Today learn the universal principles that let you grow better weed than you can buy. 

I love these strains for home growers: Blue Dream (pictured here), Candy Games #38, and Purple Ghost Candy.

1.) Start with Extraordinary Genetics

What to Do: Start with the best seeds you can find. Good seeds germinate consistently and produce the kind of weed you want (density, smell, size, effects, strength, color, smoothless, etc.).

Why: Good seeds grow good weed with your desired effects, even if you make mistakes. Plants works with you instead of against you.

Quick Win: Use one of the following 3 methods to find great genetics for your next cannabis grow.

1. Choose a proven breeder and read the strain description to find what suits you. A good breeder always maintains quality for all their seeds. Some breeders I like lately are Happy Valley Genetics, Seedsman, Seed Supreme, and Ethos (all represented in my current grow journal). 
2. Copy what works – Get the genetics that you see people growing great weed with. For example, if you have friends that grow weed, or interact with growers on social media, take their lead if you like what you see. Find out what they’re growing and get seeds from the same source to copy their results.
3. Enjoy the gamble – The old fashioned method. Grow the seeds you have, or choose a strain that sounds good and go for the adventure! Good seed banks curate their seed selection and have seed germination guarantees, so any of their seeds should produce good weed.

The seeds you pick make a huge difference to results. For example, the following plants were grown together with the same grow medium, nutrients, and care. But look how different they’re turning out! The difference is 100% genetics, not anything I did.

Blue Dream and Candy Games #38 have wildly different genetics! Choose a strain that makes weed you want to grow.

2.) Use a Strong LED Grow Light (Cannabis-Specific)

What to Do: Get a proven cannabis grow light that’s designed for the size of your grow space.

Why: Light = food for plants. More light is better, up to a point. Spectrum (light color) matters too, affecting not only yields, but also density, color, and potency. Older grow lights, most especially “blurple” LEDs, don’t get nearly as good cannabis yields or bud density as newer “quantum board” style LEDs with pinkish or white light.

Modern cannabis LEDs usually produce white or pinkish light.

Quick Win:

1. Choose an LED grow light that’s proven to get great results with weed. The best thing you can do is use a grow light that growers are already using to produce great cannabis harvests. 
2. Good LED companies include… We’ve consistently found these are the most popular grow lights for GrowWeedEasy.com readers: Spider Farmer, Mars Hydro, and HLG. I’ve used multiple models from each of these companies and always had great results with growing weed. Which one to get? Choose the grow light that best fits your grow space and budget requirements. Spider Farmer and Mars Hydro get about equal results. HLG lights tend to be overpowered and cost a lot, and often have to be turned down even in a dialed in setup, but gets some of the best bud density of any LED we’ve tried so far. Even their tiny 65W and 100W LED lights have produced multiple ounces for us.
3. Check out our list of 9 recommended cannabis lights with yield estimates, and see pictures of real cannabis plants we’ve grown with them.

A HLG 65W LED is surprisingly productive in a 2x2x3 grow tent. Not bad for an LED that uses less electricity than my bedroom fan.

Or upgrade to a bigger grow light, like a HLG 350 Diablo (or two).

Or go BIG, like Max did here, with multiple lights including a Spider Farmer G5000.

Often it’s easier to combine multiple smaller grow lights than have one enormous grow light. That way you can adjust them independently and have more control over where light falls.

3.) The Right Nutrients at the Right Time

Whether you grow in soil, coco, or hydro, provide proper nutrients. Either use cannabis-specific nutrients and dole out to plants on a schedule. Or start with a cannabis-specific soil that slowly delivers the right nutrients at the right time (called “just-add-water” super soil). 

What to Do: Make sure plants get the right amount of nutrients at the right time.

Why: Faster greener growth, but more importantly, proper nutrition in the flowering stage greatly increases bud quality, yields, and potency. On the other hand, a plant that is starved of nutrients while buds are forming makes small, airy, non-potent buds. Most crucially, make sure plants have plenty of nutrients for the first 6+ weeks of the flowering stage, until hairs start darkening and curling in. Plants still need nutrients after that, but for the best harvest, it’s especially important to avoid significant nutrient deficiencies during the early flowering stage and initial bud formation.

Quick Win: Use cannabis nutrients and follow an already-tested schedule

1. Easy cheap option – Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom. Give at 1 tsp/gallon. Give “Grow” for seedlings until first 3 weeks into flowering stage. Then once the flowering stretch is over, give “Bloom” until harvest. These nutrients were initially designed for orchids, but growers have discovered they give surprisingly great results with weed. I was impressed when I tried them in coco.
2. Advanced nutrient system – General Hydroponics Flora trio. My personal favorite nutrients, I find the GH trio provides some of the fastest growth and biggest yields. No need to follow a special schedule. Just follow the amounts listed on the side of the bottle at half-strength, and only raise the amounts if plant seem pale. I’ve had good results in soil, coco, and hydro.
3. Use super soil instead – Use a “just add water” organic soil that’s made for a plant like cannabis. This kind of soil slowly releases nutrients over the course of the grow, so you don’t need to add any extra nutrients. Nature’s Living Soil is a proven super soil concentrate that makes super soil when used with Coco Loco soil. Just remember, super soil can be stinky at first! But the smell settles after the plants make themselves at home in the soil.

General Hydroponics Flora trio are my personal favorite nutrients for growing weed.

Follow the directions on the bottle at half-strength to grow green, happy, and abundant cannabis plants.

4.) Water Plants So They Grow Faster

Water plants regularly with the right amount at a time. It’s important roots don’t dry out, or stay overly wet for too long. Luckily, if you’re following all the other steps here, you can make some watering mistakes and plants still turn out great. Cannabis plants are remarkably able to recover from watering issues as long as you course-correct.

What to Do: Water plants properly. The easiest method is to follow a cannabis-specific watering schedule like the one below. Or follow proven general principles.

Why: Plants grow faster and get fewer deficiencies, especially seedlings, when given the right amount of water. Good watering practices helps plants start growing fast out the gate. 

Seedlings grow super fast if you give the right amount of water!

I use a battery operated water transfer pump to easily water plants.

Quick Win: Basically, give seedlings just a little water at a time, at first, in a small circle around the base, every few days. If you don’t want guesswork, follow the following seedling watering schedule that I use. It’s suitable as long as you’re in a 3 or 5-gallon pot (and works pretty well in most sizes). Never wonder again if you’re over or under-watering your seedlings!

Day 1 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per plant (at this point, your cannabis seedlings should have their leaves completely open and be in a 3-gallon or 5-gallon pot under the grow light)
Day 3 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per plant
Day 6 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per plant
Day 8 – Give 3 cups (750ml) water per plant (every 3 days after this)
Day 11 – Give 3 cups (750ml) water per plant
Day 14 – Give 4 cups (1 liter) water per plant
Day 17 – Give 4 cups (1 liter) water per plant
Day 20 – Give 5 cups (1.25 liter) water per plant
Day 23 – Give 6 cups (1.5 liter) water per plant
Day 26 – Give 6 cups (1.5 liter) water per plant
Day 29 – Give 8 cups or 1/2 gallon (2 liter) water per plant

At first, cannabis seedlings only need a little water in a circle around their base.

After the first 30 days, start watering like this…

(1+ Months) Cannabis Watering Schedule

1. Wait until top inch of soil is dry (for coco, wait until top is mostly dry)
2. Water until you get 10-20% runoff out the bottom
3. Remove runoff (test the pH if needed) and start over

P.S. Learn about auto-watering pot bases so you can water plants less often. I’m loving them lately.

5.) Harvest at the Right Time

Wait to harvest until buds have reached peak potency, size, and bud quality. Harvest earlier (speedier more “up” weed) or later (stronger relaxation effect) to achieve your desired effects. Dry and cure using a proven home method.

What to Do: Harvest buds based on their maturity level. After harvest, dry buds to make them smokable (buds are mostly water on the plant), and then jar them so they “cure”.

Why: Choosing the right harvest time maximizes yields, potency, and effects. Drying and especially curing increases density, appearance, potency, and effects, while enhancing the natural bud smell.

Quick Win: 

1. Follow our free harvest & curing guide on GrowWeedEasy.com
2. Check out our new digital book HARVEST. It’s perfect if you want a step-by-step harvest guide that’s available anywhere without the internet Growers who sign up for our Home Grow Masterclass next week get a free copy of HARVEST. And those who have already purchased HARVEST get a steep discount on the class! Make sure you’re signed up for our newsletter and watch your email for more info coming soon.

Wait until buds have reached maturing before harvesting for best effects…

Harvest time may be my favorite part of growing!

The post Grow Better Weed: The 5 Core Principles appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Where is the best place to get cannabis seeds? We recommend these cannabis seed source as of late January 2026…

• ILGM (I Love Growing Marijuana) – California, United States
• MSNL (Marijuana Seeds Netherlands) – Amsterdam seed bank now ships from US, Canada & UK
• North Atlantic Seed Co. – Maine, United States
• Seed Supreme – Florida, United States
• Seedsman – Ships from US & Europe
• Other – Did we miss anyone you like? Let us know.

Check out my recent grow journal featuring seeds from Seedsman, NASC & Seed Supreme.

Seeds of different strains grow different buds.

Are you looking for yields (like Blue Dream) or beauty (like Candy Games #38)?

Maybe density & potency are most important. Then go with a strain like Purple Ghost Candy.

Note: Purple Ghost Candy is an oversized stretchy plant that always makes potent, dense buds, but not always purple. See the full strain review.

Or perhaps the key to your heart is a pungent, memorable smell (like Mandarin Cookies V2).

Check out the new cannabis strain library for reviews of strains GrowWeedEasy.com recommends for home growers.

Note: Here’s how to store your seeds so they last for years.

Where to get cannabis seeds? Here’s our note to marijuana growers looking for good seeds going into a turbulent 2026…

Updates on the 2026 Farm Bill

“How will the new Farm bill for 2026 affect home growers? Is there a specific deadline for growers? I have seen many opinions, but have yet to find a straightforward answer to this question.” ~ Bob

Laws and regulations seem to be evolving every day. The reason no one can give you a straight answer is because no one knows for sure what will happen.

If you want my personal opinion, I suspect it will have a small effect in the short term, and a long term dampening effect.

Seed companies may try to work with lawmakers to find ways to ship seeds in compliance with the law. But unless the law is changed, fewer small breeders will participate. Some people are concerned that only the biggest companies with deep pockets for a legal team might be able to easily sell seeds and take payments.

That’s why home growers need to value cannabis genetics.

In other words, don’t panic. However, do take on a general preparedness mindset.

Happy growing,
Nebula Haze

GrowWeedEasy.com

Hey growers,

Looking for good cannabis genetics? We got you! We have run our recommended cannabis seed source page on GrowWeedEasy.com since we started the website in 2010.

GrowWeedEasy.com’s trusted seed sources list has helped home growers find seeds since 2010.

If you don’t have cannabis seeds in hand, it can feel like it’s going to be hard to get them. Luckily, these days, you can get viable seeds of good strains sent to you almost anywhere. Today, we want to hear about your experiences ordering seeds online.

Marijuana seeds are so tiny…

But within each seed is a tiny living thing, longing to be released…

Did you know? A cannabis seedling embryo is already fully-formed inside each seed, just waiting to germinate and grow weed for you!

Germination lets the seedling inside escape its shell prison!

Never touch newly germinated seedlings like this, I only did it for the picture!

Leaves are yellow inside the shell, and turn green once the leaves start getting exposed to light.

Less than a day after being planted into a Rapid Rooter, the seedling is green and already growing new leaves!

Learn how to germinate seeds here.

Back in 2010 when we started GWE, we’d only had good experiences with a single seedbank so far (the others had been mediocre-to-bad). So back then, the seed source list had only one option…

Bonus: Check out the October 2010 version of the seeds page on the Wayback Machine! You can even click around to see the original version of the site 🙂

Our seeds page is not meant to be a comprehensive list of seed sources. Sirius and I are just a two-person team and can’t try every seed company. There are many, many outstanding cannabis seed sources not listed on our seeds page.

But what the page is, is the list of the seed banks we actually use ourselves to grow weed at home and document on the website.

Check out our recent autoflowering grow journal! The OG Kush Auto produced smooth, potent buds.

When we stop using a seed company ourselves, for whatever reason, we take it off the seed source page. Usually, they haven’t done anything wrong, just simply no longer carry strains we’re looking to grow with.

We believe it’s crucial to ensure every seed bank on the list is legit, and only stay if we continue to use it for our home grows.

Our seed bank testing is led by you: If we hear about a really great new company that everyone loves, we will test it out ourselves. Our goal isn’t just to grow great weed (though we do a lot of that too!), but also help home growers find exactly what they’re looking for.

GrowWeedEasy.com testing process for seed banks

• Community feedback – If we keep hearing good things about a particular seed source, we know it’s time to give it a try.
• Order seeds anonymously – We never tell them it’s us. I always order the seeds myself as if I were a regular customer. I feel like that’s way more likely to give the “authentic” experience.
• Grow the seeds – Next, we actually grow the seeds from germination to harvest in a home grow environment.
• Document the results – We take pictures and notes about each plant, including where we got the seeds, and share that information on GrowWeedEasy.com and through our newsletter.
• Lab testing – When funding is available, we get the buds lab-tested, especially for side-by-side grow experiments with clones (like testing super soil vs coco or plant training methods like defoliation vs natural)

We also love, love, LOVE when you send us grow pictures, or tell about your experience with seed banks and their strains/seeds.

Our current cannabis seed source recommendations, as of January 2026.

• ILGM (I Love Growing Marijuana) – California, United States
• MSNL (Marijuana Seeds Netherlands) – Amsterdam seed bank with shipping centers in the US, Canada, and UK.
• North Atlantic Seed Co. – Maine, United States
• Seed Supreme – Florida, United States
• Seedsman – Ships from US & Europe
• Other – Did we miss anyone you like?

We encourage you to write us any time with specific cannabis seed bank feedback, including anecdotes, or just your overall thoughts or experiences buying cannabis seeds online where you live.

We’ll be considering everyone’s feedback as we go through 2026. And make sure to sign up to our newsletter to ensure you get insider information and updates about seed sources that we can’t post on the website. You can email GrowWeedEasy.com directly by responding to our weekly newsletter.

Harvest great smelling, dense, potent buds with proven home harvest techniques. By Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside, authors of GrowWeedEasy.com.

Get total guidance next harvest.

Find the Best Marijuana Seeds for You

Every cannabis strain listed here is personally recommended by GrowWeedEasy.com for home growers. Check out our notes and the pictures to see why we chose each strain. Our goal is to make it easier for you to find the perfect cannabis seeds for you. More strains added every week!

The post The Seed Banks WE Use to Grow Weed (2026 Update) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Jump to the weigh-in! (Final Yields!) 

Five photoperiod strains in soil, the hope of sweet dreams to come, and an overarching goal: Grow 1 pound of top-shelf weed!

“Sweet Dreams” Genetics: Blue Dream, Purple Ghost Candy, Candy Games #38, Mandarin Cookies, GG4 x Zkittlez

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7 – Initiate flowering stage (started 12/12 so buds start growing)

Week 8 timelapse (flowering day 5 to 11)

Week 9, we’ve got buds! (flowering day 18)

Week 10 (flowering day 24) – So stretchy! Smells amazing in there now.

Week 11 (flowering day 31) – Purple starting to come out in some plants.

Week 12 (flowering day 39) – Some of the bigger buds now held up with plant yo-yos!

Week 13 (flowering day 44) – In natural light!

Week 14 (flowering day 51) – Need gloves to touch buds now (otherwise sticky fingers that reek of delicious weed smell).

Week 15 (flowering day 59) – Sweet dreams have come

Week 16 (flowering day 67) – First plant looking ready to harvest! (Candy Games #38)

Flowering day 73 – Harvest Day!

Weigh-in – Well over a pound of top-shelf weed!

Jump to the latest grow journal update! (Weigh-in!)

Table of Contents

About This Grow Diary

Germination – Seeds sprouted!

Week 1 – First leaves

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 4
• Day 7

Week 2 – Seedling life

• Day 8
• Day 9
• Day 10
• Day 11
• Day 12
• Day 13
• Day 14

Week 3 – Early vegetative stage

• Day 15
• Day 16
• Day 17
• Day 18 – Assemble AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases
• Day 19
• Day 20 – Transplant to 5-gallon fabric pots
• Day 21

Week 4 – Vegetative stage & topping

• Day 22
• Day 23
• Day 24
• Day 25
• Day 26
• Day 27 – Plants get topped!
• Day 28

Week 5 – Filling up the tent!

• Day 29
• Day 30
• Day 31
• Day 32
• Day 33
• Day 34
• Day 35

Week 6 – Trained to grow wide and flat, about to start flowering

• Day 36
• Day 37
• Day 38
• Day 39
• Day 40
• Day 41
• Day 42

Week 7 – Initiated flowering stage with 12/12 light schedule!

• Day 43
• Day 44
• Day 45 – started 12/12 (to initiate flowering stage)
• Day 46 (Flowering Day 1)
• Day 47 (Flowering Day 2)
• Day 48 (Flowering Day 3)
• Day 49 (Flowering Day 4)

Week 8 – First stigmas (hairs) and transition to flowering

• Day 50 (Flowering Day 5)
• Day 51 (Flowering Day 6)
• Day 52 (Flowering Day 7)
• Day 53 (Flowering Day 8) – Noticed first white hairs (buds starting to form)
• Day 54 (Flowering Day 9)
• Day 55 (Flowering Day 10)
• Day 56 (Flowering Day 11)

Week 9 – Auto-watering pot bases to the rescue!

• Day 57 (Flowering Day 12)
• Day 58 (Flowering Day 13)
• Day 59 (Flowering Day 14)
• Day 60 (Flowering Day 15)
• Day 61 (Flowering Day 16)
• Day 62 (Flowering Day 17)
• Day 63 (Flowering Day 18)

Week 10 – Bud city!

• Day 64 (Flowering Day 19)
• Day 65 (Flowering Day 20)
• Day 66 (Flowering Day 21)
• Day 67 (Flowering Day 22)
• Day 68 (Flowering Day 23)
• Day 69 (Flowering Day 24)
• Day 70 (Flowering Day 25)

Week 11

• Day 71 (Flowering Day 26)
• Day 72 (Flowering Day 27)
• Day 73 (Flowering Day 28)
• Day 74 (Flowering Day 29)
• Day 75 (Flowering Day 30)
• Day 76 (Flowering Day 31)
• Day 77 (Flowering Day 32)

Week 12

• Day 78 (Flowering Day 33)
• Day 79 (Flowering Day 34)
• Day 80 (Flowering Day 35)
• Day 81 (Flowering Day 36)
• Day 82 (Flowering Day 37)
• Day 83 (Flowering Day 38)
• Day 84 (Flowering Day 39)

Week 13

• Day 85 (Flowering Day 40)
• Day 86 (Flowering Day 41)
• Day 87 (Flowering Day 42)
• Day 88 (Flowering Day 43)
• Day 89 (Flowering Day 44)
• Day 90 (Flowering Day 45)
• Day 91 (Flowering Day 46)

Week 14

• Day 92 (Flowering Day 47)
• Day 93 (Flowering Day 48)
• Day 94 (Flowering Day 49)
• Day 95 (Flowering Day 50)
• Day 96 (Flowering Day 51)
• Day 97 (Flowering Day 52)
• Day 98 (Flowering Day 53)

Week 15

• Day 99 (Flowering Day 54)
• Day 100 (Flowering Day 55)
• Day 101 (Flowering Day 56)
• Day 102 (Flowering Day 57)
• Day 103 (Flowering Day 58)
• Day 104 (Flowering Day 59)
• Day 105 (Flowering Day 60)

Week 16

• Day 106 (Flowering Day 61)
• Day 107 (Flowering Day 62)
• Day 108 (Flowering Day 63)
• Day 109 (Flowering Day 64)
• Day 110 (Flowering Day 65)
• Day 111 (Flowering Day 66)
• Day 112 (Flowering Day 67)

Harvest Week!

• Day 113 (Flowering Day 68)
• Day 114 (Flowering Day 69)
• Day 115 (Flowering Day 70)
• Day 116 (Flowering Day 71)
• Day 117 (Flowering Day 72)
• Day 118 (Flowering Day 73) – Harvest!

Introduction 

As we wrap up our autoflowering grow journal, it’s time to look ahead. This time we’re going to grow with photoperiod strains, go bigger with a 4’x4′ grow tent, and turn up the PPFD with a HLG 350W Diablo LED grow light. We’re going to be trying out AC Infinity Auto-watering pot bases, using Coco Loco soil and FoxFarm nutrients.

Want to join us? Sign up for our newsletter to follow along live, week by week, as we turn a handful of cannabis seeds into a bountiful harvest. Over the coming weeks, you’ll see every part of the grow journey.

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About the “Sweet Dreams” Photoperiod Grow Diary

Grow Space: 4’x4′ grow tent

LED Grow Light: 1 x HLG 350W Diablo LED

Soil with Auto-Watering Pots

• 5-gallon Fabric Pots
• FoxFarm Bushdoctor Coco Loco soil
• AC Infinity Auto-watering pot bases

Nutrients: FoxFarm Nutrient Trio (Big Bloom, Grow Big, Tiger Bloom)

• Using this nutrient schedule (I make notes in the journal for any deviations)

Strains (“Sweet Dreams” themed!)

• Candy Games #38
• Purple Ghost Candy
• Mandarin Cookies V2
• Blue Dream
• GG4 x Zkittlez

Quick Summary: 4’x4′ grow tent with HLG Diablo 350 LED, 5-gallon fabric pots full of Bush Doctor Coco Loco soil, FoxFarm nutrients.

We are trying AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases for the first time (aka “auto-pots”)

FoxFarm Nutrient Trio for soil following this schedule in Coco Loco soil

Nebula Haze’s Sweet Dreams Photoperiod Grow Journal

Here is the first entry, which we sent to the GrowWeedEasy.com growing community via our Sunday email newsletter.

August 3, 2025 – New Photoperiod Grow Journal: T-minus 1 week!

I am about sprout seeds for our next grow (photoperiod strains this time), and then we’re off to the races on a new grow journal!

Yield Goal: 1 lb (16 oz) of top-shelf weed!

We’d love for you to join us with your own photoperiod grow! Think of it as a grow challenge we can all go through together. If you’re a little ahead (already sprouted) or behind (can’t germinate yet this week), that’s okay! We can still be together in spirit 🙂

HIT REPLY if you’re joining us, and let us know your setup and strains. We’d love to hear what you’re up to, and we may feature you in a future newsletter!

~Nebula Haze
GrowWeedEasy.com

Germination Time – Seeds have sprouted!

I chose to use the Paper Towel method to germinate my cannabis seeds this time. When combined with a little heat, I’ve had the best germination rates and fastest germination with this method. And it makes it easier to track the progress of each seed. However, other simpler methods like planting the seeds directly in soil work too!

First I pick the seeds I want to grow, and cut a paper towel to the size of the plate.

Note: Use the CHEAPEST paper towels you can find. The nice “cloth-like” ones are no good because roots can grow into them. But super cheap paper towels work perfect.

I decided to germinate 3 seeds per strain, just to ensure I get to grow all 5 of the strains, and pick one extra for a total of 6 plants.

All the “extra” seedlings are going to get grown in the mini tent! We’ll do a little “Sea of Green” grow with the 100W Spider Farmer LED. It will be fun to see how the buds from the mini tent compare to the buds in this more powerful HLG Diablo LED grow tent.

Purple Ghost Candy seeds – I am super excited about this strain. In past grows, it has produced some of the favorite weed we’ve ever grown.

Candy Games #38 – I like how safe the seeds seem like inside the box. I have heard so much good stuff about this strain and I can’t wait to see what all the fuss is about for myself!

Mandarin Cookies V2 – These are actually old seeds, from all the way back in 2020. There are only a few seeds left out of a pack of 10. Every single plant I’ve grown from this pack has been a bit different from each other, but every single one has produced fire weed.

The breeder recently released an R3 version of this strain which claims to take the best traits of Mandarin Cookies and make a super stabilized version aimed at home growers who seek consistency. I decided it was time to grow the last of the original cross, and then next time I can compare these three plants to the new R3 version.

Blue Dream and GG4 x Zkittlez (both by Seed Supreme) – The Blue Dream strain is legendary, no explanation needed for why I picked it for a Sweet Dreams grow! “GG4 x Zkittlez” just sounded like a fun sweet strain to round off the grow. Every GG4 (Gorilla Glue #4) and every Zkittlez I’ve grown have turned out well. So why not see how they play together as a mix?

Make sure to add labels before closing up your seeds. I used a marker. Otherwise, it’s easy to forget which seed is which!

I add just one single paper towel on top, so that it’s easy to see whether the seeds underneath have sprouted yet. Then I add just enough water that everything is thoroughly wet, but there isn’t liquid water sloshing around.

Close her up! Just add another plate on top to lock in the moisture and make sure seeds get darkness while germinating. Make sure the paper towels are all fully enclosed inside the plates.

Tutorial: Wet paper towel cannabis seed germination method

I find germination happens faster, and I get higher overall germination rates, if I add a little heat. However, a regular seedling heating mat can get too hot. So I put a little something between the plate and the seedling heating mat. In this case, the tray of Rapid Rooters I’m going to use for the seedlings.

This makes it so that the plate is getting some warmth, but the seeds never sit on hot spots.

Learn more about heating mats for seed germination.

I left the seeds on the kitchen counter for 3 days…

When I checked on them, it appeared that every seed had cracked! I could see under the single wet sheet of paper towel.

Click for closeup! You can see the seeds have sprouted underneath.

I ALMOST had the perfect unveiling video, but one Candy Games #38 seeds ruined it right at the end haha

Several of them have totally escaped their seed shells, and are just naked seedlings on the paper towel.

Which cannabis seeds sprouted best?

• 1st Place: Blue Dream and Candy Games #38 – All seeds sprouted, big long roots, already escaped their shells by the time I unveiled them from under the paper towel. In my experience, these types of seeds, where the entire seedling comes all the way out of the shell in the paper towel, often grow the most vigorously.
• 2nd Place: Mandarin Cookies and Purple Ghost Candy – Not as uniformly vigorous as the others. Purple Ghost Candy had one seed with a strangely thin root. And although all 3 Mandarin Cookies seeds sprouted, they had overall smaller roots than the other seeds. But hey, they’re 5 years old, which is ancient in seed years. I won’t hold it against them for taking it a little slower 🙂
• 3rd Place: GG4 x Zkittlez – Although all 3 seeds sprouted, one just cracked open and the root hasn’t come out yet. Not a good sign when every single other seed has an actual root. Maybe it will pull through, but in my experience seeds like that rarely thrive. I will put it in a Rapid Rooter and hope for the best. But luckily, the other two seedlings look great!

Rapid Rooters are seedling-friendly “plugs”.

I cut the Rapid Rooters so that it’s easy to add sprouted seeds.

And here’s what it’s like to put a seed inside!

When they’re cut open, the seedlings fit perfectly inside even if they’ve got a curly tail, like the one in the above example.

Here they are after being put into Rapid Rooters. I positioned the ones with leaves right at the top so they could immediately start getting light. The ones still inside the shells got placed just below the surface, so they hopefully push the shell off as they emerge.

Hopefully everyone pokes their head out soon 🤞 Here’s to hoping that I wake up tomorrow to a ton of happy little green leaves!

Stay tuned for the next update!

Happy growing!
Nebula Haze
GrowWeedEasy.com

Week 1 – Seedlings put into cups!

Here is everything that happened in our cannabis seedlings’ first week of life.

Day 1 – Seedlings emerge…

The next morning, I’m greeted by many seedlings saying hi!

Day 1 seedlings

Not every seed has made it above the Rapid Rooters, but 13 of the 15 sprouted have little leaves opened up.

Two seedlings haven’t appeared yet.

Day 2 – Seedlings are loving life!

By day 2, all the seedlings have appeared but one. Looking at that empty Rapid Rooter, I don’t any signs of life.

I decided to open it up and can see the root never emerged further than it did in the paper towels.  After two days of no growth, it’s safe to say it didn’t make it. So I tossed that one.

All seedlings have their heads above ground now!

