New Grower G'Day from OZ. 1st time grower here going to use the Auto-Pot Hydro System

Howdy smeg,

Bro, it's all fixable.
Problem is your autopot. Can't grow in those like u do with top feed hydro or soil--and they can be hell, theoretically, for autos. Problem is autos are age sensitive not photosensitive and in autopots u gotta waste time top watering to establish some roots then let the medium dry out for a week to get them to put down root mass and this seems to be when auto flowers wanna boogie but you're stuck farting around with this, essentially, wick system. Common mistakes: hooking valves up too early--leads to conditions too wet low in the pot before roots are big enough to drink quickly; so you're getting salt buildup, not enough aeration, and the pH begins to go nuts! Gotta go real mild on notes bro till mass of plant is almost big as the pot, if u ain't familiar with stress signs on these capiliary systems.

U got hen poo in your coco so give pots a good flush with tap water to dilute it all. U gotta get pH sorted. If pens are giving u the shits get a liquid aquarium pH test kit and dose pH corrected nuts no stronger than 300ppm and pH of 5.5 - 5.8. Water with this every two days --but only a little, not enough to run out the bottom of pot. The aggregate pH will sort itself out over time. Looking at your plants, water liberally with plain pH'd water every six or seven feeds. When the plants have gotten almost big as the pot hook up the valves to pH corrected nuts no stronger than half strength u would use in recirculating systems and run plain water in res every three res fulls. Oh, and dude, lift the lights. Little suckers ain't big enough to need much and u don't wanna stress them

Good luck bro!
 
I'm going to start 2 soil grows this week. Plunked another agp in the shot glass and I will pop another 60dw in as well. I will use the lowes easy dirt guide.
 
I'm going to start 2 soil grows this week. Plunked another agp in the shot glass and I will pop another 60dw in as well. I will use the lowes easy dirt guide.

Sending karma your way!! :-)

Hopefully these grows do good!
 
Here in Oz all they had that was decent was miracle grow organic potting soil. So, I grabbed a couple bags and some perlite and did up an autopot bucket with 50/50 MG and perlite to dliute the nutes. I can't decide whether to plant the seed in the soil or in the coco.

What do you guys think? Try to save the 60DW and run that as a hydro with the autopot and run one soil grow with a new AGP bean and see which gets better results?
 
Well, I pulled the plug on that sickly AGP and tried transplanting it into the new coco autopot that I prepped for the new bean.

I found tap roots all the way at the bottom of the autopot root mat so the roots did get down to the bottom pretty fast. Here's what I pulled off the root mat. I'm sure she's a goner now but I did what I had to do, which was.....something!

What's interesting is that the roots are white, not brown or slimy. Here's what's left of her bottom tap root.

I prepped the new autopot today with the airdome at the bottom and about 1/3 Growstones at the bottom and the rest 50/50 coco and perlite. I put the poor, dying AGP in the corner to see if she'll come back....doubt it. I have a bean in wet tissue ready for a tap root to grow. I flushed out the new pot earlier today and going to let it dry for the next few days until the new bean has a tap root then I'll put her straight in.

Send me some good karma my way for this one and say a prayer for this dying AGP...thanks everyone. Invaluable lessons being learned. Good thing I'm using my cheapest beans for my first grows...AGP and 60DW...actually the 60DW was pretty pricy at 15.50 quid.

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Here's to ya! Keep on keeping on and working at it.
:karma Cloud::karma Cloud::karma Cloud: and a :hug: for all the hard work!!
 
LOL, I pulled the plug on that poorly AGP and threw her in the bin. My wife got her out of the bin and put her in one of the pots outside to see if she could save her. Poor thing.

ETA: I had another AGP germinating and I just dropped this one in the Miracle Gro soil mixed with 50% perlite. Going to use the Aussie version of the easy dirt guide but I'm subsitituting fish emulsion for Seasol and the Starter Grow with Powerfeed veg and fruit bloom nutes.

I'm going to feed just the one 60DW on the autopot rez doing 20L at a time batches once I get a PH meter and a new pump. Airpump I bought just last week packed it up so I'll need to exchange it and get some PH up and down.
 
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Well, guess what? I moved the AGP seedling (just popped a tap root from tissue paper) from the miracle grow potting soil back to the coco/perlite pot I had mixed up as a backup. This is becoming a comedy of errors...a journal to other newbies of WHAT NOT TO DO. I guess I'm going to finish this grow as a hydro grow. If I learn enough lessons then I'll stick with hydro, if it all goes to shit then I'll try soil next time.

sigh:stoneslap:
 
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