Zkittles Auto (Fastbuds) + Quantum Board

WEEK 11 This week saw the appearance of some bud-rot on the tips of a couple of colas on two of the plants (the two with the largest diameter colas. This week also sees the early harvest of those two plants. This week the feeds have been dropped to an EC of 1.0 - this is in reaction the the runoff EC buildup, and also an attempt to stabilise and balance the root environment, just in case something weird in the coco environment is the cause of the bud-rot in the two plants so far. DAY 71 - No changes today. Have noticed a couple small spots of bud-rot in some of the larger colas on the two plants with the largest colas. I removed the infected site and surrounding bud. I eventually removed the entire limb of the infected site as it seemed to be reoccuring on those limbs. DAY 72 - Fed the plants with 3000ml each of EC=0.9, PH=6.2 of solution comprising just Greendream1-Bloom, Budstorm and Budgenie. (So dropped the CMX, ROOTS, Silica and Grostorm). The bud-rot on the two plants with massive sized buds has me worried. I'm not sure if it can spread to other plants, or if it will keep reoccurring on the plants it has already appeared on, so I've made a decision. Given the two plants with the bud-rot are looking very frosty and not very far from harvest day, I've decided to harvest these two plants today. You can see in todays photos, there are now only 7 plants in the tent. This should remove the risk of more bud-rot, or bud-rot spreading. It will also give the remaining 7 plants more floor space, and more space between them for the fans to circulate air around them. I lowered the fans and turned them to full power. I have also ordered an extra pole-grip fan for each tent, so they will now have 3 pole-grip fans. Hopefully this will aid in the prevention of humidity buildup and more budrot. I am quite astounded at the amount of bud that I harvested from the two plants. I am equally impressed with the level of frostiness and the bud structure. It looks like it will be very attractive sticky bud. I guesstimate from the wetbud quantity that there will be around 2 to 3 ounces of bud from each plant when dry, possibly more depending on how much these dry down. DAY 73 - Fed the plants with 1600ml each of EC=0.9, PH=6.4 solution as per day 72. DAY 74 - No Changes Today (NCT) DAY 75 - Flushed plants with 3000ml each of PHéd water (PH=6.0) DAY 76 - No Changes Today DAY 77 - No Changes Today WEEK 11 SUMMARY: All up the plants have done remarkably well. Apart from the two I removed with bud-rot concerns - I reasoned that removing the plants, and then breaking them down into small bud pieces would be the most assured way of 1) Preventing bud-rot from spreading to other plants. 2) Preventing the bud-rot from spreading within the already infected plants 3) Stopping any further bud loss to rotting, which hopefully mitigated the loss in final yield due to immature harvest (That said, the plants were both quite advanced and I felt no major loss was had by harvesting them at this age). 4) Quickly drying the buds thereby preventing any further mould growth. The buds on the two harvested plants were so massive, they were the most dense and fat multi-hued buds I've ever seen, and their diminutive size had me assuming they were both sub 56g plants. To find them to be actually 88g each (properly dried) was a genuinely pleasant surprise. BUD-ROT: I am fairly sure this was a result of high humidity (65%+) combined with very large diameter colas, combined with a very compressed canopy (which was due to late LST). The inflection points were few, and limited to 2 plants and apart from one occurrence on one other plant, has not occurred again. This has not prevented regular bud inspection, which has damaged the buds a bit, but it seemed prudent to do it anyway. I have purchased a product called CITROSHIELD SPRAY 750ML. I used it to treat the subsequent occurrence of bud-rot on another plant. I plucked the mould stricken bud off the plant, and then sprayed the affected area. This appeared to work great and the mould did not reoccur in that location (or anywhere else). I assume the greater air flow and less dense canopy, plus the spray, plus the extra fan. plus the fact the rest of the plants don't have quite the same massive diameter buds means the causes of the bud-rot have been eliminated. I have pictures of the bud-rot and will eventually upload them to this week of this diary.