Grow Mediums 2 Autos in Autopots Water Only, finishing flower

Joined
Apr 15, 2021
Messages
12
Reputation
0
Reaction score
23
Points
0
Hi everybody. I just wanted to share some pictures of my 2nd water only grow with Autopots. I bet there are quite a few people out there doing this but I feel like we're not connecting and not able to share a lot of information. Or maybe there arent many of us!

This grow is a UK cheese Auto from Canuk and a Mephisto Sour Stomper. My brother is a fairly experienced grower and recommended the cheese as he said he got it as a freebie when he ordered some ACE seeds from True North but was super surprised at how amazing it was so I ended up ordering some seeds from Ace as well and picked up the cheese freebie Auto to try out.

I have my fair share of issues but they don't seem to be with the autopots at all. In my grows I always have some kind of magnesium and potassium or calcium problem right around sexual maturity that arrives reliably and my plants seem to freak out with a bottom-up nutrient deficiency that's mobile. I think I'm actually under watering and over lighting.

I haven't seemed to find my way out of that problem yet but all my plants do well once they've resolved this issue and these plants are doing great now.

They're coming up to the end of week 10 and I think harvest is pretty soon. They're both well clouded and no amber but there's quite a bit of random glassy clear trichomes as well so I'm just holding out to hope the cheese fattens up like the sour stomper is.

The way I use the autopots is I shut them off every seven days, dry the pots out until they weigh something in the range of 8 to 9 lb. This way I know they've dried out significantly and are ready for a watering and are also probably pretty thirsty and hungry. I've been told by a couple breeders that I really respect that when I see these teas to let the plants get really hungry and a little bit extra dry and it increases the uptake. So far it seems to be definitely working as they're saying.

I brew a worm casting tea (Buildasoil castings) with natures brix and flower finisher from Greengro. I'm also using bioag ful-humix in there. Plants go absolutely crazy after they get the tea and all my plants in the house also get it and they also respond incredibly.

Once the tea is done brewing I add Epsom and gypsum, as well as the Rootwise inoculation products (dry and wet) for beneficial microbes.

This time I'm using Detroit nutrient company soil. I wanted to try it out and I really like how it wicks. I have the air domes in there and they're blasting and it all seems pretty well but I do feel like the soil at the top is still a little too wet. I did 1.5 in of perlite at the base with soil above it next run I'm going to try to 2 inches amd see if I can an airier lighter soil without being forced to add more perlite and remove nutritional mass from the pot.

I just have this one experience with it but I think the DNC is very hot. Good but overloaded. My plants got pretty burned once I started drinking heavily. My feeling is that that's why all is probably better suited for photos but I plan to recycle the soil that I used and I'm going to re amend and also soil test for myself just to see where things landed after this grow and to give me a sense of how to re amend. I bet after re amending it will be better than it was new.

My last grow was just one plant and I got 5.5 Oz off of a Barney's Tropicana banana in a 5-gallon fabric autopot. This run with autos I think I'm probably going to get about one and a half ounces off of each plant. Which is totally fine this is just for me and my wife but I do feel like the plants didn't bulk up that much perhaps from me screwing things up in their mid life phase at about 3-4 weeks.

Overall Im really happy. My buddy is using Autopots with Jack's nutrients and is just absolutely crushing and so my feeling is that this wayer only living soil route is a little bit harder to do in Autopots than modified hydro. But this is proof that it's totally doable.

Next run I'm going to start to supplement with epsom and gypsum fairly early on to see if I can reduce this early crash I get. I'm going to bump up to 2 inches of perlite. I turn the autopots on around three and four weeks when the plan is significantly larger than the circumference of the pot its in. It's not the time though it's definitely the size.

You'll see some light burn on the top of the sour Stomper. Dhlg 135 I'm using is so bright. Even with reasonable ppfd readings I'm still getting burn so I know now that this tenant has to stay under 550 at the top of the canopy. I know that sounds really low but I've spoken with hlg and even their tech support guy says he has the same problem. I think perhaps these lights are meant to be hung much higher like in a commercial setting. I'm in the process of looking for a 3 by 3 and I think I'm going to go with a photontek light this time.

Screenshot_20220325-124549.png



Screenshot_20220325-124431.png
 
Last edited:
That CalMag deficiency is relacionated with the led lights, they need more nutes and extra calmag, is usual to have it.
A good way to fix it is to add Dolomite in the substrate.

(sorry for my bad English)
 
Back
Top