u/ajdudhebsk

*first 2 pics are before the trip and the last 3 are the day I got back.

I went away for 9 days during week 6-7 of flower and didn’t want to ask someone to water my 3x3 bed for me. I looked up some self-watering methods instead of blu-mats because I already had to buy an “emergency” dehumidifier and didn’t want to spend even more money.

I found a method where you place 1 gallon jugs of water on the surface of the soil, then prick 2 very small holes - 1 near the top and 1 near the bottom. The trick is to use an extremely thin sewing needle, which I didn’t have. I had to use a push pin, which made the holes too large (and the water flow too quickly). I then read that I could break off the tip of a wooden toothpick inside the bottom hole, which is supposed to allow just enough water to drip out. This only partially worked, it actually made too-tight a seal on a bunch of the jugs.

Here’s what I did before leaving for my trip:

Watered 3 gallons (my bed is roughly 70-80 gallons of soil). I typically water 2 gallons every second day, then 3 or 4 gallons once per week. This is in flower with around 80F and 45% RH during lights on. And it’s a very full bed, the plants are filling the full 3x3 footprint plus hanging over a bit.

I placed seven 1 gallon jugs with the pinholes around the surface of my soil bed. I tried to place them near the bases of all the plants.

When I got back, my plants had survived just fine. However, only 3 of the water jugs fully emptied. 3 others only dripped out around 1/4 of the jug, and one did slightly more than that. Luckily, the plants and all of my worms survived. I lost maybe 2 small handfuls of fan leaves that got crispy and brown, and I’d say the plants look like they’re fading slightly early.

Overall I’d say I should have tested way before I left, and ordered some really thin sewing needles to make the holes the right size. But I got through it and didn’t need anyone coming to my house and watering for me.

I’ve got a crowded 3x3 soil bed but these 2 plants from mass medical seem like they’ll yield a decent amount. First 3 pics are Emoji, the rest are golden Putang.

Emoji was a freebie and it’s like 4 different crosses so I can’t remember them all (I know peanut butter breath is in there). I think I listed them all in an older post in veg. It’s been a pretty vigorous plant and easy to grow. It’s had some herm issues, I’ve had to pluck around 10 or so nanners from week 2 of flower to now. It was an average stretch, maybe 1.5-2x.

The buds feel dense, not particularly greasy and has a lighter earthy and fruity smell. The buds aren’t huge but seems like it’ll yield an average amount for its small size in my bed.

Golden Putang smells exactly like some Putang plants I grew a couple of years ago. Very Tangie-ish (I think Putang is star pupil x tangie). It’s got some tall spears and is one of the larger plants in the bed. It seems like I’ll get an above average yield for this one. The buds are different from the Putang plants I grew before, these are much larger/less leafy and seem way more dense. The stretch was about 2x.

There’s also a mutated bud, which I’ve never had before. For anyone who’s had this mutation before, should I watch for bud rot pretty closely? It’s not a huge bud but I read they may rot more easily.

This is 2 triple danks from seed in the same 3x3 bed. Plants have been remarkably similar - same size/colour/smell/etc.

The only real difference is that one has a variegated branch, which is my first time in my own garden.

These plants are really greasy when touched, have very strong smells (earthy/fuel so far), and I feel like they’ll be really dense small nugs when the dry/cure is finished. I’m guessing these will go 70-80 days.

I was gone for 9 days and just got back. I tried a trick I read about with pinholes in water jugs to slowly water while I was gone. It half worked but the plants in the bed clearly suffered a little while I was gone. I pulled a couple small handful of brown crispy leaves and some upper canopy fan leaves got a little messed up too.

These 2 have been really vigorous and easy to grow. I noticed a couple of pollen sacs at flip but that’s about the only issue I’ve had. I removed them and stripped most of the shaded out lowers and no sacs/herm issues have come back.

I’ve got one raspberry parfait in my 3x3 soil bed. These were old seeds but still germinated well. This plant has been very easy to manage, hasn’t had any issues.

It has a fruit smell for sure but I can’t say if it’s raspberry. It has much thinner fan leaves than any other plant in the soil bed. It didn’t stretch too much - just about doubled but more like 1.5x than 2x.