The Story of the Doomed One-Leaf Seedling 

While I’m here, I want to share this story of what happened with one of the seedlings. I doomed this seedling by accident. It wasn’t because I didn’t care. In fact, this was a Purple Ghost Candy seed, the strain I wanted to grow the MOST. That made it feel extra tragic.

So here are the seedlings right after they germinated. And here is as close a picture of the Purple Ghost Candy sprouted seed I got at the time.

This pic is from germination day. Just before I committed the horrible crime against the Purple Ghost Candy seedling.

Sorry for the picture quality, I didn’t know I was filming its last moments.

I noticed the shell was stuck to one of the little round leaves, which is normally fine. It’s okay if one leaf has a little shell stuck to it. It will fall off on its own.

But then it happened…

One leaf was ripped off! I was trying to take pictures with one hand and put seedlings into Rapid Rooters with the other hand. I wasn’t being careful at all. And when I moved it, I was not gentle, and accidently ripped off the leaf attached to the shell!

I knew something was wrong when it happened, but I was hoping, just hoping, that the middle growing tips had survived, and it was just the little round leaf that got pulled off.

But by the time it made it’s head above soil, I could tell it was almost certainly doomed.

The leaf that got ripped off was stuck to the shell!

By 4 days later, the writing was on the wall. Nothing was growing from this seedling.

I actually still have that one-leaf Purple Ghost Candy seedling. You will see it in future pictures. I’m going to let it live. How cool would it be if it miraculously started growing?

Analysis: This one-leaf seedling was my fault. I ripped off the leaf. The Purple Ghost Candy seedling was perfectly fine when it germinated. If I had been more careful when transferring the seedling to a Rapid Rooter, this wouldn’t have happened.

That being said, a shell shouldn’t get stuck on a leaf like that. But cannabis plants are living things and they don’t always grow perfectly.

Luckily, I only need one Purple Ghost Candy seedling and I still have two to choose from even without this one.

Day 4 – Time to put in cups!

I could put them in their final pots. But I haven’t decided which 5 lucky seedlings to keep yet. So I’m going to put them all in cups so they get a few more days and I can try to pick the 5 best, most matching seedlings.

In retrospect, I probably should have given them another day or two in the Rapid Rooters, so their roots had fully colonized the plugs before moving them. But luckily, it ends up being just fine 🙂 Cannabis plants really do grow like a weed!

Transplant time! They’ll get very light nutrients today (seedling strength).

I cut drainage holes in the bottom of the cups for the marijuana seedlings.

Filled the cups with soil and made labels.

I poked Rapid Rooter sized holes in the soil, and just plopped the seedlings in. Gave about 40 ml of clean water, and left them alone.

I used tweezers to easily grab the plugs to move them.

Plopped in the Rapid Rooter

Slowly gave 40 mL of water (it would have been easier if I’d used a syringe, which I have tons of, but I didn’t think of that until after haha)

Story of The Mutant Seedling

That was the first GG4 x Zkittlez seedling. But while we’re here, I wanted to share the other GG4 x Zkittlez seedling, which is a MUTANT!

Here’s a baby picture of our little “clover” 🍀 mutant, not long after it sprouted.

I thought to myself, “That looks a bit odd.” But I thought it was a “tri-fold” seedling, which is when a seedling grows 3 leaves per node. That’s pretty common. But that’s not what this was.

Here it is on day 4. Same strain as the normal seedling below, but now it’s clear that this seedling has an odd mutation 🍀

Let me show you the difference.

Here is a normal cannabis seedling

Normal seedling

• Two leaves per “node” – If you look closely at the normal seedling. You can see that each new “layer” (also known as a “node”) is a set of two leaves. A pair of leaves per node.
• Normal sequence for seedlings
  • 2 round leaves – The first two round leaves are called “cotyledons” and were already fully formed inside the shells.
  • 2 serrated leaves – The second set of leaves (with serrated edges) was grown completely by the plant.
  • Another 2 serrated leaves – Next you see another set of two leaves growing in.
  • And so on for many sets of nodes…

On a normal seedling, this “pair of leaves per node” continues on for at least the first 6-7 sets of leaves, and often for several weeks longer. Older plants, don’t grow this way (which is why “clones” don’t grow like normal seedlings, but that’s neither here nor there).

Typically when you see unusual growth patterns on growing seedlings, it’s a sign there was a mutation. Often called “mutant” seedlings.

Our adorable little mutant “clover” is growing to the beat of its own drum.

I’m not sure exactly what it’s doing yet. It appears mostly healthy and green, but all leaves are growing directly from the middle, like an actual clover. Let me know if you want to see more pics of it as it grows!

What happens next with a mutant seedling?

In my experience, with mutant seedlings, they go one of two ways. They either always grow weird, or they sort of “grow out of it” and start growing normally. We’ll let this one grow to see what happens!

Now back to the main show….

Voila! Everyone is finally in the grow tent!

Environment Notes

• LED to top of tent, dimmed to 1/2 power – I put the LED grow light all the way to the top of the tent, and turned down to half power. The HLG 350W Diablo is extremely powerful LED grow light. It’s amazing for flowering plants, but you have to be very careful with seedlings and young plants, as it will overwhelm them.
• Temperature about 77°F / 25°C with lights on – I’d like it just a bit warmer for the seedlings. Seedlings love it closer to 80-85°F / 27-29°C under LEDs. LEDs don’t warm up the inside of leaves like the sun (or a bulb light like T5, MH, HPS, CMH, or LEC). What does that mean? Under LEDs, the leaves are about the same temperature as the air. In other words, it always “feels” a little colder for seedlings under an LED compared to the same air temperature under the sun. I’ll close up this room to help keep more heat in, and once I turn the LED up to full power, it will add plenty of heat and this won’t be a consideration anymore!
• Nutrients – Following the FoxFarm trio nutrient schedule at “seedling strength”. No supplements. Just water and a light dose of nutrients.

Seedlings will go into their pots once the leaves reach the edges of the cups and all look healthy and happy. I’ve noticed f you keep seedlings in cups, it helps them all stay the same size. With photoperiods, that helps keep everyone “together” in a cohort.

Side note: In side-by-side tests with some seedlings in cups, and some in big pots, I’ve found they grow at the same rate for the first 2 weeks or so. But after that, cups tend to slow down seedling growth. That  means leaving them all in cups can help any seedlings that are behind the others get some time to catch up. You wouldn’t want to do that with an autoflowering strain grow, where it’s a race to the finish line and you don’t want to slow down growth for a second at the beginning, but with photoperiod plants you can take your time since plants don’t start making buds until you tell them to.

Once they’ve all got a few sets of leaves, I will pick the 5 “Sweet Dreams” Champions, one plant of each strain, and move them to their final homes.

Day 7 seedlings – Looking happy!

One-leaf mutant – Here’s a closeup of the one-leaf-seedling at 7 days old, for those interested in its journey. Is that middle bit getting longer? To me, it looks like the little “flap” got slightly longer but is not making any  significant progress. What do you think?

Day 7 top view

Seedlings on left – Click for closeups!

Seedlings on right – Click for closeups!

Check back next Sunday for the next update! Or sign up below to get our home grow newsletter with get live grow journal updates delivered to you every Sunday morning at 4:20am.

Happy growing!
Nebula Haze
GrowWeedEasy.com

Week 2 – Seedlings get bigger!

Day 8

Left seedlings alone today. Just letting them grow and do their thing.

The cute little mutant

Day 9

Watered that night. I’m still giving week 1 nutrients of the Fox Farm schedule, just because they’re in cups and I don’t want to overwhelm them with too many nutrients. The soil already has enough nutrients to last the seedlings for a little while, and the official schedule jumps up in strength a lot between week 1 and 2.

So far the fastest seedlings seems to be the Blue Dreams.

Day 10

Added a small fan to space, to add extra airflow around the plants. I didn’t want to point it at them since they’re so fragile. So I just put it in the tent pointing up. I can see that gets their tiny leaves twittering just a little.

In a few days I’ll attach the clip-on fan to the bars of the tent so it can blow air over the top.

Day 11

As I’m looking at the seedlings, I feel like they’re growing well, but not as fast as I’d like. It might have helped to give them an extra day or two in the Rapid Rooters before transplanting them into the cups. I noticed when I transplanted them that they just had a few roots each. It’s best if you can see lots of roots coming out of the Rapid Rooters when you move them. That means they have a buffer that will help them thrive immediately after transplant.

Why did I transplant to cups instead of the final container?

• I put them in cups because I wasn’t sure which 5 plants to keep yet. But if I had wanted the fastest growth, I should have put them straight into their final pots
• I have found in past side-by-side experiments, that seedlings in cups grow at the same as plants in bigger pots, until about week 2. After that, the plants with more room for the roots start overtaking the cup-based seedlings, and you can visually see them growing faster.
• The biggest issue with putting plants in their final container is it’s easy to overwater them
• But when you follow a proven watering schedule, that’s not an issue, and you can put seedlings right in the final containers and get the fastest growth possible, with the least chance of plants growing slower than they would have.

How important is it to get plants to grow as FAST as possible?

•  If I were still in “autoflowering mode” like I was for my last grow journal, it becomes absolutely crucial to make sure seedlings get a strong, fast start. That’s because autoflowering plants only have a few weeks before they start flowering. It’s like a race.
• Something that’s really kind of nice about growing with photoperiod plants is it’s a lot more relaxed at the beginning.
• If plants grow a little slower, it’s okay, because you have as much time as you need to get them to the exact perfect size, BEFORE you initiate flowering

Autoflowering vs Photoperiod: Which is best for beginners?

• Autoflowering – I feel like autoflowering strains are great for beginners because they give you a QUICK harvest, and full education on growing from seed to weed in just 3 months.
  • Another cool thing about autoflowering strains is you can plant a seed and let it grow alongside your photoperiod plants.
• Photoperiod – yet photoperiod strains can be a great choice for beginners, or growers who want extra time to experiment and make mistakes.
  • With photoperiod plants – As long as plants stay in the vegetative stage, you have time to help them recover from any issues, get to the perfect size.
  • You can even cut off huge amounts of plant if it got too big, and a vegetative plant will keep growing like nothing happened.

Just some thoughts, from someone who just completed an autoflowering grow and is now doing a photoperiod grow.

Day 12

Watered the seedlings today. I gave Week 2 nutrients of the Fox Farm trio schedule. However, I gave them at 2/3 strength. (I made 3 gallons of water, but only added nutrients for two gallons, arriving at 2/3 strength compared to the schedule).

GG4 x Zkittlez – Normal seedling on left, “mutant” clover seedling on right. Notice the different shape overall.

After adding nutrients, I adjusted the water to 6.7 ph. This helps prevent nutrient deficiencies, because plants more easily absorb nutrients through the roots at the proper pH. With soil, it’s good to keep the pH just a little acidic, between 6-7 pH.

They look just a touch droopy for my taste. I turned the LED grow light down to 75%, even though it’s already 3.5 feet away. It’s hard to say, but I wonder if it might still be a bit too powerful for these seedlings.

By later that day, they already looked a bit perkier.

Thoughts on the HLG LED grow light

• I love this light. It produces some of the best weed I’ve grown. Potent, dense, aromatic, beautiful buds.
• Yet one thing I’ve noticed about it is it is “harsher” on seedlings compared to more “general purpose” LED grow lights like Spider Farmer or Mars Hydro
• I am keeping this HLG light almost at the top of the tent, and dimmed down to about 75%, giving plants a PAR of about 200 µmol/m²/s according to my Apogee light meter.
• But that’s just the beginning. A little extra care to keep the LED the right distance away solves the problem.
• Once these plants start flowering and making buds, the real power and beauty of this grow light comes out. The bud production historically has been insane.

Just curious, would you rather use an LED grow light that is the absolute easiest and most gentle on plants?

Or would you rather use an LED grow light that is overly powerful for seedlings, even turned down, but will provide the best results in the flowering stage?

Day 13

Seedlings looking happy today. Finally starting to grow significantly from day to day!

Thoughts on the strains so far

• Blue Dream – The 3 Blue Dream seedlings are furthest along, and growing the fastest. At this stage, I always feel fond of the fastest-growing plants, and these ones have been growing like a dream 🙂
• Mandarin Cookies – The Mandarin Cookies plants are the slowest growing so far, especially one of them. I won’t hold it against them since they’re 5-year old seeds. I’m super excited about this strain, so I’m happy to baby them.
• GG4 x Zkittlez – The normal seedling is big and happy. The mutant seedling is healthy but a bit slower growing. That’s pretty typical for mutants. I’m so curious to see the underlying structure once it starts growing out.
• Candy Games #38 – These are almost as big and fast-growing as the Blue Dreams! Very hearty, adorable plants with beautiful leaves.
• Purple Ghost Candy – The Purple Ghost Candy seedlings were a little behind at first, but have clearly found their stride. At this stage, they’ve caught up to the others and are starting to overtake them.

Day 14

Some clear “winners’ Of the group by now. I will pick the final 5 very soon. Don’t worry we’ll do something cool with all the other seedlings too. I’m not sure yet though exactly what. Maybe grow the extra seedlings out in a mini tent, like a Sea of Green grow? What do you think? Let us know!

Watered the seedlings until I felt a bit of coolness at the bottom, but no runoff. Same nutrients as before (2/3 strength, week two, 6.7 ph).

I can’t wait to transplant them into bigger pots. At that point, watering becomes a lot easier, because I can follow a proven day-by-day watering schedule. When they’re in cups, I feel like they’re a bit more finicky. The soil in the cups can only hold a bit of water at a time. As a result, you have to give less water, but more often.

I like how with our proven watering schedule in 5-gallon pots, you can water them with an exact amount and they’re always happy 🙂

Next week I will choose our final 5 plants, and transplant them into 5-gallon fabric pots with auto-watering pot bases.

Then the REAL fun begins!

Nebula Haze
GrowWeedEasy.com

Week 3 – Transplant to 5-gallon pots, with auto-watering bases

This week, the 5 final “winners” are picked and our five seedlings get transplanted to their final homes!

Day 15

Today I mixed up a gallon of nutrient water.

Fox Farm nutrient trio

• Week 2 full strength 
• Adjusted to 6.5 ph (in soil, 6-7 pH is ideal to prevent nutrient deficiencies)

They look a little dry and thirsty, so I gave them a watering.

Day 16 – Me just fretting about the seedlings, nothing to see here

They look okay, but some are a bit droopy. I think they’re a bit Overwatered. I guess I’m as guilty as anyone else of overwatering. I should have waited a full two days between watering. Ah well, it’s okay. They’ll be just fine with some extra care.

Random Thoughts: Big Pots vs Cups for Seedlings

• I think it’s simpler to water cannabis seedlings in a big pot than in cups.
• There’s more “buffer” in big pots, because roots can seek out dry spots if they’re too wet, and wet areas if they’re too dry. But with little cups it’s easy for them to have too much or two little water.
• The advantage of growing seedlings in cups is if you do overwater, seedlings are quick to recover.
• A cup can only ever hold so much moisture, as long as there are holes at the bottom.
• So overwatered seedlings quickly drink up all the water in the cup.
• If seedlings are Overwatered in a big pot, it can take a long time for all the soil to dry out.
• But there is a solution to that. With a big pot, you can follow a watering schedule pretty closely, especially for the first few weeks.
• On the other hand, cups aren’t conducive to a rigid watering schedule.
• They need to be watered often with small amounts. In a 2-cup (500mL) container, you can’t give a seedling 1 cup (250mL) of water.
• It’s easy to know that seedlings need to be given just a bit of water at a time, but it’s difficult to tell how much water is too much or too little.

I will leave them alone until at least tomorrow. Even if they seem droopy or dry tonight, I think they need at least a whole day. I noticed the Rapid Rooters seem wet. There’s no way the seedlings can go through all that water by tomorrow. I will leave them alone.

Side note: After all that fretting, they looked totally fine later when I check on them haha (pictured here)

Day 17

I gave each plant 20-60 mL of water, based on how heavy the little cups felt.

I think they’re ready to be transplanted to their final homes tomorrow!

Random thought about the HLG LED grow light

• I feel like this HLG 350 Diablo grow light is a bit harsh on seedlings.
• I have it at half strength and several feet away. The Apogee light meter shows a PAR value of about 200 µmol/m²/s.
• For light levels, 200 µmol/m²/s is a moderate-to-high amount for seedlings, but healthy 3 week old seedlings should be able to handle it
• I feel like they don’t seem as happy as seedlings under similar size Mars Hydro or Spider Farmer LED grow lights at this age, under the same PAR values.
  • Note: PAR is a measure of light quantity not necessarily quality. Plant response is also affected by spectrum, diode placement, lens configuration, plant stage of life, and other factors.
• This is just a personal feeling. But I feel like the HLG LED grow lights (including all the ones I’ve used so far – 65w 100W, 300W, 350W) are harsher on young plants
• The reward is how well HLG LED grow lights perform in the flowering stage, especially bud density, sparkle, and yields per watt. My favorite harvests/buds often come from HLG lights.
• Of course, strain is king. In our side-by-side tests with different LED grow lights with clones, the differences between different LED models are small (a bit of yield, maybe 0.5-1.5% difference in THC). The effect of your particular LED grow light model is small compared to the huge differences you see between strains. A 27% THC strain feels just as strong if buds only reach 26% THC.
• And if an LED grow light is easier to use, like Spider Farmer and Mars Hydro, that often matters more to home growers than the tiny gains from using a more “advanced” LED grow light…

Day 18 – Assembling the auto-watering pots

Today, I plan to move the 5 “winners” to their 5-gallon pots.

I gave the seedlings a good watering to help get them prepped for their “move”.

Then, I assembled the auto-watering pots (“autopots”).

The autowatering pots arrived in a 4-pack in the mail from Amazon. (I got two packs, for 8 pots in total)

All the pieces inside the first pot. I didn’t realize I had to assemble these.

Looking at the directions, assembly seems pretty straightforward.

Now it’s assembled according to those instructions.

This glass piece is going to be used to easily see the water level.

I’m not exactly sure how it will work, but it seems nifty.

Okay, now for the “Self-watering” part of the instructions.

Now, I need to cut some rope to size, as this will be what wicks the water to roots.

For 5-gallon pots, the AC Infinity instructions say to cut the rope to 18″ (45 cm) long.

Next, I string the rope through the holes (directions told me to use the outermost holes for 5-gallon pots)

You put two pieces of rope per AC Infinity pot base

Bottom view – The ropes dangle down, theoretically into water in the reservoir, therefore wicking water to the bottom of plant pots.

The final product! Whew, I expected the pot bases to come pre-assembled, but it actually wasn’t too hard to put them together.

Since the ropes are loose, it’s easy to move them out of place. So I used a permanent marker to make dots so I could see how the rope should be positioned in relation to the holes.

I added dots to easily position the ropes if they get moved.

Final product, with the dots on the rope for reference.

About the auto-watering pots

• I’ve never grown with these before, so you get to experience the adventure with me.
• These “auto pots” are meant to feed/give water from the bottom. But at first I’m going to water from the top first.
• The directions say not to water them from the bottom until their roots have reached through the bottom of the fabric pots.
• So once I see roots on bottom, I’ll start giving plants nutrient water from underneath by just adding it directly into their reservoirs.

We’ll see how that goes! I worry a bit about these auto-watering pots.

Will the AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases make growing weed easier or harder?

New discoveries about auto-watering pots from the directons

• Clean every 2 weeks – I was surprised to learn in the directions that the reservoices should be cleaned every 2 weeks. You’re supposed to dump all the water, rinse out the reservoir, and then reset it up with the plants on top, and refill. They say if you don’t do that, the roots will grow into the reservoir and prevent the plant from drinking properly.
• Wicking ropes – You cut pieces of rope to wick the water from the reservoir to the bottoms of the pots. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I don’t like how the ropes aren’t tied down anywhere, so you have to be careful of disturbing them when you move the plants. I marked the ropes with black permanent marker to know how to fix them when they get disturbed.

I used to grow cannabis mainly in hydro, and the directions for these auto-watering pots seem to want me to treat them like a bit like a hydro reservoir. Except it seems like more work compared to maintaining the reservoir in the hydro tub.

Hmmm, maybe I’ll only change the reservoir if I see signs of pH/nutrient problems.

Or maybe I’ll be a good grower and follow the direction and change all their reservoirs every 2 weeks.

I should definitely at least change all the water before I initiate flowering (rinse out the reservoirs and give fully fresh flowering nutrient water).

I have the feeling the plants are eventually going to get big enough that I can’t pick them up. At that point I will have to feed them through the reservoirs only.

Oops, I’ve spent too much time playing with the auto-watering pots. I’ll have to transplant the seedlings tomorrow.

Day 19 

I got really busy today. I watered the seedlings and filled the 5-gallon fabric pots full of Coco Loco soil. I will definitely transplant tomorrow!

Got everything totally ready for seedlings!

Day 20 – Transplant to 5-gallon pots

Today is transplant day. (for real this time)

All of the seedlings look great today. I put them in the window overnight under an LED since the grow tent is now full of 5-gallon pots!

This is the exact spot they germinated and grew as seedlings. I wonder if they “remember”.

I picked the 5 “winners”, one plant from each strain. I tried to pick plants that were the most matched in size/growth patterns.

Carefully cut away the white paper cups to expose the roots below. Try not to disturb the roots!

I dug a little cup-sized hole and just plop the seedling in.

They’re 20 days old today, so when deciding how much water to give, I think I will follow my trusty seedling watering schedule, which says to give them 5 cups of water per plant at this age. Though that’s meant for seedlings actually living in a big pot, not for transplanting.

Why not, let’s do it. I need to water them after transplanting anyway. Let’s follow the wisdom. They do seem about the right size for day 20 seedlings.

Add some extra soil if needed, and water the plants immediately afterwards.

All 5 plants… transplanted! A few hours later they look great.

I still have the grow light at half power a few feet away, with a PAR reading of 200 µmol/m²/s. I’ll be raising the light levels soon, but not right after the transplant. I want to let them get some quiet time to themselves to adjust to their new homes.

Yay! So happy the plants seem to have taken the transplant well!

Day 21

Plants look great. Turned the LED power up a little. I’m thinking I’ll turn it up a bit every day until it’s 100%. Then maybe I’ll lower it, or just let them grow up towards it.

All of the plants have grown at least 6 nodes (sets of leaves) by now, even the Mandarin Cookies, which is currently the “runt” of the grow.

The Mandarin Cookies is the “runt”, but still doing great! Six sets of leaves by day 21 isn’t too bad.

I probably could have topped them today, as all have at least 6 nodes.

I typically top plants (cut off the top) right above the 5th set of leaves. Topping young cannabis plants helps them grow with multiple big bud sites, instead of just one big bud.

But I’ll give them another day or two. What’s the hurry?

I love how relaxed it feels to grow photoperiod plants. You have all the time in the world to do things, especially compared to that feeling of “being in a race” that I get when growing autoflowering plants.

Training today:

• I did a gentle leaf tucking.
  • In other words, I tried to gently tuck any big leaves down
• The goal is to expose the growth tips underneath, so they start developing into longer branches.
• Once I top the plants, it will really cause them to start “bushing out” and making lots of branches.
• A wide cannabis plant (ideally, wide and flat like a table) with lots of stems is key to getting lots of fat top buds, so therefore the best yields and density.

Next week, I’ll show you exactly how to prune plants so you get bigger yields later!

Week 4 – Topped the plants!

Now onto the exciting week 4!

Day 22

Looking good this morning. Turned up the LED light another touch.

Starting to finally stack those nodes!

Should I top them soon?

The Mandarin Cookies is currently the “runt” of the grow. It’s a little bit behind the others. It hasn’t quite made 6 good nodes (sets of leaves) yet. I think the other plants are all ready to be topped, but the Mandarin Cookies needs a few more days.

Mandarin Cookies (red label) is the “runt”, though seemingly healthy.

What do you think?

Day 23

Nutrients

• Fox Farm trio soil feeding schedule
  • Gave week 2 nutrients since they were just put in fresh soil (gave 6 tablespoons Big Bloom in 3 gallons of water).
  • Will start giving week 3 nutrients next watering.
• Adjusted to 6.7 ph

Watering

• 6 cups water to each plant

If you look closely at the back wall, you can see certain colors (blue, green, yellow, red) from the LEDs reflecting oddly. I don’t see it with my eyes, but it shows up in pictures.

Click for closeup!

Day 24

Looking perky this morning!

LED grow light

• I decided to turn the HLG 350 LED to 100%.
• Still at the top of the tent.

Day 25

The Mandarin Cookies looked a little droopy, but otherwise green and healthy.

A few others also don’t look as “erect” as I’d like.

All green leaves I can see.

The only thing different is I turned up the power of the light to 100% yesterday.

I suspect it may be a bit too much at full strength, at this age. This HLG LED is no joke!

LED

• Turned the LED grow light back down to where it was yesterday

Added a webcam (back left) so I can check on the plants any time!

Clip-on Fan

• Moved the mini fan up a bit higher as I felt it might be disturbing the leaves a bit too much as they got taller
• Still light leaf movement when I close the tent and peer through the viewing window.

Day 26

The HLG 350 LED is so far away and still delivers so much light.

Here’s the view from the top!

Mandarin Cookies still looks a bit droopy, but I think it’s fine. Today I will water them all but give the Mandarin Cookies a bit less water than the others. Just in case it was slightly overwatered. But I still think it got a little stressed from the light levels being too high. I think it will be back to 100% by tomorrow.

Nutrients

• Gave Week 2 nutrients at ⅔ strength.
  • Made 3 gallons of nutrient water
  • Added 2 gallon worth of nutrients, giving 2/3 strength
• PH 6.5 as of right after mixing
  • Added ½ tsp PH Down

I’m curious how the pH will change in the nutrient water after sitting. I noticed last time it climbed after sitting in the reservoirs overnight.

Watering

• Gave 6 cups water per plant
• Except Mandarin Cookies got 5 cups

Grow light

• Still at the top, still turned down a bit

The Candy Games #38 has a full 8 nodes, working on the 9th!

The Blue Dream seems about the same

Zkittlez x GG4 seedling is spreading out naturally

Even our little Mandarin Cookies has over 6 nodes now

Definitely time to top them tomorrow!

Day 27 – Topping day!

Today is the day. Time to cut of the tops of all the plants. This will make them naturally grow more bushy with many buds, instead of only one main bud.

Off with their heads! Ok, now I kind of feel bad.

TOPPING DAY!

• “Topped” all plants right above the 5th node
• In other words, I cut off the top of each plant above the 5th set of leaves.
• Now they all have the same number of leaves, and are about the same height as each other.

Take a seedling that has grown at least 6 sets of leaves (this plant has extras!)

Then cut off the top above the 5th set of leaves. Use scissors or fingers to cut through the main stem.

Always leave some extra stem. This gives structure and prevents damage to the tender leaves below.

Light

• Still dimmed slightly down. Will probably increase to full power tomorrow after I’m sure they responded well to being topped.
• PAR is currently around 300 µmol/m²/sat plant tops

Auto-watering pot bases

• I noticed the Candy Games #38 had water in its auto pot, as did the Mandarin Cookies (just a bit)
• I removed the water and rinsed them out

I noticed the wicking rope was both moist and brown on the Candy Games plant. So it’s clearly working. I don’t like seeing brown but I think it’s just staining from the nutrients.

Are any of you interested to hear about my experience with the auto-watering pots so far? They’re not like how I expected, and I have lots of thoughts on them haha

Plants after being topped

I tried to tuck leaves as best I could to expose all the growing tips to direct light.

Now the stage has been set for a bountiful, productive cannabis grow. The plants are ready to fill up the grow tent!

Day 28

Nothing to report today!

Week 5 – Tucked leaves, light training, plants growing fast!

Day 29 

Here are the beauties this morning at the start of their 5th week.

Today they got watered.

Nutrient water

• Mixed with 3 gallons water
  • Fox Farm week 2 – ⅔ strength
  • 0.5 tsp pH down
  • 6.6 pH
• Give 8 cups or 1/2 gallon (2 liter) water per plant

After watering

• I think all got at least some water coming out the bottom.
• I see some roots coming out the bottoms of the pots.
• Probably I could start bottom-feeding now, according to the directions from AC Infinity

Training

• Tucked leaves

I tucked all the leaves to expose the growing tips (look kind of like stars from above). The arrows point to growing tips.

When the growing tips get direct light, they grow, causing the plants to grow more wide and bushy as lower branches develop and reach the top of the plant.

I want plants to continue growing wide, with many branches. This increases the number of buds that grow later.

LED

• Full power at the top of the tent, delivering just under 400 µmol/m²/s at the top tip of each plant
• Let’s see how they respond.

Day 30

Nothing to do or report today. Just took a quick peek and will check on them tomorrow.

Day 31

Plants look good, water tomorrow?

Maybe start watering from the auto watering pots starting tomorrow?

From above, it’s clear that some marijuana plants are ahead of others.

Specifically the Mandarin Cookies (bottom right) is not just smaller, but also growing with huge leaves that block the lower growing tips and have been difficult to tuck until now. I could have removed those top two big leaves to expose the lower tipes, but I knew I’d be able to tuck them soon, and that way I won’t be stealing valuable leaf area and nutrients from the plant. Today they get tucked!

The Mandarin Cookies (bottom right) is less bushy than the others, despite getting the same treatment. Every marijuana plant is a little different.

However, I can see the tent is not well balanced considering there are two plants in back and 3 in front.

• Rearranged the plants so that the two biggest ones get the back to themselves, and the 3 smaller ones are in the front.

New arrangement seems more balanced. Mandarin Cookies is now in bottom middle.

Now, let’s tuck the leaves on that Mandarin Cookies! (and all the plants to a lesser extent)

The leaves of the Mandarin Cookies marijuana plant have been tucked under other stems. Side view.

If you click this next picture for a closeup, you can see the Mandarin Cookies now has several growing tips exposed, since I tucked away those big leaves.

After this, the plant is going to start growing more wide and bushy like the others. Leaf tucking does a lot of work for you when it comes to getting plants to grow wide and bushy, basically can not be messed up regardless of skill, and it literally takes seconds. An underrated cannabis grow technique, in my opinion.

Day 32

Gave water to the reservoirs in the AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases.

Nutrient water details

• Mixed with 3 gallons water
• Fox Farm week 3 – ⅔ strength
• 0.5 tsp pH down
• 6.5 pH

For each plant, I added ½ gallon to the-auto watering pot base reservoir. This is my first time using the auto-watering pots, but the roots have hit the bottom and according to the AC Infinity auto-watering directions, that means they’re big enough to start wicking and being bottom-fed.

Roots have reached the bottom of the pots, so I should be able to start using the auto-watering pot bases.

Watered using my handy battery-operated water transfer pump

I removed the water level indicators and pumped water directly to the reservoirs

That little orange piece in the middle is the watering indicator. If you can see it, there’s water in the reservoir.

If you don’t see the orange piece in the middle (just see glass) it means there is no water in the reservoir. Nifty.

We’ll see how it goes!

Day 33

Here they are on day 33.

Plant Training

• Bent over taller branches and gently tucked the under leaves where I could, especially the top two branches.
• Coaxed out many colas, even the Mandarin Cookies, now mainly waiting for them to gain some height and width to fill up the tent.

Before tucking – top view

After tucking – top view (very subtle)

I love how they’re growing so wide and bushy with literally just seconds of “training” every day. Just taking the time to tuck leaves every day makes a huge difference over time as far as getting plants to grow more wide and bushy with lots of branches.

Auto-watering pots and wicking…

Hmmm, plants look great but I feel like they’re not wicking water at max capacity. Note: On the wicking ropes, I added black spots with permanent marker to mark where the ropes should be, in case they get moved by accident.

The top of the auto-watering pot bases looks too dry to be wicking properly.

The one exception is the Candy Games plant, for some reason. The entire bottom of that pot is wet.

I suspect the coco was too dry when I filled the bottom reservoirs. I believe if I give the plants a good watering from the top (so that it’s totally wet throughout the growing medium to the bottom of the pots), they’ll start wicking properly.

So I mixed up the same batch of water again, and watered according to the plan for yesterday, giving each plant ½ gallon nutrient water.

Watered plants from the top

• ½ gallon each, same nutrients as yesterday, 6.5 pH

Fox Farm nutrients: My impression of them so far…

• Plants love it – Plants are thriving on it, so far.
• Doesn’t stay fully mixed – I don’t like how the organic ingredients quickly sink to the bottom (particularly the worm castings), because it means I need to shake the water right before using it, and again if it sits for even a few minutes. One thing I like about mineral-based (synthetic) nutrients is they completely mix with the water, so you feel confident plants are always getting the same amount as each other.
• Ultimately, it’s a 2-part mineral-based (synthetic) nutrient system plus the ultra-weak organic tea “Big Bloom”.
  • You could follow the schedule without “Big Bloom” (a diluted, gentle worm poop and bat guano tea) and get good results, because that bottle is not adding significant nutrition (according to the label). So it possibly has other benefits, but giving the plants nutrients and minerals isn’t what it offers.
  • Grow and Tiger Bloom are almost completely comprised of mineral nutrients, with a tiny bit of worm poop and kelp mixed in.
  • Which makes me realize it is essentially a mineral/synthetic nutrient system, for your core nutrient sources, but with a huge helping of natural goodness (worm poop and kelp) incorporated at every stage, plus tiny amounts of bat and seabird guano in Big Bloom (the tea)

Fox Farm trio nutrients

I mixed up a batch of Fox Farm nutrient water.

After sitting for 12 hours, look how much the Fox Farm nutrient water separates. Must be thoroughly mixed immediately before watering.

Day 34

Plants look overall green and healthy.

I noticed some light yellow tips on one of the plants. Also the color just seemed slightly off to me on some of the leaves. Like a little blueish. Yellow tips (just yellow, no brown nutrient burn) is sometimes a symptom of too much light. But it can also be pH. Yellow tips plus slightly blue-tinted leaves is a set of symptoms I associate with incorrect pH, from past experience. I checked the pH of that reservoir and it was 7.4-7.5 pH. Actually, upon testing with a pH pen, all the reservoirs of all were at least 7.2 or higher. With soil, it should be between 6-7 pH to prevent nutrient deficiencies. Light levels might be a factor, but it seem pH definitely is.

I tested the remaining nutrient water from yesterday, and it was at 6.8 pH. So just sitting in the water containers, the pH rose 0.3 pH, but in the auto-watering reservoirs the pH rose 0.5-1 pH. So it seems like the pH might rise naturally on its own, but something about being in those reservoirs is making it rise more. I washed them thoroughly before using them. Hmmm.

I emptied out all the reservoirs since the pH was off in them. Next watering, I will water them to runoff in the tanks and check the pH (instead of trying to water from the bottom again just yet).

Auto-Pots Still Not Wicking Well

• They didn’t seem to be wicking the water well, except for the Candy Games. When I pick up that plant, I can see the whole base seems wet, and the bottom of the pot feels wet.
• Even though I just watered them yesterday, and got some runoff, I suspect that maybe the other pots weren’t fully soaked all the way to the bottom
• Without total soil saturation, the wicking isn’t getting started properly.
• I noticed the Candy Games plant drinks less, and therefore the soil is wetter, on average. Maybe that’s why the wicking seems to be working well for the Candy Games?

Day 35

A bunch of little celebrities.

Giving nutrient water with pH on the lower side of the 6-7 pH optimum, because the pH was high yesterday, and want to help counteract.

Nutrient water

• Mixed with 3 gallons water
• Fox Farm week 3 – ⅔ strength (gave 2 gallons worth of nutrients to the 3 gallons of water, giving ⅔ strength)
• 1.25 tsp pH down
• 6.1 pH (optimum is 6-7 for soil, but it was high yesterday so I’m giving the pH on the lower side of that range)
• ½ gallon to each plant

Got about 10% runoff. All pretty much came out the pH they went in.

• Runoff 6.1-6.2ph

Overall the plants look gorgeous, and I’m excited for this next week. It doesn’t seem like they’ll need much more time before they’re big enough to initiate the flowering stage with a 12/12 light schedule.

On average, cannabis plants about double in size after the switch to 12/12. That means once plants have complete coverage of the grow space and then reach half the final desired height, it’s time to switch!

In our tent, I want plants about 3 feet tall, leaving enough space between the light and the plants when the light is at the top of the tent. I also want to make sure there are buds from wall-to-wall in the tent, so I will be spreading the tallest branches out as plants grow, in order to make a wide, flat, table-top shape.

Once I have full canopy coverage and plants are about 1.5 feet tall, I’ll initiate 12/12. Right now they’re about 1 feet tall. Maybe T minus 7-10 days until then? Either next week or the week after, at the latest.

Plants should completely fill the tent, like a wide flat “table” of leaves, before initiating 12/12.

It’s so beautiful to watch them at this age. Everything is so lush and green. It’s so… peaceful in the tent. Like being in a field or getting a little touch of nature in the home. I like to just look at them.

Check back soon! Or sign up below to get weekly live updates of this grow journal in our newsletter. Sent every Sunday morning at 4:20am.

Week 6 – Filled the tent!

Day 36 

Looking great!

Training

• Gave them a light training session. No tying down, just gentle bending and spreading out.

Before – above view

After I gently spread out the plants, you can see a lot more of the growing tips from above. Now that they’re not hidden by leaves any more, the lower branches will start growing and rising up towards the top of the plant. The parts of the plant that get direct light from above are the parts that tend to develop the most.

Top view – after spreading out branches (click for closeup!)

Auto-watering pot bases

• PH in reservoirs had climbed overnight, to 6.6 or so (still within the optimal 6-7 pH range for growing cannabis in soil)
• It seems like sitting in the reservoir is raising the pH of the water.
• I tested the nutrient water that was in a container overnight, and its pH stayed the same. So it doesn’t seem to be the nutrients or water changing the pH by themself.
• It is convenient the pH was on the lower side when I put the water in, and naturally seemed to go up.
• We’ll see if that continues after the reservoirs have been used a while, or if it’s some side effect of being brand new (thought I did thoroughly clean the reservoirs before using them for the plants)

Wicking

• The Candy Games plant was wicking as expected. The bottom is totally wet.
• That plant also had the most runoff water in the reservoir.
• Since the wettest plant is wicking the best, it makes me think the pots/grow medium need to be wetter overall, for the wicking action to be effective.
• Maybe the other plants are not wicking well, because the grow medium is just not soaked through enough.

The Candy Games plant seems to be wicking. Under the pot is wet.

Note: The black dots on the rope are permanent marker to help line up the ropes.

But none of the other pots seem to be wicking. They look bone dry when I pick up the plants.

Plant health

• Plant overall color looked better to me today, and the yellow tips look less stark.

Watering

• Made 3 gallons of nutrient water and split between the 5 plants
• I watered all the plants from the top, except the Candy Games, which was pretty wet top to bottom, until they got some runoff
• Hopefully, if they’re giving runoff, they’re wet all the way through
• I dumped all the reservoirs to start fresh
• Then I added fresh nutrient water straight to all the reservoirs.

My hope is I’ll see wicking action tomorrow on all give plants. If not, I may try watering from the top again tomorrow. I’m sure that should kick start it if today wasn’t enough.

Almost filled up the tent!

Day 37 

Just checked on them and spread out their branches a bit. 

I was too busy to mess with the reservoirs today, but I’m not sure the water levels have moved. I will take a closer look to see if they’re wicking, and make sure to test pH tomorrow.

Plants look great today though!

Day 38

PH in the reservoirs

• PH in reservoirs is high, around 7.1.
• These reservoirs really seem to change the pH over time.
• I think I’ll try putting the nutrient water in at 6.1 pH today. To counteract the lowering that happens in the reservoirs.

What’s going on with the wicking?

• Ghost candy – not wicking
• Blue Dream – not wicking
• GG4 x Zkittlez – not wicking
• Mandarin Cookies – wicking
• Candy Games – wicking

The smallest plant, Candy Games #38, seems to be wicking the best.

I know the plant is drinking from underneath because the top of the grow medium looks dry while the water level in the reservoir is going down. The bottom of the pot is totally wet.

The smallest plants are wicking, but not the larger ones. The smallest plants don’t drink as much, and get more runoff water. Hmmm. I feel pretty certain now that the wicking isn’t happening on plants whose grow medium isn’t fully soaking wet.

I think the solution is a very thorough watering. So I watered today. Here’s the mix I used…

Nutrient water

• Fox Farm week 3 – ⅔ strength
• Mixed with 3 gallons water
• Adjusted to 6.1 pH – This is on the lower side of the 6-7 pH range, but the pH was high so I’m putting water in at the opposite of that range.
• Not-wicking plants got water from the top, until I could see visible runoff into the reservoirs.

Once I confirmed they all had significant runoff (hopefully they’re now all super soaked), I decided to empty the reservoirs and refill with fresh nutrient water. So I made one more batch of the above.

• Split the 3 gallons of fresh nutrient water into the reservoirs below
• My hope is with all the pots wet all the way through, and reservoirs full of water they’ll start wicking properly
• Reservoir pH after this treatment was 6.1-6.3 pH for all plants

Some Thoughts on Fox Farm Nutrients

• Finished off the whole pint of Big Bloom from FoxFarm already! It’s only Day 38 of a grow with 5 plants, and I haven’t even been using the nutrients at full strength. What a rip!
• Luckily I saw it coming and ordered a bigger bottle a few days ago.
• I noticed the FoxFarm schedule starts recommending less of Big Bloom on week 4, even in the vegetative stage. They start upping the amounts of their other supplement. I wonder if this is where people start running out of Big Bloom lol

I already finished the brand new pint of “Big Bloom” that comes with the FoxFarm nutrient trio! So soon.

Something I noticed about the auto-watering pot bases…

• The directions from AC Infinity recommend you dump out the reservoirs and rinse them out every few weeks.
• Or like me, maybe you get a bunch of runoff water and want to remove it so you can refill with fresh nutrient water.
• But moving cannabis plants in 5-gallon containers is sooooo heavy if they’ve been watered recently.
• I’m in pretty decent shape, and they were very heavy for me to move.
• Having to move the 5-gallon pots on a regular basis is really not an effective solution for those with mobility problems.
• Overall, I feel like the auto-watering pot bases can make it a bit more difficult if your goal is to maintain perfect pH to prevent deficiencies.
• But people love these bases, and I get that I’m resistant to new things haha
• Overall, the plants are really happy, and growers have told me that the auto-watering bases really shine in the flowering stage, so I’m going to continue with them until the end of the grow. A lot of time when something feels challenging, it just means I need more experience/information.

Although I’ve had some challenges getting used to the new auto-watering pot bases, the plants are thriving.

Training

• Ooops, accidently broke a stem on the Candy Games, but not badly.
• Luckily it was small, just the skin. It didn’t need tape, but I taped it lightly mostly just to remind me it’s there so I don’t try to bend that branch again until it’s full healed.
• Been spreading plants out with just bending and tucking of tall branches
• Back two plants (Purple Ghost Candy and especially the Blue Dream) are getting taller than the rest. Luckily they get the back to themselves so I can just spread them out. Use that height to create extra width!
• But I’m thinking tomorrow I should bend/LST the two back plants so they’re flat with the front plants, and spread out as wide as possible.

Ooops put a slight crack in the stem while bending. The stem is still standing, but I broke the skin.

I got a piece of tape. The stem doesn’t need support, but I want it mainly to remind me where the crack is.

I wrapped the tape loosely so it won’t “cut off circulation” as the stem gets bigger.

Now I can easily keep an eye out, to avoid bending this particular stem until after it’s well healed.

The Blue Dream plant is the biggest and is growing in a tall and stretchy way. Luckily, it has willowy branches that are easy to bend down and way from the center of the plant.

Day 39

Quick peek and plants look good! Getting a little wild though. I think they should get some training tomorrow.

Day 40

Today also look good.

But…

Auto-watering pot bases

• PH in reservoirs at 7.1 pH again
• Wicking – Still not wicking to my satisfaction
• I spoke to a grower who recommended I try wetting the lines first
• Makes sense to me. They claimed that wicking seemed to be working after wetting the lines.

Leaf Color (a bit dark)

• Plants look great with the LED on, but when I see them in normal light, I feel like the leaves look a touch dark
• I don’t see nutrient burn yet, but darker leaves is a sign the plants are getting somewhat too high levels of nutrients.
• I’ve been giving the nutrients at ⅔ strength, but will switch to ⅓ recommended level until the leaves lighten up a bit
• Will defoliate a bit, because removing leaves can help pull some stored nitrogen out of the plant that has gotten a bit too much.
• They’re also too leafy, so there’s never been a better time to defoliate.
• Let the underlying structure be in view, so everything grows well

The leaves look a tiny bit bit dark to me. That’s a sign of slightly too-high nutrient levels.

I noticed on some of the darker leaves, some of the very ends of the “fingers” are slightly curled down. That’s another sign of slightly too high levels of nutrients.

Leaves are healthy, but a bit dark. I think plants need slightly lower levels of nutrients for optimum color (and fastest growth).

Watering

• Dumped out all reservoirs, though I probably could have left them. I don’t know.
• Giving at ⅓ strength now, until leaves look a bit lighter
  • 3 gallons water tsp Big Bloom
  • 3 tsp Grow Big
  • 1.5 tsp PH Down
  • 6.1 pH
  • 560 PPM
• 3 gallons to Blue Dream and Purple Ghost Candy. Second batch of 3 gallons I gave to the remaining 3 plants.
  • Runoff pH around 6.1 for all
  • So the pH of the water going in, and the water going out are the same. Awesome
• Next, I will start watering it at 6.5 pH, which is right in the middle of the 6-7 pH idea in soil to prevent nutrient deficiencies

Dumped the reservoirs and rinsed them out. These plants are HEAVY now. I can barely move them and I’m in decent shape. Definitely need to make sure to always lift from the knees or I might throw out my back!

The plants are HEAVY to move now.

Upon opening up the auto-watering pot bases, I was surprised how much nutrient solids had already built up on the bottom of the reservoirs. I think it’s mainly the worm poop from the “Big Bloom” bottle. Times like these, I miss the super clear mineral nutrients from the General Hydroponics Flora trio. Organic ingredients just seems so messy and easy to fall out of the water.

This was the Fox Farm nutrient water in the reservoir before I dumped it out. I was worried by the appearance at first, like maybe something was growing in it, but I’m happy to report it smelled very clean. Phew! I think it is just the ingredients sinking to the bottom and swirling around.

Fox Farm nutrient had lots of solids that fell to the bottom of the reservoir.

Defoliation & plant training

• Trained plants to be shorter and wider.
  • I gently bent the tallest stems down and away from the center of each plant
  • Blue Dream and Ghost Candy got the most treatment, since they were the ones growing taller than the other plants.
• Defoliation to all.
  • When plants are slightly dark from high levels of nutrients, like these ones, it’s an awesome time to defoliate
  • Removing leaves actually removes some of the extra nutrients being stored in the plant.
  • A dark, healthy plant that’s growing lots of new leaves each day, almost always responds great to defoliation.

I bent tallest stems down and away from center of plant (to help plant grow flat and wide)

Defoliation – Removed all leaves that were hand-sized or bigger.

Removed a lot of leaves from the biggest plants, Purple Ghost Candy and Blue Dream!

New top view of those plants – much more wide! (filling up the space under the light)

New side view – both plants are totally flat!

The rest of the plants got some bending and defoliation too.

Here is the top view of the grow tent immediately after training.

3 hours later – all the leaves have already turned back up to face the light. Our canopy is shaping up well!

HLG 350 LED Grow Light

• Using my PPFD app on the phone, I saw the tops of plants were getting about 600 µmol/m²/s
• I think the top leaves look a tiny bit stressed from the brightness
• Turned down until they were all at 400-450 µmol/m²/s for the PPFD, according to the phone app

Looking up, as if I were a plant. It’s insane this tiny LED panel makes such intense light from so far away.

Do you all want me to take any measurements for this grow light?

• We have a few different lux meters, a professional Apogee light meter, and the PPFD app on my phone.
• Hit REPLY and let me know what/if you want me to run light tests on this this HLG 350 light
• Also let me know if you want me to compare the lux meter with the pro light meter with the phone app.
• Or let me know if you want me to test other lights. We have Spider Farmer, Mars Hydro, HLG, and a few other brands laying around the grow room from past grows!

Tell me what you want to see as far as light measurements, and I will make it happen for you!

Day 41

Noticed yellow tips and a slight blueish tint on the Candy Games leaves (front right plant). The beginning of a nutrient deficiency!

Candy Games #38 has a few yellow leaf tips, which I believe is from too-low pH

Since I’m using good nutrients, a deficiency is almost certainly due to the pH. Another possibility is light stress, but I turned the light yesterday so I don’t think that’s is. The water went in a 6.1 and came out at 6.1. Ideal is 6-7. I suspect maybe the issue is the pH is too low.

Emptied reservoirs.

I’m feeling a little frustrated with these auto-watering pot bases, but I still feel pretty sure I just need to get the hang of using them. Will “reset” tomorrow by watering plants with fresh nutrient water, at 6.5 pH. See how they do, then go back to trying to figure out how to get them to wick right haha

I know, I know. I’m fussing on the plants. I get they overall look good. I just want the plants to get perfect conditions 🙂

Day 42

Watered plants. I added a touch of Cal-Mag.

• 3 tsp Big Bloom
• 3 tsp Grow Big
• 3 Tsp Fox Farm CalMag
• 6.5 pH

Gave all 3 gallons, between plants.

Plants are almost half the final desired size, which means it’s time to initiate flowering soon.

Almost half the final desired size.

They’ve mostly filled up the tent from side to side, too!

Mostly filled the tent from side to side!

I think I’ll give them just another few days, and then it’s time to initiate the flowering/budding stage by giving plants a 12/12 light schedule (change the grow light timer to turn off lights for 12 hours a day).

Week 7 – Initiated 12/12 – Buds incoming!

Day 43

I love seeing these little beauties every morning 🙂

So far I just have the one HLG 350 LED grow light in there. Maybe I will add our other HLG 350 after they start flowering and need higher levels of light for max production, but so far, one seems to be more than enough! Such a powerful 350W light.

Day 44 

Look good overall. I still see a few yellow tips, but only on the old leaves. They’re starting to regain their color, and it’s not spreading to new leaves. So I think our pH correction was a success!

PPFD at the canopy is 450-580 µmol/m²/s, according to the app on my phone.

The tops of the soil aren’t quite dry, water tomorrow!

Day 45 – started 12/12 (to initiate flowering stage)

Time to initiate the flowering stage. I set the grow light timer to have lights on 12 hours on, 12 hours off. I decided for my schedule to have lights on from 6am-6pm, and total darkness for the other 12 hours.

One of the tricky things about flowering photoperiod plants, is plants can’t get any light during their 12 hour dark period (or they revert back to the vegetative stage). So it’s important to make sure the “on” hours are convenient for you to check on your plants, because you can’t easily check on them during their “night”.

Also watered the plants. Gave 3 gallons between plants.  Here’s what I added, and the measurements.

• 3 tsp Big Bloom
• 3 tsp Grow Big
• 3 Tsp Fox Farm CalMag
• ½ tsp pH down
• 6.7 pH
• 580 ppm

Day 46 – Day 1 since 12/12

Looking good! Here’s the view from a webcam in the tent.

Day 47 – Day 2 since 12/12

Still looking good. Don’t seem quite ready to water yet. Pots still feel a bit heavy, and topsoil not totally dry yet.

We have almost completely filled the tent. This increases yields later!

Will water them tomorrow.

Day 48 – Day 3 since 12/12

Turned up the light power a bit.

• Measures 550-650 µmol/m²/s at canopy (using phone app)
• Let’s see how they respond.
• It’s not just light power, I feel like when the HLG is turned down it looks more blue and less red
• I suspect they made it that way, so when it’s turned down it’s more suitable for veg, and turn up you get all the red you need.
• So I might try raising the light and turning it up, to get the full spectrum?
• I’m curious how the plants will respond. Will they show any visible signs of stress?

Still no new yellow tips, so I think that deficiency is fully beat.

Watered them today, with Fox Farm nutrients.

• 3 gallons water
• 3 tsp Big Bloom
• 3 tsp Grow Big
• 3 tsp Tiger Bloom
• No pH Down (the extra Tiger Bloom lowered the pH enough to get it in the right pH range)
• 6.7 pH
• 666 PPM

Made 2 batches, for total of 6 gallons.

• Even with 6 gallons, didn’t get much runoff
• Runoff pH was low, about 6.3 (after going in at 6.7)
• Runoff PPM around 2200
• Made sure the bottoms of the pots and ropes were wet

Made 1 more batch, but added ½ tsp PH Down, bringing the pH down to 6.4 pH

• I made it lower because I know the pH rises in the reservoirs.
• Filled the bottoms with this nutrient water

The little orange line in the glass orb is the water level indicator on the AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases. It floats on the water. That means if you see orange, it means there is water in the reservoir.

I guess, if this works, I won’t have to water them for a while…

Hmmm, I kind of like watering them.

I’m not sure I like how “hands off” it is to use the auto-watering pot bases.

I like looking at the plants every day, and giving water every 2-3 days.

Now that they’ve got 3 waterings worth of water, it seems like it should be at least a week before I need to give any more.

What will happen with the pH in that time? Will they be wicking properly? Will they show any signs of nutrient deficiencies?

No worries. I’ll be here to save the day if they need anything!

Day 49 – Day 4 since 12/12

Removed big fan leaves from all the stems growing taller than the others. Helps slow “stretchy” stems down when you take away their biggest fan leaves.

You can see that lower parts of all the plants are already in shadow.

Probably should give them a final defoliation and lollipop soon.

Total coverage

Week 8 – Transition to Flowering and First Pistils

Day 50 (Flowering Day 5)

Overall plants look awesome.

A picture from the webcam.

Some still have full reservoirs, some almost empty. Hmmm, are they really drinking so differently? Or are some not wicking?

Day 51 (Flowering Day 6)

All reservoirs are empty now except the Blue Dream.

How strange.

The pot doesn’t feel light, like its not getting water. The plant looks great.

Maybe it’s just not drinking as much as the others?

Super busy today, but I think they’ll be good until tomorrow.

It is kind of nice they water themselves.

A quick gif. Look how much they grew since yesterday! They love the auto-watering pots.

Day 52 (Flowering Day 7)

I’ve been really busy the last couple of days and feel like I haven’t been tending the plants as much as I normally do… (hence why I don’t have actual pictures of them)

And they look awesome!

Rows and rows of happy leaves

Those auto-watering pots are finally doing their thing and making my life easier!

Today I will water them all from the top again, to make sure everything is still fully wicking.

Then empty/clean all the reservoirs, and refill with fresh nutrient water.

Water from top

• 3 gallons
  • Big Bloom 3 tsp
  • Grow Big 3 tsp
  • Tiger Bloom 3 tsp
• No pH Down
• 6.7 pH
• 671 PPM

Fill reservoirs (took two more batches, so the following x 2)

• 3 gallons
  • Big Bloom 3 tsp
  • Grow Big 3 tsp
  • Tiger Bloom 3 tsp
• ½ tsp pH Down
• 6.5 pH
• 676 PPM

Though I can see they’re ALL wicking finally. Yay! It really was the case the ropes and pots needed to be fully soaked first.

Some of the ropes even have roots growing into them already.

It’s getting really dark and bushy under the top canopy. These plants need to be lollipopped.

Training

• Lollipopped the plants
• Did some major defoliation, especially from the bottom and middle, though you wouldn’t be able to tell just from looking at them!
• Made sure all the main buds were exposed
• Used twist tie to adjust any branches or stems to make them more evenly spaced and of the same height

Got my trusty Fiskars to cut off stems

Removed any stems that will never make it to the top of the plant (we’ve got plenty that have!)

I pulled the front plants out so you could clearly see what it looked like to lollipop the two most wild plants (Purple Ghost Candy and Blue Dream in the back)

Before and after lollipopping

Removed lots of stems and leaves. Filled up half a 5-gallon bucket!

Here’s what they all looked like after the training session. Nice and airy and bright under there again!

Ahhh I hurt my back.

Stupid moving of the pots.

Though I comfort myself that the plants are looking PERFECT.

Day 53 (Flowering Day 8)

Plants look awesome!

Nothing to do. I can see they’ve slightly wicked up some water, so the wicking continues to work.

The first buds are JUST starting to form, about a week after getting 12/12.

These little white hairs are the first signs of buds.

I can see the stems are growing in that long, lanky “Flowering Stretch” kind of way you always see at the beginning of the flowering stage.

Plants are looking “stretchy”

The stage is perfectly set.

The entire canopy has well-spaced long buds from each plant.

A lot of the “work” for this grow is done. At this point, it’s more a matter of just keeping plants watered (which seems like it’s going to be easy with these auto-watering pot bases) and keep the light the right distance away.

We’ll still need to prune the plants as needed, but from here on out, Mother Nature does most of the work for us!

My thoughts on the auto-watering pot bases:

• I think I should have watered purely from the top for the vegetative stage. It would have simplified my life greatly just to treat them like trays to catch runoff water.
• Next time I plan to wait until the plants start flowering to start trying to water from the bottom.
• Like maybe around 12/12, give them an extreme watering until it partly fills up the reservoirs below. Remove the runoff, and then refill the reservoirs with fresh water. Then start watering purely from the bottom. Something like that.

Day 54 (Flowering Day 9)

I see all have been drinking water, the Mandarin Cookies drinks the least, which makes sense since it’s the smallest.

Peeking in through the grow tent window…

Flawless!

Day 55 (Flowering Day 10)

All the water in the reservoirs is gone!

I’m going to refill the reservoirs with plain ph’d water to help them use up nutrients, as the leaves look a bit dark to me when I take one out of the tent to look in regular light. I think it’s that they’ve been drinking SO much, and just taking in tons of nutrients.

• Gave 3 gallons plain water, ph’d to 6.5 with 1 tsp PH Down

The leaves look a bit dark to me, when I take them into natural light.

You can see drops of water where leaves lay on top of each other.

Refilled the reservoirs

Water Level Indicators Aren’t Always Accurate

I noticed today that you can’t always trust the water level indicator on the AC Infinity auto-watering pot bases.

In case you forgot, this is the water level indicator on the pots. If you can see the little orange rod, it means there is still water in the reservoir.

You can see when I pick it up and put it down, that the indicator “floats” on the water and pops back up, showing the current water level.

But… sometimes the indicator gets stuck and doesn’t move even if the water gets used up. It’s only when you bump it that the water level indicator gets unstuck and shows that there’s actually no water in the reservoir.

I had been wondering why certain plants weren’t drinking as much, like the Blue Dream. It’s one of the biggest plants, so it seemed weird that it hadn’t finished drinking up its reservoir like the others. But I bumped it in the water indicator fell, showing that it actually had no water. It seems it’s just that particular indicator tends to get stuck the most, which is why the Blue Dream didn’t seem like it was drinking.

Signs of Flowering

Plants look good. All appear to be flowering a bit.

• The Mandarin Cookies and Ghost Candy are currently the slowest/furthest behind.
• The GG4 x Zkittlez is furthest along which makes sense since it seemed to have stretched the least. When a plant stops stretching right away, it’s usually because they start flowering right away.

10 days after initiating 12/12, the GG4 x Zkittlez has the most white hairs at each bud site.

They look a little stretchy. But that’s to be expected in the midst of the flowering stretch.

I turned up the light to 100% to try to discourage stretching. The light is insanely powerful.

Measuring light: PPFD Phone app vs Apogee MQ-500 PAR Meter

Phone app – PPFD in the top canopy is now 750-900 µmol/m²/s. This is according to the light app “PPFD Meter” on my Android Galaxy phone.

PAR meter – According to my Apogee MQ-500 PAR meter, the PPFD is less, more like 500-650 µmol/m²/s.

My thoughts:

• Very different values – I’ve noticed the Apogee PAR meter consistently measures significantly lower then the PPFD Meter on my phone.
• Still somewhat helpful – I think both can help you understand how light levels are affected by adjusting your grow lights.
• Difficult to know anything for sure – The Phone app says we’re hitting 900, which is getting close to the max recommended amount of about 1000. Yet the PAR meter says we’re only hitting 650, which is a relatively low amount for the flowering stage. According to my eyes, it does seem REALLY bright to me now that I turned it up to full power. Ao at least in this instance, I’m more inclined to believe the app on my phone. But I’ll watch the plants for any signs of stress on the plants. In the end, they’re the real light meter.

My conclusion: Don’t trust “universal” PPFD values – Every way I’ve used to measure light, whether my phone, a lux meter (which I didn’t use here, but have tried before), or an expensive PAR meter, all give different values for the same light levels. That means you should take any kind of “PPFD chart” or recommendation with a grain of salt. Unless you’re using the exact same grow light and measurement device, I think you might be comparing apples and oranges when comparing PPFD values.

Remember, the real light meter is your plants!

Day 56 (Flowering Day 11)

Noticed some yellow tips, especially on the Blue Dream.

Checked the water reservoirs, and the pH was between 7-8. And no surprise, the reading was highest for the Blue Dream plant.

Plants had already drank nearly all the water from yesterday. They’re heavy drinkers right now.

I used a syringe to syphon out the remaining amount from the reservoirs. Only got about ⅓ of a gallon in total, which means they drink over 2.5 gallons of water overnight.

Gave 3 gallons water

• Since plant leaves are slightly dark overall, I mostly just gave just water.
• Since pH was climbing, I decided to add a small amount of Cal-Mag, which can help stabilize pH
  Though Cal-Mag also raises pH, and therefore needs extra PH Down to counteract
• 1 tsp Cal-Mag
• 1.5 tsp pH Down
• 6.0 pH
• 442 PPM

Gave some water from the top

• I gave each plant a couple of cups of water from the top. My reasoning is to make sure there’s great suction power through the plant root system. I feel like if there’s water all the way to the top, it will be able to wick more water up into the pot.
• My other thought was adding some proper pH water from the top could possibly help lower the pH of the root zone faster than just letting them drink from the bottom.

The rest of the water was pumped into the reservoirs.

Reservoir water measurements afterwards

• 6.2 pH
• 430 PPM

According to the water level indicators they’re each between 3/4 and 7/8 of the maximum level for the reservoirs.

I’m hoping since each plant got some proper pH water from the top, and have a reservoir of proper pH water from the bottom, they’ll be able to quickly get whatever nutrients they needed that they couldn’t because the pH was too high.

Just a note to myself, this thing where the leaves kind of look dark/blue and the tips look yellow seems to be highly correlated to high pH, at least as far as I can tell, at least with Fox farm nutrients and these plants in this system.

Overall they look great!

Bonus: A timelapse summary of the week!

Week 9 – Auto-watering pot bases to the rescue!

Day 57 (Flowering Day 12)

Checked on the plants, they look great.

Here are closeups of the buds from each of the plants so far (12 days from initiating 12/12)

GG4 x Zkittlez seems the furthest along

Mandarin Cookies is not far behind

Here is the Candy Games #38, which has tons of white hairs but no “budlets” yet

Blue Dream is about tied.

Purple Ghost Candy was starting to worry me, but today I saw a bunch of hairs, and it’s definitely growing in that stretchy “just started flowering” kind of way.

I thought it was cool to see how much a difference the strain makes when it comes to how quickly after 12/12 for flowers to appear.

They seem to have drank about half of the reservoir water, perhaps a bit more.

I don’t like the smell of the reservoir water. I took some out to test the pH with a syringe, and I noticed a slightly stinky smell. The smell is like how the Fox Farm nutrients smell after a half-full batch of nutrient water sits for a few days.

It makes me miss synthetic nutrients, which I find tend to need a lot more time before they start to smell bad. I wonder if hydroponic nutrients might be a better choice for this setup, since they’re specifically designed to help roots thrive in reservoir water.

About the Reservoirs Today

• pH of reservoirs tested at 6.8 pH
• The top of FoxFarm recommended pH range
• Almost to max 7 pH range for soil
• Tomorrow, I’ll remove any water that’s left, and replace with more water at 6.0 pH.
• The goal is for the reservoir water to always be between 6 to 7 pH every day. This is the best way to prevent nutrient deficiencies with cannabis plants.

Tomorrow, I will start adding the Hydroguard supplement when mixing up water for the plants. This supplement is something I always use when growing in hydroponic systems with roots in water. It adds good bacteria that help protect your roots against root rot or other root diseases. It has no downside (doesn’t affect PPM, doesn’t affect pH) but can make a huge difference in reservoir health. I already have an unopened bottle from a recent hydro grow, so I figured, why not?

Day 58 (Flowering Day 13)

Nebula from the near future: Just a little foreshadowing, this beautiful, flat, neat canopy will not look so neat very soon…

I should have taken more time to admire the view haha

You can see the beginnings of the problem child in the back left. Starting to get taller than the rest, but this is nothing yet compared to what’s to come. Oh Purple Ghost Candy, you’re lucky your buds and yields always come out so good!

A hint of the crazy stretch that’s incoming…

Reservoir measurements

• 7.3 pH
• 1700 PPM
• Pumped out all water, to be replaced with…

3 gallons water – Week 2 of 12/12 nutrients (⅔ strength) – Here were my steps

• Big Bloom 6 tsp
• Tiger Bloom 4 tsp
• Was 6.7 pH after this
• 3 tsp Hydroguard
• 1.5 tsp pH Down
• Was 5.7 after this 😭
• Added 3 tsp Cal-Mag (to help bring up the pH)
• Was 5.9 pH after this.
• 720 PPM
• Soooooo close to 6, but PPM is a bit high (highest previously has been around 680 PPM, if I remember correctly)
  I think it’s okay since the pH has been high previously
• They’re growing fast, stretching. Let’s do it!

Watered a few cups from the top, My reasoning was to help with wicking, even though they look nice and wet at the top. I also wanted to provide the plants with good pH throughout the root zone really quickly. I put the rest of the water in the reservoirs.

I then added about a gallon of extra plain water because I was worried about the PPM, when I remembered that some of the plants looked like they were thinking about nutrient burn (burnt tips from too much nutrients).

After getting a couple of cups of water from the top, and being filled from the bottom, and given an additional 1 gallon of plain water on top of everything else, their reservoir is now measure as thus…

• 6.3 pH
• 1500 PPM

Environment:

Humidity is too high in San Diego right now, hitting 70%! Everything feels kind of sticky. The grow tent reading is also around 70% RH today.

Fan

• Turned up the exhaust fan and opened up vents a bit more, in hope a little extra fresh air helps remove extra humidity from the plants, though that doesn’t help lower the humidity of the air being brought in.

Dehumidifier

• It was humid but cool in the tent, under 80°F/27°C and close to 70% RH
• So I turned on my big dehumidifier in room, which increases temperature and lowers humidity. Side note:. If it had been hot and humid, I would have turned on the AC, which lowers temperature and humidity.
• I would like to get temp closer to 85°F/30°C and RH closer to 55-60%.
• I feel they grow better at this stage when it’s a bit warmer, especially with LEDs.

Day 59 (Flowering Day 14)

No time today! So glad for the auto-watering pot bases keeping the plants watered. 

A quick check on the plants through the grow tent window is all the time I had today.

Day 60 (Flowering Day 15)

Another day with nothing to do but enjoy the plants. Which is great because I was strapped for time.

Starting to see real buds forming!

Day 61 (Flowering Day 16)

Plants look good. They drink up all their water. Some of the pots of soil are starting to look a little dry at the top. But all the plants are heavy and seem well-watered. Leaves look good. Buds are growing. Here’s the hoping it goes well.

Starting to get some major shadow (no light hitting the floor). Will need to defoliate soon.

A little part of me worries that the buds won’t get big enough.

The plants seem to be stretching less, and well into flowering now. The slowest one to make buds is the Purple Ghost Candy, which is also the tallest. The second slowest was the Blue Dream but now it seems to have caught up to everyone else. Very impressed with this Blue Dream so far. A little worried how much this Purple Ghost Candy might stretch. But luckily it’s in the back corner. That’s always a perfect place for a too-tall plant.

Another message from future Nebula: I was right. This Purple Ghost Candy is going to cause a ruckus haha

Week 3 of 12/12 nutrients (⅔ strength)

3 gallons

• 6 tsp Big Bloom
• 4 tsp Grow Big
• 4 tsp Tiger Bloom
• Was 6.6 pH after this
• ½ tsp pH Down
• 6.4 pH
• 740 PPM

Just before I water them, I feel like some of them are thinking about nutrient burn. I don’t see definite nutrient burn, but on the Blue Dream and the Candy Games I feel like there’s a tinge of the idea of nute burn.

So I added a gallon of extra water.

• Ph’ed down to 6.1, since I know rising pH is an issue in this system.
• Watered from the top

Then I added the nutrient water I made to the reservoirs. From the top.

So 4 gallons in already, still no runoff.

I want to check the pH of the root zone, so I made another batch, at ⅓ strength

Week 3 of 12/12 nutrients (⅓ strength)

3 gallons

• 3 tsp Big Bloom
• 2 tsp Grow Big
• 2 tsp Tiger Bloom
• Was 6.8 pH after this
• ½ tsp pH Down
• 6.5 pH
• 600 PPM
• Watered from the top until I finally got runoff into the reservoirs

Reservoirs after runoff

• 6-6.2 pH
• 1800-2400 PPM

PPM seems very high to me, even though I’ve been giving nutrients at such reduced strength…

Nutrient burn? I’ve been giving the nutrients at very low levels compared to the recommendation, yet the leaves are thinking about nutrient burn. The tip of this leaf is a tiny bit brown. Not yellow, which I associate with nutrient deficiencies or light stress. It actually looks brown, without any other symptoms. To me, this looks like the very beginning of nutrient burn (too much nutrients). It’s hard to see in pictures. Hopefully it doesn’t spread! Luckily, a little nutrient burn never hurt anything.

Light

• I feel like the buds aren’t big enough…
• So Sirius helped me put up the other HLG 350
• Woo hoo! Two lights!
• Sirius turned them down to level 6 of 10
• Apogee meter shows that it’s 1000 PPFD, though the mobile phone PPFD app shows closer to 1500 PPFD. Hmmm.

All the leaves started sticking straight up, which I associate with high light levels.

A few hours later…

• I wonder if the leaves look a bit stressed?
• I turned the lights both down one more click to level 5
• It’s plenty warm in there now with both lights, so I turned off the dehumidifier, which heats up the room
• Turned on the AC, set to 77 for now.

16 days since 12/12, and the Purple Ghost Candy is finally starting to put out lots of hairs!

It’s behind the other plants. Especially the GG4 x Zkittlez plant, which has full “budlets” already.

Let’s see how they look tomorrow!

Day 62 (Flowering Day 17)

Still look kind of light stressed? Or just my imagination?

Environment

• 80°F/27°C
• 68% RH

Light

• Turned both lights down to 4
• Want to feel like the plants want more light, before turning it up

Reservoirs

• 6.4 pH
• Smells a bit off to me
• Decided to empty the water out of the reservoirs
• Should give them a good cleaning tomorrow

Later that day, they still looked stressed. The color and shape of the top leaves seems slightly off. Here’s a view from the web camera.

I turned both lights down to just Level 2 (of 10).

That brought the PPFD to under 700 for each plant, according to the PPFD app on my phone. I know that’s a non-stressful amount of light, since that’s what they were getting before I added the second light.

I also was a little worried about possibly getting nutrient burn on the Candy Games #38 plant.

Gave plain water

• 3 gallons
• Gave 3 gallons plain water, from the top
• 1 tsp cal mag (just to help stabilize the pH vs adding nothing)
• pH to 6.4
• The goal is to reduce the nutrient levels in the root zone to prevent the chance of nutrient burn.

I don’t like the way the reservoirs smell, but today is an extremely busy day for me. So I just want the plants to hold on until tomorrow, and I should probably take all the reservoirs out, clean them, and put them back in, as the AC Infinity directions tell you to do.

I also plan to do another defoliation of big fan leaves and possibly lollipop on the plants. They’re looking extra leafy, and I think lots of dinky little stems still need to be mercilessly removed, if I’m honest, though I hate cutting off anything with a bud on it.

I pulled a few leaves and small stems, but this tent is wild and needs much, much more.

But if I see the plants tomorrow, and a bud is on a dinky stem, and it’s significantly smaller than other buds on that same plant, it’s got to go!

The water I got from the reservoir was about 6.4 pH and 2,200 PPM.

Day 63 (Flowering Day 18)

Looking happy.

Nebula from the future: I thought the flowering stretch was pretty much over. How wrong I was!

LEDs

• I turned the front light up to level four, since it was on top of the shorter plants.
• I turned the backlight up to level three because the plants were taller and closer.
• According to my phone app this gives them somewhere between 800 and just over 1000 PPFD
• According to the Apogee PAR meter, it’s closer to 500 to 750 PPFD.
• However, in the Wyze camera, they seemed less perky after a few hours.
• So I turned both LEDs down back to where they were before, so now level 3 in the front and level 2 behind.

Reservoirs

• Still exactly 6.4 pH
• Seems like the pH has stopped rising.
• I added some plain 6.8 pH water to each one, bringing the pH in the reservoirs to 6.6
• I want them to get the full pH range
• I really should clean the auto-watering bases out like the AC Infinity directions say, but if I don’t get time today at least they have plenty of water and the proper pH!

Let’s take a quick tour of the tent to compare to the beginning of the week!

GG4 x Zkittlez (front left) is the shortest plant in the tent. It naturally grew in an orderly manner.

GG4 x Zkittlez buds are the furthest along.

Candy Games #38 (front right) is next. It’s stretched a ton since I initiated 12/12.

Candy Games #38 bud closeup.

Notice in the above picture that the edges of the fan leaves are turned up from light stress. That’s part of why I dialed the LEDs down. Once the light levels are back to a good level for the plant, the edges of the leaves should settle back down.

However, if you ignore this symptom for too long and don’t lower light levels, the edges can get permanently crispy. I know that from past experience haha.

Something that’s been hard for me to accept as a grower is that, even though “light = food”, you get the best yields and bud quality if you listen to your plants when they tell you, “Too much!”

Mandarin Cookies (middle plant). The plant is difficult to see clearly in the middle, but the buds are coming along beautifully! So sparkly already.

The Purple Ghost Candy bud development (below) is far behind the others. Foreshadowing: I don’t realize yet how much bigger this plant will get; it’s still stretching a ton. No wonder it was slow to make buds.

The Purple Ghost Candy is finally flowering to my satisfaction. I was starting to wonder if there was a light leak.

I thought this next picture might help give an idea of the Purple Ghost Candy  in action. In the front of this picture is the GG4 x Zkittlez plant with white fluffy buds. You can see those long branches looming in the background, with barely any buds on them yet. That’s the Purple Ghost Candy.

GG4 x Zkittlez in front, Purple Ghost Candy in back. The shortest plant and tallest plant, right next to each other.

In comparison to the Purple Ghost Candy, the Blue Dream buds are stacking! (back right plant)

Recap of the week: Here were the plants at the beginning of the week (flowering day 12) to the end of the week (flowering day 18).

I made the red line at the top of the back pocket, so you can see how much the plants grew this week!

I love seeing the plants every day. Something is so special about growing a beautiful garden that literally makes weed for you.

Week 10 – Flowering stage is in full gear

Day 64 (Flowering Day 19)

Didn’t get a chance to check on the plants today.

Day 65 (Flowering Day 20)

Poor babies have been completely ignored for almost 2 days.

The back plants completely overgrew the webcams again, in just two days!

The Purple Ghost Candy grew an incredible five or six inches in those days. It’s crazy. It seems to have responded really happily to the extra light.

The Purple Ghost Candy (back left) is MUCH taller than its neighbor the GG4 x Zkittlez plant (front left)

The Blue Dream (back right) is also tall but not quite to the same extent. It’s much more closely matched to its neighbors.

In case you want to see the whole flowering stretch from 12/12 to today, I made a moving gif. Wow!

Sirius and I supercropped the tallest stems. The goal wasn’t necessarily to make them shorter as much as to prevent them from growing any longer. 

I’m not sure if you’re interested in this type of content, but here was Sirius and I talking about the plants before we supercropped them. Let us know what videos you want to see more of!

If you supercrop a strong stem, it stunts the growth of that stem even if the stem rises back up. 

So here’s to hoping that the webcams catch the plants not getting any taller.

Here’s me taking a picture of the plants, from the perspective of the webcam.

The soil still looks wet enough on the top that I feel totally comfortable watering them from the bottom.

However, since they looked on the verge of being nutrient burnt last time, even though I watered them at ⅓ strength, I will lower nutrients even more. This time I’m going to water them at ⅙ strength (cut in half compared to last time). I’ll adjust the next watering depending on how they react.

3 gallons (week 7 / flowering week 3, ⅙ strength)

• 1.5 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big 
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 0.75 tsp pH Down 
• 1 tsp Hydroguard (to prevent root smelliness by giving root inoculants)
• 6.7 pH 
• 500 PPM 
• Added to reservoirs.

Leaves currently look great and have an overall good color.

Day 66 (Flowering Day 21)

Didn’t have time to check on the plants today. Thank you auto-watering pot bases!

Day 67 (Flowering Day 22)

Some of the Purple Ghost Candy stems haven’t turned back up yet. So I super cropped the remaining tall branches so it’s all one height (about the same height as the GG4 x Zkittles next to it).

I flipped the light orientation so that that’s now the “short” side of the tent, and the other side is the tall side. Then I readjusted the lights, so that they could be moved independently for each side of the tent. 

It would be impossible to grow in a 4×4 grow tent if you didn’t have those side access panels to reach plants in the back.

Watering

• 3 gallons (week 7 / flowering week 3, ⅓ strength)
• 3 tsp Big Bloom
• 2 tsp Grow Big 
• 2 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 0.5 tsp pH Down 
• 1 tsp Hydroguard (to prevent root smelliness by giving root inoculants)
• 6.6 pH 
• 560 PPM 
• Added to reservoirs.

Tops of soil were just starting to dry out, which I believe is normal, as watering from the bottom tends to cause the plants to drink mostly from the bottom of their pots. I watered a tiny bit of the water on top, just to hopefully cause there to be overall more wicking action at the roots, but ensuring there’s moisture from the top to bottom. Don’t know if it works that way lol

Training

• Removed lower small stems 
• Needs a good defoliation tomorrow, I think

Day 68 (Flowering Day 23)

A beautiful vision awaits me when I open the tent today!

Training 

Today I defoliated and lollipopped the two plants on the right. The first one is Blue Dream, the second one is Candy Games #38.

I was going to do the same for the plants on the left, but the Purple Ghost Candy stems still seem fragile. So I don’t want to be messing around with that one too much. And since it’s kind of laying on the Mandarin Cookies and the GG4 x Zkittles, I’m going to give that side another day or two before I give it the full strip. Luckily with defoliation, there isn’t an exact schedule as much as accomplishing a series of steps. 

If you look at the plants on the right now, they were at the perfect place to be defoliated. They look a little sparse right now, but this tells the plant to put all of its effort on fattening those buds. 

Defoliated and lollipopped right side of the tent. The left side looks wild in comparison.

It’s sad doing a defoliation, and having to make heartbreaking choices. Sometimes you have to remove buds that seem like they might actually turn out well. but I try to look at the top of the plant make sure there’s an even amount of bud spaced, and then remove the rest. The only exceptions I make, are if I find a bud that’s already extremely well developed, even if it hasn’t made it to the top, and those sometimes get to stay. 

I took a picture of one of the buds I cut, it made me a little sad, but I’m sure it was the right thing to do. 

I’m hoping that the Purple Ghost Candy recovers quickly. Once it gains some strength, I can give it a nice defoliation and lollipop.

The Purple Ghost Candy most certainly is not going to keep getting taller, here on out it’s recovering. You can even see that the leaves on it are stressed at the top, the poor thing. But I think it’s all going to be for the best. And one thing to note, is recoverable stress is associated with higher THC levels after harvest. So once this plant pulls through and is happily flowering again, I think we’re really going to see the benefits later.

I’m kind of happy with how the super cropping went, because I feel like it’s nice to have a flat side, so I can get the most out of the GG4 x Zkittles and the Mandarin Cookies. Otherwise they would be below the canopy line and never develop to the level that I would hope. So now it’s perfect the whole left side is flat the whole right sign is about the same size. The right side seems to be able to handle the light well and buds are developing well. 

Bud development 

I’m pretty excited to see the bud development on the Blue Dream, but perhaps most especially on the Candy Games #38. The buds seem disproportionately big for how recently it just started flowering, and I’m feeling pretty good it’s going to be a good yielder. I like the way that it’s growing. The Blue Dream also seems like it’s going to get excellent yields.

Candy Games #38

Mandarin Cookies

Purple Ghost Candy

GG4 x Zkittlez

Blue Dream

None of the flowers have started turning color yet. They’re still completely white and growing bigger, which is always a great sign. You know once you start seeing brown hairs, that’s when you start to get a good idea of how big the buds are going to be in the end. 

LEDs 

Both lights are set to level three. I’m going to watch to see if plants show any signs of stress. 

For some reason, it seems like the lights don’t measure as bright since I rearranged them in the opposite direction. Which doesn’t make much sense to me. But it is what it is. I’ll do more testing on the lights in the future. Just under 1000 PPFD everywhere in the tent according to the app on my phone. I’ve noticed the dial settings on the lights, which are the same model and should be identical, aren’t even with each other. On one light, if I go to the first click it doesn’t even turn the lights on, where the other one it does. I’d like to do some testing between the two. Yesterday, I turned both lights up to 100%, and saw that brings it to 2000 PPFD throughout the tent according to the app. Absolutely crazy.

It makes me wonder who could actually use these two lights at full power? It also makes me wonder if I should have stuck with just the one light, but I figure it’s better to have two and be able to adjust them separately. That just gives me more overall control over light levels in the tent especially when there’s such a big height difference between each side.

Day 69 (Flowering Day 24)

LEDs – Took some comparison light measurements, for anyone interested in this kind of thing.

• Turned both lights to level 3
• Even though the plants on the right are much closer. Light levels are surprisingly similar
• With this configuration 
  • Left light level 3
    • 22 inches from tops of plants
    • 600-700 umols on phone 
    • 450-500 umols on Apogee meter
  • Right light level 3
• 12-16 inches from tops of plants 
• 700-1000 umols on phone
• 500-700 umols on Apogee meter 

Just for future reference, what if I turn them both to level 4.

• Left light level 4
  • 22 inches from tops of plants
  • 850-950 umols on phone 
  • 550-650 umols on Apogee meter
• Right light level 4
  • 12-16 inches from tops of plants 
  • 1340-1580 umols on phone
  • 750-1000 umols on Apogee meter

Too high! The left plants are weak. Giving them Level 4 is like giving the right plants level 3, but since I’m hoping for the Purple Ghost Candy to recover well, I’m going to put them on the lower end. 

I wish these lights were easier to adjust up and down and small amounts. I can also see how it could be confusing for new growers, if they use their light at the same setting as someone else, but are actually giving their plants a significantly different amount of light.

So both lights are set to Level 3 for now.

Watering – Since I already fed them a few days ago, I’m giving it at extremely low strength today. Leaves look healthy without deficiencies, but if I take leaves out of the tent into regular light, they look a bit too dark. So I want to avoid overloading them with more nutrients than they can use.

3 gallons (week 7 / flowering week 3, ⅙  strength)

• 1.5 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big 
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 0.5 tsp pH Down 
• 1 tsp Hydroguard (to prevent root smelliness by giving root inoculants)
• 6.7 pH 
• 490 PPM 
• Added to reservoirs.

I checked the PPM and pH of the reservoirs. They seem to be exactly what I put in. I might test them again later today, I’m curious to see if they have any residue in the bottom, that might affect the PPM or the pH after it’s sat for a while.

Environment 

82F in the tent with these lights at this level. 62% RH. Luckily it’s been way less humid lately, and so the humidity is naturally at a better level. That being said, once the bud start fattening more, I will definitely have the dehumidifier running 24/7 to keep it closer to 50% as the buds finish up. But that’s weeks away. At this point, they’re fine at 62% RH.

Note from later that day

The leaves seem to be turning up and on on the tall side, praying too hard. I turned that light down to level 2.

Here are its new measurements 

• 12-16 inches from tops of plants 
• PPFD app 500-600. so low!
• Apogee 390-450. So low! 

The difference between level 2 and 3 is enormous. Level 3 seems too much, but this seems so little. Especially considering that it drops even lower as you go down into the canopy.

But the plants look stressed, and they’re the boss. So down it goes for today.

Day 70 (Flowering Day 25)

Plants look amazing today!

The Purple Ghost Candy looks 10x happier today. All the super cropped stems are finally turning up.

I love enjoying the plants while enjoying a joint.

It got me thinking about plant personalities.

