First time grower's indoor journal - welcome all comments

I got a cheap IR thermometer and measured my leaf temp.

Grow tent has been between 81 and 83. (This may go up once we get into higher temps outside)
Dehumidifier has been set to 50%
Leaf temp is 75.

That puts me at around 5 degrees below room temp for the leaf temp which gives me a lot more flexibility on my humidity.

For now I am going to run it at 50% and once I get into the final 2 weeks for the Blue Cheese, see how things are looking. At that point I may just keep it at 50% or I might try running it at 45%. I don't expect my buds to get crazy chunky since I mainlined them and the clones are in smaller pots.



Blue Cheese:

Blue Dream:

Blue Haze:

Monday marked the "last two weeks" of flower for the blue cheese based on the breeder estimate. However, I understand that those estimates can be total bunk.

Temps have been mostly stable as has my tent humidity.

I am still getting some heat stress on some of the leaves, but at this point I am just going to try to leave it alone and hope for the best. If the leaves suddenly get bad looking, I'll try something else. I just don't think I can lower my temps more without investing extra money I don't have budgeted.

Yesterday I spent a large chunk of time doing plant cleanup. I had a lot of extra leaves grow out of the buds so I removed some more of them to open up the airflow and expose the bud again. I only did the main plants, I will remove leaves from the lower section of the clones again later today.

The blue cheese is looking like it is starting to ripen and get heavier. I don't expect to have any issues with being too heavy for the stem to hold because I mainlined it. It is looking like around 50% of the pistils are brown/red however I want to wait until I start seeing some amber on the trichomes before I figure out a harvest game plan for it.

The blue dream and blue haze both still look like they have longer to go.

Tent after cleanup if the main plants:

Blue cheese:

I'm working on planning out my next grow. I'll most likely just grow a single seed from each of the 3 varieties I already grew plus the ILGM Gold Leaf seeds I haven't tried yet.

I like the idea of growing 2 varieties but I have no idea what to expect for effect and potency nor how much my yield will actually be of each one.

I'm thinking about setting up a small grow tent somewhere to start the seeds soon so I can get a second round growing while it is hotter and flower when the outside temps start to drop. My concern with waiting is that the blue haze may end up taking longer than planned as hazes take awhile to ripen. It could also take longer for all of them to fully ripen to where I want them as I literally have no idea what to expect with any of this.

If I get the seeds started in the middle of July and it takes just as long to get to harvest, I would be looking at finishing up at the end of November or beginning of December.

I can get by with a much smaller tent footprint for seed starting/veg than I would need for flower.

Either way, if I'll plan to follow the same basic grow plan as this time.

Differences:

• This time I will be mixing up a different base salt mixture to replace the liquid A+B I was using. The bottles are getting very low. I'll keep using the other liquid nutes I have until I run through them all. Then I will replace with salts.
• I will do a better job at training early and defoliating early.
• I may try lollipopping as well to see how the yield changes with "quality bud" vs "larf"
• I'm hoping to see some color changes since I will be able to get my overnight temp lower during the colder weather.
• I am going to treat 1 of each clone fully with colloidal silver to harvest pollen for future pollen chucking to make my own feminized seeds.
• I'll be growing each clone in a 1 gallon pot instead of having any stay in the nursery bags. They worked okay but end up drying out completely over night.
  • I may actually end up moving them all up to 3 gallon pots but I think that would require shrinking down the 7 gallon pots to 5 gallons.
    

Today a bunch of the blue cheese leaves started showing heat stress. The basement is 70f with 74% RH. The tent itself was hovering around 85F.

As a result, I raised my dehumidifier to 55 so the VPD is more in range of where it should be. I am going to lower my fan a bit more so it blows more directly across the buds to help compensate for the higher humidity.

When I have a good night where both the temp and humidity are low, I will plan to open up the basement and let it air out a bit.

