Progress from dying on the sidewalk to 2 weeks flowering. How's she doing?

Hello friends.

Exactly two months ago, on Father's Day, I went out for my run in my lovely city in Colorado. I didn't even get to the end of my block when I noticed, right off the sidewalk next to a dumpster at a small apartment complex, a fairly large sized cannabis plant. It was pretty shocking to literally stumble into. But, it's a college town in a legal state and there is a lot of turnover, so I figured maybe someone was moving and couldn't take it. Felt like an invitation.

Here is what she looked like the day I found her:


I have been enjoying cannabis for...ugh...over 15 years at this point (getting old!) but had never grown it before because I had lived in an illegal state up until a few years ago and never wanted to risk it. Growing and cultivating it had always been something that piqued my interest, though, so finding the plant on the road, ready to be trashed, seemed to call out to me. So, I took it home and decided to give it my best shot.

Obviously, there is some weird stuff about it. First of all, I found it on the side of the road. I didn't know its strain, the medium, the conditions it was in, anything. Then, the previous owner made some really, really befuddling choices in their grow. First of all, the potting situation you can see in the first picture. There are four plants in the same pot -- a terra cotta pot that had its bottom broken off, which is then inside another plastic pot. With weird carbon pads on the top. I don't know what they were thinking here.

Since this was my first time ever growing, I didn't fully understand how egregious this situation was, and the plant started dying....quickly.

In the throes:

There was clearly a lot of other bad things happening here in addition to it being hopelessly rootbound...namely a pretty good spider mite infestation. The origins of the plant are so mysterious, but I am assuming the person dumped it because of this. Who knows, though, given the other weirdness.

So, first thing I did was do a bunch of reading online. Next thing I did was repot it into a 15 gallon smart pot in Roots Organic soil.

Day of repotting:


I kept it outside facing SW and I began feeding it with Fox Farms Big Bloom and Grow Big (only found out recently that Grow Big is full of heavy metals...whoops), I treated the spider mites with Safer End All, and the plants (all girls, gloriously enough) rewarded me by rebounding and growing mightily.

This morning:


Gallon for scale:




Now she is finishing up her second week of flowering. Been in transition with a little bit of N along with Botanicare PBP Bloom. Going to switch entirely to the bloom nutes next week.


This process has been confounding, nerve-wracking, but incredibly rewarding and has awakened something inside of me. Haven't been this excited about a hobby in a long time. It's definitely convinced me to do a grow next season all on my own, from a clean slate, with proper (and more manageably-sized) potting, the right medium from the start, and with knowledge of the strain I was growing. So many intangibles and mysteries from just acquiring a plant off the side of the road. I'd like to think the person who started the grow would be proud of how I turned her around, though. Excited to see this thing through to the end.

Any advice for where she is at now? I've read mixed things about defoliating...I'm inclined to just leaving it and letting it do its thing. What do you guys think? Any other wisdom for a first-timer?

 

Damn man, that's some paranoid stuff there! I think it'll be a-okay.