Cali Octane 2024

7/6 Day 29 from flip. I’ve been checking the plants every day for pollen sacks, and I just keep on finding more and more. At this point the whole grow is likely trashed, but to come this far we’ll just see it out. A real shame since this was a super successful grow up until the herm. I don’t really have an explanation as to why she hermed. The grow was bang on across the board, some of the healthiest and best growing plants I’ve ever had. The VPD was pretty much perfect, and I watered every day just to make sure root zone EC was kept in check and we never got too dry. I blame most of my previous herms on high EC from the autopots, but that doesn’t apply here. Best guess is that this is a new strain that has not fully bred out the risk of random herms. A real shame. 7/8 Day 31 from flip. I keep checking for pollen sacks and while I have found one I think I missed from before, I don’t think any new ones have been forming. At least that’s the hope since they can be real hard to spot sometimes. My Mandarin Cookies grow had pollen sacks everywhere without me ever seeing one until harvest, so I know how elusive they can be. In an effort to rule myself out as the culprit of this yet again, I did a long hard look at all my processes to see if any mistake was made. I came to 2 potential sources of issue, the lights being a touch aggressive throughout the grow and my NER perhaps not at optimal ratios. With both however we’re talking about minimal changes to be perfect so I’m still fairly skeptical this is somehow my fault. Apart from all of that though, buds continue to form and the frost is already being packed on impressively. Other than the herm issue this strain does seem to be everything you’d ever want. The smell is evolving as time goes on, currently sitting at something like creamy rubber. It’s a pretty hard smell to describe so I hope that’s helpful. 7/11 Day 34 from flip. Buds are adding mass like crazy and frost is everywhere. If I reach into the tent my entire arm is sticky when I pull it out. Happy with that. I did find one more pollen sack but again I think it was an older one I may have missed. I have not seen any new ones growing anywhere so maybe it sorted itself out. Measuring light at the highest point of the canopy I read about 930 PAR / 40.2 DLI, and if I go down to a more average height for most tops it’s around 850 PAR / 36.7 DLI. I’d love to pump it up even higher, but I know I gotta be close to the upper limit so it’s probably safest to just leave it alone for now.