I think a lot of people notice different strains and plants act in their own “way”. I wanted to share my thoughts on these strains so far. I germinated 3 seeds from each strain for the purposes of this grow, so I included my thoughts on germination. I’m also growing some of the leftover extra plants in another tent, so that informs these opinions a bit.

Purple Ghost Candy

• Not the best to germinate 
• All 3 were weirdos as seedlings
• Hollow brittle stems 
• Gangly with lots of branches everywhere
• Slow to start flowering 
• Stretched a lot
• Covered in bud sites
• Looks like it will be a big yielder

This particular Purple Ghost Candy seed was a slow-growing seedling, at first

Yet a month later, the runty seedling was now the biggest plant! (40 days from seed)

From today. Just getting started flowering!

From a past grow in this setup (same seed pack). Purple Ghost Candy is a beast!

Mandarin Cookies

• All germinated, but a bit slow to germinate and get started (admittedly they were 5 year old seeds, but they all germinated fine)
• Pretty leaves not shaped quite like most plants.
• Overall smallish plants.
• Stretched a normal amount.
• Crazy sparkly. It looks like someone dropped a bag of sugar over the plant.
• Leaves near buds are getting plump and sparkly, like they’re turning into buds too

An adorable seedling

Grew healthy but relatively slow compared to the others. Here it was at day 22.

From today. So sparkly already!

Mandarin Cookies from a previous grow under HLG LED (same seed pack).

That plant produced some of my favorite buds ever!

GG4 x Zkittlez

• One of 3 seeds was a mutant that grew with alternating nodes from a seedling
• Both mutant and non mutant plants grew fast
• All grew in a beautiful, classic, easy to grow kind of way.
• Didn’t stretch much
• Lots of bud sites
• Naturally bushy
• Uniform growth
• Seems super beginner friendly, great for small spaces
• Buds look beautiful so far, but not the biggest

One of the seeds (right seedling) grew with alternating nodes from the beginning, which is a bit unusual, giving it a kind of clover shape from above.

Yet both plants grew into a beautiful, orderly plants.

Here’s the one from our tent after it just got started flowering. The plant grew into a natural bushy structure. Perfect for home growing.

Buds were the quickest to develop of all the plants, and I would guess the GG4 x Zkittlez will be the first ready to harvest, too.

Blue Dream

• Huge, fast growing plants
• Super easy to germinate 
• Tons of long, stacked bud sites
• Would be great to grow by itself so it could spread out 
• Tends to be tall, extremely amenable to being trained 
• Appears like it will be the biggest yielder in the tent, though we’ll see 

Seeds sprouted the fastest of all, and grew like they were running a race. By transplant day, it had already FILLED its cup with roots.

At just 26 days old, our Blue Dream was already the size of a much older plant.

(From today) It’s filled the entire back right of the tent with long stacking buds. Can’t wait to see how big they get!

Candy Games #38

• All seeds germinated fast, and seedlings grew at a typical pace
• Compared to the others this plant drinks less water, and needs less nutrients. 
• Stretched a lot for flowering. It went from being one of the shorter plants to one of the taller plants.
• Seems to be using the stretch to make a lot of bud sites.
• Super fat, gorgeous, sparkly buds, grow in golfball-like nuggets forming.
• Looks to be another surprisingly big producer, but we’ll see 

A lovely low-maintenance plant (26 days old here)

Right around when I initiated 12/12

Here it is 18 days after initiating 12/12. It stretched a lot (more than doubled in size).

Lots of buds are starting to form on those leggy stems (pic from today).

Buds look lovely so far (from today).

Here’s an example of what Candy Games #38 buds look like after being grown out.

Today’s Watering Routine

• Reservoirs are essentially empty 
• So I’m going to give them more water at the same strength 
• But first, what’s in the reservoirs?

Reservoirs 

• Purple ghost candy has 800 PPM and 7.7 pH . I noticed it has yellow tips today.
• Blue Dream has 7.8 pH and 643 PPM 
• Candy games 33 has 7.7 pH and 860 PPM. 
• Mandarin cookies has 7.7 pH and 510 PPM 
• GG4 x Skittles has 7.8 pH and 930 PPM. I noticed it had the least water of all, so it makes sense that what’s left would be highly concentrated. 

So it’s clear the pH is WAY too high. The PPM seems fine. The plants seem particularly happy today. The leaves still look a little bit dark when I pull them out into the regular light. So today when I make their nutrients I’ll give the same ⅙ level nutrients I made yesterday. I’m going to make them around 6.3 pH (The lowest pH level recommended by Fox farm on their nutrient sheet)

Watering

• 3 gallons (week 8 / flowering week 4, ⅙  strength)
• 1.5 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big 
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 1.5 tsp pH Down 
• 1 tsp Hydroguard (to prevent root smelliness by giving root inoculants)
• 6.2 pH 
• 500 PPM 
• Added to reservoirs.
• Tested reservoir pH and PPM, was about the same as water I put in. Let’s see how they test tomorrow 

LEDs 

I, like many growers, want to give as much light as possible. Yet it’s clear between yesterday and today, how much the plants seem to like the new, reduced light levels. The plants on the right look less stressed, and their leaves are laying more flat. It kills me to have the light only on level 2, but if the plants are happy, as far as I’m concerned, they’re the boss.

What about all of you? Do you tend to push your plants to the limit, or try to give them “just right” conditions when it comes to light levels? Hit reply to this email and let us know what you think!

Week 11

Day 71 (Flowering Day 26)

Here are the plants at 26 days from 12/12

The Purple Ghost Candy is rising with a vengeance. I had to tie it down a bunch of branches today. Apparently nothing can hold it back.

Purple Ghost Candy (back left) rising above the canopy!

I noticed the Candy Games #38 had nutrient burn, which I was a little sad to see. I’ve been giving very weak nutrients lately. I’m not quite sure exactly what made it appear.

I tested the reservoirs and they were all high above 7 pH. The Candy Games #38 had 1000ish PPM in the reservoir.

• Maybe when I watered it yesterday from the top, I somehow activated old nutrients that were in the soil?
• Is that how a plant could get nutrient burn getting ⅙  strength nutrients?

In any case, the solution is the same. I pumped out the water from all of the reservoirs, and refilled with new fresh water

Refilled with

• 3 gallons water
• 3 tsp Cal-Mag
• Hydroguard
• 1.25 tsp pH Down
• 6.1 pH
• 480 PPM
• I added the Cal-Mag to try to help stabilize the pH.

Day 72 (Flowering Day 27)

I took one of the extra auto-watering pots and used it to raise the GG4 x Zkittlez (the shorted plants) several inches. It’s nice and stable already but I used some blue tape just to make sure it can’t slide around.

Stacked an extra bottom to make the shortest plant taller.

The front left (short) plant is now a bit taller, but still furthest from the light!

pH was really high, approaching 7.7 pH

• Drained the reservoirs, and made new water, this time with a sixth strength nutrients, plus cow mag. I feel like it seems like the pH is more stable when there’s at least some amount of nutrients in it. I know the Tiger Bloom in particular seems to bring down pH.

Watering

• 3 gallons (week 8 / flowering week 4, ⅙  strength)
• 1.5 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 1 tsp Hydroguard (to prevent root smelliness by giving root inoculants)
• 6.0 pH
• 500 PPM

Added a pinch of citric crystals, to help keep the pH low. I know from working with super soil, that the citric crystals seem to lower pH not just immediately but also over time. I’m hoping a little extra organic buffer of an acid can help keep the pH from rising overnight

• Added nutrient water to reservoirs.
• Tested reservoir pH and PPM, was about the same as water I put in. Let’s see how they test tomorrow

Training – Removed small buds

Went and removed all the lower buds that weren’t a substantial size yet. So I went under the plants, and if anything just looked like hairs, without actual weight to it, I just pick those off. I know from experience that the lower buds don’t ever fatten up, so I want to let the plant use all of its energy on the top buds that are actually going to get fat. Normally I take off the leaves too, when I lollipop, but this time I just picked off the buds. I’m curious of having those extra leaves might help the plant withstand potential nutrient deficiencies or light stress, since it’s a store of extra nutrients in the plant. It seems possible they might create extra energy too, and since they don’t have any buds nearby, any energy they have either stays in the plant or goes to the buds at the top.

LEDs

• The plants on the right still seemed just a tiny bit like they’re getting too much light. All of their leaves are pointing up.
• I turned the light down on that side just a little bit, not even a full click. I thought I’d give those plants a slightly overcast day until his leaves were flat again. Then I might turn the light back up tomorrow

Day 73 (Flowering Day 28)

Plants look super happy.

The Candy Games #38 (front right plant) is growing big golf ball nugs. The structure reminds me a lot of Zweet Inzanity, only sparklier.

LEDs

• Still on level 3 on left over shorter plants, and level 1.5 on right over the tall plants (you can turn the dial between clicks)

Struggling with pH in the reservoirs

pH was high in reservoirs, at 7.3. PPM was around 1000.

So there’s obviously something in the reservoir raising the pH.

However, yesterday I left some nutrient water out to see how the pH changes without being in the reservoir.

The nutrient water went to 6.6 overnight, from 6.0 yesterday.

So at least part of the problem is these nutrients tend to rise over time, at least with my water.

• I added the remaining nutrient water mixed with with 1.5 tsp pH down and split between all the reservoirs, to being their pH down without changing the water
• pH of reservoirs tested about 5.8-6.0 immediately after adding the water.
• PPM around 1000

Two hours later…

• An hour later it was at 6.7 pH. Such a fast rise!
• 1500 PPM. Why ppm rising so much? I think there must be sediment or something in the reservoirs that’s dissolving into the water?

I’m going to give just plain water for a while. The leaves seem dark and I don’t want to give more nutrient burn.

Adjust pH lower

• Mixed 1 gallon plain water with Hydroguard, adjusted to 5.5 pH
• 400 PPM after mixing
• Added to reservoirs

Reservoirs immediately after adding that water

• 6.5 pH
• 550 PPM
• About ¾ full according to the water indicators

I’d like to maintain it here.

Day 74 (Flowering Day 29)

Oct 9 – day 74 flowering day 29

Reservoirs were high again, around 7.1 pH. Plants appear dark in natural light, which signals to me they need overall lower levels of nutrients. Plants get dark when they’re getting too high levels of nutrients for their current stage of life.

Under the LED, leaves looked the right color. But in natural light, it’s clear they’re too dark (need less nutrients).

Solution: Give just plain water for a while!

So I added 3 gallons of plain water pH’ed to 6.0 with a mix of citric crystals and regular pH Down, in hopes that one of them helps to get the pH to stay lower.

After adding the water, reservoirs measured at around 6.1 pH

Day 75 (Flowering Day 30)

FORGOT TO TAKE ANY PICS TODAY! 

Struggling to keep them watered haha

This morning pH is at 7.2 again. PPM around 1200.

Added more plain water mixed to 5.9 pH.

They are drinking a ton of water. I added 3 gallons yesterday, and they need more today.

Gave about 2 gallons today. I don’t want to fill them above the “max” amount listed on the water indicators.

I know from past experience in hydro that when the roots of plants are too close to a water reservoir, it can cause stem rot over time. It’s always best to have at least an inch or two of extra air gap between plant roots and the water. I would guess that’s a good idea here. So I don’t want to overfill the reservoirs.

I’m happy they’re drinking so much water. Hopefully they’ll use up some of the extra nutrients in the leaves. Clearly there’s still nutrients available at their root zone, because the PPM of the water always climbs overnight, like there’s nutrient residue built up on the bottom or something?

Would have, should have, could have…

I honestly should take the plants out to clean and examine their auto-watering pot bases. I’m curious what’s going on in them. Are the roots overtaking everything? Is there stuff built up or growing on the bottoms of them?

But I hurt my back moving the plants last time so they’re not going anywhere again haha. They stay where they are until I start cutting off branches for harvest.

If I notice nutrient problems I’ll just start watering them from the top like regular soil, and use the trays to catch runoff and remove afterwards.

But for now I’m just going to give them plain water for a while. Maybe start giving nutrients again at very low levels once the leaves look closer to a normal green.

Day 76 (Flowering Day 31)

One LED panel was off this morning…

One of my LEDs was off this morning. But I turned it off and on and it turned back on. Hmmm. I think it’s because at that level 1 click, it’s too close to being all the way off. When it turned on it just wasn’t enough. I’m not sure exactly why it happened.

• One thing I noticed, is the plants on the right side of the tent, which have had semi-stressed looking leaves for a while, were looking really happy this morning. Their leaves were more straight and also the edges of their leaves were lying flat. So I figure it was probably a good 4-hour break for those plants. It was still getting light from the other side.
• My goal is always to keep the plants green and healthy first, and then maximize light after that. It’s painful because we’re constantly told that more light equals more buds. And that’s true. But it’s also important to think about the overall quality of the buds. And if you keep the plant healthy, the quality of the buds are better, even if the yields might not be exactly as huge. I know I’d rather have 15 oz of high quality weed than 20 oz of subpar weed. Though I doubt the difference in yields isn’t even that much.

Being really on top of nutrients also seems to allow your plants to handle a lot more light.

Water reservoirs

The water reservoirs pH were extremely high, 7.5 and up. Except the Purple Ghost Candy which had already drank all the water. The rest were about a quarter full.

I mixed up some water with just citric crystals and pH down, then gave it to them.

3 gallons

• ¼ tsp citric crystals
• 1 tsp pH down

I gave to the reservoirs. Afterwards, they were all between 6.1 and 6.6 pH. The Candy Games #38 seems to consistently have the highest pH. The Purple Ghost Candy ended up having 5.8 pH, I think because it didn’t have any water from before. So for that plant, I gave a little extra water into that one with a tiny amount of Cal-Mag in it to bring the pH up to 6.1. The water level seemed high, right at Max. So I removed about 2 cups of water with a syringe, so it’s below the max line. However that plant is drinking the most, so I’m not as worried about hurting its roots by giving it too much water.

LEDs – Zip-tied lights to the top of the tent, then turned up the light power

I wanted to rain down more photons without giving the plants light stress from too much light intensity. So I used zip ties to raise the lights in the tent. Then I turn them up a bit. The one on the left is set to level four, and the one on the right is set to level three. I’m going to observe them in the wyze cam for the day, and see how they react. If they look stressed, I’ll turn them back down. If they look good, then it stays at this light level. I could also raise the lights a little bit, but the carbon filter is in the way,. I might have to think a little bit about the best way to do it. For example I could rearrange how the lights are so their face the opposite way.

Used big thick Zip-ties to raise lights further than the native hardware allowed.

I didn’t take down any of the old hanging apparatus, for simplicity. I just added zip ties and tightened them to raise the panels. If I cut the zip ties, the lights would be hanging the way they were before.

According to my phone PPFD app, with the new height and light levels, it’s about 800 PPFD at the top of the canopy on both sides. That seems like a good amount and with the lights turned up they’ll be more light in the tent, potentially getting lower to the lower buds. Let’s see what happens!

Day 77 (Flowering Day 32)

A peak from the back right window of the tent, while I was checking on the Blue Dream up close. It’s getting stacked!

A peak from the back left window of the tent. Here’s the Purple Ghost Candy up close!

And lastly, from the front!

Reservoirs growing things…

I noticed some foam or something growing in the reservoirs, but I don’t have time to check it out. The pH was really high above seven again. I wonder if whatever is growing is what’s causing the pH to increase.

It’s hard to see, but all the little white specks are something that is growing on top of the water in the reservoir.

I can’t wait to try the Vivosun auto-watering bases, where you can actually get into the reservoir instead of only have this tiny hole.

So today I added some low pH water, but this time I added some hydrogen peroxide 3%. My hope is this kills anything in the reservoir. And although it was really low, I only filled them to about halfway, just so the water isn’t too close to the roots.

I noticed that the PPM is actually lower than it was yesterday. It measured around 370 PPM. To me that sounds like the plants, or whatever growing in the tank, is using nutrients at a higher rate than they’re using water.

The plant still look pristine, without any sign of using up nutrients. I don’t see any deficiencies on the lower leaves, which is where I would expect to start seeing some leaves dying from not giving nutrients for several days.

Giving water

So I’m going to continue giving plain water pH’ed very low, though tomorrow maybe I’ll pump out everything and try to start over with the reservoirs as best I can, without actually moving the plants.

• After giving low pH water, the pH in all the reservoirs was between 6.4 and 6.8.

Buds are developing well.

LEDs – Raised panels a bit more

Today I raised the lights a little bit more. The plants seem to have responded really well to raising the lights and increasing the light levels. I could see their leaves perk up.

Right now I have the light on the left set to level four, and the light on the right set to level three.

According to the phone app that is still about 1000 PPFD for the tallest bud it’s closest to the light..

I’ll watch them through the Wyze cam today to see how they react.

Perhaps if they react really well, and their leaves lie flat, I’ll increase the light levels even more. But we’ll see. I want to make sure the reservoirs are great before I put any additional stress on the plants. Also since they’re early in the flowering stage, and stacking well, I don’t want to accidentally stress the leaves out too much, since these leaves need to hang out for another month plus.

Week 12

Day 78 (Flowering Day 33)

Buds are all looking good!

The Mandarin Cookies buds are all kind of silvery. I remember the last Mandarin Cookies I grew (from the same seed pack) grew the same way!

GG4 x Zkittlez hairs are starting to darken and curl in.

The Candy Games #38 buds look like they’re going to get BIG.

Blue Dream seems like it’s still just getting started!

The Purple Ghost Candy is also just getting started. I have a feeling it’s going to absolutely explode in buds. It started late, but doesn’t seem to have any signs of slowing down.

I’m still struggling with PH going VERY high overnight

PH in the reservoirs was high again. Above 7.5 pH. I removed all the water out of them, and refilled the reservoirs with fresh water.

3 gallons

• Feeding schedule week 9, 1/6 strength
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• Skipped Big Bloom in case the organic ingredients were feeding what was in the reservoir, or otherwise contributing to the rising pH.
• ¼ tsp citric crystals
• 6.2 pH
• 400 PPM

Reservoirs immediately after

• 6.4 pH
• 450 ppm
• Let’s see how they change before tomorrow

LEDs

• Plants seem Happy
• Put right light on level 4, so now both are on level 4
• Leaves still look a little bit dark
• I’m curious to see how the plant reacts to higher light levels, now that the light is much further away.
• According to my PPFD app on my phone, the highest PPFD is approaching 1300 on the tallest colas.
• It’s probably too much light, so I will watch my plants closely in the Wyze web camera for signs of stress. If the leaves look stressed I’ll move it back.
• It’s hard because I want to give as much light as possible, but not too much

Day 79 (Flowering Day 34)

3 gallons

• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big (hydro version)
  • I just felt like the soil version doesn’t have enough potassium
  • I have some of the hydro version for my other plants in Fox Farm coco, and I noticed their schedule gives Grow Big (hydro)nutrients all the way until harvest at an even higher rate than tiger bloom.
  • Use 1:1 and you get a 5-10-10 NPK that seems appropriate at this phase of flowering. The hydro version also contains calcium.
  • 1 tsp Hydroguard
  • ¼ tsp citric crystals
  • 6.0 pH
  • 460 PPM

After adding 2 gallons, reservoirs were about 6.6 pH. So I mixed another ¼ tsp citric acid into the remaining nutrient water, and gave a cup of that super low pH solution. After that, reservoirs measured 6.0-6.3 pH. Good!

Overall plants look great.

Day 80 (Flowering Day 35)

Seeing that today is day 80 since I germinated these seedlings, I just wanted to reference my autoflower grow journal. The first plants were harvested on day 80, and all harvested by day 90. I thought it was interesting to compare that to this journal, to help get an idea of much faster autoflowers are compared to photoperiod plants. Even the fastest of these photoperiod plants, the GG4 x Zkittles, has a while to go.

These photoperiod plants today, at 80 days from germination. I’d estimate we’re still 4-6 weeks away from harvest day.

What our autoflowers looked like at 80 days from germination, not long before harvest. No faster cannabis harvest than an autoflower harvest! Check out the full journal!

The autoflower harvest produced about 10 oz of weed. This grow seems like it’s going to produce quite a bit more than that. And if I’m honest, I’m a lot more excited about smoking the photoperiod strains!  Especially Purple Ghost Candy, Mandarin Cookies, and Candy Games #38. With the autoflowers, the weed came out great, but I feel like the strains were less exciting.

Reservoirs

• pH was around 7
• Added some low pH water from yesterday.
• Immediately after was 6.0 pH

Turned right light onto level 4 again, but left on level 3 above the GG4 x Zkittlez that seemed a bit light stressed yesterday.

Day 81 (Flowering Day 36)

Plants look good but leaves are still too dark.

Under the LEDs, the leaves look an okay color. Maybe a little dark.

But I turned off the LEDs and took a picture in regular light, so it’s a lot easier to see that the leaves are still too dark. The leaves should all be Kelly Green, especially this late in the flowering stage, when leaves tend to lighten up. But these leaves are darker, closer to Hunter Green, which is a sign they’re getting overall too much nitrogen/nutrients. You can see the leaves at the bottom most clearly.

In normal light, you can see the leaves are very dark.

Easy fix. Continue giving just plain water until the leaves start to lighten up.

I use a 3-gallon container to water the plants

3 gallons is usually enough to water them all.

I use this water transfer pump to dispense. I wish it had a longer hose though. It is difficult to reach the plants in the back.

Reservoirs pushing 7.6 ph.Removed all the water from the reservoirs. Added a little h2o2 to kill what’s in the reservoirs. Hopefully h2o2 plus total dryness will help kill anything plus air prune the roots.

• Watered with 3 gallons of 6.1 pH water, from the top.
• No runoff.

Maybe tomorrow or the day after, I’ll give enough water to get runoff, so I can test the pH at the root zone.

But for now I want the reservoirs to dry out to help kill anything living in them.

LEDs: Turned both up to level 4

Day 82 (Flowering Day 37)

It’s going to be a lot of weed!

Gave 3 gallons from the top

• Added 1.5 tsp pH down
• 6.1 pH

Finally got a bit of runoff, around 6.7 pH

So definitely it’s high at the root zone.

Luckily we’re on top of it!

Let’s water from the top for a while…

I’m going to simplify things. I’m going to water normally from the top and just use the reservoirs to catch runoff.

At least until the pH is in a better range, then maybe I’ll try bottom watering again.

Luckily the plants have stopped drinking such crazy amounts!

Overall they look good.

I see the hairs are starting to turn. To me that says this is about the final size the buds will be,just they’ll get more filled out.

Going to be a lot of weed!

Day 83 (Flowering Day 38)

Looking good 💯

Day 84 (Flowering Day 39)

Soil mostly dry on top.

Gave 3 gallons from the top

• Added 1.5 tsp pH down
• 6.1 pH
• Gave about ½ gallon to all
  • but I didn’t give any to Mandarin Cookies, as the top soil still seemed a bit wet.
  •  I gave a bit extra to the Purple Ghost Candy as it seemed particularly dry.
• No runoff, but all felt cool at the bottom, so I feel I gave enough to wet them thoroughly.
• Will wait until tops are dry to the first knuckle before watering again

LEDs

• Turned both up to level 5

Training

• Removed some lower leaves
• Removed big fan leaves covering bud sites that couldn’t be tucked
• Removed lower bud sites that hadn’t gained any heft yet. If they’re dinky now, they’ll never get big and dense. Might as well let the plant focus on the biggest top buds, which tend to be the most potent and high quality.
• Strung up the Blue Dream colas since they were starting to fall over

I checked on Blue Dream plant from the side, since I saw some buds were falling.

I have plant wire strung across the top of my tent to use with plant yo-yos to hold up heavy buds (also handy for drying).

Plant yo-yos are specially designed to hold up heavy cannabis branches.

Plant yo-yos gently hook onto stems without disturbing buds.

So for the Blue Dream plant, I use plant yo-yos on the falling stems.

The big Blue Dream buds are now held up by the top of the tent.

New view of the Blue Dream with the plant yo-yos from the side window.

Now from the front, you can spot yo-yo strings holding up the heavy Blue Dream buds.

In regular light

Bud readiness

• GG4 x Zkittles and Candy Games #38 both starting to get brown hairs. Maybe 4 weeks left?
• Remaining three plants are still all white hairs that I can see. At least 4+ weeks left on those

I’ll take detailed pictures of all the buds next week!

Week 13

Day 85 (Flowering Day 40)

Oct 20 – day 85 flowering day 40

Gave the rest of the plain pH’ed water from yesterday to the plants where the soil looked totally dry on top.

Nutrient burn after watering from the top…

I noticed the plants have more nutrient burn today! They’ve been getting just plain water for quite a while but I guess there’s still excess nutrients from before. Now that I think of it, this happened right after I started watering again from the top.

I wonder if they’ll want nutrients again before harvest.

The Candy Games #38 has it the worst. I also noticed some marks on some of its top leaves. Light stress? Nutrient problem? Did I accidentally hurt the leaf mechanically? We’ll see if it spreads.

It happens!

Maybe I’ll turn the light down a bit on that side until I’m sure it’s not spreading? Lights are out now, but I’ll check on plants first thing tomorrow.

Day 86 (Flowering Day 41)

I saw later I apparently didn’t write any notes or take any pictures. Did I even check on the plants today?

Day 87 (Flowering Day 42)

Note from tomorrow: They should have gotten watered today…

I peeked on the plants, and they looked good. But their topsoil was almost totally dry and I knew they needed to be watered today. I filled a container with water, but I got a call. By the time I got back, the lights had already turned off for their 6pm bedtime. I didn’t want to interrupt their dark period, so I decided to wait until tomorrow.

Day 88 (Flowering Day 43)

Oct 23 – day 88 flowering day 43

Underwatered! Droopy! Nooooooo!

Oops, plants are underwatered, especially the Blue Dream.

Here’s a closeup of the droopy underwatered Blue Dream.

You could really see the drooping on the Blue Dream’s “undercarriage”.

Gave the plants 3 gallons of water, pH at 6.5.

Two hours later they looked mostly back to normal.

2 hours later, Blue Dream looks a lot better.

It’s funny that as soon as I got rid of the auto-watering pots, and got busy, my plants immediately became underwatered. Especially considering that they’re not even drinking that much compared to before during the flowering stretch period.

Day 89 (Flowering Day 44)

Seem recovered from going thirsty

Plants look back to normal for the most part.

Some of the lowest leaves on the Blue Dream seem a bit wilty, but I think the plant was already giving up on those leaves, since they didn’t get any light.

The tops of the soil already look dry, so I gave the plants another 3 gallons of water at 6.5 pH.

Buds are developing beautifully. I’m surprised how the Purple Ghost Candy and the Blue Dream still don’t have any darkened hairs on their buds yet. They are going to keep getting bigger, and they already seem pretty big.

Purple Ghost Candy buds – Still all-white hairs

With the Purple Ghost Candy, some of the stems and parts of the leaves are turning purple. I remember that last time we grew this strain, the plant was mostly green until the last few weeks before harvest,  but also had the same splashes of purple on the stems. Then about a week before harvest, the leaves on the entire plant, sugar leaves and all, turned purple almost overnight. I’m curious to see how the purple expresses itself in this plant as we approach harvest!

Blue Dream buds – Also all-white hairs!

When will they stop getting bigger and start maturing? lol

The Mandarin Cookies looks especially mouth-watering!

The Mandarin Cookies buds are so covered in trichomes it’s difficult for the camera to catch anything but white reflection. I can’t seem to get the camera to focus on the buds themselves or capture much color, even when playing with the settings. But to the naked eye, the buds look like long silvery-blue spears.

Any stem on this plant turns bright purple the moment it gets exposed to light now.

There’s a deep purple stem in this picture, which appeared after a heavy bud started sagging over and left a “hole” in the canopy for light to get through.

Can you spot the deep purple stem where light got into the canopy?

Since the branches keep flopping all over from the bud weight, there are new bright purple stems every day wherever the stems happen to face “up”.

I remember last time I grew Mandarin Cookies the plant looked and grew the exact same way. It’s getting me excited because I absolutely loved those buds! I don’t think this plant will be a big yielder, but I don’t mind when buds look this good!

I tried to get a couple different shots to help you see the plants.

Side view (see the plant structure)

Three quarter view of canopy

In regular light

So happy to see under normal light that the leaves finally starting to lighten up! It’s been over a week of just getting plain water, not nutrients. The lower levels still a bit on the darker side, especially on the Candy Games #3 plant in the front right, but a much more “Kelly green” kind of color now. The darker leaf plants will continue to get plain water until those lower leaves start to lighten up.