I'm hoping the slightly higher humidity will not be an issue. Once the Blue Cheese is harvested, I will look at lowering the humidity again for the other plants. The Blue Dream and Blue Haze haven't shown the same sensitivity to the higher temps so I think I'll be able to run it a bit better.

I would try getting an air conditioner. Run your lights at night when its cooler and consider bringing cooler air in from outside(filtered if possible). I save a lot of money on energy pulling cooler outside air in to cool my grow room. I have a thermostat set to switch A/C to fresh air at 62f. The A/C will stop the compressor when the outdoor air temp is below 62 due to science and HVAC religion. This could lead to runaway temps. It is kinda complicated but works well. If you just start out with an air conditioner due to the fact that a dehumidifier is probably pulling the same amount of current and has to work by condensing gas to make it hot and cause it to evaporate or a Peltier effect unit that has to make one side hot to make the other side cold enough to condense moisture. Both of these types of humidifiers do the same thing. Heat up the air in the room because of the way that it is. Air conditioning uses the same principle as the gas type dehumidifier. Condenses gas to evaporate it and make the room cooler. The advantage of this type of system is you can vent out the condenser section outdoors(those standalone a/c units that has the duct). This will be much easier to manage humidity and temps. I'd keep the room 68F and 50 to 60% humidity. A good rule of thumb I hear is if you can really smell your buds then you're cooking off the turpines, which gives bud flavor.

Most blue cheeses finish 9 to 10 weeks ime obviously you can get some later phenos but for the most part

conor c said:

Most blue cheeses finish 9 to 10 weeks ime obviously you can get some later phenos but for the most part

Click to expand...

Good to know.

I didn't get any time to do much over the holiday weekend and am getting back into the tent today.

Unfortunately it looks like all of the plants are foxtailing. It is most likely just caused by the heat stress since my temps have been high.

Today, I raised the lights up 2 more inches to try to get the leaf temp a bit lower. My basement is 70F and 83% humidity today. If I try growing indoors over summer again, I will definitely need to try to handle the basement humidity. After this grow is done, I will plan to run the dehumidifier in the basement and have it pump water outside for awhile and see if I can even get it lower. I have a feeling it wouldn't be cost effective though to run the dehumidifier basically on high all summer.

I may look at costing out a DIY sealed grow room instead. Or at least something that I can control a bigger space with. Not sure that it will be worth if for me though since I am just doing this for myself.

Here are some shots of the plants currently. The trichomes are a mix of clear, cloudy, and amber on all 3. I'll took so many that I can't remember which are which so will upload some after I figure it out.

Blue Cheese:


Blue Dream:


Blue Haze:

I took some new closeups. I couldn't find my tripod adapter so had to freehand it. Each photo is of a different bud from the plant. I don't have any photos of the clones right now. They are a mix of readiness but I may wait on the clones until the last plant I pull out.

The plants all started foxtailing and growing out new pistils. The larger buds have way more than the smaller ones.

Blue Cheese: The buds look like they could be ready whenever I want. I am going to let them go a bit longer but am going to switch over to regular water for them. Most of the trichomes look cloudy in these closeups and there are some amber.




Blue Dream:
The buds look like they still need more time. There are still some that look glassy but most of them look cloudy to me and some are starting to look amber as well. There are also a lot of missing trichome heads which I assume are from my over handling during trimming. This plant had 2x the leaves and really tight node spacing.

I'll keep watering these the normal fertilizer for another week then check them again and see how they are progressing.



Blue Haze:
The buds are looking like they might be ready soon. They mostly look cloudy to me with some small amounts of amber.

I'll keep watering these the normal fertilizer for another week then check them again and see how they are progressing.

Foxtailing has gotten worse on the buds. I'm switching them all over to plain water and am going to lower my lights from 80% to 60% power and change the light schedule to 10/14 by adjusting it 30 minutes a day. I'm hoping this will encourage ripening a bit faster so that all of the new foxtail growth has some potency to it.

