AutoOtto
Welcome to the CannaZone
Mr and Mrs AutoOtto's medical cannabis grow diary
CHAPTER 1: Germinating/planting autoflower seeds
Preparing autoflower/mother room
5 gallon bucket DWC LST Autoflower cannabis grow
6/20/13: My wife and I are beginning our medical grow, and have decided to incorporate autoflowering strains into it. Recieved our seed orders from both seaof seeds and The Attitude today, here's the packages:
excited for the autoflower strains we ordered: 10 Northern Lights auto from the attitude, which also came with an auto for one of the freebies, G13 labs Sour Diesel auto, and from seaofseeds we ordered a strain by Humboldt seed organization: 3 Lemon Juice Express seeds, which came with both a Puple auto by Pyramid seeds and an auto Superbud, not sure the seed company on that one tried to look something up on it and aside from Ed Rosenthal superbud, which as far as I can tell, no one has an auto strain of, I can't find a superbud.... have a buddy holding some seeds for me need to meet up with him and get those, among them are a Cheese Candy auto and a Supercheese Express auto. But we decided to get our seeds presoaking in glasses anyway. As much as these seeds cost, I'm a firm believer in doing all you can to insure germination so prior to soaking the seeds, decided to do the old sanddpaper in a box and scuff them up a bit prior to the soak, althought this turned out to be counter-productive at first when the box wasn't as tight as I thought it to be and 7 of my 10 NL auto seeds flew all over my kitchen, despite much time carefully searching on hands and knees, I failed to recover 2 of them, leaving me with 8 NL auto =( Shit happens, you live and you learn, haven't abandoned the scuff method, but make damn sure now that no seeds can fly out.... So now we have all the auto seeds (except for those I need to pick up from my buddy tomorrow) soaking in labeled glasses, we waited a few hours and gave them a poke and they easily dropped to the bottom, a good indication of viable seed.
6/21/13: Taproots not showing on anything yet, and we decided to avoid damage to the delicate taproot during planting, we'd plant them directly into the medium now that they've soaked overnight. We've decided in the future to abandon the pre-soak method and go to directly from scuffing the shells to planting them in the final pot, along with giving them a nice long drink of water. My buddy brought me my seeds he'd been holding for me, and we also planted the autos that came with that order, Delicious seeds Cheese Candy auto, and Positronics Supercheese Express, giving us a total of 16 autos would like to get more seeds to allow me to fill up the auto room, but we'll see, and we want to leave some room for some photoperiod flowering mothers in the autoflower room until we can finish the other rooms. We have chosen 5 gallon bucket dwc as our growing method, our container is a D.I.Y Lowe's bubble bucket with a 8 inch net pot lid:
growing medium, 100% perlite, which might sound strange to some, I know it did to me, when I first saw it being used. I had previously known of it only as a soil amendment, but my friends dad has a medical grow in MT, and is able to get large amounts of free perlite, which he is graciously hooking me up with as well, and as a first time grower, in this same system, he achieved an average yield of 8 dried ounces per plant, with one monster plant in particular weighing in at over 13 dried ounces! Not bad for a first timer! Here's the pots with the seeds freshly planted in them: I am essentially a first time grower myself, although I've been a serious dreamer about and student of all types of grow knowledge and techniques for the last 18 years, and I know that first time growers have the reputation for overwatering, which makes it nice to start out in a medium in which you virtually can't overwater, although I think after this we'll do our starts in Jiffy cubes, then drop sprouts into the final pots once they pop.
I don't have the $ this second to get the pump, tubing and air stones to get these bubbling but I have a few days grace before the taproots come throught the holes in the net pots, and in the meantime, I'm topwatering them, essentially treating it like soil for the moment. We have a 4 bar, 4' T5 hanging over the pots, and will upgrade in a matter of a week to a sealed 8.5' x10.5' room with 3200w of MH (8 400w MH)
6/24/13: Seeing our first little girl pop up, it's one of the Lemon Juice Express seeds, #3 of 3 planted. Last, but apparently not least. This strain is supposed to have a lemon flavor with an element of pineyness to it, and I don't know about you guys, but although lemon flavor seems to be a common terpene profile these days, I can't think of the last time I tried some piney tasting herb, so super stoked for this strain! Hope some nice, low-stress training can net me some extra colas from this stuff = ) Our first sprout!!
On the learning side went and got a ph pen today, yes I should have had one already, I know, but I discovered that silly me, I should have flushed and soaked the growing medium with properly ph balanced water since perlite is sterile, with a neutral (7) ph, and this system operates ideally a little above 5.5, (my netpot runoff tested at over 9!!) but not to worry, I caught the problem very early in the life cycle of any of these plants, for the first 2 weeks of it's life, cannabis draws it's nutes directly from the seed leaves, or cotyledon, and therefore for this time period, doesn't need to get them from the medium, I've begun a daily flush program with water ph balanced just on the low side (5.4), and I anticipate by the time they need to draw their food from the medium, ph levels will be where they should.
