💙 Project Blue Tent – Week 7 Blue Waffle F1 – Pheno A (Folder 13A) Welcome back everyone to another week inside Project Blue Tent! 💙🌱 If you're new here, welcome aboard. This project is all about exploring the incredible Blue Waffle F1 genetics from Zamnesia while putting the complete growing ecosystem through its paces. Rather than documenting four plants as a single diary, each phenotype receives its own individual journey from seed to harvest. They share the same tent, the same environment, the same nutrition, the same irrigation and the same lighting. And yet... They still manage to tell four completely different stories. As I always like to say: We're not just growing plants. We're getting to know them. ──────────────────────── 🌿 Week Seven – The Final Cleanup This week feels like a milestone. The SCROG has done its job. The canopy is full. The plants have established their structure. And now it's time to prepare everything for the next chapter... Flowering. 🌸 Plant A is looking absolutely beautiful at the moment. Her foliage has developed into the rich, healthy green I've been hoping to see, and the overall structure is remarkably balanced. After several weeks of gently guiding branches underneath the SCROG, we've managed to create a canopy that is surprisingly even from one side of the tent to the other. At approximately 60 cm, she's sitting comfortably within the space we've created for her. And although she could certainly continue growing vegetatively, I don't want to simply keep filling the tent with more and more foliage. At some point, you have to stop building the canopy... ...and start preparing it for what comes next. That's exactly where we are now. ──────────────────────── 🕸️ From SCROG to Flower Over the last couple of weeks, the SCROG has completely changed the way these plants occupy the tent. Instead of allowing individual branches to dominate vertically, we've been gently guiding them horizontally beneath the screen. The result is exactly what we were looking for: A broad, relatively even canopy with many developing tops sharing the available light. SCROG isn't about forcing a plant into submission. It's about working with its natural growth and redistributing that growth across the available space. And looking at the tent now... I'd say the mission has been accomplished. The screen is filled. The plants have claimed their territory. Now we need to create the best possible starting point for flowering. Which brings us to this week's main job. ──────────────────────── ✂️ Defoliation – Cleaning Today for a Better Tomorrow This week we're performing a deep, purposeful defoliation across the canopy. For anyone unfamiliar with the technique, defoliation simply means selectively removing leaves from the plant. But it's important to understand what defoliation isn't. It isn't stripping a plant bare. It isn't removing leaves just because they're in the way. And it isn't something that should automatically be performed every week. The purpose is to improve the structure we've already created. After several weeks of SCROG training, there is now a tremendous amount of foliage packed into a relatively small space. While those leaves are essential during vegetative growth, too much overlapping foliage can eventually create unnecessary congestion inside the canopy. So we're removing selected leaves that are: • Blocking developing growth • Creating unnecessary overlap • Restricting airflow through the interior • Shading lower areas that we've decided to retain • Or simply no longer contributing enough to justify occupying that space The goal isn't to make the plant look empty. The goal is to make the plant efficient. ──────────────────────── 🌬️ Why Defoliate Before Flower? Timing is everything. We're doing this now because the plants are still in vegetative growth and have time to recover before we ask them to transition into flowering. Defoliation is a form of stress. Even when performed carefully, removing a significant amount of foliage temporarily changes the plant's balance between its leaves, roots and growing points. That's why I don't want to perform a major cleanup deep into flowering unless there's a very good reason. Right now, the plants can take that short period of recovery while they're still operating under an 18/6 light schedule and actively producing new vegetative growth. After the cleanup, we'll give them time to recover, settle and rebuild their foliage before flipping the lights. The idea is simple: Stress now. Recover now. Flower later. Rather than asking the plant to simultaneously deal with a major transition into flowering and a significant amount of pruning, we're separating those events. One step at a time. That's especially important in a project like this, where I'm trying to observe the plants rather than simply push them as hard as possible. ──────────────────────── 🌿 Plant A – Looking Better Than Ever Plant A continues to impress me. The first thing that stands out this week is the colour. That slightly lighter appearance we saw earlier in the grow has completely disappeared. The foliage is now displaying that rich, healthy green that tells me the current nutritional strategy is working extremely well. She's vigorous without looking excessive. Healthy without showing signs of nutritional stress. And most importantly... She's balanced. Her branches have responded beautifully to the SCROG, and the canopy has developed into a very usable structure for flowering. This is one of those moments where you can look at the plant and realize that the weeks of small adjustments have finally come together. The topping. The recovery. The daily SCROG work. The irrigation. The feeding. The environmental stability. None of those things created this canopy by themselves. They're all pieces of the same puzzle. ──────────────────────── 💧 The Drip Irrigation System One of the things I have become particularly impressed with during this project is the automatic drip irrigation system. It's working beautifully. With the plants now drinking more consistently and the canopy becoming increasingly demanding, having a reliable irrigation system makes maintaining uniformity across the tent considerably easier. Each plant is currently receiving approximately 1.2 L per 24 hours, delivered through the drip system. And the plants are clearly enjoying the consistency. One of the advantages of automated irrigation isn't simply saving time. It's repeatability. Instead of relying on every watering being manually performed at exactly the same interval and volume, the system provides a much more consistent routine for the plants. That consistency becomes increasingly valuable as the root systems develop and the plants transition toward flowering. So far... The