Primeau’s First Grow, Soil Photoperiods Out On The Patio, 2021

[Primeau]

Good Evening,

I started my first grow on a whim back in May and since then found this forum, lurked around for a while on other members Grow Journals and have decided to start my own journal.

My girls are currently in veg outside on the back patio. I’ve been using Reefertilizer nutes and the final homes are/will be 10 gallon fabric pots with a mix of Gaia Green Living Soil, worm castings and perlite.

On to the strains:

My grow experience started when I decided to germinate a couple of seeds I found in a jar of Bruce Banner that my buddy grew and gifted to me. I will provide a more detailed timeline with photos for each strain below.

After germinating the Banners, I rushed to the local grocery store and bought some potting mix meant for seedlings and planted the germinated seeds in the1-Gallon pots that they gave at the store.

I then did some research and began to worry, what if they’re both males or inclined to hermy because they’re bag(jar) seed? If I’m going to spend the time and money to research and grow, I want to make sure I have some viable plants so at that point I bought the following feminized seeds: Grape Drink, Blood Orange Kush, Blue Haze and Hay-Z. I selected these strains partly because they offer a good mix of sativa and indica hybrids but mostly because they had some of the most interesting, colourful looking buds in the breeders catalogue.

I’ll provide more detail below but at a high level seeds were sprouted in 3 rounds:

May 10th - Round 1: Two Bruce Banner x Unknown

May 20th - Round 2: 1 each of Grape Drink, Blood Orange Kush, Blue Haze and Hay-Z

June 10th - Round 3: 1 each Blue Haze and Hay-Z (intended to be replacements for the Round 2 Blue Haze and Hay-Z)

As you can gather from my need for a Round 3, some of my plants are doing better than others so I appreciate any and all tips, advice, chastising I can get to help me optimize my yield for this first grow and learn some important lessons for the next.

Thanks and Happy Growing!
-Primeau

 

[Nine Toed Hippie]

Welcome Primeau! You are in the right place. Post up some pics of your ladies and give the guys and gals here more info so they can help you get right. I’m on my first grow and the folks here have really helped me.

NTH

 

[Primeau]

Welcome Primeau! You are in the right place. Post up some pics of your ladies and give the guys and gals here more info so they can help you get right. I’m on my first grow and the folks here have really helped me.

NTH

Thanks Nine Toed Hippie! Uploading pics to build out the timeline for each plant now, round 1 coming shortly!

 

[Primeau]

So here’s the timeline for Round 1 - Two Bruce Banner x Unknown seeds found in a jar of Bruce Banner my buddy grew and gave to me:

May 8th: 1 tap root showing

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

May 13th: BB1 & BB2 sprouted. Both looking tall and lanky in the window. I’ve now learned the window will not cut it until the seeds go outside and I need to buy a couple of small LEDs

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

May20th: BB1 & BB2 are the bigger two plants under the small lights I bought. Ignore the other plants for now we’ll get to them later. BB1&2 are still looking fairly lanky and haven’t grown too much over the last week. I was definitely guilty of overwatering early on and we see slow growth because of that.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

May 30th: BB1 & BB2 are still the biggest plants (they’re still the tallest today so I’ll stop pointing that out). Pretty decent growth over the last 10 days but they remain fairly tall and lanky.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

May 31st: BBs have been repositioned and this is a better shot.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

June 5th: Plenty of vertical growth continuing the theme of very tall plants. I think that my little seedling LEDs we’re not sufficient for the plants at this point, especially when the light was shared between 6 plants in 1 gallon pots and so could not be focused on any 1 plant. I think that had I grown them all in solo cups, the plants would have been closer together and all plants would have received more light at higher intensity.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

June 8th: BB1 & BB2 have now been moved outside. While I was aware of the need to harden off the plants by slow exposure to direct sun, I still did not take it slow enough and we’ll come to see that the girls get sunburnt!