The clone I was treating with colloidal silver partway through has developed some pollen sacs on the treated parts. I don't know that it will be viable before I chop it though. Next time I will plan to start treating it right at switch. I think the pollen sacs took so long to form because there were already forming buds on it

The pistils on the other buds are browning a bit more. I think the new lighting schedule is helping. I don't expect any of the new foxtail growth to ripen before chopping.

My plan is to chop it this weekend. I will pull them at lights on Saturday or Sunday morning. I want to take a photo of each plant and some closeups of the terpines.

I started 5 seeds for my next grow this past Friday (2022-07-0. New journal is here. The seed mix is 2 Blue Dreams, 1 Blue Cheese, 1 Blue Haze, 1 Gold Leaf.

Foxtailing blue cheese:


Closeups of terpines on blue haze and blue cheese.


Blurry blue dream.

Pollen sacs on clone:

The leaves are starting to fade and die from the plain water. I'll plan to cut them all down this Sunday morning (2022-07-17). I am going to remove dead leaves when I cut it down and then just hang the whole plant in the grow tent.

My game plan is to slowly dry them over the next week since I will be out of town for work. I will start drying with the dehumidifier set to 55. I will just need to raise my light all the way up and reposition where my dehumidifier and floor fan are pointing to make sure no air gets on the plants. I'm hoping the foxtailing doesn't result in overly large colas which could mold.

I have someone who will check on them daily for me and will adjust the dehumidifier down to 50 on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on how the plants are doing.

After the plants are dry, I'll be dry trimming them and curing them in canning jars.

I noticed today that one of the sugar leaves on a cola of the Blue Dream had completely died. When I investigated, I found some bud rot on it. I cut the whole stem off including 2 small buds that looked okay. I don't want to take any chances.

I lowered my dehumidifier from 50 to 45. I also turned my exhaust fan down a notch. The humidity has been higher in the tent due to pulling in the damp basement air. The temps were staying more in check though. Hopefully I don't see any more mold. I'll plan to look things over when I chop to dry.

Chop is 2 days away.

Chop day is today.

I went through all of the plants and trimmed off any of the large or dead fan leaves and looked through for bud rot. I didn't see anything so hopefully I won't run into any issues.

I decided not to hang the plants in one whole chunk, but rather to cut a section that has 2 "colas" on each section. I was concerned that there wouldn't be adequate airflow with how the plant was.

Most of the bud looked okay. There were a few nanners and a lot of fox tailing from the high temps. I will definitely try to not grow during summer with the current set up.

Drying is in the same tent. I pulled everything out of the tent and hung them. The lights were only on for the photos. The dehumidifier is now in the middle blowing against the far wall and I have a fan on the floor blowing slightly upwards to one of the walls. The dehumidifier is set to 55 to start and I will run it there for two days and have my temp tender turn it down to 50 on Tuesday morning.

Whole tent:


Blue Cheese:



Blue Dream:


Blue Haze:




Hung to dry:

Saturday morning, the small stems were snapping on all of the plants when testing them. The thicker sections were still more bendy but I decided to get them finished. They hung up for 6 days total before being pulled and cut apart more.

I did one variety at a time. I cut all of the branches off each main stem and then cut the top section of bud off the stem as well so they were all basically single sticks that I could work through.

Blue Cheese was first as that one seemed to be the driest out of the batch. I think because it had less leaves on it. I trimmed off any remaining fan leaf and a few big sugar leaves here and there.

The Blue Haze and Blue Dream I did the same except I only removed large fan leaves. The Blue Dream probably could have used another day or two drying. Something for next time.

The clones I trimmed all together rather than having them in with the main batch of bud. They are just going to be a mix of

I ran each of them through a trimbag to do a rough cleanup of leaves on the buds before jarring them up. I did not sort out any light/wispy buds so they are just all together in jars. I'm going to eventually sort out the light stuff and try smoking it to see how it compares potency wise. Then I will use it in a batch of butter or something.