system is doing exactly what I wanted it to do. And honestly, watching four plants respond so uniformly to the same irrigation strategy has been one of the most satisfying parts of this project. ──────────────────────── 🥥 Feeding Program The feeding recipe remains unchanged this week. And for now, I don't see a reason to interfere with something that is clearly working. Current nutrition: • Plagron Hydro A — 1.9 ml/L • Plagron Hydro B — 1.9 ml/L • Plagron Hydro Roots — 1 ml/L Current EC remains approximately: 1.92 mS/cm with the solution maintained around 18°C and pH at 5.8. The plants are showing excellent colour, strong growth and healthy leaf development, so I'm perfectly comfortable maintaining the current recipe for now. We may increase the nutritional strength next week depending on how the plants respond after defoliation and as flowering approaches. But that's exactly why I don't like changing several variables at once. First, we observe. Then we adjust. The plants will tell us what they need. ──────────────────────── 🌡️ Environmental Conditions The Blue Tent continues to remain remarkably stable. This week's average conditions were: • 🌡️ Day Temperature: 28°C • 🌙 Night Temperature: 27°C • 💧 Relative Humidity: 65% • 🥥 Substrate Temperature: 24°C • 💦 Nutrient Solution: 18°C • ⚗️ pH: 5.8 • ⚡ EC: 1.92 mS/cm • 💨 CO₂: approximately 450 ppm • 💡 Light Schedule: 18/6 • 💧 Irrigation: approximately 1.2 L/plant/24h • ? Pot Size: 8 L • 📏 Plant Height: approximately 60 cm The plants are continuing to respond beautifully to these conditions. The root-zone temperature remains particularly stable, irrigation is consistent, and the canopy has enough air movement to support vigorous transpiration. As we move toward flowering, environmental management will become even more important. The room we've created now needs to support not only vegetative growth... ...but the much denser flowering structure that is coming next. ──────────────────────── 🌬️ Why the Cleanup Matters One of my main objectives with this defoliation isn't simply aesthetics. It's airflow. When four vigorous plants completely fill a 100 × 100 × 200 cm tent, the amount of foliage inside that space becomes considerable. From above, everything can look absolutely perfect. But underneath that beautiful canopy is another story. Leaves overlap. Branches cross. Interior spaces become crowded. Air needs to move through all of that. By selectively removing excess foliage now, we're opening those internal spaces before flowering begins. That gives us a cleaner structure going forward and makes it much easier to inspect the plants, maintain airflow and monitor the developing flowers. This is also one reason I'm much happier doing the major cleanup before the flip rather than waiting until the plants are deep into flowering. Once flowering begins, the priorities change. I want the plant concentrating its energy on developing flowers rather than repeatedly recovering from major structural work. So we're preparing the room now. Clean canopy. Good airflow. Healthy structure. Then... Flower. ──────────────────────── 🧠 Defoliation Isn't About Removing Leaves One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding defoliation is that more leaves automatically means a worse plant. That's not true. Leaves are incredibly important. They're the plant's solar panels. They capture light and help drive photosynthesis. So the objective should never be: "How many leaves can I remove?" The better question is: "Which leaves are no longer contributing enough to justify occupying this space?" That's the philosophy I'm following here. We're not trying to weaken the plant. We're trying to improve the relationship between: Light → canopy → airflow → growing sites. And because we've already spent weeks creating the structure with SCROG, this cleanup is simply the final refinement of that work. ──────────────────────── 🌱 Plant A's Personality Every phenotype continues to develop its own personality, even when all four plants are living under almost identical conditions. Plant A has consistently been one of the more balanced girls in the tent. She doesn't appear interested in becoming the biggest plant in the room. Instead, she seems much more interested in becoming an efficient one. Her growth is structured. Her canopy is balanced. Her foliage is beautiful. And after weeks of training, she has settled into the SCROG extremely well. Now, after today's cleanup, she looks almost like a different plant. Less crowded. More open. More organized. And ready for the next chapter. That's the part of growing I really enjoy. You spend weeks slowly building something... Then one day you step back and suddenly realize: It all came together. ──────────────────────── 👀 Looking Ahead The next few days will be about one thing: Recovery. No unnecessary training. No chasing perfection. No constantly changing the environment. Just observation. The plants have been through topping. They've been trained beneath the SCROG. They've filled the canopy. And now they've received their final major vegetative cleanup. So we're going to let them breathe. Let them recover. Let them continue growing. And then, assuming everything continues to look as good as it does today... we flip the Blue Tent into flower. 🌸 This is the point where all those weeks of preparation finally start paying off. The screen is full. The structure is ready. The plants are healthy. Now we just need to let them do what plants do best. Grow. ──────────────────────── 💙 Thank You A huge thank you to Zamnesia for making Project Blue Tent possible, from these fantastic Blue Waffle F1 genetics to the complete ecosystem surrounding this grow. A massive thank you to Plagron for providing the Premium Growbags together with the Hydro nutrient line, which continues delivering excellent results and beautifully healthy growth. A special thank you to Mars Hydro for the drip irrigation and automatic drainage system. After watching these plants respond to the consistency of automated irrigation week after week, I'm genuinely impressed with how well the system is performing. Thank you as well to GrowDiaries, for giving growers around the world a place to document their journeys, exchange knowledge and learn from one another. And finally... Thank you to everyone following Project Blue Tent. Every comment, every question, every bit of feedback and every person simply stopping by to see how these four phenotypes are developing means more than you probably realize. We've spent weeks building this canopy together. Now the really exciting part is about to begin. The plants are cleaned. The SCROG has been filled. The room is ready. Flower is next. 🌸💙 Until next week... Growers Love, happy growing, and take care everyone! 🌱💙