Grow Diaries First grow in my DIY Earthbox - Fastbuds Autoflowers

So unfortunately both Jack Herer seeds failed to germinate which is disappointing as its been my favourite home grown bud by a long way so far, I only have 1 bean left for now so I'm not going to pop this as they maybe didn't like going straight into soil. I'll replace these with another 2 from fastbuds, Wedding cheesecake auto and gorilla cookies auto...so I've now got 4 different cultivars in the tent which is something I wanted to avoid for this grow. I actually wanted to pop 4 Jack Herer but only had 3 beans. Anyway I digress....

Both BPP and PP have broken soil and are now on the clock 😀

I had a poke round in the soil and there's no sign of the seeds, I even went to check the pack as thought maybe there's a chance stoner brain kicked in 🤣

So off to a bad start but we'll make it work. 

Stay high folks

Irishgrower420

Day 6 and all seeds have now broken soil, even one of the Jack herer beans I had written off. Unsure what 2 I'll stick with in that earthbox but I'll see how they look in another week or so. The jack herer only has one cotyledon and the other has some yellowing of the cotyledons. 

I have now removed the domes and will keep misting them a few times a day. I'm going away for a few days at the weekend so going to need to rig up my auto watering jerry rig system to keep them alive. 

Once these seedlings are big enough I'll put the mulch covers on but for now they're all still too small. 

Irishgrower420

Great looking earthboxes, do you know roughly how many litres they are? Looking foward to following along and seeing how they perform.

Both the gorilla cookies and jack herer seedlings are looking a bit sorry for themselves. I might get another bean in a wet paper towel just incase. 

In the past I have jerry rigged an auto watering setup to keep the plants alive whilst away for 10 days. It worked well so I've rejuvenated it as I'm going camping this weekend. I know this isn't ideal but it'll do!

I have a small 10w submersible pump in a homebrew bucket of water connected to what you see in the pictures. I have it connected to a smart plug so I can run the pump manually, probably for 15 seconds or so but I'll work that out over the next few days. The socket will fail safe after 1 minute and turn off automatically, killing the pump should i lose control of it for some reason. I have also run the hose line to the top of the tent and back down to make sure I don't syphon out the entire reservoir (this may or may not have happened before 🤣). 

This system will work well once I start bottom watering but for now a splash of water should just about keep them alive. 

Best advice on an automatic watering system is to make sure the runoff catch container is at least as big as your reservoir so if things go sideways your liquid will always be contained. This saved me once when I messed up the timing.

Checking in on the grow whilst away camping with family and friends, wanted to make sure the auto watering was working otherwise I have a friend that could help out. Not a great camera but I can tell the Purple Punch back right is starting to thrive. 

We're staying in a forest park, made a coffee this morning and took the dog a walk in the forest. Ended up going off the trail and found this awesome little smoke spot. Just the crafty this morning although I might have a sneaky joint here later this afternoon.

Day 13 for the Purple Punch & Banana Purple Punch. I wanted to put the rucksack cover on yesterday but the plants were a little too short as my soil has dropped an inch or so and the rucksack cover is pretty tight so the bottom of the plants wouldn't clear the cover...I'll try again tomorrow. For now I've cut up a blue bin bag 🤣 I top dressed both planters with some ecothrive charge and also some neem meal as I have some fungus knats but nothing too bad. I watered about 2L water and knat attack from living soils before covering. I'll now wait until I can feel the planter getting lighter before beginning bottom watering.

Day 9 or so for the wedding cheesecake and its is now starting to get going too. The gorilla cookies and Jack herer both survived and I'm going to give it another few days until I decide which to keep but I think I'll go with the jack herer. It's had a hard life so far after having given up on it and scattering it around the soil by mistake only for it to germinate after being moved. I'm sure it'll be severely stunted but that might not be a bad thing if this grow goes to plan as 4 might be pretty tight in my 3x3. 

Temps and humidity are averaging 28c/83f @72% humidity. I'm pleased to have kicked this grow off a little better than my last few. I'll be happier once I start bottom watering as I'm still unsure if my wicking corner pots are going to work correctly...time will tell!

Stay high folks

Irishgrower420

I have removed the Gorilla Cookies seedling and transplanted into a small pot. I'll leave this in the tent until it gets too crowded. I also started some LST on the 2 on the right to bring them away from the tent walls a bit. I should I have planted them in the middle but I was planting as per the earthbox instructions and forgot about the tent walls!

I added about 10L of water to the reservoir today so let's see if the wicks are working! I'll add water to the planter on the left after I get the cover on which should be in a few days. 

The Purple Punch and Banana Purple Punch are about 3 weeks old today , the Jack Herer and Wedding Cheesecake are about 1 week behind. The Jack herer has had a rough start so I'm not expecting it to get very big. 

The planter on the right has already almost completely drained the reservoir,  there's only a tiny amount in the bottom of the res so I'll let it dry back for a day or 2 then refill. 

I filled the res on the left last night for the first time. I don't think the JH is ready to be bottom watered yet but the WC is and the Jack is badly stunted anyway so I'm better catering to the Wedding cheesecake. I was worried about the wicking corners but they seem to be working very well so I'm delighted they're up and running! I have managed to get the main stem more or less in the middle of the planter now using LST so I'm mostly just leaf tucking, I think I'll need to defoliate soon as they're getting pretty bushy. 

