Indoor Strawberry Ice Cream Auto under HLG 200 Diablo LED

[elcoloan]

Good morning growfriends!

I'm back into growing autos after doing some phenohunting on a photoperiod strain I love, which has taken me longer than expected. In my 2x4 tent I'm currently revegging a single small mother I had neglected during the phenohunt and which had started flowering unintentionally, so I know it will take me at least 2 months more to establish a new mum from her (I clone the slow way and this pheno takes long to reveg), so I figured I'd use the extra space and reveggin light schedule in the tent to get an auto going.

The auto strain I will be growing now was a gift from a forum member who made some crosses for himself and made big claims about them. He knew I had a sweettooth and I also love fruit-tasting strains so he gifted a couple of seeds from this strain to me in 2021 and I had promised to grow them as soon as I could and give him feedback on it. He isn't active here any more and I think he wont be coming back (he got banned for some time for bad attitude), but I still am curious to see what all his fuzz was about.

He named the strain Strawberry Ice Cream. He told me he used Strawberry Nugget from Mephisto and Purple Scoops from Rocbud, and crossed these with some strain he had bred (Nympho 3) which he claimed had amazing therapeutic and psicoactive qualities. Not sure how long it will take until harvest but seems to be a 90 or more days long strain from what I was able to gather from his journals.

I started its germination process in the afternoon of May 8th by submerging the seed in warm tap water for about 4 hours. Then I put it in a moist paper towel in a warm place. It took about 2 days to crack and grow a little tail so by that time (may 10th) I planted her in her final 3 gal (11 litters) pot filled with pre-moistened Roots Organics Original substrate.


By the afternoon of May 13th the seed had already sprouted and opened cotys so I am considering it as day 1.



And well, this is her yesterday (may 25th) in her day 12. VPD is not ideal so Ive kept the light at a distance that gives it about 200-250 ppfd for a DLI of 12-16.



I plan to use plain tap water for a couple of weeks and then start feeding with EWC leachate. I havent watered once yet.

The light Ill be using is a quantum bord that has a driver that can go from 40 up to 200 watts but I wont be using it past 100-120 watts. It is one of the early Diablo boards from HLG which has this spectrum:



As always, any input is welcomed!

 

[Delps8]

Agree that VPD is very high for seedlings but she looks really good so that's a sign that you're getting her enough water.

That's a great thermometer! I had a couple of them that were a few years old an one was giving me strange readings—it was telling me that the leaf offset was -6. I decided to get a new IR gun and that's when I found that one from AC Infinity. Very well thought out, like most of their products.

Temps and RH are low, both values, for seedlings. Any chance you can get more warmth and moisture in the air?

The screenshot of the VPD thermometer shows that your leaf temperature is higher than ambient. You have (slightly) positive leaf temperature offset?

At 22° and 54% with 0 offset, VPD is 1.2. If leaf temperature offset is -1°C, VPD drops to 1.1 and then to 0.9 with an offset of -2°C.

Re. a DLI of 16—that's very low. If you're keeping PPFD down because of the elevated VPD, that doesn't mean that you need to short change them on the photoperiod. As long as the plant is handling the PPFD, you can get more mols to the plant by extending the photoperiod. A cannabis plant does not need a dark period and many growers, myself included, run 24/0.

 

[elcoloan]

Thanks for the feedback!

Any chance you can get more warmth and moisture in the air?

Using electric equipment dedicated to increase temp or RH is out of the question due to very high electricity costs where I live. I would normally just go with the wet towel method to increase RH and start increasing the light's power draw to up the temps. I havent done the towel thing with the hope that the mum plant will add the RH as she grows bigger. And I plan to increase power draw of the lamp this week to try to help with temps.

You have (slightly) positive leaf temperature offset?

hmm not sure. Ill have to check the gun once im back home

 

[elcoloan]

Day 15: