My First Grow - Sunset Sherbet

What a difference four days makes! She's due for a watering here, which is why she looks a bit droopy, but you can see how much she's really filled in since I defoliated.

Freshly defoliated:



4 days later:



I was originally going to flip her to flower yesterday, but I have an upcoming vacation in 10 weeks, and so I'm probably going to let her veg for another week or two. You can read more about it in this thread.

Forgot to add that I changed up the water recipe today. If she's going to veg longer, then I won't start cutting out N. I tried 2ml of the FF Grow Big (6-4-4) and cut back the Fish and Kelp Emulsion to 10 ml. I also decided to try 1 ml of Silica, and the usual 5ml of 50% sulphured molasses solution.


All that was in 4 liters of water. She was thirsty, and there was less runoff than usual. I had meant to water last night, but life got in the way, and I thought she'd be fine until today. She was, but the pot was really, really light. I'm glad I got to her when I did.

Bullet2112 said:

Are you sure this is your FIRST grow?? I'm gonna have to call BS....no offense!

I can't imagine a first timer having the cohonies to bend and cut, heavy defoiliate, etc, on his first time out.....so aggressively!

Rock on Mr. "First Timer"!! Grow is looking very good!

Click to expand...

Ha ha! Too funny. My old job was Project Manager in the day. I’m a weirdo for sure. Thank you for the compliment.

Minor updates: She's looking quite nice in the undercarriage, and is filling out well after the last defoliation. She needs water every other day now, and honestly every 18 hours would probably make her quite happy.

Watering recipe

4l filtered tap water
1 ml Silica Blast
4 ml Grow Big
10 ml Fish and Kelp Blend
5 ml 50% Sulphured Molasses solution

I'm going to confess to a sin here and admit that I haven't checked ph or ppm for longer than I should, but everything seems to be going well. If the plant tolerates this feed well, I'll hold it here and give her this until I'm ready to flip to flower. I turned down the light a bit, to 90%. I think the plant will be fine with that, and I'll be able to save some power and heat there, as well as have the ability to increase it in flower later if I want to.

Some recent photos:

Minor Updates, and a new plant in the flowering tent!


The Sunset Sherbet continues to do great! It's thriving with the current feed regimen, so I'll keep that up until it's time to start transitioning to a flowering nutrient scheme. The plant is getting huge - leaving it to veg for a couple of weeks after the big trim has lead to an absolute explosion in size. I should probably go in and do some pruning, but part of me just wants to let it be the beast it wants to be.

The new plant is a Vanilla Kush seed I planted about a week and a half after the Sunset Sherbet. I was attempting to LST the main stem into a spiral shape, but it didn't quite work out, and I accidentally topped the plant. As a result, it's just sort of a free form combination of LST and HST now. I did practice some supercropping on it last week.

Current fertilization scheme:

4l water
5ml 50% molasses solution
5ml Root Ruckus
10ml Fish and Kelp Solution
5ml Grow Big
2ml Silica Blast

Watering is every other day for the Sunset Sherbet, and every three days for the Vanilla Kush.

Here they are together, Sunset is on the left, Vanilla on the right.

Really nice grow,for some reason I still can not bring myself to top my seedlings.

Today is (finally) the day! Both plants are growing beautifully, and displaying female preflowers. The lights will shut off at 8pm tonight, and they won't come back on for 12 hours. I came in this morning to find that the Vanilla Kush has responded to her new environment positively, growing up over the Sherbet overnight. I watered, then started pruning both for the flip. I cleared up a lot underneath, and removed a bunch of small branches that I'll try cloning with. I haven't had much luck with cloning so far, so I'll keep my fingers crossed. I also supercropped the very tall branches on the Vanilla Kush to try to keep everything under control. I'm thinking about doing some super cropping on the Sunset Sherbet to bring the main colas down a bit. I know I have to decide asap; I don't want to stress her too much in flower.

Here's how everything stands as I flip to flower
Sunset Sherbet - 56 days veg
Vanilla Kush - 46 days veg
Tent: 4x4x6 Vivosun
Lights : 2x Spider Farmer SF-2000 Dimmed to 80%
Ventilation: AC Infinity Cloudline T6 fan and carbon filter, oscillating tower fan

5 gallon fabric grow bags
Fox Farm Ocean Forest

Watering/Fertilization:
4l water
5ml 50% molasses solution
5ml Root Ruckus
10ml Fish and Kelp Solution
5ml Grow Big (2ml for the Vanilla Kush)
2ml Silica Blast







First thing this morning:

After Pruning:


Sunset Sherbet after pruning:


Vanilla Kush after pruning

The Sunset has recovered from her late watering and pruning. I decided to go ahead and supercrop the main tops to give the smaller ones a chance to fill out the canopy. Here's the before and after from this morning.

Before:

After:

So, it's been a while since I updated. It's now day 47 of flower, and my plants have been through the wringer. Right after the last posts, a member here spotted the early signs of overfeeding, and I backed off to straight water for a while. Singed tips showed up with a day or two after the switch, so while it was caught early, there was some damage done.

Then the basement where my plants lived flooded multiple times, and while the plants themselves were never compromised, they had to move for repairs. So that was a whole to-do, moving the entire grow tent and both plants. I'm sure that was stressful to the plants, which were temporarily tented in contractor bags during the move.

Then once they were settled into their new home, aphids struck. It was only because I checked on my plants and inspected them closely that I found the first signs, a few sticky leaves with a dusting of white powder. Aphid colonies were found directly above on the underside of the leaves over the site. Thankfully they were confined to one portion of the plant, and mostly to one branch. I did some research, and ordered a few products to combat the aphids. In the meanwhile I carefully inspected every leaf on the branch and the ones adjacent to it. I removed every leaf that had any signs of aphids or eggs, and so far it looks like I caught it in time. I've found a couple of eggs and adults on leaves twice since, but so far it appears that they haven't been able to reestablish a foothold. I'll keep inspecting everything closely up until harvest.

The worst part of all of this though, is that in my panic about the aphids I completely missed a watering, and nearly killed the damn plants myself. I had a very busy day right after the aphid incident, and didn't check on the plants until that night. They were shriveled and nearly dead, but I managed to catch them just in time. I've been babying them back, and the Vanilla Kush has mostly recovered, while the Sunset Sherbet has a little further to go.

Despite all of these massive failures, they just keep chugging along. It looks like I'm going to actually get some smokable buds despite my best effort to kill these plants.


Here are some current bud pics - not too shabby, all things considered.

Sunset Sherbet -

Vanilla Kush -