I’m posting the following journey undertaken by my friend Theodore Complete on their behalf.

Week 6 - Ennui

Day 36

I know I need to ride this out to completion, but I don’t feel like I’m doing well at this at all.

I have a lot of self-criticism about my set up at this point based on reading the experience of others: the growth is too stunted, it’s too cold in the basement to grow properly, the UFO light is junk, I’m not feeding the proper nutrients, I don’t have the right tools.. a lot of frustration and self doubt. I see pictures of grows from other people and they seems to be leaps and bounds beyond me at this phase.

I guess that, like all new hobbies, humility is the price of admission. Still, I assumed I’d be able to do better than this, but the mistakes I have made in gathering tools piecemeal through the grow should help make the second one go smoother. Part of me wants to start right from scratch, but I also know I’m crusty from a shitty nights sleep.

My light is still set to the same distance, seems to be pumping out roughly 12000 lux with the added height of the new pot.

Day 37

No change from yesterday. I’m telling myself it’s getting used to the new environment. No water today. Apparently my pH pen and additional nutrient help will arrive early next week.

Day 38

Now I’m thinking nutrient burn, so I’ll just water it without for a little while. It just doesn’t want to grow upward though. Hopefully the cal-mag will help this since it could be a symptom of calcium deficiency.

I moved the LED strip ring to the highest position and turned it on for the day to see what it does to temps. This puts the LUX reading at about 21000 at canopy height.

Gave it a few tbsp of water at the base. In anticipation of getting that pH pen I’m going to grab a bottle of pH up and down from the hardware store - $12 each. Given the size of this operation these should all last a long time.

It has been really muggy lately and I turned on the portable dehumidifier I have out of curiosity. It’s reading 72% RH in the room as opposed to the 63 in the bucket. I set it to 60% for the room and let it run for the morning. By noon the ambient humidity was 58 and 56 inside the bucket.

Day 39

I bought some pH down ($8) and used the pH test kit I already had that relies on colour - I’m never confident in my own colour matching abilities, but I did get a colour more in the 6 pH range after adding quite a few drops to the water jug. I gave it a tiny misting at the base.

Looked happy a while later

Day 40

Seems pretty content so I left it alone. The heat is creeping up with all the lights on so I set the fans on a timer to turn on/off every half hour which seems to keep it fairly regulated.

Day 41

I feel like maybe this little sucker is doing alright. Growth seems to have picked up a bit, and I’m not sure whether to attribute it to the new pot, the light, the temp, or the pH’d water - I’m going to choose the water though considering the high pH it is naturally. I wish I had pH adjusted the water ages ago. Lesson learned!

My pH pen and cal mag came in today. I calibrated the pen and retested the water I had previously pH adjusted - it read 6.3 which is about in line with what the colour strips suggested.

I put a spray bottle of vitamin water together with cal-mag and nutrients (low dose) with water and adjusted the pH until it read 6.1 and gave the base a little spritz.

Maybe I’m once again running before I walk, but screw it, sometimes life is about rolling the dice.

Day 42

Well, another week down! I think the adjustments to the water pH have helped and it looks happy.

Temps for the week seemed fine, humidity too a weird dip that could be an error maybe. All in all, not a bad week considering it started crummy. The plant is starting to smell a bit too.