Sour Apple Autoflower
Auto Rig Check In
Day 40, Wednesday, September 1
New Phone/Camera!
Hi guys. Today is a lovely day for a Sour Apple check in because it's day 40
and September 1st. That feeds my OCD jones so well I'm practically giddy.
Obviously this girl is budding. It's a great comparison to Sue Anne, the big single bud cola I grew and just recently exhausted the buds of, (lol - not). With Sue Anne I did nothing. She became a one ounce cola bud with two little side branches about 6 inches long top to bottom and a bud on each. Yield was an ounce and an eighth. Ugh. So this time we trained her hard for an auto. I know this strain well enough now to know that she is going to start budding early-ish, at around the day 25 mark, and so far always before 30 days. As this one did. So I took a chance and trained her hard very early on, and actually topped her using Uncle Ben's method. First time doing that on an auto. It's fairly extreme and I don't necessarily recommend it with an early budding strain like this, but it would be spectacular with a strain like the Chunkadelic. And of course it works the same as if you did it to a photo, except that topping an auto using this method is about as extreme an auto topping as it gets. It will generate lots of bud sites and growth for you, but the trade off is the plant's height will be compromised. I've only done this to the Sour Apple but I can see it would inevitably be the case regardless of strain. Just takes too long for the plant to generate useful stems after that instead of one inch long bullsh-- stems that'll make a bud that weighs a half gram. There's just no time left for it with certain strains after the plant recovers from the topping because you can't really use Uncle Ben's method until at least the third node is out, and that's the EARLIEST it's even possible. To use the method works in conjunction with having a great rootball, so to use UB early sort of compromises that. This one I did as late as I thought I could, around day 18 or something. So as you can see on any of these Sour Apple posts, this plant is short. Real short. The canopy is 9 1/2 inches off the dirt. But the training early and effective defoliation to get light to the inner growth after the topping has resulted in 8 exactly the same size and height main colas. So far not one is claiming dominance, and you could sit a paper plate level on top of the eight, they are that exactly the same height and distance from the light. This of course is spectacular. There are also three legit inner stem budding/stretching out, which will be smaller buds but very legit. The rest will be flarf. I'll be trimming the lower inner flarfy stuff off soon enough, once I see how the three inner buds separate themselves from the rest of the nest of garbage at the base. But sometimes you get surprised, so this is my worst case scenario. With a different strain, such as the Chunkadelic in the tent, there is an extra week of growth before budding and it naturally forms more side branching, so this methodology with a strain other than Sour Apple would result in better yields, but that said, the idea here was to see how much of a f--k you we can say to the ounce and an eighth with the same strain grown the same way. This one is in Sohum, but all else is the same. She will definitely yield more than Sue Anne.
Today is clean watering day for this plant, after lunch.
I am discontinuing the use of the MSA at this point with this plant, as I also already did today with the Chunkadelic.
The suggested usage of the stuff says to use in veg and discontinue shortly after budding. Although it doesn't explain that further, I'm guessing that by now the MSA has worked it's magic. And since the plant is now putting almost all it's energy into forming buds, it really doesn't need the distraction of stealing some of that energy to develop the stems further. They're as developed as they're going to get. So that is my semi-educated guess/opinion on why they say to discontinue early into flowering. It's also perhaps possible that if you kept using it through budding maybe it would start to make the buds unnaturally hard or something. I don't know. Need to research that more. Since this plant is in Sohum, that means the rest of the way, unless I see a need for a boost later in budding, she gets only clean, 6.3 water.
Except that I am now replacing the MSA with the blackstrap molasses. From here on out any of her clean waterings will include the molasses. It's important always to Ph your water I now see, but if you use molasses it's especially important, so obviously I did that too.
Other than that the plant is at around 1070 par, getting hit with plenty of full spectrum and plenty of red light. Her environment doesn't change much. Temps stay between 64 overnight up to around 76 in the hottest possible day. This is only possible because the one AC unit blasts the space she's in with AC for one little plant, lol. Her RH stays around 65% which is higher than preferred obviously but I can't change it. Not a huge deal.
That's about it, other than I finally got a new phone, and thus a new and highly upgraded camera with tons of editing options I didn't have on the lowly 6s I was using. This is the first photo with my new toys, and the idea was to see if the tools could help me overcome the blurple effect. I couldn't quite make it natural looking, but it's way different than blurple pics and check out the definition. If you have seen any of this or previous journals of mine, the improvement in focus and detail is dramatic. I just posted this one pic cuz it's a work in progress. But here's the Sour Apple on Day 40, September 1st, through the eyes and editing tools of the new camera.
Enjoy!!!
Hey, please, if anyone has any input or knowledge about the MSA please feel free to share and help educate?!!