I love peeking in on the plants. When it’s just as window in the front of the tent, I can do it as much as I want without worry about bothering the plants at all.

I keep finding myself in the grow room, peeking in at the plants, admiring the beauty of the flowers.

It’s crazy to just grow weed at home! What a great time to be alive.

Day 90 (Flowering Day 45)

Looking happy! The topsoil is dry, so I’m giving plenty of water today.

3 gallons

• 1.25 tsp pH Down
• 6.2 pH

Not one drop of runoff water.

Made nutrient water just for the Blue Dream

I noticed the Blue Dream is paler than the other plants. I also noticed that it’s lowest leaves are turning yellow and falling off. It needs more nutrients. Luckily it’s got tons of leaves left so losing a few lower ones is no big deal since we caught this right away.

Blue Dream looks hungry for nutrients. Lower leaves are getting pale and starting to wilt.

Note: When a plant doesn’t have any other nutrients deficiencies (spots, etc.) but the lower leaves are turning yellow, wilting, and falling off on their own. It means the plant wants MORE nutrients. Not that the pH is off, but that it literally is running out of nitrogen and needs higher levels of stage-appropriate nutrients.

All the other plants still have regular-to-dark green leaves, and zero yellowing, so they get plain water.

I made up a gallon of water with half strength week 10 nutrients and that’s going just to the blue dream.

1 gallon for Blue Dream

• Week 10 half strength
• 1 1/2 tbsp of Big Bloom
• 1 tsp of grow big
• 1 tsp of tiger bloom
• pH to 6.3

I did give a little squirt to all the other plants.

• Gave the rest of the water between them
• They all got a little bit of runoff except the Mandarin Cookies. I gave it less than the others. It tends to drink the least. I did confirm that water got all the way to the bottom by touching the bottom of the pot.
• I gave a lot of water to the Blue Dream. So much it got enough runoff to fill its reservoir to the max. I tested it’s run off water and it was 6.3 pH and 1600 PPM. That seems fine to me, within the recommended pH range of Fox Farms, with a bit high PPM but I know it needs more nutrients. So I’m just going to leave it. I’ll let him have all the extra water.

I think I’ve done the right thing so we’ll see how they look later

Environment

I noticed it’s 70% RH in the tent. Hmmm, why? It’s been pretty consistently 50-60-% RH this grow so far.

Then I looked at my humidity monitor in the living room, and my outside thermometer, and the weather forecast for this week. All say 70% RH or higher!

So my local environment was causing the humidity to rise in the tent. Everywhere in the house is 70% RH, so it makes sense the grow space will be as well.

The big dehumidifier

I’m going to turn on the big dehumidifier and close up the room tight. The dehumidifier tends to raise the temperature of the room but that’s okay considering it’s coolish in the tent already. The only problem with this dehumidifier is you have to empty the water out all the time, because it holds so little. You can connect it to a hose, and have that go into a bucket, but if you forget to change the bucket it could overflow. It’s meant to be put over a drain. I could take a long hose to the bathroom I guess… but what if I have guests? Hard to explain a hose going from the spare bedroom and dripping into a bathroom drain!

It’s not crucial to control humidity yet at this stage, but buds develop tighter and denser (with lots of sparkle) if you can keep the humidity around the buds under 60%. Ideal humidity after buds are forming is 45-50% RH, but that’s unrealistic for me when the air everywhere is 70% RH and I don’t have a totally sealed grow room (cracks under the doors and such).

When you’re at the mercy of your environment, you just do your best!

Day 91 (Flowering Day 46)

Humidity down to 54% RH in the tent with the dehumidifier going. Much better!

Plants still seem well-watered. They soil looks we and the pots feel wet on bottom.

There’s still a little water in the Blue Dream reservoir, and in the Purple Ghost Candy reservoir, but the rest are empty. The Blue Dream plant looks pretty pale/hungry to me (back right this picture). The next time I water it I’m definitely going to make sure that one gets nutrients again.

The Candy Games #38 is looking decidedly more purple around the buds, than earlier this week.

Big and beautiful Candy Games #38 buds!

I’m at that part of the grow where there’s not much to do so I keep looking at the buds and fussing about the plant’s environment and water 🙂

Week 14

Day 92 (Flowering Day 47)

Looking good. Plan on giving the Blue Dream some nutrients and maybe give everyone else just a little splash. 

Picture: The Blue Dream (back left, blue label) is the only plant that seems “hungry”. It cannibalized several bottom leaves. Which is why it’s getting nutrients in the water. I want it to keep all its leaves for many more weeks, as its buds are still all white (which means they have several weeks to go before harvest day).

Only the Blue Dream seems “hungry” for nutrients.

Even though it lost several leaves off the bottom, when I peeked in on the Blue Dream plant from the side window, I see it’s still got tons of green leaves. Maybe even too many. It’s crazy how wild plants can grow in the back where you can’t see them. But overall I think the Blue Dream looks great.

Here’s what the Blue Dream looks like from the front! Seems a lot more orderly from this direction haha.

You can see it’s more pale than the other plants. It’s an okay color but I’m going to make sure it gets some nutrients with every watering, maybe get those leaves just a tiny touch darker like the Purple Ghost Candy to its left.

1 gallon nutrient water 

• 1.5 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big
• 1 tsp Tiger Bloom
• pH 6.5
• 670 PPM 
• Gave mostly to Blue Dream but a splash to others 

3 gallons x 2

• Plain water pH to 6.4 ph
• Split between all

Noticed no one had runoff after giving first 3 gallons from the top. Added another plain water gallon from the top, until some runoff, then 1 gallon to the reservoirs. 1 gallon remaining. I’ll check their reservoirs later today and if any are low I’ll give the remains 

Environment 

• It’s 75% RH in the air outside, and in the rest of the house 
• So I have both the AC and dehumidifier running with the room closed up as best I can.
• Lights are at Level 5
• Getting it around 81F in the tent and 55% humidity in the grow space.

Day 93 (Flowering Day 48)

• Gave the rest of the plain water from yesterday.

Plants look good. 

I saw a fallen bud from the GG4 x Zkittlez.

It got too heavy to hold itself up anymore.

I strung it back up with plant yo-yos.

I plan to lift up the Mandarin Cookies (tiny plant in the middle) on an extra reservoir platform, like I did the GG4 x Zkittlez, so it gets more light. The Mandarin Cookies center spot is between the two LEDs, so it could be higher up, and still be a good distance from the LEDs (since it’s not directly under any hot/bright spots).

Right after the LEDs turned off, I took a picture of them in natural light, to get a better idea of what their leaf color looks like.

I’m happy the leaves look less dark on all the plants compared to a week ago. However, besides the Blue Dream, I think the rest of them still need to use up some of the nutrients they have before I give any more.

I dropped my cellphone on the poor GG4 x Zkittlez while taking pictures, but luckily he didn’t seem the worse for wear. Hopefully these pictures were worth it!

GG4 x Zkittlez from the front. Considering it is only day 49 since 12/12, it looks surprisingly close to harvest. Definitely a fast strain!

The GG4 x Zkittlez buds are unusually leafy. I removed just about every big fan leaf from the long buds, and they’re still covered in so many leaves. Might be a good strain for outdoors as those leaves would do a great job protecting the buds from the elements. Plus, a fast-flowering strain like this is more likely to be totally ready to harvest before wet or wintry weather comes.

Closeup GG4 x Zkittlez bud.

Candy Games #38 is the exact opposite. Almost no sugar leaves, just naked buds!

Day 94 (Flowering Day 49)

Moved the Mandarin Cookies up a few inches, like I had done previously with the GG4 x Zkittles. It seems to have stopped stretching on the shorter side. I had reached the top canopy, but since it was right in the middle there is no LED panel directly above. It’s getting light from either side. I figured that was the perfect opportunity to give it more height. That way it’s getting more light from each side, yet doesn’t affect any other plant from getting light.

Peeking through the grow tent window in at my plants. The silvery mini Mandarin Cookies plant in the middle has been raised up a few inches now.

I’m so excited with how they’re turning out!

You may noticed in the pictures that the front right plant (Candy Games #38) seems a bit leafier (big fan leaves, at least) than I’d normally do.

Candy Games #38 plant in front right spot. Why did I leave so many big fan leaves?

It’s because it has those big fan leaves, but pretty much no other leaves. The buds are bare with barely any sugar leaves. Compare that to the GG4 x Zkittlez in the front left, where I plucked every fan leaf off the main stems at the top, and it’s still insanely leafy.

I want the Candy Games #38 to have plenty of leaves to last until harvest. Since it has so few, it gets to keep them even though normally I’d defoliate away any big fan leaves like that to expose buds to more light.

Environment is perfect for bud formation! Not too hot, not too humid, nice and breezy.

Defoliation/lollipop experiment

Speaking of leaves, I am experimenting with a different kind of “lollipopping” than previously. You may see that in my pictures.

Normally, I pull all the leaves off below the “lollipop” point. BUT this time I tried something different. I picked off all the buds below the lollipop point, yet left the leaves alone as long as they weren’t touching each other.

Why? My hypothesis/theory is that those bottom leaves aren’t taking from the top buds, but it’s the bottom buds that take from the top buds. In my mind, I wonder if the leaves act more as like a reservoir of easily usable nutrients the plant can draw from.

I’m happy I did that with the Blue Dream plant. One day I came in and realized it was taking nitrogen from all the bottom leaves. They all were stripped by the plant, wilted and died. The issue was it was using more nutrients than I was giving it. It’s an extremely nutrient hungry plant and I hadn’t realized it was lightening compared to the others, since it was in the back.

But I noticed those bottom leaves dying, and immediately gave it a feeding of nutrients, and the leaves stopped dying. I will be making sure to watch that plant a lot more closely.

BUT the cool thing is even though it lost maybe 15 of the lowest leaves overnight, as it took nutrients and brought them to the top, the entire top of the plant was totally unaffected. Those leaves gave the plant some buffer when something didn’t go quite right because of my mistake.

Note: The Mandarin Cookies also showed one or two leaves being halfway devoured, so I’m going to make sure I give that one extra nutrients too, especially since it’s buds are still 100% white and it’s now been moved into a position of stronger light levels. And it’s cool because it still has a massive buffer of lower leaves, yet the plant isn’t putting any effort into growing lower buds.

And it makes me think, the plant has to put energy into GROWING buds, but how much energy does it really waste on maintaining an already-fully formed leaf that isn’t even having to do photosynthesis. Is the plant really losing energy on those leaves, or are they just a free reservoir of nutrients we’ve been needless plucking away, because the REAL secret was we needed to get rid of those lower buds being developed, and just the losing of the leaves was okay as long as you took PERFECT care of the plants and kept all the top leaves until harvest.

All the little buds with no size after several weeks of flowering? GONE! But I didn’t strip the fan leaves.

Anyways, it all makes me wonder, considering one of the biggest struggles in the flowering stage is keeping healthy leaves until the end, if we’re reducing our “buffer” by removing those lower leaves. Clearly removing the growth improves yields and bud quality. I’ve tested that very carefully with both photoperiod clones AND autofloweirng strains. The lollipopped plants produced better than the unlollipoped plants. BUT, what if you could get further gain, or maybe further buffer, by leaves the leaves and only picking off the lower buds sites?

So far, I feel like this strategy seems very promising. At least in the case where the Blue Dream was able to go through a problem in the middle of the crucial flower stage, and experience no ill effects because it was able to draw on that buffer of lower leaves, which I don’t care when they died.

For the other plants, it’s less clear the effects. I can see that the plants are clearly carrying a lot of nutrients. Their lower leaves are still dark. So for those plants, I’ve been experimenting with just giving water. It seems like they’ve been happily getting all their nutrients because I don’t see a single nutrient deficiency on any plant besides the Blue Dream which lost a bunch of lower leaves, and the two half-lost leaves on the Mandarin Cookies.

I haven’t been removing the dead leaves either. I figure if it can get any last bit of something from it, I’m leaving it until the plant decides to drop the leaf on its own. 

Of course, I will immediately pick up any leaves that fall, and also remove any leaves touching each other but that isn’t the case here.

What do you think of my experiment? What do you think of my hypothesis?

Should leaves and buds, or only buds, be removed when lollipopping?

To summarize

New Lollipop Method: Remove buds but not leaves from bottom of plant.

• Main Hypothesis
  • Get the well-proven benefits of lollipopping (bigger, denser top buds), but extra leaves give extra buffer in case you mess up with nutrients.
• Secondary Hypothesis
  • Plant might produce more energy from extra photosynthesis, raising overall yields vs if those leaves simply weren’t there.
• Alternative Hypothesis
  • It’s possible that this lowers bud yields by diverting energy away from buds to lower leaves. So I need to make sure the experiment controls for that possibility.

Informal Experiment (what I’m doing with this journal)

• When lollipopping plants (I think I did it about week 2 or 3 after 12/12 in this grow journal, I only removed lower bud sites but let most leaves remain.
• I didn’t worry about “light hitting the ground”. I made sure that top buds were well exposed to direct light, and then I made sure to remove any buds that weren’ well developed compared to the top buds. So if the lower buds were just wisps of hairs, even though the top buds were developing, I removed those buds. But if there was a bud that was developing well, even if it was a bit lower, I left those buds.
• Essentially, since I wasn’t moving the plants at all at that point, I decided to let each plant “tell me” which buds it was “working on” and which were an “afterthought”. And removed the afterthoughts and left the big buds.
• Now that it’s week 6 or 7 or 8 (can’t remember exactly) since 12/12, I will go again today and remove any remaining lower buds I missed that simply aren’t developing.
• If this seems to get good results compared to my sort of “intuition” then I am going to do a much more formal hypothesis. Like how when I tried defoliation and lollipopping originally, it FELT like it helped, but it was hard to be sure since other factors change between grows. So I did detailed, well measured experiments and found my intuition was correct. Defoliation and lollipopping doesn’t just increase yields but bud size, density, and even POTENCY at the labs. It’s outstanding.
• So this first informal experiment is just to test that it “seems” like it goes well. And if it doesn’t, next I’ll do a FORMAL experiment.

Plants in this journal were lollipopped, but only the buds were removed. Lower leaves were left alone.

Formal experiment (next experiment if this goes well)

• Background: If this works, it would be a totally FREE, new, and easy way to improve both yields and overall fun. A goal worth testing.
• Experiment Structure
  • Grow space: Two tents, same nutrients, setup, everything exactly the same as much as possible
  • Plants: Use clones of 4-5 different strains, one of each clone per tent.
  • Experiment
    • One tent gets lollipop stripped (traditional lollipop method)
    • One tent gets lollipop of lower buds only (lower leaves allowed to remain)
  • Results
    • What will happen?
    • Will one tent produce significantly more weed than the other?
    • Will one tent’s plant’s be more resilient and fun to grow?
    • Or will it work the opposite way? Will the full strip lollipop actually produce more/bigger/denser weed. It’s well proven this offers improvements over not lollipopping at all, but will it beat Nebula’s experimental “Lollipop Tek”?

Day 95 (Flowering Day 50)

I love the new raised Mandarin Cookies getting lots of light on all the buds now from both sides 

The Mandarin Cookies buds were hidden before, but now they’re raised a few inches and getting lots of light from both sides.

Had to string some of the Mandarin Cookies buds up with plant yo-yos. They’re small thin spear-shaped buds, yet amazingly heavy! I think they’re going to be extra dense after harvest.

Gave 3 gallons plain water, 6.5 pH, to all plants.

I noticed the Purple Ghost Candy and Candy Games are finally starting to lighten up in color, though GG4 x Zkittlez (front left) has not yet.

Blue Dream deficiencies stopped spreading. It needed that dose of extra nutrients.

It got plain water today, but I’ll definitely give it more nutrients next watering. All the hairs are still totally white, so I know it’s going to need a lot of nutrients yet.

Blue Dream is still all white hairs, so I need it will need plenty of extra nutrients for a while.

The Purple Ghost Candy is also all white hairs still, for the most part!

Purple Ghost Candy has just a few darkened hairs, and starting to get random spots of purple here and there on the sugar leaves.

Day 96 (Flowering Day 51)

Starting to get colorful in there! Especially the top leaves.

Made up 1 gallon of water and gave to the Blue Dream, and a little bit to the Mandarin Cookies and Purple Ghost Candy. Since those are the ones that have mostly white hairs.

Fill the rest of the reservoirs about 3/4 full with plain 6.5 pH water

I’ve got the dehumidifier running 24/7 in the grow room now to try to keep it under 55% RH in the grow tent. It’s tough because the rest of the house is at 65% RH, so I’m fighting the natural environment.

I just get nervous because those Blue Dream buds look so big, and nearly all white hairs still. I feel like they’re going to keep getting bigger and be prone to bud rot.

I know that keeping the humidity lower and a fan on the buds not only helps prevent mold immediately, those conditions can help the buds grow tighter, with fewer air spaces that cause humid air spots leading to bud rot/mold ideal conditions.

I am thinking about setting up some more little fans in there, specifically to have one that completely blows over the Blue Dream buds so I can see them constantly moving slightly in the breeze.

Can’t touch the buds without gloves now, or my fingers get sticky and reek of delicious weed smell.

Day 97 (Flowering Day 52)

Reservoirs all have a little bit of water left, so I’ll leave them alone for now. 

Played around with the fans today.

I moved the oscillating fan to be over the shortest plant, so it can blow directly on all the taller plant’s buds.

Added two small fans on low at the bottom of the tent blowing up through the “undercarriage”.

And a quick view of the tent!

Day 98 (Flowering Day 53)

Nothing to do today but enjoy!

Week 15

Day 99 (Flowering Day 54)

Plants look happy!

Pots seem really dry today (the top soil looks very dry) even though they seemed really wet yesterday.

Made 1 gallon of half strength week 10 nutrients

• 750 ppm
• 6.5 pH 
• To split between plants with white hairs

Made 3 gallons plain water x 2 (they were thirsty!)

• pH 6.4
• To split between all

Added fans

Now I have a fan pointing up through the plants

And an oscillating fan blowing over all the big buds.

Nice and breezy in there!

Day 100 (Flowering Day 55)

Getting full in there!

It feels like I need to add a new plant yo-yo every other day.

All water is gone except the GG4 x Zkittlez. I think it’s slowing down getting ready for harvest. Still white hairs and clear trichomes so not yet.

GG4 x Zkittlez is the shortest plant, and looks closest to harvest.

But if you look close, there are still plenty of white hairs, so I know buds need more time.

Candy Games #38 also is starting to look close, with big buds and relatively few white hairs left.

Though the Candy Games #38 buds do still have lots of white hairs if you look closer.

The good news is that means all the buds are still getting bigger, more dense, and more potent!

Made 1 gallon of half strength week 10 nutrients

• 750 ppm
• 6.5 pH 
• Split between Purple Ghost Candy and Blue Dream reservoirs 

3 gallons 

• 6.5 pH
• To reservoirs of all

Day 101 (Flowering Day 56)

A quick peek at the Blue Dream from the back right side window, as I strung up another bud that was falling over. Otherwise left the plants alone today.

Day 102 (Flowering Day 57)

Noticed the Purple Ghost Candy has lost a lot of color. I hadn’t noticed since the leaves are starting to turn purple, but I can see the entire plant is starting to look pale in natural light. The Blue Dream also looks light. even the Candy Games is finally lightening up.  GG4 x Zkittles is still dark, and Mandarin Cookies looks good.

Made 1 gallon half strength hydro nutrients 

• 2 tsp Big Bloom
• 1 tsp Grow Big (hydro)
• ½ Tiger Bloom 
• ¼ tsp pH Down
• 6.3 pH 

Split between Blue Dream and Purple Ghost Candy. Gave from the top. Not sure why. Need to kind of figure out what difference it makes, if any. I just remember that giving plain water from the top could give nutrient burn even if we haven’t been giving nutrients in a while, so I thought it might make the nutrients more available if I gave them from the top. In my mind, it might make some of the nutrients in the soil more available to the plant if it’s wet.

I may water the other plants later today but they’ve all got a tiny bit of water left in their reservoirs. I’ve been trying to let the reservoirs dry out between waterings, to prevent anything growing in the reservoirs.

Day 103 (Flowering Day 58)

Gave clean water to the GG4 Zkittles, and a little bit to the Mandarin Cookies and the Candy Games. For the Purple Ghost Candy and Blue dream I made up some nutrient water.

3 gallons (⅓ strength) – Gave to Blue Dream and Purple Ghost Candy, plus a small bit to Mandarin Cookies and Candy Games.

Mandarin Cookies buds look and smell like magic!

Blue Dream, when will you start dreaming of harvest day?

These LEDs provided 100% of the “food” (energy) these plants turned into buds!

There’s never been a better time to be a grower than today. Modern LEDs are outstanding 🙂

Day 104 (Flowering Day 59)

Gave the rest of the nutrient water to Blue Dream and Purple Ghost Candy, from the top. Both still have some water.

I feel like some of the buds have the sign of possible light stress on top (growing new hairs closest to the light). I turned one light down a bit. 

Purple Ghost Candy – Lots of new white hairs. A sign of light stress, or just regular bud development? It’ll be clear in a few days!

Blue Dream – Still mostly all white hairs, going to be a BIG yielder I think. As long as I prevent bud rot haha

All the Blue Dream buds are so fat and long. Absolutely crazy genetics.

Mandarin Cookies – Long, thin pointy buds that smell sweet and fruity! A unique silver-blue tint on the leaves and buds.

GG4 x Zkittles – The buds were small and leafy at first, but lately started to put on weight.

Candy Games #38 – Pretty bud structure, color, leaves, and sparkly. Very “modern” or trendy looking genetics. This look is kind of what’s “in style” in the American cannabis breeding scene right now.

The Candy Games plant stretched a lot in the flowering stage and had a lot of long empty stems. No more! Each of those stems is now carrying multiple fat “bud balls”.

Buds grow like golf balls (not the typical long “cola” shape).

Can’t wait to see what these buds look like after drying!

I feel like we’re in the home stretch. I definitely want to push the plants with lots of light to get the best yields and potency, but never to the detriment of the buds themselves. It’s better to have a little bit less yields with better buds, than a ton of buds that aren’t at peak quality because the plants got too much light stress.

Such a crazy assortment of different bud types!

Other plants still have a bit of water left in reservoirs, and tops look a bit wet still. I’ll give them plain water tomorrow. If the reservoirs dry up between waterings, I feel like it helps prevent anything growing in the reservoir.

Day 105 (Flowering Day 60)

1 gallon plain water

• Gave to two front plants, which have the darkest leaves

3 gallons – ⅓ strength nutrients

• Gave to Blue Dream and Purple Ghost Candy, plus a small bit to Mandarin Cookies and Candy Games, with some left over

A different view! “Underskirt” picture.

Week 16

Day 106 (Flowering Day 61)

Gave the remaining nutrient water. All still have some water in the reservoirs. 

My view opening the tent each morning.

Mandarin Cookies buds have a cute bud structure. Thin and pointy yet compact and sparkly.

It’s the small plant hidden in the middle (long spear-shaped buds with a silvery-purple tint).

It’s hard to see in the middle of the sea of bigger buds!

Day 107 (Flowering Day 62)

Gave 1 gallon plain water to three front plants, fed from bottom in reservoirs 

I love taking pictures of the plants these days!

3 gallons to back two plants. 

• Same nutrients last time 
• 6.5 pH 
• Fed half water from top, until I got some tiny runoff, then filled the reservoirs

Tops of plants are starting to look a little rough. I think just because they’re getting closer to harvest, and also just accumulation of small mistakes like with nutrients, underwatering, etc. These are the same leaves that have been working hard for several weeks without replacement, and it’s starting to show!

Buds look immaculate though!

Day 108 (Flowering Day 63)

Nebula from the future: I didn’t take any notes or pictures. I don’t think I actually checked on the plants today.

Day 109 (Flowering Day 64)

Strung up some more falling stems with yoyo’s. Overall, the buds are all progressing beautifully.

The GG4 x Zkittles buds are surprisingly starting to fatten up a lot! I’m not going to lie, I’m impressed as they didn’t seem like they were going to be that big at first. Its buds were surprisingly leafy at first, but now that they are bigger, the buds are a lot more spread out. You can much more clearly see the bud structure underneath now.

GG4 x Zkittles buds are not so tiny anymore! They’re actually getting pretty fat.

Environment is good. Under 80°F/26°C, around 50% humidity with the dehumidifier. The local weather has been cooperating, not being particularly hot or humid this week. Hopefully it lasts to harvest day! Luckily the summer is over so at least we (hopefully) won’t get any heat waves.

I tried to use a ring light for more light from the front so I could take clearer pictures of the GG4 x Zkittles buds. I don’t think it made any difference, but the ring did make a kind of cool picture border for the plants.

Day 110 (Flowering Day 65)

All I have for today is a blurry picture from the webcam (above the Blue Dream plant with all the white hairs).

Day 111 (Flowering Day 66)

Gave very light nutrients, 1/12 strength, 6.5 pH.

Flowering day 66 the Blue Dream is still nearly all white hairs, meaning it likely needs several weeks before buds are ready to harvest.

Is the Blue Dream playing with me?

Many white hairs = weeks until harvest (for this plant)

Not much else to do but wait!

Day 112 (Flowering Day 67)

Plants looking good today. Here’s a tour of the tent as we finish up the week!

The grow tent

GG4 x Zkittles – looking juicier every day!

Mandarin Cookies – such fanciful, sparkly buds

Purple Ghost Candy – finally turning purple

Blue Dream – white hairs for days

Candy Games #38 – looks like candy for real!

So nugget-y

Harvest Week!

Day 113 (Flowering Day 68)

Gave several gallons of water.

Tonight’s plan: drop the temperature so the Purple Ghost Candy and Mandarin Cookies plants turn purple from the cold.

I turned it only down to 70°F which isn’t that cold. But I wanted the plants to purple up all pretty 🙂

Day 114 (Flowering Day 69)

I think they look a bit more purple today. I turned off the AC for the day, but turned it on again right before they went to sleep.

Gave the rest of the water from yesterday.

Day 115 (Flowering Day 70)

The room is now set to 60°F/16°C (as cold as my AC can go) and about 50% RH. Hopefully it helps the big plants finish faster, and grow tighter buds. It’s also the perfect conditions for drying weed.

The Candy Games #38 looks ready to harvest. I’m going to let it go just a little long to try to harvest the plants all together so I can hang them in the tent to dry.

Day 116 (Flowering Day 71)

The Candy Games #38 is ready, but I don’t have time today to harvest. The reservoirs are all just a touch wet still, so I’ll tend to them and harvest the Candy Games tomorrow!

Day 117 (Flowering Day 72)

The plants all look like they’re getting closer. I think the cold has helped them finish ripening faster. Maybe, just maybe I can harvest them all together.

Day 118 (Flowering Day 73) – Harvest!

Today, I was looking at the buds under magnification and all looked pretty ripe. The Blue Dream doesn’t look ready yet but I saw some bananas. I don’t want the buds to grow seeds I think it’s been decided, today is the perfect harvest day!

I love the assortment of different colors in this tent.

These HLG LED grow lights really outdid themselves!

GG4 x Zkittles – The first plant to get harvested! Buds feel heavy, with a fresh herbal scent.

Mandarin Cookies is the tiny silvery plant hidden in the middle. It was second to get harvested.

And then there were three.

I turned off the LED to snap a picture in natural light, which gives a different perspective.

Candy Games #38 – I love how these buds look.

All the Candy Games #38 buds have lovely mild, sweet, tantalizing smell.

The Purple Ghost Candy looms in the back. Leaves turned a dark purple in the last few days.

The buds have a classic mid-2010s California dispensary smell I haven’t smelled in a while.

The Blue Dream roots had totally grown into the ropes in the auto-watering pot bases.

The roots actually shredded the ropes!

Branches hanging upside down in the tent to dry.

Filled from top to bottom, front to back!

“Sweet Dreams” Journal – Final Weigh-In (Yields!)

Here are the weigh in results!

The entire harvest – Over 1 lb of top shelf buds!

I’ll post pictures in better light soon, with smaller labels for all the jars so you can more clearly see how much weed there is in each jar. I forgot about the label maker until the last two plants I jarred.

