1st Time: White Widow XXL Auto from Dinafem - Daily Coivd-19 Journal

Hello everybody, my name is Pezza, and this is my first journal ever. This is the second time I grow cannabis, last time I tried a nuted Big Bud and it went great, even tho I don't consider it my first time since I didn't even know what I was doing. So here we are with the mix and the plan:

37 liters (10 gallons) fabric pots put inside a plastic 40 liters pot, put on a saucer with wheels. The fabric-inside-plastic idea comes from the magic thread of Organic_sinse and I tested it with tomatoes and other vegetables in my yard. Roots will grow outside the fabric, in the little space between fabric and plastic, therefore they will 'breathe' while being covered from direct light. The wheeled saucers are to easily rotate the pots, so every bud will get enough light.

The Soil is 66% a mixture greated from the recipes on the magic thread of InTheGarden, a 33% mixture of 50% BioBizz Light-Mix, 30% perlite, 20% worm casting with tiny little hungry worms, which is always good to have. To this I also added some little stones imbued with good bacteria&microorganisms, because...reasons. I just want to test those on cannabis. I don't care about growing "pure 100% organic marijuana", that's something that I am not really interested into.
Soil cooked under very bad conditions due to Covid-19 killing people and shit, therefore:
1) I forgot to let it breath every week, and for 5 weeks I totally forgot to move the soil.
2) I first overwatered it for 2 weeks and was cooking slowly, then I put some newspaper on the soil to cover it from insects, and hell if it cooked! It lasted 2 months. 40 gallons of soils inside a 80 gallons plastic container.
3) The measurements were all made by eye, and I'm not trying to be as perfect as possible.

Seeds are Dinafem White Widow XXL Automatic, sprouted in 48 hours. 100% germination rate in a rockwool left in water for 4 hours then rinsed, watered again, seed down the hole...that's it. No vitamins or root helper. Left them under 60w neon lights, inside a humidity dome, max 27° Celsius, 50-80% humidity. To be fair...I expected four of the seeds not to sprout at all. One of them looked damaged, the other three had stripes that didn't look natural at all and weird colors...I was 100% wrong!

Now they live inside a 90x90x180 tent, but tomorrow it will became a 120x120x230 tent because of the lights. I used ThisWonderfulLED, which is f-ing pricey at first, but it is simply perfect to use, even too much. I didn't know that too many Watts per square foot could burn the plant, and I thought that 30cm were enough to distance the lights from the buds...totally wrong, here! This time I'll try to avoid any of these problems by using a 230cm tall tent.

What else...? Oh, yes, the setup: the tent is inside my bedroom, therefore I want it to be as silent as possible. But I also love high quality buds. How to solve this? Easy stuff! Just put two small oscillating fans inside the room, one pointing up to the light and one pointing down to the middle or just oscillating 180° horizontaly. in the middle of the tent. Then of course use a silent inline, like THIS. That's mine, and that's actually the only one I ever used, sooo...can't compare it. Sorry. Anyway, it's silent as hell if you use a bigger diameter for your tent. For my 4'x4' I'm gonna use the T6 at 4 speed. Really, that's gonna be it, lol. 40% of the power is enough, it's 170 CFM.

That's it! Hope you read this journal, I'll try my best to update it everyday. Here now, have those pictures of my little ladies! They're hiding under the mulch right now, but don't worry, in a week they're gonna explode!

 

Second day: they loved the transplant somehow and they keep growing. No stunts, no stress. I've noticed a little white stain on a leaf but it's just me being stupid: my LEDs are freaking hot and they can burn a leaf if I leave some water on it! I'll keep some toilet paper nearby next time, lol

The transplant was easy. Take the rockwool cube, add a little bit of water just because, make a hole in the middle and fill it with some light mix of yours (I've used more BioBizz), put the cube above and be sure to put more soil than you think you're gonna use, because you need to press it a little bit. Don't go too strong on it, tho, be careful not to damage the root: it can handle the soil easily, but don't press too hard or scratch it!

I've also poured 1.75 liters of water mixed with a powder full of good bacterias. The bag was 20€, I used it four times during a 5 months grow and there's more than 90% of the bag left, so I bought it to do some tests, and it truly helps the root to grow fast during the first days on photoperiod. I'm not sure they're gonna help on a automatic grow, but at least the bacterias help the soil to give enough N to the plants, or something like that. I'm gonna put some picture later on this journal, or if you guys need it later in time just ask!