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

June 18th: At this point I’ll start referring to the bushier plant as BB1 (back right) and the taller lankier one as BB2 (back middle). I’m starting to check both very closely each day for pre-flowers as you’ll recall these came from bag seed. My buddy tells me the Bruce Banner they came from was grown outdoors with no sign of hermy so they should be regular seeds, capable or producing male or female plants and not inclined to hermy. We’ll watch closely to find out.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

June 22nd: Both plants have been topped at about the 6th/7th node. BB1 (middle right) was fimmed and BB2 the taller sister (or brother?) so was topped. I’m about to go to my trailer for 6 days so this is the before photo. I left all the plants under our pergola so they’ll be somewhat protected from the weather.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021
• 5

June 28th: I’ve returned from the trailer and despite the tornado that came through a 40 minute drive from here and the high wind and rain conditions, there’s been pretty good growth in all plants although they were watered by some sideways rain under the pergola.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

Finally today!: The rain stopped this afternoon so plants are back under the sun, BB1 is rightmost and BB2 is second from the right. The bottom / old growth does not look good as it was ravaged by the earlier sunburn but otherwise I think they look not great but ok for my first time, any tips much appreciated! Regarding sex of the plants, I think I found signs of a female pre-flower on the nicer, bushier BB1. Have a look at the closeup and let me know what you think!

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

 

[Primeau]

So I won’t get to the timeline with photos for Round 2 and 3 done tonight but will work on that tomorrow. Hopefully this has some of you intrigued! After putting it together I thinks it’s interesting looking at a compressed timeline of the two plants that can be quickly viewed, read and reflected on. Hindsight is 20/20 so feel free to point out all the things this first time noob did wrong so I can improve on it next time. I do think I’ve got my overwatering under control for Round 3 so you can look forward to that timeline coming soon.
Have a good night all and happy growing!

 

[Mdlroad]

Good Evening,

I started my first grow on a whim back in May and since then found this forum, lurked around for a while on other members Grow Journals and have decided to start my own journal.

My girls are currently in veg outside on the back patio. I’ve been using Reefertilizer nutes and the final homes are/will be 10 gallon fabric pots with a mix of Gaia Green Living Soil, worm castings and perlite.

On to the strains:

My grow experience started when I decided to germinate a couple of seeds I found in a jar of Bruce Banner that my buddy grew and gifted to me. I will provide a more detailed timeline with photos for each strain below.

After germinating the Banners, I rushed to the local grocery store and bought some potting mix meant for seedlings and planted the germinated seeds in the1-Gallon pots that they gave at the store.

I then did some research and began to worry, what if they’re both males or inclined to hermy because they’re bag(jar) seed? If I’m going to spend the time and money to research and grow, I want to make sure I have some viable plants so at that point I bought the following feminized seeds: Grape Drink, Blood Orange Kush, Blue Haze and Hay-Z. I selected these strains partly because they offer a good mix of sativa and indica hybrids but mostly because they had some of the most interesting, colourful looking buds in the breeders catalogue.

I’ll provide more detail below but at a high level seeds were sprouted in 3 rounds:

May 10th - Round 1: Two Bruce Banner x Unknown

May 20th - Round 2: 1 each of Grape Drink, Blood Orange Kush, Blue Haze and Hay-Z

June 10th - Round 3: 1 each Blue Haze and Hay-Z (intended to be replacements for the Round 2 Blue Haze and Hay-Z)

As you can gather from my need for a Round 3, some of my plants are doing better than others so I appreciate any and all tips, advice, chastising I can get to help me optimize my yield for this first grow and learn some important lessons for the next.

Thanks and Happy Growing!
-Primeau

Welcome you will find all the help you need here. I did

 

[Primeau]

Timeline for Round 2:
First a quick description of the seeds:
Blood Orange Kush - This is an indica dominant hybrid of Aota x pinecracker and an unknown OG. The plant is expected to grow bushy.
Grape Drink - This is another indica dominant hybrid of Kimbo Kush x Grape God
Blue Haze - This is a slightly sativa dominant hybrid of the original Haze and Blueberry
Hay-Z - This one is a super sativa cross of Super Silver Haze and Nevilles Haze.