Final dry weight buds:

• Mandarin Cookies: 78.94 g (2.8 oz)
• GG4 x Zkittles: 67.69 g (2.4 oz)
• Candy Games: 98.89 g (3.5 oz)
• Blue Dream: 190.11 g (6.7 oz – WOW!)
• Purple Ghost Candy: 135.43 g (4.8 oz)

Total: 571.06 g (20.14 oz)

The Candy Games #38 plant made 3.5 oz of FAT, beautiful buds.

Here’s my weigh-in and notes. I had to weigh the Blue Dream in two batches because there was too much buds for my bowl ^.^

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Nebula, Co-Founder of GrowWeedEasy.com

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The post “Sweet Dreams” Photoperiod Grow Journal appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

We had just started an autoflower seed journal, and received an email from Labron, a self-proclaimed “old DeadHead”. Labron had a message to share about storing cannabis seeds.

This Picture: Fresh, viable cannabis seeds. Ready to grow!

“I hadn’t grown anything in years, but last month when you started your auto flowers, I decided to follow suit.”

We recently started a “grow with us” autoflowering grow journal in the weekly newsletter, and Labron decided to join in using the seeds he had stored away a few years ago.

This Picture: Our autoflowering plants from the current “grow with us” grow journal

“I had stored perhaps 40 or 50 seeds… stored in individual zip lock bags (very small type), were then placed in larger zip locks and placed inside a cigar box… stored in a cool, dry and dark cabinet.”

His stash of cannabis seeds had been stored in ideal conditions. He decided to germinate some of the seeds using the wet paper towel germination method.

This Picture: The wet paper towel method is one of the most popular ways to germinate cannabis seeds. Seeds are kept between wet paper towels (in a bag or between two paper plates) until they sprout.

“Using the paper towel method, I started 12 seeds, 6 females and 6 auto flowers. Only 3 developed tap roots. And of those 3, only one actually started sprouting regular leaves.”

He was using a germination method that had worked well for him in the past. That is a sign the lack of germination is likely due to seeds themselves.

This Picture: If you ever use the wet paper towel method to germinate seeds, make sure to label which one is which!

“I grow organically and use a soil made up of top soil, coco coir, peat moss and vermiculite… I have usually had good results with this formula. But not this time.”

His message for other growers is to buy fresh cannabis seeds whenever possible.

“What I am concluding… is that sometimes good genetics and procedures are not enough. You want fresh seeds if possible. Even well stored, old seeds are just that. Old.”

You can get most well-stored old cannabis seeds to germinate. But even if you give perfect conditions, some seeds won’t germinate no matter what you do. So whenever germinating older seeds, make sure to have a backup stash of extra seeds. Preferably fresh ones. There are many times you wish you had more seeds, but never a time you wish you had less!

This Picture: On the right, you can see the round cotyledon leaves that were fully formed inside the shell. Pretty neat! These first leaves are yellow inside the shell, but once they get exposed to light they open up and turn green.

“I am in my late 70’s and have a bag of collected seeds that was started sometime in the early 1970’s. It currently contains several thousand undifferentiated seeds of who knows what strains from the past. But would any of them even try to germinate and grow? I doubt it.”

It can’t hurt to give those seeds a try, you might be surprised!

This Picture: A happy little marijuana seedling with the seed shell stuck on its first round leaves. If you ever see this, just leave it alone and it will fall off on its own 🙂

If you’ve got old seeds you want to germinate, or new seeds you want to keep safely in storage, here are some tips to increase your chance of success as much as possible.

Tips for Germinating Old Seeds

• H2O2 Dip – Dip the seeds in Hydrogen peroxide before initiating germination. This kills any possible germs or pathogens on the shell.
• Heat – Make sure seeds are warm. Ideally the germinating seeds should get 80-85°F (27-30°C). A seedling heat mat underneath (or reptile heat lamp pointing down from on top) can help. If you’re planting the seeds directly in the grow space, turn on the grow light while they’re germinating. Just like the sun!
• Wet – Once seeds touch water, it kickstarts the germination process. That means it’s crucial once the seeds get wet, they never dry out. Make sure your paper towels, seedling cube, or soil (or whatever medium is holding the seeds) doesn’t dry out during germination.
• Leave Them Alone – Don’t touch or move seeds after they start germinating.
  • If using paper towel method, put just one sheet of paper over the top of seeds, so you can see whether they’re germinated through the translucent sheet. Give them 3 days before you even check, though that may kill you inside.

Learn how to germinate cannabis seeds for high germination rates.

After germinating old seeds, you’ll be rewarded with happy, adorable seedlings of rare genetics.

How to Store Cannabis Seeds to Last for Years

• Dry – Seeds must stay totally dry
• Sealed – Keep in air-proof container
• Cool – Temperature under 65°F (18°C)
• Dark – No light exposure is ideal

Of course if you have your own seeds, there are many ways to accomplish these conditions. But I personally love when I buy seeds that are already perfectly set for good storage. Good packaging also means the seeds are more likely to have been stored properly before they got to you. Here are examples of good seed packaging, so you know what to look for.

I like how Seed Supreme stores their in-house seeds. This is how I got my last seed order. Seeds in vials, kept in a sealable light-proof bag. Just stick it in the back of the fridge or cool drawer and cannabis seeds can stay viable for years to come.

Another great seed storage method is by Happy Valley Genetics. Seeds are kept in vials inside a little cardboard box. It does take more room to store compared to the above method, but the package is really spiffy looking, and each vial is completely safe. I had already cut the seal on this pack before I made the video, but I like how their seed packs come sealed so you know you have an unopened breeder pack.

Candy Games #38 is one of my favorite strains right now!

The post Why Your Old Seeds Might Be Dead (Even if You Stored Them Perfectly) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

You’re browsing a cannabis seed bank website, and see different marijuana strains with the same name, perhaps Bruce Banner. But one says “Autoflower” and one says “Fast” (sometimes also “Express” or “FF” or “Fast Flowering”). What does this mean? What’s the difference?

What’s the difference between an Autoflower and a Fast cannabis strain?

“Autoflower” and “Fast” Cannabis Strains are Not the Same

This may be the most confusing strain naming convention for beginner cannabis growers. You could read the entire strain description, and still not know what to expect. Autoflowering strains are technically very fast to grow, typically being ready to harvest just 2-3 months from germination.

However, the short answer is a “Fast” strain is a fast-flowering photoperiod strain (not an autoflower strain).

Keep reading for a quick and simple explanation, so you know exactly which strain to choose for what you want!

“Autoflower” Cannabis Strains Make Buds Automatically

An auto-flowering (“auto”) strain makes buds automatically after a few weeks, and these plants are typically ready to harvest only 2-3 months from germination. These are not photoperiod strains and don’t need special light periods, or any input from you whatsoever, to start growing buds. They’re essentially like a cannabis houseplant that just needs to be kept alive to make buds.

Auto-flowering strains like this Gorilla Glue Auto by Fast Buds tend to stay small and are typically ready to harvest 2-3 months from germination.

• Autoflowering examples: Bruce Banner Autoflower or Chemical Candy Auto

Learn more about autoflowering strains.

“Fast” Strains are Photoperiod Strains… but Faster

A “Fast” strain is not an auto-flowering strain, but actually a photoperiod strain that has been bred specifically to go through the flowering stage extremely quickly while still achieving good yields and potency.

• “Fast” strain examples: Bruce Banner Fast and Crystal Candy F1 Fast Note: Fast strains are sometimes called “Express” or “FF” (for Fast Flowering)

What does “photoperiod” mean? Photoperiod strains are traditional cannabis strains, and instead of automatically growing buds after a few weeks, they need to experience a 12/12 light schedule (12 hour nights) in order to start making buds. Otherwise photoperiod plants just get bigger and bigger forever, never growing buds. Luckily, giving 12 hours of darkness each day is easy to accomplish indoors just by putting your grow lights on a timer.

Learn more about photoperiod cannabis strains.

A “Fast” strain like Crystal Candy F1 Fast is NOT an auto-flowering strain!

Fast cannabis strains are usually developed in one of two ways.

Two ways to create a “Fast” photoperiod strain:

1. Cross a photoperiod strain with an auto-flowering strain – Once the cross is made, the first generation (F1) of offspring will be photoperiod because the auto-flowering trait is recessive. In other words, the offspring carry the recessive autoflowering gene, but still act like photoperiod plants. Those photoperiod plants tend to be much faster-flowering. Some breeders might sell those F1 seeds as “fast flowering”. However, typically a breeder will continue breeding to select for the fast-flowering trait while breeding out the recessive autoflowering trait until they stabilize a photoperiod strain with that extra speediness. The use of autoflowering genetics is why you’ll notice that many “fast” photoperiod strains are developed by breeders that also breed auto-flowering strains.
2. Cross 2 fast-flowering photoperiod strains – In this case, the breeder makes the cross between great photoperiod plants, identifies the fastest-flowering offspring, and then uses those plants to breed the next generation. This is typically done by commercial growers, and over several generations can shave multiple weeks off the flowering time without sacrificing yields or bud quality.

For home growers, we typically don’t mind an extra week of growing here or there. As long as we’re getting several solid harvests every year, we’re often happy with that. Compared to those growing weed to sell to dispensaries, we may take more time in between grows, and experienced home growers often grow way more weed than we could use on our own anyway.

However, once breeders develop these fast strains, it’s actually pretty neat from the perspective of a home grower. Who doesn’t want to get the same bud quality and yields, but sooner?

Fast cannabis strains produce the same results in less time.

Recommended Fast Strain: Gorilla Cookies Fast (sometimes listed as Gorilla Cookies “FF” for “Fast Flowering”) can get big and produce great yields, but buds are ready to harvest 7-8 weeks after initiating 12/12. That’s 2-3 weeks quicker than most photoperiod strains.

Here’s an example of Gorilla Cookies Fast. Tons of weed in a short amount of time!

While we’re here, I just wanted to explain the difference between feminized and regular cannabis strains, since this is a super important distinction for home growers!

Feminized vs Regular Seeds

• Feminized Seeds – Every cannabis plant is female when you start with feminized seeds. That means every single plant will make buds, and the buds will be seedless. These special seeds are created using an advanced feminization technique. As a home grower, starting with feminized seeds lets you grow weed without worrying about male plants. Example: Bruce Banner Feminized
• Regular Seeds – With regular seeds, half plants are female (makes buds), half are male (don’t make buds). Example: Bruce Banner Regular. Male plants make non-smokable pollen sacs instead of buds, and also release pollen, causing any nearby buds to become full of seeds. Although it’s extremely important for growers to know whether a cannabis plant is male or female, you can’t tell which is which from looking at the seeds, or even from looking at the young plants. Male and female plants look the same until they start making flowers or pre-flowers. Therefore when using regular seeds, growers must identify and remove male plants as they reveal themselves. You get to skip all that if you start with feminized seeds.

Half of “regular” seeds grow into female plants, which make buds.

But half of “regular” seeds grow into male plants, which make non-smokable pollen sacs.

I recommend most beginner growers start with feminized seeds. This takes one extra possible headache out of the growing process. It stinks if you grow a few regular seeds and most of them (or even all) end up being male, due to random chance. In that case, you would have to start over to get more cannabis plants that grow buds. It’s a lot easier to take care of cannabis plants when you know every plant will make buds!

Feminized seeds always make buds.

Fast Fun Fact: You may have noticed many versions of Bruce Banner on this page. Why so many variations? It’s because the original Bruce Banner cannabis strain (bred by Jason Holck, aka OG Ironlung) hit the genetic jackpot of big yields, high bud quality, and strong euphoric effects.

Bruce Banner genetics tend to be high-yielding with excellent effects.

Do you have any questions about marijuana seeds or strain names? If so, let us know and I can add the necessary information to this tutorial!

The post What’s the Difference between “Fast” and “Autoflower” Cannabis Strains? appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Every home cannabis grower knows that your strains make the difference between a ‘meh’ harvest and an amazing cannabis harvest that makes your eyes water with pride. At GrowWeedeasy.com, we are constantly growing, so we make sure to keep up with the latest developments when it comes to strains and strain breeders. That’s why I want to highlight a new strain breeder, Happy Valley Genetics, that offers stabilized seed versions of some of my favorite cannabis genetics that were previously only available as unstabilized crosses or clones.

Happy Valley Genetics is a new(ish) cannabis breeder.

Sometimes it’s hard to get information about new breeders, so I put together this page to share my research and experience with this breeder so far.

Happy Valley Genetics offers cannabis seeds that are stabilized and ideal for home growers.

Who is Ethos Genetics, and what do they have to do with Happy Valley Genetics?

Ethos Genetics is a Colorado-based company known for breeding high-quality cannabis seeds which I’ve been growing since around 2015. They offer great genetics, but the one downside (in my opinion) is they tend to release lots of “crosses” but don’t actually stabilize their strains. That means you could get 5 seeds of the same cross, and potentially produce 5 very different plants with different buds. This is amazing from the perspective of “phenotype hunting” and breeding your own strains. You get seeds of amazing genetics with lots of genetic variety to sift through.

However, for a home grower who isn’t planning on breeding seeds, it’s often more convenient to get a stabilized version of a strain when buying seeds. This makes planning a lot easier.

Advantage of using stabilized strains is you know…

• Plant size – Be able to anticipate how big plants get
• Time to harvest – How long they take before they are ready to harvest
• Bud quality – Know how buds look/smell, potency, density, etc.

With a stabilized strain, you can grow 5 seeds and all 5 plants will grow the same as each other, almost as if you were growing clones.

Stabilized strains are usually better for home growers.

That brings me to Happy Valley Genetics. They are located out of Massachusetts and have been collaborating with Ethos Genetics for several years. During this collaboration, Happy Valley Genetics won two High Times Cannabis Cup awards: Best Sativa Flower for Super Lemon Haze and Best Hybrid Flower for White Wedding.

As part of my research on this breeder, I learned that Ethos and Happy Valley Genetics primarily breed with only female plants, stating that the Y chromosome from male plants does not necessarily contribute a lot to female bud development. This unique technique of cutting out male plants lets breeders always choose two “parent” plants that produce excellent buds, and is combined with testing plant genetics to get objective data instead of relying on anecdotal observations.

Happy Valley decided to start stabilizing the best versions of Ethos strains, and entered a formal licensing agreement. Now they offer stabilized strains, based on Ethos genetics, in both feminized photoperiod and feminized auto-flowering form.

Recommended photoperiod strain (so far)

Candy Games #38

Recommended auto-flowering strain (so far)

Pineapple Diesel Auto

See other Happy Valley Genetics.

Let us know your experience with this breeder. If you’ve got pictures, don’t hesitate to submit them and we might feature them on this page!

The post Who is Happy Valley Genetics? (“Powered by Ethos Genetics”) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Hey cannabis growers! We all know how annoying nutrient problems can be. And obviously, the best thing to do for your cannabis plant to prevent growing problems is give them the conditions they need to thrive. But did you know some strains are naturally more resilient than others? Certain genetics are less likely to experience problems. Yes, some special strains can experience sub-optimal conditions and still thrive.

Some cannabis strains make amazing buds even if you make some mistakes.

But which ones? These strains typically share some features…

• Fast-Flowering Strains – Perhaps it’s because they just don’t get enough time to get sick, but fast-flowering plants are often ready to harvest before you start running into significant problems even in sub-optimal conditions.
• Buds Grow as Nuggets, Not “Colas” – “Cola” is Spanish for tail, some growers use the word cola do describe a long fat bud. Sometimes these types of buds are called “baseball bats” (or in less polite company, “donkey d**ks”). These strains are high-yielding, but also prone to bud rot because they focus energy on producing long, fat colas. And for the purposes of today’s subject, tend to take out literally everything they can from the plant to their own detriment. These strains happily kill themselves to make buds. Which is kind of cool in its own way, but if you’re just looking to get a solid harvest with high bud quality, you’ll find the strains that tend to grow buds as small nuggets tend to thrive and stay healthy while their cola-wielding friends are sucking out every last nutrient as the plant slowly dies around the buds.
• Stable, Established Strains – Strains that are well-bred to be predictable tend to be more resistant to problems than raw crosses or experimental strains. That’s because breeders often refine their best strains for years to ensure that every batch of seeds grows exactly the same – fast and healthy!
• Legendary Strains – Some strains become legendary for a reason. Often, it’s because they just have something special to offer. Strains like Blue Dream, Girl Scout Cookies, Bruce Banner, and others were developed over years by home growers and commercial growers together. They’ve stuck around because they are all around great strains, and that’s also why you see they are some prominent in the history of so many new strains. Although not all versions of these legendary strains are great, I’ve found when you get them from a good breeder, they’re more likely to perform above-average than when you’re growing a strain you’ve never heard the name of. I love a strain name like “Candy Pegasus” as much as the next person, but you need to be more wary of brand new strains.
• Direct-to-Grower Breeders – Strains from breeders that sell directly to customers are often a great choice. I think it’s because they’re also the ones answering questions when growers run into plant problems. The further removed the breeder is from the grower, the less they may be thinking about how plants grow, since breeders are usually growing in ideal conditions. These growers breed only for what the buds are like, and may not “stress test” their plants, unlike breeders who also consider growth patterns. Direct-to-growers breeders pay extra attention to ensure their strains tends to germinate quickly, efficiently use nutrients, grow fast, and never herm. For example, I have found the homegrown strains from Seed Supreme, Seedsman, and MSNL tend to be easy to germinate, fast-growing, and overall resistant to problems.

Looking for some specific recommendations? Let’s explore some hardy cannabis strains that can handle a challenge!

Blue Dream by DNA Genetics

Why It’s Resilient

• Fast-Flowering – Ready to harvest with a 8-10 week flowering stage.
• Stable, Established Strain – This version has been stabilized from the original clone-only strain over several years.
• Legendary Strain – Blue Dream is the gift that keeps on giving. Every year there’s a new, even better Blue Dream. It has that special something that can only be accomplished by growers all over the world working together to develop a strain for years.
• Direct-to-grower – Get is straight from DNA Genetics off their website.

Ideal For: Growers looking for a balanced high (strong yet extremely relaxing) with a forgiving growth cycle.

Get Blue Dream – Buds get tinges of purple with strong enough light

Growing Blue Dream Tips 

Ready to harvest with a 8-10 week flowering stage, this version is exceedingly easy to grow. Plants are just not picky. Responds well to training and can handle relatively higher levels of nutrients. Does well outdoors but really thrives indoors.

Girl Scout Cookies (GSC) by Seed Supreme

Why It’s Resilient

• Fast-Flowering – Ready to harvest with a 8-10 week flowering stage. These buds won’t “go long” on you.
• Stable, Established Strain – This version has been stabilized from the original clone-only strain over several years.
• Legendary Strain – Anyone who’s been watching cannabis cups or visits dispensaries has probably seen this strain many times. There are sooooo many “Cookies” strains that have been developed from this strain as well. It’s legendary for a reason, and this refined version may have even better bud effects and sweet “cookies” smell than the original clone.

Ideal For: Those seeking a strong, euphoric effect, sweet-smelling buds, and a resilient growth profile.

Get Girl Scout Cookies – Famous for a reason!

Growing Girl Scout Cookies Tips

Easy to grow, easy to train. Can handle warmer temperatures than some other strains, which makes it a good choice if you’re struggling to control the heat in your grow room, or live in a very warm climate. Great yields even if you make some mistakes.

Honorable Mention: Platinum Cookies is a Cookies cross that has that special something. Check out my full Platinum Cookies strain review.

Purple Ghost Candy by Seedsman

Why It’s Resilient

• Buds Grow as Nuggets – Chunky, dense nugs galore. Often grows with purple tinges all over the buds as long as you provide high levels of light.
• Stable, Established Strain – This strain was a banger from the beginning, but has been refined over the last few years into a gold standard stabilized strain.
• Direct-to-grower – Seedsman runs a full seed bank full of strains from many different breeders, but I’ve consistently found their in-house strains are just all around easy to grow with great germination rates and lower chances of problems.

Ideal For: Growers looking for a potent high and a sturdy plant with big yields. Best for growers with a bigger grow space. This plant needs room to stretch (either tall or wide). Performs great as a single plant as it tends to completely fill up the grow space available.

Get Purple Ghost Candy – One of my favorite strains lately!

Growing Purple Ghost Candy Tips

I’ve found this strains tends to grow big plants with huge yields, yet grows buds as nuggets so you don’t run into the same problems as other high-yield strains. Grows lots of side branches and responds very well to pruning, bending branches, and defoliation.

One of the reasons I chose this strain over the others I’ve grown from Seedsman is the outstanding bud quality. Buds tend to grow dense, beautiful, and POTENT. Make sure to wait until buds are totally mature before harvesting for the best bud quality. Not for the faint of heart or casual smokers!

Dirty Unicorn by Dirty Bird Genetics

Why It’s Resilient

• Fast-Flowering – Typically ready to harvest in about 9 weeks from 12/12.
• Buds Grow as Nuggets – Buds are dense and sparkly, and produce tight nugs.
• Stable, Established Strain – Dirty Bird Genetics took a famous Thug Pug strain (Unicorn Poop – a non-feminized strain that is always sold out) and worked with it for over two years to make an amazingly consistent strain that gives you the wonders of the original genetics but in feminized, stabilized form.
• Direct-to-grower – Get it straight from the breeders.

Ideal For: Those who want a clear-headed, energetic high with top-of-the-line bud appearance and smell.

Get Dirty Unicorn – Unusual name, memorable buds!

Growing Unicorn Poop Tips

Plants tend to grow on the taller side, with extra space between nodes, but that actually makes it really easy to train this plant to grow into whatever shape you want. Vigorous, fast growth. The seeds germinate fast and seedlings tend to start strong.

Bruce Banner by Seed Supreme

Why It’s Resilient

• Buds Grow as Nuggets – Dense, tight nugs galore!
• Stable, Established Strain – Developed over years
• Direct-to-grower – Get it straight from the source.

Ideal For: New growers, low-maintenance gardens, and those prone to minor nutrient mishaps. Offers a powerful, uplifting high.

Get Bruce Banner – Named after the Incredible Hulk for the sheet potency of buds

Growing Bruce Banner Tips

A robust strain that can take extra nutrients and warmer temperatures. Great yields, easy to grow, and overall just a pleasure of a plant.

Choosing the right cannabis strain can make a big difference. Hardy strains are known for their ability to thrive in less-than-perfect conditions, which makes them perfect if you’re looking for a consistent harvest with minimal issues. It can help when you opt for fast-flowering strains, those that grow buds as nuggets, stable and established genetics, legendary strains, and those from direct-to-grower breeders. Remember, the best cannabis strains are the ones that give you what you want, how you want it!

Happy growing!
Nebula Haze

The post Which Strains Get Fewer Nutrient Problems or Deficiencies? appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Ok, it’s starting to get warm outside. What if you want to harvest a lot of outdoor weed as fast as possible? What if you’re working with a short summer where you live? Perhaps it’s already summer time; do you still have time to grow weed outdoors? Get the answers today!

• Under 2 months → Not enough time to harvest outdoors (time to start an indoor grow)
• 2-3 months left → Grow an autoflower (Gummibears Auto, LSD-25 Auto, White Russian Auto)
• 3+ months left → Grow an autoflower (fastest) or fast photoperiod (Bruce Banner Fast, Guava Root GMO, Gorilla Gas F1)

Grow autoflower strains for an ultra-fast outdoor harvest in as little as 2 months!

Pictured: Rainbow Kush Auto plants on either end, Four Assed Monkey Auto plants in the middle. Masterfully grown by our Home Grow Masterclass student Raymond!

When I started growing in 2008, you had to always plant your cannabis in the Spring and they would not be ready to harvest until late Fall. That’s how traditional (“photoperiod“) strains worked.

Luckily, as a cannabis grower in 2026, you have more outdoor growing options.

There are now many strains, known as autoflower strains,  which are ready to harvest as soon as 8 weeks from germination, regardless of when you germinate your seeds. That’s less than 60 days from seed to weed. It’s still mind-blowing to me how fast autoflower can strains sprint to harvest.

Autoflower cannabis strains need as little as 2 months to go from seedlings…

…to a bountiful outdoor autoflower cannabis harvest!

What that means to you: If you’ve got at least two more months of decent weather where you live, you’ve still got enough time to complete an outdoor harvest using autoflower strains. Note: “Decent weather” for growing cannabis plants means the weather is sunny on many days, and not freezing cold or constantly wet.

Fun Fact: I’ve noticed that many fast autoflower strains have “Blueberry” genetics in their history. Someone in the past must have made a fast-flowering Blueberry auto cross!

A lot fast autoflower strains have Blueberry genetics in their history.

What About Photoperiod Strains?

When growing outdoors, photoperiod plants grow buds in the summer and are ready to harvest in the Fall. But even in ideal conditions, the fastest photoperiod strains are usually slower than almost any autoflower strain.

That means if you’re looking for the fastest outdoor harvest, autoflower strains are the best option.

But what about the fastest photoperiod harvest? There are “fast version” photoperiod strains that are ready to harvest a few weeks earlier outdoors, typically in early-to-mid Fall.

Most photoperiod plants (like this Larry Lemon) are not ready to harvest until mid-to-late Fall. “Fast version” strains may be ready in early Fall.

See Recommended Strains for a Fast Outdoor Photoperiod Harvest.

These 10 Autoflower Strains Are Ready to Harvest Outdoors in 2-3 Months

The fastest strains to harvest are autoflower strains. Autoflower strains start making flowers (buds) about a month from germination, and are typically ready to harvest just a month or two after that. The exact amount of time needed depends on the strain.

Most of the following autoflowering strains are ready to harvest 8-10 weeks from germination. 2 months is about as fast as you can harvest with autoflower strains and still get good yields and bud quality.

Note: A little extra time increases bud size and potency. Even with these ultra-fast strains (which do produce great buds in 2 months), you can increase your yields and bud potency further by giving them an extra week or two over the minimum recommended time.

When time is of the essence, the following outdoor autoflower strains serve you well!

Black Cream Auto by Sweet Seeds

Ready to harvest in 60 days from germination, this strain stays on the shorter side. Plants tend to grow one main big bud, and a few smaller side branches. Bud color ranges from regular purple to almost black purple, depending on the particular plant. The smell is sweet and fruity, with earthy notes. Once they’re dried, the dark purple nugs are a unique sight to behold.

Buds have a unique smooth effect that I love from Sweet Seeds strains (whether auto-flowering or photoperiod). Their genetics are originally from Spain and leave you relaxed and floating on a cloud.

Dark purple buds like from some Black Cream Auto are delightful to see on the plant and after harvest!

Here are all the colors of buds you can expect from Black Cream Auto. These plants are extra hardy and can handle some mistakes yet still produce a great harvest. Grown by Santacabrera.

Skunk #1 Auto by White Label

Skunk #1 Auto plants make that old school skunk smell that takes me back to when I first started smoking. Great yields, easy to grow, and ready to harvest in under 60 days. A relaxing strain that is not too intense, making it perfect for social situations or long smoking sessions.

Two Skunk #1 Auto plants grown outdoors (orange cat for protection)

Skunk #1 autos produce big buds outdoors, fast!

Girl Scout Cookies Auto by FastBuds Seeds

I love this autoflower strain for a bunch of reasons. For one, this strain is true-to-its-roots and gives you Girl Scout Cookies buds with the effects you would find in a photoperiod version of the strain. Buds look gorgeous, and feel stronger than the 20% THC. The apparent strength may have to do with the entourage effect and higher levels of d-Limonene in this strain’s buds. Note: D-Limonene is a lemon-smelling terpene that adds to the entourage effect and may make buds feel more relaxing and social.

Plants can get surprisingly tall in a short amount of time. Ready to harvest about 65 days from germination. Prefers higher-than-average nutrient levels in the flowering stage (a plant needs lots of nutrients to grow those huge buds!). Otherwise, plants are hardy and easy to grow.

LSD-25 Auto by FastBuds Seeds

A lot of the fastest autoflower strains are bred by FastBuds, or descended from FastBuds genetics. That’s because this breeder has continuously focused on making strains to produce fast harvests. LSD-25 Auto is a popular choice for growing outdoors because it’s ready to harvest in 60 days from germination, stays small, is easy to grow, and most plants produce bright purple buds.

Outdoor-grown LSD-25 Auto plants typically make bright purple buds. This one was grown by BigBeardy Grows.

