New Year, New Grow, 6 AutoFem, Hydro, LED

[PTSd]

After criss-crossing this great land for the past 3 months, I've gotten back to my happy place.

While I was gone I loaned my set-up to a good friend of mine and gave them 6 AutoFem seeds. It was a very disappointing grow, but they got some great experience and are now armed with everything they learned, and shopping for their own cabinet. Looking back, I wish I had this opportunity myself, would have saved a lot of $ and angst.


New Years Eve, I spent deep cleaning and sanitizing _everything_ and dropping my last 6 AutoFem seeds into production.

2x Buddha Mix
1x Northern Lights
1x Super Hash
1x Gorilla Glue
1x Fast & Vast

Germination rate is 6/6
(The Northern Lights has germinated, but has not emerged from the rockwool plug yet.)

One of my seedlings (Gorilla Glue) shot way up compared to the others, I decided to start LST, being as gentle as humanly possible.

Photo's courtesy of my new Canon EOS Rebel T6 DSLR. Shooting in RAW and editing in Digital Photo Professional 4... Bear with me, I'm still figuring this thing out! My magnification filters should be here in a few days. (yippie, more toys!-)

 

[PTSd]

Day 57:

All is well, 3 plants are well into flower, and the others are close behind!

 

[PTSd]

Upgraded to a bigger cabinet, doubled the amount of light and grow space.

The 6 Sisters in their old Apartment:

And in their new Deluxe Condominium:

A little tour around the block @ 74 days:

 

[PTSd]

Between the girls racing towards their biological imperative, and the new accommodations (2x the lumens as before) over the past week, I felt compelled to do some canopy management and thin out all the fan leaves, and give some careful thinning of the more obtrusive sugar leaves on the ones getting close to finishing. An added bonus is I can start making a fresh batch of butter.

Hopefully the 2 Buddha Mix's, and the Fast & Vast (though fast, was not very vast) will hurry up and finish so I can start opening up the Afghan Mass and Super Hash (center-rear and right-rear) which have now started flowering in earnest. Space management can be a real issue when running 6 Auto's in such a small space.


Before thinning:

After Thinning:

The last 2 of my 10 pack of "Buddha Mix" seeds are doing amazingly well, I only wish I knew what they were:

 

[PTSd]

Apparently ODOR has become an issue for me;

As I was slogging the snow off the top of my vehicle in our apartment's parking-lot, my next-door neighbor casually dropped a few not so subtle hints about it, as well as mentioning he observed "at least two _other_ brands of nutrients in the dumpster"....(I specifically toss my empty nutrients away far, far, from home) It was definately meant to be one of those "I'm cool, and I know you are cool" conversations, but being ever paranoid, I gave them a non-committal "hmm, is that so?" and soon as I got back inside, I jumped on the web and ordered my carbon filter and inline fan! So, I'll be doing a lot of walking and taking public transit to where I need to go, and eating PB&J's until my next disability check comes in, but it's better than attracting unwanted attention from my neighbors.

It's actually kinda comical because our walls are so thin, I can literally hear his bong bubbling (as well as the occasional "electric toothbrush" buzzing from the single-mom's apartment on the other side of me ;-) But I'm not about to go knocking on either door anytime soon!

 

[PTSd]

About 2 weeks ago I went through and harvested about 10-20% off each plant taking only the "mature" flowers (amber trichomes) which provided a good sampling and prevented me from having to go buy my medicine.

Today I had help from a friend to come in since I have neck and back problems I can't sit or stand for hours, never an shortage of people who will come help harvest though.... we were going to harvest all the plants, but as I was clipping off flowers I notice there were plenty underneath that could use some more time, so we carefully only pruned off the "ready" flowers:

Left to Right:
Gorilla Glue, Purple Kush, Super Hash, Afghan Mass, Deimos



There were still plenty of immature flowers (clear trichomes) on the now denuded plants, and since I have the extra space in the cabinet for a few more weeks, we figured to let them mature and fatten up as much as possible before their biological clock expires.

(Apologies for the poor picture quality.) Everything left is now carefully lollipopped immature flowers

 

[PTSd]

Everything left is now carefully lollipopped immature flowers

For a few days they were really not to happy after being butchered by the pruning shears.
Plenty of leaf drop after the main harvest, but everything seems to have reached an equilibrium again.

A week later, the immature flowers that were left to their own devices to finish are filling out nicely.

Purple Kush(back left) seems to be on the very end of it's life, but the trics haven't gone amber. I keep thinking "today's her last day" but at the end of the day, and the buds are still springy when gently pinched. So, since I'm now able to take some taste testers out of the early harvest, now in jars curing ;-0, and more the main harvest that just went into jars, that I want to let these girls ride out as long as they can.

The Gorilla Glue (front left) really perked right back up the quickest, and the remaining flowers are plumping up nicely.
Few enough that I can count on two hands, but that means at least 10 additional days of medication.

The Super Hash is like the energizer bunny, just keeps going and going, and going....

 

[PTSd]

To me this really highlights a downfall of having mixed cultivars in a communal grow.
When it's time to hit the reset switch, some plants are going to invariably be lagging behind.

Auto's have been fun and taken a lot of the guesswork and human error out of the equation while I've been figuring things out for myself. But I'm ready to start cloning and flowering to take better advantage of my space requirements.

So in this new arrangement Auto's will now go in 1 Gal buckets, and use my (2) 6-slot hydro's for 6 clones, soon as they have decent roots, force them to flower. That's the plan anyway, we'll see how well I do at cloning off the Delicious Black Russians waiting in the maternity wing.

 

[Amadeus Forzin]

Hope all is well in your world.

How did this grow turn out?

We would love to be updated with some pictures and info.

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I am moving this to Abandoned Journals until we get updates.

Sending you lots of love and positive energy.