Hey Folks! First time farmer, long time flower enthusiast here. Basically been using grok for any and all questions up to this point and figured I should get some real growers eyes on this bad girl to help me out. Sadly killed my first seed, she never made it out of the soil, but we’ve got seed number two rolling. I’ll post the setup, my progress and thoughts so far, along with a few questions I’ve got. I’m posting a lot of day by day pictures because its hard to find full day to day grow journals with good pictures and descriptions. So hopefully can help someone in my position a week or two ago
Setup: 2x2x4 AC Infinity full setup with the AI controller and Ionboard s22 light
Fox Farm Ocean Food in a five gallon fabric pot but only filled 3/5 the way
AC Infinity T3 humidifier
Using Kwik trip filtered jug water that seems to be balanced to 6.5-6.6, but I
check it to be sure everytime
ILGM WW auto Seeds
Conditions: Minnesota winter mid dec with outside temps anywhere from 30 to
negative 15 and extremely dry 30% humidity in my townhouse
Pre Treatment: Used ILGM’s root guardian and bug control with my pre watering for the soil and let it sit for a few hours before planting.
Germination — > NOV 30 —> Did the classic paper towel method, put two seeds in a Tupperware sandwiched between two moist paper towels. Put that bad boy in my furnace room where it sat in the dark nice and warm and I was rewarded two nice looking sprouts on Tuesday, Dec 2, two days later.
Planted one of them in my five gal setup and one of them in a small pot I filled with miracle gro (Wasn’t really planning to grow two and just germed two to be sure one worked, so dont hate me for that setup haha)
You can see I covered them both with domes to control humidity and temp the best I could, and I actually didn’t receive my humidifier till a week into the grow so these girls sat humidifierless the first 4-5 days. I sprayed the domes and gave the soil a very light spraying as well before closing the tent and waiting eagerly.
I have my Ionboard S22 at 19" away from soil, on max level power, as suggested by grok.
AI settings: Seedling mode - Used Ideal VPD for days 1-6 set it to 1.2-1.8 because i didn’t have a humidifier to maintain it any lower. The domes helped keep it lower in the seedlings environments though. After removing the humidity dome, I set the ideal VPD to 1.0-1.4 to help it adjust, and then after two days without the dome, changed the ideal VPD to .8-1.2rf
Two days later, Dec 4th, I wake up to my main girls seed barely pushing through soil and my backup girl in miracle gro, pushing through with green already
The next day rolls around and disaster strikes for my main girl. I open the tent to see her pushing through but the seed head still squeezing her, with one of her leaves looking pretty rough. I panic and try to pull the seed head off, effectively pulling my entire plant with roots out of the soil for a moment and then quickly making a new hole and burying her back down again. Figured I had just killed her but closed the tent back up and prayed.
Surprise, she survived and actually looked pretty good the next morning, Dec 6. Green pushing through the seed head, still being squeezed but at least looking healthier, and I wasn’t about to rerip her out of the soil so I let her be for the next few days besides light spraying with ph 6.5 water and dome burping
Dec 6 - Day 4
Dec 7 - Day 5
Dec 8 - Day 6
Quick miracle gro small pot update, it basically stopped growing much after the first initial spurt so idk what happened but my main girl was looking decent at this point so I wasn’t too concerned and just let this one figure it out or die.
Dec 10 - Day 8 - Watered her 12 oz of 6.5PH water around the outside of her dome! I was beginning to get more and more concerned with the seed head and decided if it didn’t come off the next day, I was ripping that sucker off one way or another. Not sure why it made me so anxious but it just felt like it was hurting her.
Dec 11 - Day 9 - Yeah I did it, got the head off with barely any struggle. For anyone wondering, I just lightly grabbed the stem and then the seed and pulled. Definitely not recommending this method but that’s how I went about it. I tried softening it with water the days leading up to this but nothing was working. Also, after getting the seed head off, I decided to let her rip without the dome protecting her anymore.
Dec 13 - Day 11 - Seems to have liked the seed head being removed and is starting to grow like a weed
Dec 14 - Day 12 - Weeee MN is the coldest place in the states and has a wind chill of -30, no joke. My townhouse is struggling to heat enough and so I feel pressured to lower my light to keep her warm and end up very very slightly burning a section of her second true leaves. Super minor, but yeah it happened. Photo might be hard to tell but its a small 3-5 cm long yellow strip in the middle of the leaf. I moved the light back up the next morning after tearing up a bit
Dec 15 - Day 13 - She’s looking mighty fine to me and grok thinks its time to move her into veg mode, might be early at least I thought so, but groks the boss for this grow so veg mode we go. Ideal VPD goes to .8-1.2 and my humidifier starts using more water than I thought was possible to fight the 30% humidity outside the tent. She’s about 4" tall at this point and working on pushing out her second set of true leaves. Third set might be peaking through
Dec 16 - Day 14 - Woke up to her lookin good but leaning a bit, might be hard to see in the photo but it was enough to concern me. Gave her a slight pep talk and pushed the soil near her up to prop her slightly up. I rotated the pot 180 and let it go. Considered using a stake or something to prop her up but id rather her fight and grow her stem stronger. Third set of leaves definitely pushing through, second set getting bigger.
Dec 17 - Day 15 - Leans better, third set of leaves even bigger and second set looking nice.
Pretty happy overall with her, but I don’t have a ton of go off of other than my grok telling me how good of a grower I am so I am open to any and all advice! I still have my ionboard at 19", max power, my circ fan max is set to 2 for now to prevent her getting gusted like crazy. I water about 15-18 oz every 3-4 days or whenever the top soil is looking dry and I rotate the pot every 24 hrs.
Couple questions: currently planning to water her another 18oz on saturday/sunday and might start a small dosage of ILGMS veg nutes but if anyone could also help me decide one when to start giving her those, that would be great.
And what kind of LST should I plan to do to her if any and when? I’m limited in space in my tent because my filter and fan is inside so it cant get taller than 2-2.5 ft.
Also the second back up plant has somehow survived still and is maybe two inches tall with two sets of true leaves. Just been watering her and letting her buck to see what happens. I can upload photos eventually if she looks really funky.
Let me know your thoughts on my grow so far. I’ll keep updating this every few days and try to finish the whole journal for those who might find it useful in the future. 