Blueberry Auto by Seedsman

I have had consistently great results with most autoflower strains by Seedsman. The seeds germinate well, plants are easy to grow, and bud size and quality are above-average. Their Blueberry Auto is no exception!

These Blueberry Auto plants were grown in a DIY greenhouse (mainly to keep them out of sight), and thrived outdoors.

Blue Cheese Auto by Seed Supreme

This strain tends to grow one main bud, and it can get THICK! Blue Cheese Auto is specifically resistant to mold or bud rot, so it can handle higher humidity levels than many other strains. Great if you tend to have a lot of wet days or high humidity where you live. Ready to harvest in about 70 days from germination.

Blue Cheese Auto plants grow well outdoors, even if the environment isn’t perfect.

Blue Dream Auto by Seed Supreme

Needing 70 days from seed to harvest, Blue Dream plants tend to be easy to grow with excellent yields and bud effects.

Blue Dream Auto plants tend to grow themselves.

Some of these strains take a little longer, but are still very fast and reward you with bigger yields than the fastest autoflower strains.

Mint Jelly Auto by Humboldt Seed Company

This strain is an autoflowering version of the popular Mint Cake strain, but it may have turned out even better than the original. It has a THC level of up to 27% and a peppermint and cake flavor. It grows well outdoors, and is ready to harvest about 70-80 days after germination.

Mint Jelly Auto produces up to 27% THC – one of the most potent outdoor autoflowering strains available!

Cream Cookies Auto by Fastbuds Seeds

This strain is considered to be an Indica-dominant strain (its “body high” is greater than its “head high”) with high resin production. It has a THC level of a little over 20% and buds have a caramel and creamy flavor. It grows well outdoors and is ready about 10 weeks from germination.

Most autoflower cannabis plants, including Cream Cookies Auto, tend to stay on the smaller side, unless marked as XL

Planet of the Grapes Auto by Ethos Genetics

Easy to grow, good yields, smells great, STRONG bud effects. May be even stronger than Mint Jelly Auto in some cases. Tends to take a bit longer than most autos (up to 90 days) and gets bigger (up to 2-3 feet tall) but will reward you for your patience with amazing yields of top-quality buds. When growing outdoors, you want to plant this strain a full 3 months before it gets cold or rainy outside where you live.

Planet of the Grapes Auto grows with a natural bushy structure and buds are amazing.

Kushberry Moonrocks Auto by MSNL 

Easy to grow, hardy enough to grow in hot or arid climates, and great yields make this a gem in the outdoor autoflowering strain world. Ready to harvest about 2.5 months from germination. I absolutely love the photoperiod version of this strain, and the autoflowering strain lives up to the same standard of bud quality. Truly an example of getting photoperiod buds in autoflowering form.

Kushberry Moonrocks Auto cannabis bud quality is in a league of its own.

Grease Gun Auto by Atlas Seed

This strain produces the best bud quality, resin production, and potency if you allow buds to continue to mature until a full 12 weeks from germination, though it can be harvested a week or two earlier in a pinch.

Here’s an outdoor Grease Gun Auto grown by SkunkSquatch: “Plant is grown in a 7 gallon grow bag about 22 inches tall.”

Grease Gun Auto by Atlas Seed does well in outdoor conditions and grows sparkly buds dripping in resin.

Zkittlez Auto by Seedsman

Extremely easy to grow indoors or out, this strain does take a bit longer than most others on this list, needing almost 90 days from seed to harvest. Yet still faster than any photoperiod strain. For your patience, Zkittlez Auto plants reward you with huge yields of sweet-smelling buds covered in trichomes.

Zkittlez Auto buds produce lovely “chill” effects, and smell delicious.

Auto Duck by Dutch Passion

“Duck” strains (also called “Ducksfoot” strains) look different from other cannabis plants. Unlike typical cannabis leaves, the leaves of these strains are the shape of a duck’s foot. This is due to a natural mutation that an enterprising cannabis grower noticed and bred into a strain. As a result, these plants don’t look as much like cannabis plants to most eyes even after buds start growing. That makes these strains a coveted choice for outdoor growers looking for a little extra stealth.

This strain takes a full 3 months outdoors from seed to harvest, but rewards you with excellent buds. This particular version of Duck has been crossed with a high quality White Widow, giving you White Widow buds from a duck leaf cannabis plant.

Auto Duck by Dutch Passion is a cannabis strain that grows unique duck’s foot-shaped leaves. Stealthy!

Check out those leaves up close.

A Ducksfoot strain has less of an overall “cannabis” aesthetic.

What About Photoperiod Strains?

If you’re pressed for time before cold weather arrives, or just want the fastest outdoor harvest possible, then photoperiod strains aren’t your best bet. Even the fastest photoperiod strains aren’t ready to harvest as fast as almost any auto-flowering strain.

Most photoperiod strains are ready to harvest in mid-to-late Fall

While autoflower plants are ready to harvest based on their age, photoperiod plants go through their life cycle based on the season. They start producing buds in response to long nights, which means photoperiod strains typically start making buds in mid-to-late summer. Buds continue to mature until plants are ready to harvest in Fall.

Think of it as if a photoperiod cannabis plant is “trying” to finish making buds before winter comes.

Most photoperiod plants (like this Larry Lemon) are not ready to harvest until mid-to-late Fall. Notice how the leaves in the background have changed color.

“Fast” photoperiod strains are ready to harvest in early-to-mid Fall

When a photoperiod strain is “fast” that means it tends to be ready to harvest a bit earlier in the Fall season. However, there is no photoperiod strain that is naturally ready to harvest in summer. Photoperiod plants are “trying” to time their harvest to happen right before winter. If you want an outdoor summer harvest, you need to choose auto-flowering strains.

You need an auto-flowering strain, like this Bloody Skunk Auto, to achieve a harvest in summer.

Photoperiod plants are very sensitive to time of year

An odd quirk is that if you plant photoperiod seeds outside too early in the spring, the nights will be long enough to cause them to start making buds immediately. However, since the days are getting shorter at that time of year, the plants quickly revert back to the vegetative stage, buds die, and the plant then goes through its regular life cycle, becoming ready to harvest in the Fall.

On the other hand, with an auto-flowering plant, this is not a consideration. Just put the plants outside when you know you have 2-3 months of good weather.

Photoperiod plants may “re-veg” if you put them outside too early.

Remember: Whether you plant photoperiod seeds outside in the Spring or Summer, the buds will be ready to harvest in the Fall.

Photoperiod strains aren’t the best choice for late planting

Photoperiod strains grow best outdoors when placed outside in late Spring. If you plant photoperiod seeds too late, the buds might not be ready to harvest in time, even if you’re growing a Fast Photoperiod strain. Why? Let’s look at the life of a photoperiod plant to see why they need more time than you might think.

A photoperiod seedling needs a certain amount of maturity before it can start flowering (making buds). Typically, most photoperiod plants do not start flowering until at least 3-4 weeks old (later for some strains), even if you plant it later in the season when normally a plant would start flowering. So let’s say you’ve only got 3 months left before it gets cold or rainy in your climate. That means you need a photoperiod strain with a 2 month flowering period or shorter, because your plant won’t start flowering for the first month. And that’s if everything goes as planned.

Start seedlings indoors to help give them a fast start.

That’s why it’s recommended to get a photoperiod strain with the absolute shortest flowering period when planting later in the season. This just helps speed everything up and ensure your buds are mature and ready to harvest before it gets cold.

There are several “Fast” photoperiod strains, which have 6-8 week flowering periods in good conditions. These can shave off a few weeks from the flowering stage, but you’re still looking at a 3+ month grow from start to finish outdoors. If you’ve got less time than that, I highly recommend going with autoflowering strains!

“Fast” strains are your best bet for photoperiods with late outdoor planting.

Another tip for growing outdoors is to make sure to start your seeds indoors, so they get a headstart and are strong enough to start growing fast and healthy as soon as they’re put outdoors. Take great care of these seedlings and pay close attention to them from the beginning. Be careful not to overwater them. And when you put them outside, ensure they get lots of sun.

Outdoor Late-Planting Photoperiod Tips

• Grow a “Fast” Photoperiod Strain – Get a strain with a 6-8 week flowering period (as fast as it gets for photoperiod strains).
• Start Indoors – Give your photoperiod seedlings a head start by giving them perfect conditions for the first few weeks of life.
• Lots of Sun – It’s especially important to make sure your late-planted cannabis plants get a lot of light. Light is food for plants!
• Don’t Overwater – Overwatering is one of the most common ways to slow down a cannabis plant.

Learn how to grow great cannabis outdoors.

“Fast” Photoperiod Strains – Ready to harvest in early-to-mid Fall. For an earlier harvest, grow an autoflowering strain!

Note: Even if you plant these strains outdoors very late in the season, fast photoperiod strains need at least 3 months from germination before buds are ready to harvest.

Bruce Banner Fast Version by Seed Supreme

Bruce Banner is an epic strain, and this is the faster flowering version. The quality of buds is the same, though with a shorter flowering period it tends to have slightly lower yields than if you grew the non-fast version. Extremely potent (over 25% THC) so these buds are not for the faint-hearted.

Bruce Banner Fast by Seed Supreme does well in outdoor conditions and grows sparkly buds dripping in resin.

Northern Lights Fast Version by Seed Supreme

This strain is a good choice for a stealth grow because it tends to grow more short and bushy (won’t grow over your fence), and doesn’t stink up a storm like many other photoperiod strains. Tends to be a relatively hardy and forgiving plant, and can handle colder climates better than most strains on this list. The reward is sparkly buds with a nice smooth smoke.

Northern Lights Fast by Seed Supreme does well in outdoor conditions and grows sparkly buds that smell fresh with a touch of incense.

Blue Princess Fast Version by Homegrown Cannabis Co.

This is a Blueberry crossed with a Cinderella strain (hence “Blue Princess”), and the fast version has proven to perform well outdoors and still reward you with an ultra-fast harvest. A great strain for those who suffer from anxiety, as the higher CBD levels help provide a relaxing soothing effect, and overall is known as a “smiley” strain.

Blue Princess Fast by Homegrown Cannabis Co. is well-suited to outdoors and grow dense, professional looking buds.

Frisian Dew by Dutch Passion

Although not a “fast type” strain, any list of great outdoor cannabis strains has to include Frisian Dew. It is the quintessential outdoor strain, being developed specifically to thrive in non-ideal outdoor environments (especially colder climates), yet still produce a great harvest. Buds are typically purple, plants are resistant to pests, cold, high humidity, and other common stresses.

A great choice for growers at northern latitudes. It tends to be ready to harvest earlier than most other photoperiod strains.

Frisian Dew was specifically bred to thrive outdoors in northern climates.

A closeup of Frisian Dew buds. Beautiful!

Ready to Plant for a Late Summer Cannabis Harvest?

If you’re going to grow outdoors and it’s already getting late in the season, then you need to grow a fast autoflowering strain. These strains need as little as 2 months from seed to harvest. If you’ve got more than 3 months, then an early-finishing photoperiod strain can also work.

What this means to you: As long as you have decent weather for the next few months, you have enough time to plant one of the recommended cannabis seeds outdoors and still get a good summer harvest.

Remember, with outdoor plants, give them as much direct light as possible every day, and pay attention to the weather. If it’s going to be bad weather, do what you can to protect your plants from the elements. Here’s a full guide on how to grow cannabis outdoors.

About the Author: Nebula Haze

Nebula Haze is a dedicated cannabis enthusiast and co-creator of GrowWeedEasy.com, your resource for every aspect of cannabis cultivation. With years of hands-on experience growing cannabis at home, Nebula uses her passion to simplify the grow process so anyone can achieve amazing yields and bud quality at home. Her in-depth yet simple tutorials make learning to grow weed easy and fun, the way it should be!

Nebula Haze wishing you many abundant harvests!

Make sure to use the search bar to search for any cannabis growing questions you may have, and our free plant doctor tool to diagnose your sick cannabis plants.

Don’t miss out on the latest tips, tricks, and expert advice from Nebula Haze! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get the best cannabis cultivation tactics delivered straight to you every Sunday morning at 4:20 am.

The post Fast Outdoor Strains for a Quicker Cannabis Harvest (Short Summer, Late Planting…) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

What Happens if You Grow “Hermie” Seeds?

Did you find seeds in your buds even though no male plants were around? “Hermie seeds” refer to seeds you find in your cannabis buds without the presence of male plants. Here are trustworthy feminized seeds that always grow buds but never grow seeds.

Can you grow seeds from a hermie cannabis plant? Yes, but there are pros and cons.

Home Grow Tip: Start with trustworthy feminized seeds (here’s a list of good ones) to ensure every plant makes seedless buds. Save yourself the headache!

Cannabis buds with no seeds = “sinsemilla”
(higher THC and better to smoke than seedy buds)

When you find your homegrown buds have seeds even though zero male plants were in the vicinity, it means a female plant “hermed” (showed hermaphrodite tendencies).

The herm plant released pollen onto surrounding buds, causing seeds to grow. Hermie seeds can appear even if you don’t see any visual signs of herming like pollen sacs or bananas.

Hermie seeds: No male plant was around, but you find seeds in the buds anyway.

But what happens if you grow the hermie seeds from a hermed plant? Will it cause problems? Keep reading to find out!

Here is what cannabis growers can expect when growing hermie cannabis seeds:

Pros 

• Free Seeds – These are seeds you find in your buds. Cannabis seeds cost money, and getting free seeds without any effort is appealing.
• All-Female Plants – If both parents were female (at least mostly female), as is the case with herm seeds, all resulting cannabis plants will be at least mostly female and grow buds. In a way, herm seeds are unplanned, naturally-formed “feminized” seeds.

Cons 

• More Likely to Herm – Unlike professionally feminized seeds (which are created with a special chemical process), hermie seeds come with more uncertainty. Although the resulting plants may or may not show any signs of herming, unfortunately the chances are higher. That’s because for each herm seed, herming is in its genetics.

With high-quality cannabis seeds, plants usually only herm under major stress like nutrient deficiencies, light stress, heat stress, unusual light cycles, etc. With really great genetics, plants won’t herm under any conditions. But a seed from a hermie parent is more likely to herm even in perfect conditions.

The plant went through extreme stress, so it was no surprise to find seeds.

Why growers don’t want cannabis seeds that are more likely to herm:

• Higher Chance of More Seedy Buds – Again, it is possible your buds won’t grow seeds, but seedy buds are more likely. This is because the genetics came from cannabis plants that produced seeds without the presence of a male plant. Even if you don’t see evidence of plants herming, like pollen sacs or yellow hermie bananas on the buds, the buds may have seeds in them after harvest.
• Possibly Worse Yields & Bud Quality – If buds get a few seeds, it won’t affect your yields or bud potency much. But seeds take energy to grow. If your plant grows tons of seeds because it herms, you’ll end up with smaller buds that may have lower potency or smell than expected. Sadly, when growing hermie seeds, it’s impossible to know ahead of time what you may end up with.
• Unknown Genetics – Just like starting with any other bag seeds (seeds you find), hermie or not, you don’t know how the plants will grow. Although it may seem like herm seeds would be an exact clone of the “mother” plant, that’s not how it works, due to the genetic reality of herming. Unlike starting with seeds from a trustworthy breeder, you can’t know what to expect as far as how the plant grows, how long until it’s ready to harvest, the bud structure, smell, potency, etc. It’s really the luck of the draw.

Sometimes you don’t see pollen sacs or banana, but still get hermie seeds. Female plants that produce seeds without visible pollen sacs or bananas are “hidden herms”. These plants often went through some kind of stress, but not always. Regardless, if seeds are there and no male plants were around, the resulting seeds are herm seeds.

This plant suffered from severe light stress. There were no signs of herming, but buds still grew hermie seeds.

Often you can find symptoms of the herm.

Here, there is a male flower right next to the seed that formed. (click for closeup)

Growing Hermie Seeds: Summary (What cannabis growers need to know)

It’s clear to see why growers would want to grow herm seeds. They’re essentially free seeds that appear with no effort, and grow all-female plants. That’s appealing.

The main downside to growing herm seeds is that you’re more likely to end up with more hermie plants and seeds in your buds. If it’s just a few seeds in your buds, most home growers wouldn’t care. But seeds take away from the size and potency of buds. If your buds produce tons of seeds, you’ll end up with very little bud to smoke, and it will be less potent than it could be. On top of that, you won’t know what to expect as far as how the plant grows or bud quality until the grow is over.

Related Article: What causes cannabis plants to herm?

Hermie seeds look the same as regular cannabis seeds, but they’re more unpredictable.

What happens when cannabis growers use herm seeds anyway?

If you’re wondering what happens when growers try to grow hermie seeds, you’re not alone. Lots of growers have given it a shot.

Let’s explore what happens!

First off, there are plenty of fans. I’ve talked to growers who only use hermie seeds and never buy new ones. They aim to breed a line of plants that always herms just a bit. Enough to make a few seeds each generation. That way they get a steady supply of free seeds without having to deal with male plants. The downside is every generation always has at least some seeds in their buds. A few seeds is probably not a big deal for most home growers. But if things go wrong, you may end up with tons of seeds. Buds that are very seedy can be a pain because they drop seeds everywhere, and seedy buds tend to be smaller with lower bud potency.

Pollen, pictured here, is what causes seedy buds. Pollen can come from a male plant or a hermie plant.

So what can happen from growing herm seeds? The main risk is the offspring herming like its parent.

Notice how there are little yellow growths in between the white hairs in these buds? This is a common type of cannabis herm. Each of these yellow “bananas” releases pollen. If your buds grow tons of bananas while buds are early in the flowering stage like this, you could end up with hundreds or thousands of seeds in the surrounding buds.

Yellow “bananas” are a common form of herming.

This next bud is absolutely stuffed with seeds, due to a major herm in the grow room that went unnoticed. There’s little bud left after all the seeds are shaken out. No cannabis grower wants this to happen by accident!

However, if a herm plant only grows only a few bananas or pollen sacs that release only a little pollen, you may only get a few seeds or no seeds. If the herm happens late in the flowering stage, you may not get any seeds. That’s because seeds need several weeks to form. You typically only get fully formed seeds if a cannabis plant herms relatively early in the flowering stage.

A single lone banana won’t make many seeds, especially this late in the cannabis flowering stage.

If your hermie seeds grow buds like the first examples with tons of pollen sacs or bananas, you’ll likely end up with tons of seeds. If a hermie plant grows buds like the second example, you may end up with good buds that have very few seeds. Or the buds may not herm at all and you get perfectly seedless buds. It’s all a part of the genetic lottery you’re playing when growing the offspring of herm plants.

The main takeaway is this: good results are possible with hermie seeds, but you’re increasing your risk of running into problems.

If you want to read an example of a grower getting good results with hermie seeds, check this out.

Fascinating Experience from a GrowWeedEasy.com Reader

Greg, a grower from Australia, recently wrote about his experience growing hermie cannabis seeds.

He grew 8 feminized seeds indoors. In his words, “Unfortunately, the grow room underwent some heat stress early in the flowering stage, which resulted in one of the eight plants herming. Naturally, this seeded up most of the rest of them.”

He decided to try germinating 14 of the resulting hermie seeds. To his surprise, all 14 plants grew into healthy females without any signs of hermaphroditism or seedy buds. He stated, “They have all grown out quite nicely. I have not come across a single seed. The buds are dense, so dense you could hammer a nail into them. And trichome production has been excellent, they are sticky like nothing else.”

His hermie seeds grew these beautiful plants.

Greg said, “I had hypothesized that they would not be feminized and that they would all be hermaphrodites, I’m quite pleased to learn that I was wrong on both counts.”

He mentioned that in the past he had a different experience, “All my previous experience with hermies and the resulting seeds has only been more banana throwing hermies. Those genetics were all bagseed from the shallow gene pool here in Australia though. This last one was the first hermie I have seen since I started purchasing seeds from Seedsman.” He promises to let us know what happens if he tries stressing out a plant on purpose with heat to cause it to herm on purpose.

Here are the plants from Greg’s experiment at harvest.

Greg had different results with these hermie seeds compared to his past experiences, which ended in disaster. It seems he may have found a set of genetics that only herms in stressful conditions. Or perhaps the tendency to herm under stress was not passed down to these particular seeds at all.

These plants are an example of when growing hermie seeds goes “right”. The resulting plants grew dense and frosty buds without any seeds or other problems.

Greg’s experience shows that hermie seeds don’t always produce seedy or banana-filled buds. With the right genetics and stress-free conditions, it’s possible to get quality female plants from seeds made by a hermie mom plant. It just goes to show there can be a lot of variation when it comes to the hermie trait being passed down.

Related Article: Do Feminized Cannabis Seeds Make ‘Hermie’ Plants? [Sometimes]

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are they called “Hermie” cannabis plants?

“Herm” or “hermie” is a common nickname for “hemaphrodite”, and hermie seeds come from a plant that grew buds like a female plant, but also pollen like a male plant.

Whether it comes from a male or herm plant, pollen gets on nearby buds and causes seeds to grow. But herms are especially tricky because you may only see the buds and not notice any signs of herming until pollen has already been released.

Learn more about hermie plants.

Male flowers (“pollen sacs”) can look somewhat like traditional flowers when they open up.

Closeup of a herm “banana” among the buds. By the time you can see yellow, it has usually already released pollen.

What causes hermie plants?

Cannabis plants become hermies in 3 ways:

• Genetics – Some plants herm no matter what you do, due to their genetics. There’s nothing growers can do about this kind of herming.
• Stress – Some plants may only herm if they experience a lot of stress. That could include irregular light schedules, heat, high humidity, certain flowering supplements, and other stressful conditions. However, the best cannabis strains are ironclad and won’t herm no matter what.
• Chemicals – Spraying healthy young cannabis plants with certain chemicals like colloidal silver or gibberellic acid forces them to grow pollen sacs instead of buds. The resulting pollen is used to make commercial feminized seeds.

Stressed plants are more likely to herm.

How do I prevent hermie plants?

The best way to avoid growing hermie cannabis plants is to start with good genetics from a trustworthy breeder. Good feminized seeds don’t herm no matter way. On top of starting with good genetics, you should take care of your plants and try not to stress them. Lastly, take a second to look at your buds every day, and keep an eye out for signs of herming so you catch it early and quickly dispose of the offending plants.

Watch out for pollen sacs or yellow growths among your buds!

Why did I find seeds in my buds even though the plant didn’t herm?

Sometimes you don’t see pollen sacs or banana, but still get hermie seeds. Female plants that produce seeds without visible pollen sacs or bananas are “hidden herms”. These plants often went through some kind of stress, but not always. Regardless, if seeds are there and no male plants were around, the resulting seeds are herm seeds.

This “hidden herm” suffered from severe light stress. No visual signs of herming, but buds still had seeds.

How do breeders make feminized cannabis seeds?

The feminized seeds you buy from breeders are created when growers use chemical means to force a female plant to herm. They use that resulting pollen to make the seeds. Since each “parent” plant is a female, and without a male in the mix, all the resulting seeds are all female. As long as the breeders are careful to only choose plants that never herm in natural conditions, the resulting seeds are unlikely to herm.

This female plant was forced to make pollen sacs using colloidal silver. This “feminized” pollen is used to create all-female seeds.

Will herm seeds always grow like the parent?

No, expect variation from herm seeds! It’s intuitive to think that herm seeds are essentially a “clone” of the parent plant. But that’s not how it always works. Why? Pollen and buds each receive a random set of chromosomes from the parent plant.

That means herm seeds might turn out like the original plant, but they might not. The more genetic diversity in the recent history of the plant, the more diverse the resulting seeds might turn out. The genes passed down through pollen is not the same as the genes passed down in the buds, even when coming from the same plant.

This plant from a herm seed is growing like a male plant with some female flowers. (opposite of a typical herm)

What happens if I grow herm seeds for many generations?

Herm seeds tend to become more consistent with each subsequent generation. Eventually all plants tend to grow in a uniform way due to inbreeding, and become almost like clones of each other. Just remember, the one thing that often becomes most consistent is the tendency to herm each generation.

Conclusion

Should you grow hermie seeds? It depends on you and your situation.

I personally don’t, but I understand why a grower might do it, especially if money is tight. That being said, even expensive cannabis seeds don’t cost much in the grand scheme of a cannabis grow. If you’re going to spend 3-5 months growing a plant, the $100 it costs to buy a bunch of professionally feminized seeds will reward you with plants that grow as expected and produce good yields of beautiful seedless buds. You deserve the best!

Let me know what you think. Have you grown hermie seeds? What happened? Fill out our contact form and let us hear your experience!

~Nebula Haze, co-founder of GrowWeedEasy.com

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The post What happens if I grow seeds from a hermie plant? appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

How can you make sure your precious marijuana seeds last as long as possible? Today’s seed storage tutorial will show you exactly what to do. When stored properly, cannabis seeds remain viable for years or even decades. We’ve germinated 10-year-old seeds that were stored via this method!

So what’s the best way to keep your cannabis seeds fresh and viable? Here’s the long and the short of it:

How to Store Cannabis Seeds – 4 Important Factors

1. Dry (Most Important) – Moisture is the #1 enemy of seed storage, so keep seeds dry! In other words, don’t let seeds touch water or get exposed to high humidity.
2. Cool – Try to keep a cool, steady temperature. An ideal temperature is about 40°F (just above freezing temperature), but as long as it’s under 70°F you should be okay.
3. Dark – Protect your seeds from light! UV rays especially are not great for seed viability.
4. Airtight – Avoid letting your seeds be exposed to fresh air or oxygen. If possible, keep cannabis seeds in an airtight container.

Given what cannabis seeds need to stay healthy and viable, generally, these are the best places to store cannabis seeds.

Where to Store Cannabis Seeds

• Fridge – Keep seeds in a dry, airtight container in the back of the fridge or in the crisper drawer. These places tend to maintain a more steady temperature than the front of the fridge.
• Drawer or cupboard – Inside a cool drawer or cupboard can give a nice cool, dark, dry space.
• Any Cool, Dry Place – Any place that tends to stay cool, dark, and dry, without a lot of temperature fluctuations.

Ideal home cannabis seed storage storage: Seeds are still in the original breeder packs, in a freezer ziploc bag, in the crisper drawer in the fridge.

Tips to Store Cannabis Seeds Forever

• Steady temperature – Don’t let seeds get hot and cold. For example, although the ideal cannabis seed storage temperature is 40°F, it’s better for seeds to constantly be at 70°F vs fluctuating back and forth between 40 and 70°F.
• Keep in original packaging – Most trustworthy breeders have excellent packaging to keep seeds good as long as possible. So often your best best is to keep seeds in the breeder’s pack or vial it came in.
  • Alternative: Zip-lock bag (“Freezer” bags are best) – If your seeds didn’t come in a breeder pack, a great option is to store them in a ziplock bag. Make sure to squeeze out all the air before zipping the seal. If possible use a zip-lock bag that says it’s made for the freezer, as the freezer bags are much more airtight than a regular ziploc. If you don’t have freezer bags, then you can double or triple bag the seeds for the same effect. The goal is to help prevent any oxygen or humidity from getting to the cannabis seeds.
• Actively fight moisture – If you’ve got open seeds that aren’t in a protective breeder pack, for example you’re keeping seeds in a zip-lock bag, it can help to add some pieces of dry rice or a very small silica-gel desiccant pack with the seeds to absorb any extra moisture or humidity.

How to Tell If a Cannabis Seed is No Longer Viable

The best way to see if your cannabis seeds are still good is simply to germinate them and find out. Here’s our tutorial on how to germinate cannabis seeds to get the best germination rates.

If a cannabis seed sprouts, your seedling is good to go!

Examples of Cannabis Seed Banks 

We’ve had good seed germination rates with these cannabis seed sources so far, and heard good things from our readers. Let us know your experiences!

• Seed Supreme – San Diego, United States
• ILGM (I Love Growing Marijuana) – California, United States
• North Atlantic Seed Co. – Maine, United States
• Seedsman – Ships from US & Europe
• MSNL Seeds – Netherlands bank with shipping centers in the US, Canada, and UK.
• DNA Genetics – West Coast, USA

Keep reading…

• Bag Seed vs Hype Seed: Is it Worth it to Buy Cannabis Seeds?
• Why should growers start with feminized seeds?
• Where to Buy Cannabis Seeds Online (Our Personal Seed Sources)
• How to Germinate Cannabis Seeds Easily

The post How to Store Cannabis Seeds So They Last Forever appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.