My tender and I tried the different buds over the weekend (and Monday) to see what we thought of their affects. I'll jot down our thoughts on them but keep in mind I haven't smoked anything for more than 15 years at this point and she has never smoked. Also, my sense of smell is generally pretty shit at picking out much of anything.

Order of trying: We picked out a small random bud and whatever tiny bits broke off while trimming.

Blue Cheese:
Smelt sweet when opening the jar. It had a somewhat more complex scent to it. I don't know that I would call it cheese, but it had some sweet floral hints. I felt it taking affect after two small hits on a bowl. It was mostly a light headed high for the first 30 minutes or so. We smoked most of a small bowl together and I started feeling more body high and some couch lock. It wasn't overpowering, but my tender ended up taking a 2 hour nap.

Blue Haze:
This one was sweet with a hint blueberry while opening the jar. Though it also had a hint of a green/chlorophyll smell to it as well. This one hit about the same potency for me but the high was very different. It was almost all in my head with just a hint of lightness in my body. It started out pretty clear but I started to lose focus and feel mentally foggy when I smoked some more after an hour or two. I think this will be a good one for taking a small dose before doing something.

Blue Dream:
This one smelled sweet with a bit more green/chlorophyll smell to it. This strain had the most still green leaves on it so my guess is it just hadn't finished pulling out everything from the leaves yet. The potency was much higher on this one. It hit my head and then right into a mellow body feeling. I didn't feel couch locked but was very relaxed. My tender also took a nap after this one.

Total yields will get measured a bit later when I pull all the jars to burp and check RH. I'll take some photos of the dried buds. At some point I'll do a postmortem.

Here are a few photos from Saturday.

Blue Cheese:
Today - 53% RH
Total Weight - 154.6g - 5.453oz


Blue Dream:
Today - 55% to 57% RH
Total Weight - 205.5g - 7.249oz


Blue Haze:
Today - 62% RH
Total Weight - 232.1g - 8.187oz


Clones:
Today - 58% RH
Total Weight - 87.7g - 3.094oz


Total growth for first grow: 679.9g - 23.983oz - Just under 1.5lbs.

There is probably an ounce or two of sugar leaf still on the buds so the actual amount will be lower. I already pulled off 1 to 2 ounce of leaves that are all heading into a first time attempt at canna butter. I'm going to pull the leaves off before smoking rather than all at once.

The Postmortem will have to wait.

Final grow updates 5 months later.

The bud has cured up and been quite smokable. I shared some with some friends and they all have different preferences on what they like. I have also made some huge batches of gummies and cannabutter using some of the larfy buds.

I still have about 9 ounces of buds that I am storing in mason jars with a 62% boveda pack. I opted for buying packs for the jars because I couldn't get my DIY versions to work at nicely at a small size.

I have 2 ounces decarbed and ready for edibles and I have a few pounds of infused oil/butter/lard for edibles.

I ended up spending about $2400 total for the first grow including electric, equipment purchases, nutrients, seeds, etc. That means if I were to stop now and never grow again, my cost would be around $100 per ounce. Obviously I won't do that because I enjoyed my time growing.

My second grow is currently not doing as well. My upstairs closet grow never cooled down enough to help the plants thrive (though seeds started INSTANTLY) and I had to move them downstairs sooner than expected. I waited almost a month longer than I should have to transplant them so they were stunted and had to take time to catch them back up. I also didn't top them until I had to travel over Thanksgiving. I also failed to water them regularly enough which caused issues as well. That said, they recovered okay once I found time again to tend to the garden. I have found that the photoperiod cannabis seems super resilient.

I'm currently dealing with some rats that decided my plants were a good snack. Once they are gone, I will switch to flower.

Grow wise, I am doing Blue Cheese, Blue Dream, and Blue Haze again and adding in a Gold Leaf all still from ILGM. I also purchased some other seeds from Surfr Seeds for the grow after that.

I will probably look at adding another small tent to go along with this, but I'm not certain yet.