There ya go with the pictures, now

 

After a long week, full of personal problems and everything, I can finally sit in front of the computer once again. Before that, a picture of my ladies: they grew a lot, didn't they? I didn't do anything. I didn't turn the pots, I didn't nute them, or added microlife. I just waited and added 1.5 liters per pot the 06/09, that's it. I know it's a lot of water for starting plants, but I'm planning not to water them until the 12, so it's gonna be cool. They're also auto, they're gonna suck all the water up in no time, I guess?


There's a couple of things I'd like to say. First of all, I didn't mention nor used the magic, famous and useful mycorrizhae. Why so? Well...while I was building my soil-at-home, I noticed I lacked some perlite. Went down the shop, bought some, and while I was walking out the clerk told me that I didn't need to use both mycorrizhae and bat guano for the soil. It's either one or the other. Why so? Because lots of P will block the development of the mushrooms, all of them, be them inside or outside the surface. I bought it anyway, made my own research, and boy was I wrong to not trust this guy. I should've saved my money there. So, I didn't use the mycorryzhae. Let's see how it goes. Next time I'll grow I'll make a comparison using the mycorrizhae.

Another thing to mention is that I'm still waiting for my goddamn tent to arrive, but Covid-19 made everything harder and I'm still waiting...is that bad? Well, yes and no. Yes it's bad because later on the days I'll have way less time to change it. But it's not as bad as it sounds. Temperatures are around 23-26°C, sometimes they rise for 4-6 hours because I'm using a heater during the night, it floats to 29° which is fairly hot, but it's still okay.

Oh, meanwhile...those plants are really, really new. Why am I using a strong LED light on it? Usually cannabis, especially during the first part of the veg phase, is quite reactive to the light and it doesn't need more than 30.000 lumen, right? Well...NO. It doesn't work like that, to be fair. Yes, the lights are strong, but this is an automatic strain which need all the light she can. To avoid the stress, tho, you'll need something special for it... There's this thing, a silica gel that you can spray on plants, which will cover them from the heat and too-much-light damage. How does it work? It's very simple: you spray it on the leaves, turn the light off for 1-2 hours with a good air ventilation inside, let it dry, then you can turn the lights on once again. Do this every 10 day, you can also spray the buds on top to protect them (no, it won't change the taste if you do it like once or twice during the whole growth of the bud, and it won't decrease light assumption from the bud!). I had lots of crowned buds the last time I used those LED lights, so I ain't gonna change my mind on this. And if someone is curious, the plant absorb the silica way faster on the leaves than on the soil, so that's why I spray it instead of adding liquid nutes or just letting something with lots of Si decomposing.

So, here we are! Hope you're enjoying this thread so far, I'll provide more pic and more useful info for beginners here. That's the point. Making a whole grow just to show how it's done to the beginners.

 

Day 9: I can see them growing by the hour. They're happy, strong and lively! I need to put the oscillating fans but I'm a lazy ass and don't really care about moving air right now. After the full developed third node I'll start giving a crap about the plant. Before that, I won't touch or stress the plant no matter what. That's why I used rockwool for germination: to avoid transplanting and stressing the sprouted seed! The cube is strong enough to survive the light pressure you give when you put it on the soil, and it contains so much water for the sprout. It's cheap, easy to use, noob-friendly. Very safe choice.



A little note on the first plant, tho...this is just a little analysis I made by eye. If anyone reads this journal, give me your opinion on this leaf!



Zoom on this leaf. You see it's trying to close on itself? That's light. Too much light, in this case. The first pair of leaves is usually loaded with N and it's always dark as the dungeon. This is because the ver first pair of leaves produces the energies for the very first roots and the rest of the plant, they need the strongest leaves available and they fill it on clorophyll to the point it looks a little like a N toxicity is appearing. Don't worry about it, just let the plant go! But beware of light problems like the one I have here: if the leaf curles like that, your light may be:
1) Too strong.
2) Too hot.
3) Too near.

Whatever it is, raise your lights of 2-4 inches (5-10cm) asap, but don't tweak it down if you have dimmable lights. If you're using a tent, consider using a bigger tent: 30w per square foot is ideal with QB LEDs

 

Day 10: they're beautiful. Nothing else to say. Good morning!