Good day to you all, and thank you in advance for any valued advice you may contribute to a humble newbie like myself! This is my first time actually posting but I'm a LONG time reader. This is my first official grow but I feel as if I should have a degree in growing from the amount of the knowledge I have obtained from here. I have attempted to grow in the past but they either end up getting stolen by (friends) or ruined by mishap. I have countless hours of knowledge from reading and rereading forums over the years so I'm very confident that I can finally pull off at least a halfway decent grow despite the lack of actual experience and other unforeseen risks. With that being said, I am running an organic grow of 2 different strains, Headband (Reserva Privada) and Kosher Tangie (DNA Genetics), in 45 gallon smart pots. They were started from seed in my grow box. I kept them on a 24 hour light cycle to try to make up for the short amount of time I could keep them in my home due to various reasons. I foliar sprayed them with Protekt about once or twice a week and that was about all I gave them. They were hardened off and let to get about 14 in. in length before put outside. I LSTd them to try to keep them at an adequate height in my grow box and I topped at the 5<sup>th</sup> node. I must say, they exploded in the short period of time that I actually had them here. The mix that was put in the smart pots is about 30% perlite, 30% peat moss, & 40% compost. I've added worm castings, blood meal, bone meal, bat guano, kelp meal, neem seed meal, alfalfa meal, some rock phosphate, and of course some lime. I also added a little soil moist to help with water retention. I figured that was a pretty solid variety of amendments to put in a soil. My soil was only able to cook about 6 weeks now, but I gave it an AACT at 3 weeks & again this past week at 6. The plants won't need to be transplanted for about another 2 or 3 weeks so I figure that 2 months will be a sufficient amount of time for everything to have cooked. On to more important things. I believe that I have the typical spider mite problem that I've read about numerous times. I have spotted a few spotted leaves and a few leaves that have been eaten lightly, and one or two that have been munched at least 25-50% of the way down. The plants have been outside for at least 3 weeks now and this is the first sign of any problem with the plants at all despite the lack of maintenance I've been giving them. I sprayed with Mighty Wash and Protekt the day I put them out, then not again until this last visit which was at least 2 weeks apart. Is it safe to assume that this is the reason for the eaten leaves?
It's still early in the grow but the headband seems to be more tolerant to the mites where as I see very minimal damage from any spider mite anywhere on the plant. The Headband also seems to be less sensitive to deficiencies. I say this because I started the seeds off in organic Miracle Grow with a little bit of worm castings & extra perlite without thinking of checking the ph or adding lime before hand. The soil runoff turned out to be about 6.0 when it finally crossed my mind to do so. The K.T. started to show some signs of nutrient lockout quicker and to a more dramatic extent than the headband. I watered in some lime with some 7.5 ph water the following few weeks to try to bring it up. The girls bounced back better than ever a few days later. Here are some pics of the leaves that have been damaged on the K.T.
Here are a few pics of my Headband. It's starting to show pistils already and I'm kind of scared that I may have caused it to preflower due to stress (accidently bent main stem a little too much) or putting them out too early. I didn't put them outside until April 7th so I'm hesitant to believe it's flowering because it isn't getting enough light.