May 20th - From back left to right: Blue Haze, Blood Orange Kush and Grape Drink have sprouted in 1g pots of the same store bought seedling mix BB1&2 we’re started in. Hay-Z sprouted a couple of days after the others in the front right solo cup. I was almost ready to give up on het when finally cracked in the paper towel. By that point I’d researched enough to know I’d be less likely to over water in a solo cup as opposed to a 1 gallon.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

May 30th - From front right to back left:
Hay-Z, Grape Drink, Blue Haze, Blood Orange Kush. We can already see some distinguishing features for later: Hay-Z seems to have the claw going and a really strange, smooth appearance to the leaves, not broad and serrated as expected. Grape Drink is stretching into an extremely tall, lengthy plant, Blue Haze the second node is mutated and the first node has some white splotches showing. Only the back left Blood Orange Kush looks normal. This is a theme we’ll see for weeks to come.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

June 5th - Front left to back right: Grape Drink, Blood Orange Kush, Blue Haze, Hay-Z. Apologies for the poor pictures but I’m trying to string together this timeline weeks later based in on the photos I took at the time.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

June 8th - Hay-Z has now been transplanted into a 1-gallon pot outside (tiny plant front right). She’s been looking sketchy and I thought a new home might perk her up. She was transplanted into Gaia Green Living Soil.
Indoors, Grape Drink is extremely tall and stretchy in front, Blue Haze appears to be growing out of her mutation back left as the new growth looks OK and Blood Orange Kush continues to be the best looking girl back right (although still tall).

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021
• 2

June 14th - All the plants are now outdoors. Notable developments: Grape Drink in the back left was the first to be transplanted into the final 10 gallon pot. This was because she was so tall and stretchy I wanted to reign her in as soon as possible so I put the rootball in on its side near the bottom of the pot and bent the stem up straight before filling the pot in, burying several inches of stem in the process.
As for the other plants, Hay-Z front right continues to look sickly, Blue Haze right behind that the new grow still looks better but not a plant to write home about. Blood Orange Kush in the middle continues to be the only plant of the 4 that looks decent.

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• Primeau
• Jul 1, 2021

June 22nd - This is the before shot, prior to me heading to the trailer for 6 days.

Back left: Grape Drink
Front Left: Blue Haze
Front Right: Hay-Z
Back Right: Blood Orange Kush

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021
• 5

And this is the after shot when I got back from the trailer on Monday, June 28th. Pretty good growth noticed on all plants.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

And this is yesterday!

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

Today I gave away the original Hay-Z to a buddy who will plant it direct in the ground in his backyard, I’ll post whatever pics I get from him here and in the meantime am turning my attention to Hay-Z 2 which we will see in the detailed description of round 3 coming soon!

 

[Primeau]

Timeline for Round 3, this will be a quick one then we’re all caught up!
Round 3 consists of 1 Hay-Z and 1 Blue Haze. These were intended to be replacements for the sister plants described above in Round 2 because those plants were not doing so well and I had learned a lot since the start of Round 1 I was eager to apply. As I mentioned above, I gave the original Hay-Z to a buddy yesterday as I have too many plants and am interested to see how it does planted in the ground in his back yard. The round 3 plants were germinated using the paper towel method then planted in solo cups outside so they’ve been under the sun since Day 1. The medium was Gaia Green Living soil.

June 14th: Here’s the plants about 4-5 days after breaking soil up front in the solo cups, Hay-Z is left and Blue Haze is right.

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• Primeau
• Jul 1, 2021

June 22nd: Here they are again just before leaving for 6 days. BH2 left and HZ2 right.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021
• 5

June 28th: This is the after photo upon my return. I was happy to see good growth for both plants while I was away. BH2 Left and HZ2 right.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

June 30th: Both plants were starting to poke roots out the bottom of the solo cups so I’ve transplanted them into 1-gallon pots which contain a mixture of approximately 2 parts Gaia Green Living Soil, 1 part earthworm castings and 1 part perlite + a teaspoon of feather meal. I watered to runoff with pH 6.3 water after transplant. Neither plant has received any nutes yet as they should have what they need in the soil and I am wary of providing nutes given the strange claw leaves on HZ1. BH2 is left and HZ2 is right.

