle it accelerates the advent of flower. How many hours of light is she currently getting? And what do you think would be the optimal light cycle for autos in veg? I'm thinking 14-10 or 15-9? I wonder what would happen if one were raised 12/12 from the start? Would that slow the veg cycle or trigger early flowering?

Perhaps in your next grow you could try a small experiment since you'll be growing a bunch of sour apples. Try aggressively defoliating one of them and see what you get. I'm an avid defoliator. If a leaf is blocking or shading a bud site it gets removed, and that ends up being almost all the fan leaves. But I must confess I've never done a comparison, my old grows were about packing as many clones into a 4x2 space as possible, which is quite a lot lol. However the leaves would end up being overwhelming, no light would get below the canopy. To my eye the yield was still about the same as I would have expected on a similar cola from my prior grows.

Enough of my rambling, I'm glad you recommended I check this out. Take care!
 
Hello again Jon! This journal was much easier to catch up on, for some reason I thought it was even longer than your other journal. I agree with you 100% about bathrooms, I live alone and have 2 so I've always grown in the master bathroom. How many bathrooms does one guy need?? And this way when I have company over they can still use the regular bath. It's perfect, mine happens to have cheap mirrored closet doors that maybe add a little something, and most important of all I can keep the door closed and the damn cats out!

20210703_155417.jpg


You're going to want to watch your RH very closely with a giant cola, every one I've ever grown got mold in it. I was also growing outside in a very humid environment. Try to keep the humidity as low as you can at night and keep a good breeze on her, you want to dry any moisture that might be accumulating in there. Take that with a grain of salt, that was the first 6 plants I ever grew and I was doing stupid stuff like trying to wash off bird shit and misting them for absolutely no good reason, it was already 70%= rh. I then grew maybe another 8 full sized plants inside, they had no mold problems and pretty good colas but not massive. After that I switched to clones, so that's the full extent of my experience growing from seed to harvest.

Sue Ann looks great and is definitely flowering. I'm so glad you're leaving her alone like this, I've been training all of mine just to keep the heights consistent. It sounds like in running our lights so much it did the opposite of what we wanted, instead of increasing the growth during veg cycle it accelerates the advent of flower. How many hours of light is she currently getting? And what do you think would be the optimal light cycle for autos in veg? I'm thinking 14-10 or 15-9? I wonder what would happen if one were raised 12/12 from the start? Would that slow the veg cycle or trigger early flowering?

Perhaps in your next grow you could try a small experiment since you'll be growing a bunch of sour apples. Try aggressively defoliating one of them and see what you get. I'm an avid defoliator. If a leaf is blocking or shading a bud site it gets removed, and that ends up being almost all the fan leaves. But I must confess I've never done a comparison, my old grows were about packing as many clones into a 4x2 space as possible, which is quite a lot lol. However the leaves would end up being overwhelming, no light would get below the canopy. To my eye the yield was still about the same as I would have expected on a similar cola from my prior grows.

Enough of my rambling, I'm glad you recommended I check this out. Take care!
Thanks man. Relative to RH, both plants are always in the 45% range. I have four fans and a moving large fan on both plants. The air flow and bud rot is not an issue, I prepared for that.

As far as light, the Sour Apple has had a variety. Now by necessity she's on 12/12, as she was by necessity when I was on vacation. Before that, with the combo of sun and LED, she was getting about 15/9. I don't see it as rocket science. The less hours of light they get the slower they grow. Five strains and ten autos and they've all been the same. I LST'ed like mad the first nine. I know how to do that. And of course I defoliate when necessary, I don't see how one could do any grow without targeted defoliation, despite the plethora of opinions on the matter. Just me. Anyway, once Sadie gets harvested in a few days the sour apple will finish on 18/6, which is ONE answer to your question. 18/6 seems to be pretty close to the sweet spot in my opinion. 22/2 and 20/4 are too much light, again in my opinion. Many get what they consider good results that way. So I've settled, for now, on 18/6, and the advantage there is I can begin veg on my photos in the same tent.

The main point of this experiment is to see if whatever the plant does if left alone beats the yield from training. I know the best would be to be doing one of each style with two sour apples, but it's close enough given what I already know.
 
Sue Anne, aka, Sour Apple Autoflower Update
Day 46


Ok so Sadie is harvested and hanging in the Gorilla tent drying. That frees the tent up for Sue Anne to have it all to herself. So this is where and how she is going to finish from here to the end. Her light cycle will be 18/6 for the rest of the grow till she's ready to chop.

Right now she's rocking 74.5 degrees, 55% humidity, and 1240 par with a combination of full spectrum light from the quantum board and red light from the blurples, just as Sadie was set up for budding. She is getting nute/nute/clean water for a watering schedule. Her current nutes are 1 1/2 tsp. Big Bloom, 1 1/2 tsp. Tiger Bloom, 1/2 tsp. Grow Big, 1 tsp. CalMag plus Iron, and 1 tbsp. blackstrap molasses, all per gallon of water.

You can clearly see the leaf curling on the edges which was from the heat stress of the 95-98 degree days. Surprisingly, some of the curl actually flattened back out within a day of her hitting the tent. Some did not. But there won't be any more. The bottom two fan leaves actually show the burn a little, not sure if it's clear in the photo. Anyway, problem solved and it didn't take a damn week. Lol. Otherwise Sue Anne is 100% healthy and the cola just keeps growing and connecting. For sure now, one gigantic cola up the middle and two little side buds of whatever size. If they all grow this way if left alone they are the perfect strain for an auto SOG if anyone was interested in that method. She is beginning to frost up and has the very beginning of a citrusy smell starting to waft up. The plant itself is gorgeous, although I always think that. Lol.