I’m looking forward to how it finishes and the dry/cure. It’s a little ahead of the other plants (except pineapple muffin) so it’s probably got 3 weeks left at most.

Week 7 of flower in a living soil bed. It’s crowded so these are small plants.

Unfortunately both pineapple muffins hermed pretty badly after flipping to flower. Pollen sacs and nanners, which I plucked off. I stripped the lower growth pretty aggressively to make sure I removed all pollen sacs (I was also having humidity issues).

Nanners continued to come back, so I’m assuming I’ll find some seeds when I trim.

These plants are maturing much faster than anything else in the soil bed. The really purple one has looked about 2 weeks ahead of everything else after I flipped to flower.

The purple one has a much greasier feeling when I touch it and it’s got stronger smells than the other. It has more of a tropical fruit smell.

The greener one is much smaller, not as greasy feeling and smells much more like blueberry muffins (which I’ve grown a couple of times).

I’m going to start watching the trichs and will probably end up chopping these in 1-2 weeks.

I finally flipped 2-3 weeks after I originally planned. The canopy got very dense and I had to thin it out a few times before and after flipping.

This is 9 plants in one 3x3 soil bed (2 triple danks from sacred cut seed co., 2 pineapple muffins from HSC, 1 raspberry parfait from HSC, 2 star pupils from mass medical, 1 emoji from mass medical, and 1 golden Putang from mass medical).

Some cool variegation in one of the triple danks (I think that’s because of the GMO parentage) and those 2 are easily the biggest plants so hopefully I like the terps.

One golden pineapple has saw-tooth leaves, really purple stems compared to the other, and it’s way ahead of every other plant in terms of bud development. It’s the first one to have any smell too (just vaguely sweet right now).

I’ll update again when there’s some decent buds to see in a few weeks.

Just an update. I’m going to be away from home for a couple of weeks in July, so I decided to delay flower for 2 weeks. That way they won’t be in week 8+ while I’m gone.

I chopped back the taller plants pretty aggressively to get a more even height. Normally I would have just spread the taller ones out with a screen but now that I have time to kill I thought I’d go for a more even canopy.

The star pupil plants are still pretty fucked up. The smaller one is pretty much buried under its neighbouring plants, and the taller one is burnt and yellow looking all the time. It’s also small and likely won’t yield much.

The 2 triple dank plants are big and very vigorous plants. The pineapple muffins are on the smaller side but look healthy enough. Same with the raspberry parfait, which is also from HSC.

I’ll probably do a post when I flip and then take a break until there’s something worth looking at in flower.

I bought old family purple, UK cheese S1 and Mendocino purple urkle 3.5

Got 11 full free packs, plus two small fem packs (3 seeds each) and 1 small reg pack (3 seeds). I asked for grape flavour and anything purple punch, so most of the freebies are geared towards that.

PSA to any other Canadians thinking about ordering - it’s still worth it even with our shitty exchange rate and the small hassle of getting USD and dealing with the weird new tariff/customs bullshit. My order worked out to $5.50 CAD per seed, which is about half the price I pay with any seed bank I order from.

Huge thanks to Caleb. I wanted to make sure I finally got an order in just in case things get weird with seed sales and customs, and I’m so glad I did.

It’s been 1 week since I posted an update. Probably another 1-2 weeks before the shorter plants will be close to scrog screen height. This is 9 plants from seed, 6 different strains in total. I’ll have to do some bending for the taller plants once I get the screen set up.

Did some defoliation and cleaned the lower branches up, and cut down most of the clover. I’m going to do a pre-flower top dress in a few days, and I’m also waiting on a micro-nutrient mineral blend to arrive that I’ll do some foliar sprays with (and maybe water in to the soil as well). I’m not seeing tons of deficiencies (except the 2 star pupil plants that both had some real issues) other than the odd leaf here and there but I want to make sure they’re all healthy before flower.

They are: 2 Star Pupil (mass medical), 2 Triple Dank (sacred cut seed co.), 1 Raspberry Parfait (Humboldt seed co.), 2 Pineapple Muffin (Humboldt seed co.), 1 Emoji (mass medical), and 1 Golden Putang (mass medical).