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• Primeau
• Jun 30, 2021

July 2nd: Here they are today. I’m a bit concerned that both plants have what appears to be slices/cuts through the centre of a couple leaves. This is most apparent on the larger HZ2 in the picture below. A friend of mine was over yesterday and thinks it’s bugs, I haven’t seen any but will likely spay the plants with Safer Insecticidal Soap tonight just in case.

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• Primeau
• Jul 2, 2021

So now we’re all caught up I’ll likely post once a week or whenever I see something significant moving forward. Happy growing!

 

[oldmanjj]

The ladies are looking good!

 

[StoneOtter]

Nice outdoor grow Primeau!

 

[Primeau]

Thanks for the words of encouragement, Ladies were nice and perky this morning after some water and nutes last evening at dusk so I was encouraged as well when I saw how they’d reacted this morning! Below is a group photo from this evening and I’ll post a proper update Monday or Tuesday time permitting with individual shots and some of my questions, concerns and thoughts for each plant. Appreciate all the support I’ve been getting on this forum. Happy growing all!

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• Primeau
• Jul 4, 2021

 

[Tokin Roll]

I do think I’ve got my overwatering under control

Give this a read, and see if it helps with your overwatering.

@Emilya has a great watering thread you may want to checkout. Here's the links.

The Proper Way to Water a Potted Plant (in soil) - STICKY --> 321K+ Views!!!
The Proper Way to Water a Seedling Or An Auto In A Large Container

Hope this helps.

Stay safe, and grow well my friend,

Tok..

 

[Primeau]

Thanks @Tokin Roll! Ive read @Emilya articles on how to properly water and while I know my first two rounds of plants were severely overwatered early on, I think that I followed the instructions properly for the last two seedlings and they’re looking far better than the first two rounds of plants did at this point.
One question for you folks while we’re on the topic though is regarding watering during transplant: I know we say to water the new pot to saturation/run-off to help merge the soil regions but I’ve found when transplanting from 1-Gallon to the final 10-Gallon pots, watering to run-off then requires a couple of weeks for the pot to dry out, even fabric pots outdoors. During that time I’ve been giving the plant small amounts of water every few days to keep the top spreader roots happy but I’m wondering if when transplanting to a pot that’s 10+x larger than the previous pot, it might be better to soak the new pot only 1-2 inches outside the original rootball? Or alternatively maybe it would be better to first transplant to a 3-gallon pot before moving to the final 10-gallon. What do you think?

 

[Emilya Green]

Thanks @Tokin Roll! Ive read @Emilya articles on how to properly water and while I know my first two rounds of plants were severely overwatered early on, I think that I followed the instructions properly for the last two seedlings and they’re looking far better than the first two rounds of plants did at this point.
One question for you folks while we’re on the topic though is regarding watering during transplant: I know we say to water the new pot to saturation/run-off to help merge the soil regions but I’ve found when transplanting from 1-Gallon to the final 10-Gallon pots, watering to run-off then requires a couple of weeks for the pot to dry out, even fabric pots outdoors. During that time I’ve been giving the plant small amounts of water every few days to keep the top spreader roots happy but I’m wondering if when transplanting to a pot that’s 10+x larger than the previous pot, it might be better to soak the new pot only 1-2 inches outside the original rootball? Or alternatively maybe it would be better to first transplant to a 3-gallon pot before moving to the final 10-gallon. What do you think?

It seems to me that this is easy to answer, as it would always be best to do the intermediary transplant into a three gallon. From there it is possible to easily jump up to a 10, and if the eventual goal was even bigger than that, I would make the intermediary a 5 gallon.