So here are three different shots of Sue Anne on day 46. She is a 75 to 90 day auto. At least a whole month to go, probably longer. HA! Let's see how damn big that central cola will get!

Sour Apple July 5.jpg


Sour Apple 2 July 5.jpg


Sour Apple 3 July 5.jpg
 
Sue Anne Update
Day 48


Should have taken the time to do this the other day. Here's Sue Anne the intrepid Sour Apple Autoflower doing her thing in natural light. This is what she actually looks like. Just starting to frost up and smell. One very impressive cola and two side buds. That's what she is. And she's beautiful.

Photographs:

- Bud tip
- Bud top
- Side perspective 1
- Side perspective 2

Sour Apple bud tip natural light.jpg


Sour Apple bud top natural light .jpg


Sour Apple perspective 1 natural light.jpg


Sour Apple perspective 2 natural light.jpg
 
Sue Anne Update
Day 50


Well, this experiment has taken so many turns I don't even know what's a valid experiment anymore. I suppose it's still a plant that has grown untouched, and that won't change.

HOWEVER a lot of other things changed.

I had to, due to roommate concerns, pare down to one tent. Tried to buy my way out of having to, but to no avail. So obviously I will use the Gorilla Tent. Which means today I had to completely break down the Topolite tent that Sue Anne was going to finish in, and move and completely re-set-up the Gorilla tent in a new spot, plus rearranging the entire garage and getting rid of tons of stuff I no longer need with only one tent. Plus cleaning the entire garage. Plus scrubbing the entire Gorilla tent and all the pieces of hardware with hydrogen peroxide and water, to kill any latent pollen that may have been hanging out still. Fucking pollen. Then of course do all the light leak, par test, environment test, etc, as if starting from scratch. Sue Anne hung out in a cool shady spot outside during all of this. Finally we had everything the way I want it, and the Gorilla is in full swing. Sue Anne has it to herself (with the good light, obviously, no more cheapie quantum board/blurple mix....not necessary at all.....this light does EVERYTHING) at the moment. That is about to change. There is a new grow journal about to get started in the next few days.

Anyway, Sue Anne seems to be loving the new digs, which is a better tent and a WAY better light basically. And now we're set up for badass photo grows. So all the work (about six hours altogether, Christ....my back HURTS) was worth it. We're dialed in.

Can't wait to see how Sue Anne finishes. The cola is immense. The buds that make it up are immense. For any kind of weed. It's 23" long bottom to top. She's frosting up a lot now and the smell is really coming on. Today is Day 50. We'll try to keep her nice and consistent where she is for her last month now. Lol. Betcha she finishes sweet with the better light source.

So mid 70s by day, mid 60s at night, Rh around 50%, and her nutes are now just Tiger Bloom, Big Bloom, molasses, and Calmag plus Iron. (1 1/2 tsp., 1 1/2 tsp., 1 tbsp., 1 tsp.).

So new condo for Sue Anne. WHAT AN UPGRADE FOR HER!!!

Here you go.....

New Digs July 9.jpg


Sour Apple July 9.jpg


Sour Apple Cola July 9.jpg
 
Looking good Jon! Sorry you had to go to all that trouble. How tall is she?
From dirt to tip of her cola she's 26". The cola bud itself, if it all grows together, is currently 23" top to bottom. LOL. No the trouble was worth it. My body feels the lessened workload, and now it's much easier to focus on perfection, which is always my goal. Thanks man.
 
Sue Anne Update
Day 53


In just the few days since she moved into the tent under the good light, and went to a consistent 18/6 light cycle, Sue Anne seems to have hit yet ANOTHER gear. Damn, this plant is awesome. Never would have expected one giant cola and two side buds from ANY auto. Seems awfully self-contained, which has it's advantages. Can't wait to grow another one and see what that pheno looks like. Anyway, she is getting yet even fatter, and her frosting up has definitely gone into overdrive, as has her odor. I am not yet getting anything I would describe as an apple smell, but I am getting dankness and undefined citrusy smell with strong sweetness coming on strong. She smells awesome, can't wait to try her. Terps will be very interesting. And with arguably still a whole month to go (she'd have to go 83 days, supposedly a 75 to 90 plant, so that's about rightish), who the hell knows how big this bud will get? I can't even believe it actually all grew together like my pipe dream said it would! Lol. The plant has had nothing her whole 53 day life so far that I would describe as significant stress. The worst that's happened to her is a bit of leaf curl on the fan leaves from a couple really hot days in a row when she was in the sunlight. She has zero deficiencies or any kind of signs you don't want to see on your plants. Last watering I flushed her for the first time - a five gallon clean water flush, wait an hour, and finish with a gallon of nutes at the end. The water that comes out on the flush fills my shop vac twice with 5 gallons worth of runoff, and it's funny - the first dump is darkish brown from the molasses. The second dump is almost clear with just a tinge of brown. I could go further until I got totally clear runoff, but I save that for the final couple flushes unless it's necessary earlier. Hasn't been in this plant's case. So here's fingers crossed to hoping she finishes as strong as she's been so far!

Have a great grow week guys!

Photos:

Sue Anne full shot
Sue Anne Cola closeup shot

Sue Anne July 12.jpg


Sue Anne July 12 cola closeup.jpg
 
Sue Anne
Day 54


Sorry guys but this bud is growing visibly daily for some damn reason and it's nutso. So I won't bore you with more of my relatively useless verbiage, and here's just a few shots from today. Even compared to yesterday's post you can see the damn difference. Nutso.

One bud Sue Anne.jpg


Frosting up for us!.jpg
 
Back
Top Bottom