1st grow - Gold Leaf and Blue Dream question

[guitarngrowmn]

Hello there, 1st time grower and 1st time poster here.

I’m in MN, and for my first grow I’m trying one plant each of Gold Leaf and Blue Dream outdoors.
Got the seeds from ILGM in mid-April. Germinated them first then planted in Happy Frog soil on 4/20, and they both emerged on 4/22 (Earth day). So almost 4 weeks now. The first few days I kept the light on 24/7 mainly to keep them warm, but since then I’ve had them under a fluorescent light for 18 on/6 off. It’s not a perfect setup, but they seem to be doing pretty good so far. In the past week they’ve been accelerating in growth. They’re next to a window, so I just recently started letting them get some sun, and going to gradually get them hardened outdoors. I’m hoping to transplant them outdoors in about 2 weeks into 10gal fabric pots. I really wish I would’ve started them earlier, but here we are and we’ll see how it goes.

What I’m wondering is: Did I mislabel my pots?

From the day they popped out of the dirt the one I labeled as the Gold Leaf has been way taller and a bit ahead of the one I labeled as the Blue Dream. Also looking at the leaf shape and seeing pics around here and elsewhere of both strains, I’m thinking I did mislabel them. Here’s some pics.:

Blue Dream? (the shorter one)

Gold Leaf? (the taller one)

I realize that plants/strains grow differently and it probably doesn’t matter at this point anyhow, but I’d like to know just for my own info as part of the experiment and future growing, and it sure feels like I mislabeled them

My biggest concern is if there will be enough sunlight/time for them to finish. Up here in MN the sun really starts dropping lower in Aug/Sept, and my back yard starts getting pretty shady around then. I’ll probably have to move the pots around at some point. Eventually I want to get an indoor tent setup…
Thanks!

[Spiney_norman]

Hey @guitarngrowmn , Welcome to the forum.
Variations within the genetics of any strain makes it impossible to say just from sight what a plant might be. Just like two children from the same parents might look totally different, cannabis from seed, even if from the same parent plant, can and more often than not will look different. We see this question several times a week on the forum because its so common. Trust your labels. The final product and the effects you get might indicate a mix up, but that’s still not a perfect indicator. Gold Leaf tends to yellow at the end, but Blue Dream is certainly capable of the same thing.
Anyway, I like your handle. Assume you play the guitar. Many players on the forum. I think there’s an old thread about it. I play guitar and banjo myself.

Edit…
If you plan to set them outside soon you should start hardening them to sunlight by putting them out in the sun for an hour of two and lengthen the time slowly over a couple weeks. Placing them from florescent to sunlight all at once will cook them for sure.

[Audiofreak]

A Gold Leaf by any other name will smoke as sweet! Also when it goes to flower you will have no doubt about it as the Gold Leif is really golden color!

[Lostgirl]

@Audiofreak

Gold Leif is really golden color!

Is Gold Leaf aka Columbian Gold?

[Audiofreak]

Not to my knowledge. Its just one of thier (ILGM) strains. I think they won a canibus cup with it or some award.

[Ganjababy]

THANK God For Governor waltz lol my fellow Minnesota friendly neighbor seeds instructions say harvest should be ready by October if u plant them now! Auto’s u can plant in June and still harvest before autumn here in 10 thousand lakes enjoy ur grow!

[guitarngrowmn]

Update:
Raining like crazy here, but the girls seem to be doing well.
Transplanted them outdoors 2 weeks ago into 10gal pots with a 50/50 mix of Happy Frog and Ocean Forest with some extra perlite added. It’s been cloudy a lot lately, not a lot of sun, and temps have been all over the place. Hot and muggy as hell some days, cool and very humid overnight, with some big temperature swings. Sometimes into the mid-upper 80s in the day, then 50s-60s at night. 2 days ago it was 89, then I saw 52 overnight after storms went through.
Today it rained all day and the high was 64, tomorrow 86 with mega humidity and severe storms in the evening. I constructed a sort of crude hail cage with chicken wire and bamboo that should be effective, but I’m a little concerned about potentially high winds…
Its supposed to be like this for a bit, hopefully next week will be drier and sunnier!

[Fieldofdreams]

How’d you make out at the end of the season? Harvest in Croptober?

[Audiofreak]

A growme of mine grew some of the gold lief and really liked it

[guitarngrowmn]

Oh wow, never thought anyone would want a follow-up report

It came out decent, could’ve been better, but there were a lot of factors that affected all that.
1st, we had just a crazy abnormal summer/fall as far as weather. June was cool, rainy, cloudy, with a few really hot humid days mixed in. Summer didn’t really kick in until July, then things really took off. Then we had the hottest Sept-Oct ever, like we’ve never had before. Didn’t have any of the usual cool, crisp Fall days. It was 70s-80s with crazy high humidity all the way up until a few days before Halloween, which is when I harvested.
My back yard gets pretty shady into Sept-Oct, but very much so in Oct, and I think that caused them to not finish until longer than expected..

2nd, my plants got hit hard by Eurasian Hemp Borers. Those combined with the crazy hot/humid Sept-Oct caused bud rot. I lost a lot of nice nugs and entire branches.. They are my #1 priority this year, I’ll be spraying early and often for those..
Didn’t really have any other bug problems really.. A lot of leaf hoppers around, but they didn’t seem to do much.. When the ladybugs moved in I hardly saw any bugs at all. Just those damn hemp borers.
My plants got seeded somehow, and my theory is the hemp borers stressed them out. It’s entirely possible it could’ve been some pollen blowing around from wild hemp in the area too, but who but who knows.
Here’s a pic of the Eurasian Hemp Borers. Little orange bastards:

3rd, I probably made a few mistakes. The plants took way longer to finish up than I anticipated, so I probably stopped feeding them too early, and also probably didn’t feed them enough and/or as frequently as I should have. They were pretty good sized and seemed pretty hungry/thirsty toward the end. I had them in 10gal fabric pots and had to water them daily with 1-2 gallons/each. So bigger pots or in-ground would probably be better.
I should’ve been more proactive with the pest prevention/hemp borer problem. I didn’t see them until it was too late (Hemp Borers burrow into the stem and hide out/grow until they emerge later on and bore into the buds.). I saw a few of what I thought were caterpillars, but were probably the hemp borers earlier on and some caterpillar-type damage on some leaves, but they didn’t seem like a problem. I didn’t see much for other bugs either, so I didn’t really feel the need to spray very much for anything. So I learned that just because you don’t see anything, you should still at least spray regularly early and often as a preventative measure.

Lastly, this year I’m gonna grow more plants
I grew those 2 photo plants and tried to grow a few Northern Lights autoflowers, but only one of those survived and didn’t amount to much after the bud rot. (got an ounce from that one..) Our plant limit is 8 plants/4 of those being mature. So I’m shooting for having 4 good sized photo plants going into flower at the end of the season, with possibly some autos for earlier in the season. I’m also going to try some varieties that have a shorter flower period/earlier finish time.

In the end, despite the plants getting seeded and losing a lot to the bud rot/hemp borers, the smoke came out pretty good. After all that I ended up with about 11oz from the 2 photo plants. If not for the lost buds I’m sure it would’ve been easily over a pound..

Here’s some pics from mid-October:

[Fieldofdreams]

All of that prior experience will make you better prepared for this season. I battle caterpillars and spider mites bigtime in my outdoor environment. Leaf hoppers abound but only 1 plant ever suffered from their visits.

Glad to hear you’re still at it!!

[guitarngrowmn]

Thanks

I already have a bottle of Dr. Jack’s Deadbug Brew concentrate ready to go, so I’m ready.