🦇 Vampire Lightning 🦇 Grow by Afterburner

Afterburner · May 22, 2026

Here are the basics ❣

Cultivar : Vampire Lightning
Genetic Makeup: 4 Way Complex Cross
Pot/Bucket Size : 2 gallon
Tent Size: 2x2
Grow Space: 2x2
How Many Plants: 2
Environment: Grow tent
Stage: preflower
Medium: soil
Lights: 150 Watt max LED
Nutrients: Compost, Epsom salt, Hard Tapwater
Room/Tent Temperature: 71- 73°
Relative Humidity: 53-60%
pH: 6.2-7
Pests: Occasional fungus gnat found
Watering : Once bi-daily

Right now they are on their first week after flowering began. Preflower flew by without any real noticeable stretch. I saw a couple branches get an inch or 2 taller... the rest crept up a tiny bit...but I can't really say that is stretch, and more like what I would expect as normal growth.

I let the plants get a little bigger than I should have. We are talking 2x2 here, so its easy to do that. But I feel like they aren’t too big, but really on the edge of whats doable.

The main problem was my water. Im using tapwater that I adjust to the right pH. But that tapwater has a good amount of calcium and very little magnesium. The ratio is about 10:1. It took me a while to figure out wtf is wrong with the plants to discover the ratio was off bad, so I have been trying to correct that by adding some epsom salt to the water to get it somewhere between 3:1 and 5:1. I finally just started adding a nice pinch for each 2 liters of water. Seems to help, but of course not perfect. At first I was adding too much. Solved the magnesium deficiency but gained a calcium deficiency! So I backed off the epsom salt and maybe achieved an ok balance. I’m not aiming for maximum yield, but a decent yield of healthy flower. So its totally relaxed here.

This is last week at May 14:

And some older pics right before flipping and defoliation, they looked healthier here, greener.

And the male, which I kept small by pruning and root pruning. Cute little guy. Here his roots had just been pruned and an unfinished haircut

May 17: preflower seems to be over

May 19th: Females smell like green lime. A slight sweet fruity danky undertone but mostly lime smell.

IPM night...-

Thought I'd snap a photo and of the male that went through all the stress testing, and play around. Those red stems were from cold temperature stress. He can't hide his past. He has recovered from the root pruning and haircut. New branches/stems are nice green and he is producing new leaves. I'm giving him good care now.❣

And finally, last night May 21st

Really cool that these didn't stretch going into flowering! I don't want to be growing stem anyway! I barely noticed any vertical growth, just on a couple branches on the plant on the left. Hell yeah!

What a cool result!

And look at the trichromes forming so early!

They are already getting frosted up so quickly into flowering. This... is going to be good.

Thanks for coming by and looking! I will be updating this regularly. Very exciting to grow something this unique. Drop me a comment!

Afterburner · May 22, 2026

2 weeks since the switch to flowering and these things are taking off with some incredible speed! Im giving them 10-14 and they are loving that healthy dose of darkness. Tight and dense with the very short internodal spacing and bud sites everywhere from the aggressive branching. Trichomes are forming all over the little bud sites and creeping down the nearby leaves as well. The canopy looks like a beaitiful mess. This is not the ordinary result I am used to. I feel like I am tripping because its moving so fast I had to stop and check the calendar for when I flipped it a couple times now because i kept second guessing myself. But no, this is really happening this way.

Whenever I go to water or check on them and I get my face in close to them my nose is full of lime aroma with a slight greasy chemical quality to it. When I walk away it sticks in my nose and I can smell it like I carry it away to the next room. It's like it coats my sinus passage and gives me a tingley sensation inside the nostrils and around the tip of my nose. It makes my eyelids feel a little cold/hot sensation too which is a new experience from a cannabis plant for me, but I am super sensitive to essential oils so it may just be me. So the plants aroma has some power to it already. During veg there was no real fragrance to them. I could smell the dirt more than any plant smell.

I had planned on doing gradual defoliation as it progressed because it seems like it needs to be opened up more, but the density of the canopy makes it a bit confusing and difficult. Many small leaves all over the place. Im a bit too shy to get in there and rip a bunch of those small leaves away. But there is good airflow and air exchange so I just leave it alone for now.

Snapped a photo of looking into the side of the canopy this time. It may be hard to tell from the picture what I am trying to describe so I have to put a reference object in next time for perspective. In most places of the canopy the nodes are on average about the distance of the tip of my pinky finger apart. You can kinda see that in an early photo where my fingers are in the photo. The photo here doesn't capture it very well.

I added some dry compost as a top dressing, just a thin layer lightly worked into the top of the soil and gave them a very modest watering. The light is on 80% and after a couple more weeks I will bump that up to 100%

This is an exciting grow. The aggressive speed these plants show is really fun to experience since I flipped them. That lime/chemical smell is unusual. There is a lot of uniqueness with these which makes this a cool gardening experience. I didn't realize how boring and usual the grows got until these grabbed my attention. Brings the excitement and magic feing back to growing.

Afterburner · May 23, 2026

Gradual defoliation. My arms got sticky reaching around in there. The sticky scissors smelled somewhat like candy.

Some oversexposed photos tonight

Afterburner · May 26, 2026

Last nights side view. Stacking. Moving fast.

Afterburner · May 27, 2026

I have tried to describe the effects of this weed a few times. In two words I would say, Unique Transformative. It has this Jekyll and Hyde effect, and you lose track of time. Or like a reoccurring short term memory whipe that keeps you present. You get drawn into something, doing something, or creating something. Several hours later you realize so much time has gone by and you are checking out some finished project as your old self again still buzzing. It brings out a new intensity inside you, like a different version of yourself and its immensely enjoyable. I thought about it and I realized there is a face Jim Carrey can do that captures the feeling better than words. This is exactly what it feels like.