My light is set to 75% and around 3ft from the canopy, hitting about 550PAR on a 20/4 cycle so that should give me a DLI of around 40. 

Average daytime temps 27c/80f @ 70%rh , lights off 20c/68f @68%rh. I'm running a dehumidifier in my drying tent and pulling air through that at lights off to lower the rh so I'll be able to lower it as the grow progresses. 

Looking OK so far, I'll update again in a week 👍

Stay high

Irishgrower420

4 weeks old and the PP & BPP stretched and bushed out a lot this week, both are just starting to pre flower. I had to defoliate as they were getting pretty bushy so I removed the bottom third and then a few fan leaves too. I've performed very little training this time around but the canopy is fairly level currently. 

Both the Jack herer and Wedding cheesecake are also showing signs of pre flower even though they're a week behind. The wedding cheesecake won't be too bad but the jack herer won't produce much. Any Jack herer is better than none, right? 😀

The humidity outside has been over 90% for the last week so it was getting on top of me a bit during lights off but I hadn't realised the 3x3 was also pulling air from the outbuilding and not just through the lung room 4x2. Once I closed up the other vents this became much easier to manage and should help drive that humidity down now we're entering flower. 

Average temps over the last week :

26c/80f @ 70% lights on

21c/70f @ 70% lights off 

Now I have fixed the rh issue, 10 minutes ago...I'll get to within the correct vpd range moving forward. 

I'll be applying a bloom top dress with some other things next week I think, so far they look healthy with no sign of deficiency.  Although the wedding cheesecake has a small sign that somethings been nibbling a few leaves so I'll add neem in the topdress along with some diatomaceous earth and knat attack. 

The bottom watering is going better than I had hoped although there was some signs of bacterial/fungal growth on my diy floats (just the stick not the cork)so I hope that doesn't come back to bite me some time over the next few weeks. 

Until then,

Stay high!

Irishgrower420

I left the camera in the tent from when I was monitoring the auto watering when I was camping a few weeks ago. I'm away again this weekend and I can see I'm in need of some canopy maintenance only I'm 100 miles away. I'll need to remove the camera as I'd far rather not be able to log in and look 😀

The PP and BPP are just over 5 weeks old, they have stopped stretching finally...had to move my light a few times. It's taking about 3-4 days to drink the 10L res. It's dry this morning so I'll leave it 24 hours before topping it back up. I top dressed the bigger plants 2 days ago with "Bloom" from living soils. I added at half strength as its the photoperiod version but as I'm top dressing it shouldn't matter too much anyway. I got a few large handfuls of worm hummus and organic compost added the bloom dry ammendments, neem meal, malted barley,dynomyco & ecothrive charge. I top dressed the entire planter and covered it back over without top watering. Yesterday there was no real sign of much happening as the water hadn't wicked completely up yet. This morning on the other hand this is what I see under there, the mycelium seems like it's about a ½" thick over the entire surface! Man..nature is pretty cool

I've struggled a bit with humidity again this week, I really need the dehumidifier in the tent as opposed to the air being pumped in but I don't have any room for it so I'll make it work. I have plenty of air movement. I supercropped the main stem and it was so thick and maleable that it split. Looks like it's it's still growing well. 

The wedding cheesecake looks like it's staying pretty small too but doing much better than the Jack herer. These seeds had a rough start but they'll produce some decent bud I'm sure. The JH is a bit of a sacrificial lamb, the lights been moved so high it's only getting 500PAR and it's being blocked by other plants. It's also taken a bit of damage from the heater, I made a shield but it got blown off whilst i was away. I'll top dress this planter today or tomorrow. 

Current environment 24c/75f @ 57%rh lights on and 20c/68f @ 60%. 

Irishgrower420

It was getting more difficult to keep humidity under control so I've moved the Jack herer and Wedding Cheesecake into the 4x2 under 2x100w quantum boards, mars hydro ts600 and a phlizon 100w. ( no ideal but not terrible...that phlizon 100w gave me 150g of blue dream on my first ever grow 😀). I was previously using this tent as a lung room so the dehumidifier is now in the 3x3 alongside the Purple Punch and Banana PP. I'm drawing air back in to the 4x2 from the 3x3 and currently it's working OK but I'm expecting issues in the 4x2 and night try a cheap mini dehumidifier in there too. 

I've now noticed a deficiency starting to show on the PP and BPP, mostly isolated to leaves on the main stem which i snapped and put a splint on last week. It's alive and well but the deficiency seems to be showing here first. I can see a few spots elsewhere now too but nothing too bad. Here is the main site showing the issue

And a few spots elsewhere

It looks like a calcium deficiency to my untrained eye. What do you guys think? My initial soil mix had 250g of dolomite lime added which from memory is only half of the recommended amount from earthbox, could this be the issue? 

Something that's only just come to mind, I've been topping up the res after about a 24 hour dryback but on my last top up and subsequently again this morning I used a new inline garden hose filter. Could I have been so close to the bone on Ca that this filter is stripping it from the water, causing the issue? The Jack Herer and WC just got their first top up using filtered water this morning. 

Any ideas and help on this would be much appreciated ✌️

Irishgrower420

3x3 

4x2