After doing the first full watering of a new container, it always takes a dangerous amount of time before the plant can stretch its roots out to grab all of the water, and I would always recommend doing the in-between waterings of about a 1/4 of the amount it took to saturate the container, about every 3 days, to as you say, keep the upper spreader root system active and the plant's metabolism high.

Good luck, and I am overjoyed that you are getting so much good out of my watering method.

 

[Primeau]

Thank you @Emilya that makes a lot of sense! One final thought I have now is regarding my two youngest plants which were just transplanted into their 1-gallon homes last week. Ideally I’d like to get them into 10-gallon fabric pots similar to the rest of my tribe. My concern is that I believe all transplanting should be done before the flowering period which I expect to begin mid-August. I think that assuming they outgrow the 1-gallon pots by say July 20th, they likely won’t have enough time to outgrow 3-gallon pots before flowering begins. So in that case I’m tempted to go from 1-gallon to 10-gallon as I’ve done with the other plants, or maybe since these youngest plants were started later, they won’t need more than 5-gallon final homes anyway and I could go straight from 1-5 gallon and leave them there through harvest. Would love to hear from you and any other growers here on the proper strategy in this scenario?

 

[Emilya Green]

Thank you @Emilya that makes a lot of sense! One final thought I have now is regarding my two youngest plants which were just transplanted into their 1-gallon homes last week. Ideally I’d like to get them into 10-gallon fabric pots similar to the rest of my tribe. My concern is that I believe all transplanting should be done before the flowering period which I expect to begin mid-August. I think that assuming they outgrow the 1-gallon pots by say July 20th, they likely won’t have enough time to outgrow 3-gallon pots before flowering begins. So in that case I’m tempted to go from 1-gallon to 10-gallon as I’ve done with the other plants, or maybe since these youngest plants were started later, they won’t need more than 5-gallon final homes anyway and I could go straight from 1-5 gallon and leave them there through harvest. Would love to hear from you and any other growers here on the proper strategy in this scenario?

With proper watering they shouldnt be in the 1 gallon pots more than about a week to 10 days... say 3 wet/dry cycles, and then they are ready for 3gal. Keep them in the 3gal till a week from start of bloom and then uppot them to the 10. They wont be quite as developed as their bigger sisters, but they have a good start on the roots in the 3 gal and the roots will keep stretching until the end of stretch, about 2 weeks into actual bloom. This will also give them a good start into the 10g containers, and given the time you have available, this will be about the best compromise you can make. Keep in mind that the roots do keep growing all through the grow, just not as fast as they did in veg. Don't be tempted to put them into 5's just to speed up the process.. this will actually make it harder for that intermediate stage to fill that container before moving up.

 

[Primeau]

Thanks @Emilya appreciate the support! In my comment above I’d been suggesting maybe going from the 1g current pot to a 5g final pot but I really would like to get them into 10 gallon final homes to give them the best chance to be as big as they can be so I’ll do as you’ve suggested and up pot to a 3 gallon intermediate pot soon then on to the final 10g early August for the rest of their days.

 

[Emilya Green]

Thanks @Emilya appreciate the support! In my comment above I’d been suggesting maybe going from the 1g current pot to a 5g final pot but I really would like to get them into 10 gallon final homes to give them the best chance to be as big as they can be so I’ll do as you’ve suggested and up pot to a 3 gallon intermediate pot soon then on to the final 10g early August for the rest of their days.

Trust me, doing it this way will allow them to get as big as they can be. Putting them in too large of a container, losing control of the wet/dry cycle, and not challenging the roots to grow laterally, is not the way to do that. Lazy gardeners end up with lazy root systems. The little bit of extra work is well worth it in the end.

 

[Nine Toed Hippie]

Looks like I’m getting more “piggy backing “ from your thread than you are from mine! All ends up in the same place. Thanks for the knowledge @Emilya !

NTH

 

[Fredwak]

Hi Primeau! Welcome! The girls are looking they're getting healthier. All I was thinking at first was "this guy needs to read @Emilya." and I scroll down and....bingo!
So much great info and great folks here. I like growing outdoors as well. Smile and stay stoneder!