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

Tent-venture Episode 9

Day 59 (Sunday Oct 18)

Sadie - 42 days from sprout

Delilah - 59 days from sprout

Now that my irrigation system is all set and running I don’t have much regular hands on work left to do. I’m not far from starting to harvest Delilah so I’ve been reading up on drying and curing practices.

Delilah is maxed at about 8 inches from soil.

Sadie is 9 inches at her highest point so far, but flattened out.

I’ve started defoliating little bits at the bottom of stems in the undercarriage to force her energy in the ends. I’ll do a bit more tomorrow as my attentions were needed elsewhere before I could finish up.

Here’s an infographic for the general goal from Leafly.com

Day 60 - Monday

I did additional defoliation on Sadie. I went a bit buck wild actually. That’ll be it until I flip to flower, I think I’ve stressed her enough. I’m trying to motivate the canopy to grow more evenly, and I’ve read that this level of defoliation is not uncommon. I think she’s strong, she can take it.

Also, the irrigation system is working, water was drawn! The volume used is 240mm x 240mm x 7 mm, approx 0.4 L. I think it was all Delilah, and I also think it’s a bit too much so I dialled back the feed a bit more on her. I’m curious to see how long until Sadie draws it with the probe set deeper.

Day 61 (Tuesday)

The first thing I noticed was the water level - looks like another half litre went down, so I trimmed back on the flow a bit more. There is a bit of a trial and error period to these it seems. Another thing I did not consider was that I would be unable to pull the plants out again until I at least got my shutoff in place.

I checked the water pH in the holding tank and consulted with Tugboat to make sure my colour matching abilities are still ok to determine the level in the 6 range.

Delilah still has some time left to mature but it’s neat to look at the closeups:

I’m hoping only a few more weeks because I could use the grow light for a basil plant I want to keep trucking - basil has been weirdly hard to come by for a little while.

Meanwhile Sadie seems to be alright... so far.. after being stripped right down. I may still be able to meet my flowering start target of Oct 31 but will amend if necessary. It will largely depend on whether Delilah is finished or not.

Day 62 (Wednesday)

Not much to report today, just took a peek and left them alone. My water shutoff came in so I had a bit of a wet ordeal installing that but was happy with the result. I had to reset my watering level monitoring though. That means I replaced the painters tape.

I hadn’t checked my temp distributions in a while. I like what I see, it’s a tight spread.

I’ve turned off the humidifier to try to keep it lower while Delilah is in flower. The ambient humidity of the room seems alright, I may actually use a dehumidifier if it creeps up at all.

Day 63 (Thursday)

Mistakes were made. In the morning I thought Sadie was a bit light so I adjusted the drip feeder to a slow drip, assuming it would turn off when adequately moist. I meant to come back in an hour to see how it was going but that turned into 5 due to a busier than average day. The drip had stopped by the time I returned which means the sensor was satisfied with the moisture and closed the feed, but this image shows the amount of water that was needed to do that.. The mark below ‘Wed’ was the morning mark... probably a litre at least.

There was a pool in the drip tray underneath as well, but it was contained in there. It took a large towel to clean up. The photo doesn’t do the water level justice.

I turned the sensitivity down a bit more and kicked myself a bit.

Day 64 (Friday)

Just a quick peek today, all is well.

Day 65 (Saturday)

Things look good. I won’t ruin it by meddling... for now.