First Grow - Nirvana Northern Lights Auto

Hey all, been reading a lot of grow journals here and thought I'd start up my own. I started my first grow about 3 weeks ago. My philosophy behind this grow is to keep everything as simple as possible, so that I can get the basics down. I want to learn as much as possible with my first grow so I can experiment with different things down the line. Here's some info about the grow:

Strain: Nirvana Northern Lights Auto (supposedly the good ones after the recall)
Medium: ½ All-purpose potting soil (no nutrients), ½ Miracle-Gro Perlite (0.04-0.01-0.06)
Lights: CFLs, added as needed (have both 5000k and 2700k)
Light Cycle: 18/6 (started 24/0, but switched ~2 weeks in)
Veg Nutrients: 24-8-16 (also contains micronutrients B, Cu, Fe, etc.)
Bloom Nutrients: TBD

Here's a recap of the first 3 weeks. Days are since germination.

Day 4 - She says, "Hello, world!"



Day 8 - Happy and healthy so far



Day 14 - She started to show signs of heat stress. I backed the light off a bit and made this thread - https://www.rollitup.org/newbie-central/459078-worried-noob-seeking-advice-2-a.html



Day 15 - Heat stress stopped getting worse. I bought a timer and some nutrients. She got her first feeding and switched from 24/0 to 18/6.



Day 18 - Looks like the heat stress issue is resolved. Also, her first big burst of growth. I guess she like the food



Day 20 (day of this post) - Still looking good. Almost time for another watering.



I plan to update every couple days, so if this grow looks at all interesting please subscribe! Also, feedback and comments are welcome and appreciated

hey buddy. These things are pretty sweet. I have two that are coming around to day 45 and are by far the biggest auto's I've grown. They look awesome, Im pretty stoked for the smoke. Do you have any idea how long these are suppose to take?

SirLancelot said:

hey buddy. These things are pretty sweet. I have two that are coming around to day 45 and are by far the biggest auto's I've grown. They look awesome, Im pretty stoked for the smoke. Do you have any idea how long these are suppose to take?

Click to expand...

I'm not really sure, but I've read that they take around 8-10 weeks from the start. Around 4 weeks to flower and then 4-6 weeks of flowering. When did your's start to flower?

oh i dunno probably a couple of weeks ago. If you follow the link below you can find all the details you want up to now. GL brother, I'll be watching to see how yours turn out.

Been a while since I've updated, but things are still going well with the grow. She's getting fed every watering now (about 5-6 days apart). Here are some pics:

Day 29



Day 32



I'm expecting her to start flowering soon based on what I've read about these plants.

what's up man lookin good. My plants showed pistols around day thirty so you should be comming up soon! THese form buds pretty quick Mine are sooo crystally and im at like day 57 and all my trichs are milky. Im hoping they swell a bit more.

Hey man, I took a look at your's and you sure have a lot of budsites. And nice lookin buds too! I'd be happy if mine had half as many.

yea compared to last auto's their def alot taller and have way more budsites but the nugs just aren't as big as any previously but Im hoping their not done untill around day 70-80 so that hopefully will give them another 2-3wks to swell, but it's looking like their gonna be done sooner than that. I am pleased though they were a good grow and I'd probably do them again! Can't wait to see how yours turn out.

What a difference a couple days makes. It looks like she's on her way

Day 35

Well, it's been a couple weeks since she first started budding and things are still going well. She's actually gotten a bit too tall for the space she's growing in, so I'm going to be fixing that this weekend. In the 2nd photo for day 49, you can see the light isn't directly above her and she has to tilt her leaves a bit to get more light.

I think my biggest complaint so far is that she's about twice as tall as she needs to be. As you can see in the first photos for day 46 and 49, she's pretty sparse on the lower half. There's a few bud sites down there, but it doesn't look like much is going to come from those. I might try some LST or something with my next grow, but the veg stage for this was so short that I'm not sure how much I can actually do. I definitely want to try a regular photoperiod strain sometime in the future. I have 4 seeds left of these NL autos and I plan to do 2 more grows with 2 plants each time before looking into ordering more seeds.

Unfortunately, when I try to get an up-close shot of the buds my lame phone camera doesn't want to auto-focus on the bud.

Day 46


Day 49

man my two look the same one is tall and skinny the other shorter and thicker. Looking good though. You would be fine by slowly bending it a little it wouldn't do any harm. just not alot ya know.

Ok, so not buying a PH meter and just assuming that the reverse osmosis water I had was pretty much neutral came back to bite me in the ass. Anyway, this is what happened:

Too High PH!!



What happened was that I fed her like two waterings in a row and then waited a while before the next watering because it didn't seem like she needed it. Then, the discoloration started appearing on the edges of some of the fan leaves. Thinking it might be too much nutes I just gave plain water the next watering. I figured plain water wasn't going to hurt the situation. WRONG ANSWER!! Apparently this water has a PH close to 8.

A couple of the bottom leaves pretty much died off and I thought maybe the plant just didn't want them anymore, since I've read that leaves dying during flowering is normal. So, I've waited way too long to fix this PH problem. I'm just hoping I didn't wait too long to the point where I really hurt the yield.

On a more positive note, she is still making good progress despite the PH problems. Here are the latest pictures:

Day 61

Are you sure it just isn't a cal/mag deficency?

About 90% sure. I tested the PH of the soil and it is pushing 8 from what I can tell with this hard to read ph test. Even if it is a deficiency, the PH needs to go down, so I'm going to try that first. The food I've been using has Mg in it, but it doesn't look like it has Ca. The Lowe's down the street apparently doesn't have aluminum sulfate and I'm a bit wary about using sodium sulfate (probably would be fine though?), so I'm just going to get it somewhere else tomorrow. In the meantime, I gave her some nutes which should drop the PH a little.

Ok, more evidence that it's a PH problem. She's showing early signs of a phosphorous deficiency, which gets locked out at a high PH.

Some of the petioles are a little red and two of the upper leaves have a tiny bit of dark blue color starting to appear.



Just going to get the PH sorted out and go from there.

Edit: I'm really impressed with how resilient this plant is. Despite these clearly sub-optimal conditions, I'm seeing more and more crystals every day and the buds are still swelling.

Is it bad if there's a root coming out the bottom of the pot?

how big of pots are they in?

It's 12" in diameter and 10" high, so about 4.5 gallons or so. I don't think there's any way the pot is too small, but I'm curious if this happens a lot. I'm guessing one of the roots just kept growing and just happened to grow out one of the holes in the bottom.

She's getting closer and closer every day! Some of the hairs just started changing color and more trichomes popping up everywhere. I checked a couple nights ago and they were about 60% cloudy from what I could tell with hardly any amber yet. I'm guessing a couple more weeks at least.

Day 74

lookin pretty! how much you think you'll yield?