This little bush is filling out nicely
The Green Crack is really starting to thicken up and spread its leaves. It is a lot shorter and more compact than I thought it would be, especially since it is a sativa dominate strain, but I guess there is still time for it to stretch before it goes into flower in a couple weeks.
It is only 18 days old right now, but the stem is thickening up nicely. I moved my lights up a few inches to encourage a bit of upward growth, but I am not sure if that is going to actually do anything. Depending what this looks like in a week, I may end up cutting the top off. It already has six sets of branches, but I think I will let it grow at least 4 more sets before I cut its top.
The GDP I am growing has really shown me how good mainlining can be when done correctly and I am excited to see how well this plant does with it. It really helps to keep the plant from getting too tall and creating a nice even canopy.
Speaking of even canopies, just look at that. I am really enjoying this new technique with the netting because it has helped to keep the branch height under control. It was a bit intimidating at first trying to make sure I was doing it all correctly, but I have learned that it is a lot easier than I thought and I was just making things a lot more difficult in my head. Cannabis really is a hardy plant that adapts pretty easily.
It has been 25 days since I flipped the lights for flower and it is finally starting to really pick up the pace with growing buds. I have to keep reminding myself that photo period plants grow at a much slower pace because there are some days that I go in the tent and it doesn't look like the plant has really done anything.
Today was just a normal water day with a little bit of Cal-Mag nutrient. The GDP is a lot thirstier than I had thought and averages almost 3 liters of water each day. Some days it gets a little bit more. I think tomorrow when I feed her some of her bloom nutrients, she will get almost a whole gallon of water.
It is crazy for me to think that this one plant drinks almost a gallon of water a day because my autos would get like 1 to 1.5 liters max during their flowering cycles. But then I also remember that this one plant is almost taking up a whole 4x4 tent, so it makes sense that she is thirstier.
Right now, my plant is entering what is considered the "mid flower" stage. That is when the plant stops all growth and focuses everything in bud development. The buds should start to really thicken up and the pistils will begin to darken up.
The canopy is pretty thick and the fan leaves under the top layer of netting completely block out all light underneath, so I had to do my last bit of defoliation to help brighten things up a bit. There were also a few fan leaves growing from the higher parts of the branches that I needed to cut off to help bring more light on the lower bud sites.
These larger leaves like the ones in this photo block so much of the light going to the lower parts of the branches, so I cut trimmed them off.
I didn't trim off as much as I normally do when defoliating, but I think I got enough off of it to brighten things up a bit and let more of the plant absorb some light. From here on out, it is mainly just a waiting game and see how the buds do.
I have about 4 more weeks until I think this plant will be ready for harvest. The process has been a lot slower with this photo period, but I have really enjoyed it and learned so much that I will be using in the rest of my grows. I don't think I will be moving away from autos completely though because I really like the fast turnaround they have and it allows me to try out so many more strains, but I will be growing more photos of the strains I really enjoy because I think I will be able to get a lot more out of photos.
Anyways, thanks for stopping by and checking out my grow. I have been having a blast learning to grow cannabis and it is amazing that we have the Hive blockchain where we can document stuff like this that would normally be censored on traditional social media sites.