First try 7-2-2021

Soilessgreen23 Growing like a weed, but hydro system sprang a leak on Friday so had to do emergency repairs.

Soilessgreen23 At 3 weeks I see a slender growth at top of canopy, not sure if she’s going to flower already, which is a week early. As an auto flower should I pluck this 1st sign and keep her in growth stage or just let it happen? Or am I wrong on what I am seeing, since all prior leafing was flat and not thin like this? Any ideas appreciated!

Soilessgreen23 Decided to top her this week. Just the very top node, and left about 1/4 inch of stem above top node after the cut. Also pulled out some small underleaves at 1st/2nd nodes. After topping she grew another 1 cm over following two days so looks like minimal shock now. Lots of growth starting on lower bud site limbs. Last week’s growth reduced light distance to under 16” so we raised the light to 25” but we are going to have a problem getting too close to the light if we don’t train her flat next week. Running out of time for training given the short autoflower time span, so we will HST next week. Nutrients concentration is going up spontaneously as water absorbed by plant and evaporation - given high air temps this week. PH has held steady at 5.9 for the week with just a small amount of pH down added with water change at start of the week. I feel like the fox farm recommended ppm for week 4 is just too high as the leaves darkened drastically last week, but no stunting in growth suggested I keep as is to see how she responds and she seems to like it but the neighboring lettuce is not happy at that concentration so we are going to hand water the lettuce going forward.

Soilessgreen23 Increased TDS this week after a bath of plain distilled water for past week to flush overly high concentration of fox farm grow big and big bloom. Now at about 2/3 of ec/ppm levels in FF directions. Added open sesame at 1/2 strength .12 tsp/gal and added 3 tbspns of Epsom salt for cal/magnesium increase to 9 gals water to address beginning of purple color along fan leaf stems. That popped the ec levels to 1660/ 1.6. Will leave it there and watch for response from plant. Fimming early this week produced 1/2 dozen new bud site sprouts. We bent older limbs to give more light to the new growth. Bent over the two main stems to slow vertical growth that picked up pace this week. Using plasticised wire which is not cutting the stems ok.

Soilessgreen23 Week 6 starts the flowering in earnest.stopped fimming and cutting, but trimmed off many lower leaves hidden from light. Very bushy and growing lots of buds! Reduced light to 12 hour schedule. Raised to preserve 20” distance to canopy top to prevent burning.

Soilessgreen23 Week 7 ends with a large number of small buds with lovely white pistils but tiny, even on the oldest buds. I’m talking about 1 cm diameter per bud. Oldest are 2 weeks old but only .25 cm larger than the rest. She keeps pumping out new buds this week, so I cut out some undergrowth fan leaves and hopelessly buried buds low down the stems. What a bush hog she is now! Full of life, but I note the trichomes atre white/cloudy o most blooms so I have a question below foe any experienced Barney Farms Pineapple Express auto growers out ther as to whether this bud set pattern of many tiny blooms is normal for this strain, I can’t seem to find a reference to this pattern in existing posts. I do see notes from suppliers suggesting 8 week to bloom period for this speedy Pineapple Express auto flower strain, but nothing about the time to full harvest. I had to go light for a week on the nuts week before last with a nute flush due to experiment with a rhizome spray that seemed to overwhelm her and caused some leaf stress, so I figure she’s perhaps a bit slow to develop blooms fully although I am a week ahead on the 8 week bloom period. So should I expect these buds to continue growing and let her hang out for a couple more weeks and wait patiently for bloom gRowth, before any thought of pre-harvest flush? I.e., will these buds get bigger, or should is settle for the diamonds that are perfect but smaller than most? I will repeat this question below. Another issue I ran across involves two crap outs on the ph meters I am using. Both sourced from China but no brand names evident, although identical models are sold via Amazon with full branding. The use/storage instructions on both are in Chinglish. No notes there on what to do if the re-calibrations don’t take, or any warnings on avoiding dry out of the sensor, but later reading on other products suggests that can cause the rambling read outs that don’t calm down after 1 or 2 minutes and recalibration fails. Range runs from 5.2 to 10.8 and sometimes higher on these gauges. Then the high end meter zeroed out and won’t respond to re-calibrations. The cheap one responded after 24 hours sitting in a bath of 4.0 ph buffer solution. It now lets me calibrate three levels, 9.1, 6.86, and 4.0 +/- .3 so the range slipping is less and maybe enough to rely on it until a proper US brand replacement can be delivered. The expensive meter (now toast) looks exactly like a Vivosun 4 in one and instructions claim it has a 3 year warranty, but no contact details or even a company name to contact to get support or refund. This is primarily posted as a warning to those who might think a bargain price is worth it so after plunking down $85.00 bucks for a useless unit 3 weeks in use with religious water rinsing and cap replacement, it is now a write off.

Soilessgreen23 Week 8 was a series of near disasters. First I ran out of Grow Big hydro so had to rely on the fox farm Grow Big soil version I had left over. I did not notice the soil version has 6 parts nitrogen, vs 2 for hydro. It spiked the nitrogen level and caused sporadic leaf curling, dark green leaves, and tip burning with some faint leaf tip yellowing as noted in photos above. Noticed it 3 days into the week’s latest water change, so took immediate action to dump the reservoir water and start over with just the big bloom and tiger bloom and beastie bloom. My ppm in this week’s stats reflects this heavy nitro level in the water mix at start of week, but after change out, ppm is at 514. In midweek I reduced the mix to 6 teaspoons of big bloom and 6 tsps. Tiger bloom in 5 gallons water (about 1/2 strength), plus bestie blooms 1/2 strength (1 tsp.) vs. Hydro chart recommended levels from Fox Farm for week 8. This has been in the system four days now so hope the curling abates. Crisis #2: upped the light hours to 18 after reading that auto flower strains don’t need to use 12/12 to initiate flowering, and could increase bloom yield with longer photo on periods but i did not see any warning about changing from 12 hours back to 18 during flowering as a risk to stimulate return to vegging. That may be the cause of the leaf curling too, and seemed to me the leaf growth was overtaking blooming growth as well as the curling, so I went back to 12/12 to make sure the weird smooth leaf edges and strange twists in new leaves does not progress, but i have seen some more today anyway. So the 12/12 started back just one day ago, and articles I read suggest the return to shorter light periods will resume the flowering mode if it is a re-veg issue. Crisis #3. Then today the water pump decided to stop spinning, so took all day to fix. Required running the pump on its side to clear an air block inside the housing apparently. Meanwhile she started to wilt from lack of hydration, but only a 6 hour gap before I caught it, so hopefully there is no permanent root and leaf damage. Looked like the blooms took a hit as they are dull and less puffy and smelly today as well. Will update this entry once she is back on track, I hope that’s the end of the drama!

Soilessgreen23 Week 9 was a recovery process after some technical difficulties last week, so I reduced the feed levels in our hydro system to adjust for the leaf burns and curling. It promptly stopped. Removed the Grow Big from our mix entirely and used more of the big bloom which has 2 parts nitro already. Just kept the mix at about 1/2 of Fox Farm scheduled levels. Started Cha Ching feed this week too. Response was slow but good by weeks end with more bud volume and more sessil trichomes popping out. However now I am seeing a few yellowing fan leaves by week’s end suggesting more nitrogen may be in order. I will increase it a bit but keep PPM below 1000 which seems to be enough for this plant. Got myself a jewelers glass instead of the very shaky/fuzzy microscope I will warn anyone off of wasting money to buy. They all come from China with no label or instructions and barely work for our scoping needs to check trichome maturity. finally found the thorough book “Marijuana Horticulture Fundamentals” by K that swears by the jewelers glass as just strong enough at 30x magnification to get a cross section view of about 20 trichomes at once which is all you need to see the color and sizes. Skip the high tech electronic scopes as they are almost impossible to focus and handle in the field. The 9 weeks to harvest suggested by my Pineapple Express seed supplier seems about two weeks too short in case anyone wants to know. Give or take a week.

Soilessgreen23 Increased blossom boosters bembe and overive this week.

Soilessgreen23 Here comes the bride! This week she showed more bud growth and development of additional tall trichomes. What last week were clear bulbs at the tips of these tall trichomes are now clouding up, and are at 60% cloudy, 40% clear. Many fan leaves have yellowed so these are picked off as they start drooping and yellowing. We are going to continue to monitor the trichomes for the brownish tint development and then put her into clear pure water flush for 3 days, as this is a hydro grow and faster root purge is noted in the literature for the end stage wash in preparation for harvest. Can anyone speak to the average time span from mostly cloudy trichomes to appearance of tan colored trichomes first appearance, and how long most plants take to move to mostly tan/brown trichomes? I need to gauge when to start the flush by this color change apparently, but I haven’t read how many days we have from mostly cloudy trichomes before our plant becomes overripe.

Soilessgreen23 This week rounds out the flowering phase. Snuck a taste from a fallen bud and it’s surprisingly mellow, but trichomes development by this week’s end was still only at 50-60% cloudy, with most still fully translucent. Found one amber colored sessile trichome at start of week, and by week’s end only 3. So fair to say she seems to want another week before we harvest. Received some helpful comments to my question on time from cloudy trichomes to final harvest, and the consensus seems to be flush her now to prepare and if she’s still slow to finish clouding up by next week we can still run pure water for another week, which should further amplify the dropping fan leaves. I left a photo showing the volume of dropped fan leaves so far to give reassurance to new venture rest on what to expect from Pineapple Express as it completes its flowering process. There’s a lot of lef dropping but no bud growth impairment, as the measurements show they continue to fatten up nicely.

Soilessgreen23 Final dry weight 8 ounces. Lots of wet buds, but dried quickly in our hot climate. Curing nicely, softer buzz, nice pineapple aroma and easy to inhale.