6/25/13: A Northern lights, and another Lemon Juice Express have sprouted today, continuing with the daily flushes and the runoff has come down a couple full ph points already, which is good to see. My buddy helped me hang the celing drywall in what is to become these ladies home today, we ended up being shy a small scrap, but another friend had a scrap of sheetrock, he'll bring it by tomorrow, and I'll sew up this celing. Here's a couple pics of how this room looked after I demoed the crappy flaky ceiling tile that was on the ceiling:
Gonna finish drywalling this and seal of every crack and crevice that a bug or whatever could come through, Open reflectors on the Halides, non-cooled, but to handle all that heat, on the south window (both will be boarded up) we'll have an intake fan pulling 440 cfm into the room through a hepa filter and on the east window vent out with our SoleusAir 14,000btu ac/heater/60 pint trayless dehumidifier:
We will be upgrading to a carbon filter on the exhaust once the stink gets too potent, again, this is gonna be a 8.5' x10.5' room with 3200w of MH for which we already have the lighting. We have a much larger area in the rest of the basement that will in the course of the next month or so become our Mother chamber/cloning/veg. room/flower room for the regular, non-autoflowering strains, but in the meantime, since we had this little extra space, and have been intrigued by the idea of growing some autoflowers, we decided to get that started first, since it was more in the bud-get = )
Within the next week we'll start our first round of six regular photoperiod flowering mothers, and until we have the other chambers built, they can share the little room with the autos, there's plenty of space.
6/26/13: Finally got all the materials to finish the autoflower room, hung that last piece of sheetrock on the ceiling, and used a bag of fast set mud to finish the ceiling, filled all the cracks with foaming insulation, gonna wait for that to cure and paint ceiling and walls in the morning, only days from having this room up and running!! Check some pics of the ceiling with finished drywall on it:
Also on the positive side, the flushing has now brought the ph down to a "soil safe" ph of 6.6 (still a little high for hydro, but I'm not using the bubble buckets yet anyway, still top watering like soil) and in the next couple flushes should have it dialed in nicely at 5.6-5.8, in plenty of time before the roots hit the reservoir. I'm really happy with our germination rate, all but one of the pots are now showing signs of life. It's the purple auto. Obviously, you prefer every seed to germinate, but realistically, you know that some will not, I had hoped though, if I had a seed
that didn't germ, it would be one of the ones I had multiple seeds of. I gently moved aside soil with my finger on the Purple auto pot until I got down to where the seed was and, now nearly a week later, there are no signs at all of sprouting, plus that seed was kind of the sorriest looking bean of the bunch, small, and a little oddly shaped. I had sure hoped for some nice purple hues to complement the purps of the NL autos. I put it back, a quarter inch under the soil, and gave it another good watering, but I suppose if it hasn't shown signs of life yet, I may be simply hoping against hope......
6/27/13: Such a long day today, but rewarding, woke up and painted the autoflower room exterior flat white (it retains its reflectiveness through the years and doesn't yellow like interior) got some stuff done with a friend, that I've been meaning to get done, and also did some patchwork at a seniors home, subcontracting hourly to a buddy. When I got home and managed to get a look at the girls, it having been about a week since planting, I decided to change the water in the buckets (I had been ph balancing it down so as to buffer the medium and re-topwatering with the same water til this point) Since the runoff ph had been in the 6.8 to 7 range last time I watered them with
5.4 ph balanced water, I decided this time to ph the water down one point lower, to 4.4. After cleaning all the buckets out and top watering, runoff ph has hit a mean average of 5.6-5.8 and that's good to see (I've now decided with this airy perlite as a medium, I'll water smaller amounts, more frequently, say a quart, 2-4 times a day)
But the most wonderful surprise of all...... I gently dug down again in the purple auto pot, and there, a week after being planted, from this tiny misshapen bean..... showed the tiniest sliver of a taproot!! Buried it back 1/4 inch under and gave her a drink. That's right folks, 100% germination rate! And I am forced to say, that my first time experience, with both The Attitude seedbank and SeaofSeeds has been thoroughly satisfactory! Viable seed stock, fast service, both packages, ordered on the same day, showed up on my doorstep exactly a week later. The only advantage I give to The Attitude is that you can get the seeds still in the original breeders pack when you select guaranteed shipping, and you get a free gift with that 20$ guarantee(this time I got the Granddaddy Genetics coffee mug) but SeaofSeeds seems to give you more free seeds (except when Attitude runs a big promotion, which is the best time to buy from them) As first time
growers, who didn't have their game down as yet, and who got off to a less than perfect start, it's extremely gratifying to see all the girls doing their thing = ) Here's all the ones clearly showing above the medium
(going to post all the pictures I mentioned above tomorrow, I have to wake up in 5 hours, no time to post them right now. lots of fully fleshed out updates to come=)
CHAPTER 1: Germinating/planting autoflower seeds
Preparing autoflower/mother room
5 gallon bucket DWC LST Autoflower cannabis grow
6/20/13: My wife and I are beginning our medical grow, and have decided to incorporate autoflowering strains into it. Recieved our seed orders from both seaof seeds and The Attitude today, here's the packages:
6/21/13: Taproots not showing on anything yet, and we decided to avoid damage to the delicate taproot during planting, we'd plant them directly into the medium now that they've soaked overnight. We've decided in the future to abandon the pre-soak method and go to directly from scuffing the shells to planting them in the final pot, along with giving them a nice long drink of water. My buddy brought me my seeds he'd been holding for me, and we also planted the autos that came with that order, Delicious seeds Cheese Candy auto, and Positronics Supercheese Express, giving us a total of 16 autos would like to get more seeds to allow me to fill up the auto room, but we'll see, and we want to leave some room for some photoperiod flowering mothers in the autoflower room until we can finish the other rooms. We have chosen 5 gallon bucket dwc as our growing method, our container is a D.I.Y Lowe's bubble bucket with a 8 inch net pot lid:
I don't have the $ this second to get the pump, tubing and air stones to get these bubbling but I have a few days grace before the taproots come throught the holes in the net pots, and in the meantime, I'm topwatering them, essentially treating it like soil for the moment. We have a 4 bar, 4' T5 hanging over the pots, and will upgrade in a matter of a week to a sealed 8.5' x10.5' room with 3200w of MH (8 400w MH)
6/24/13: Seeing our first little girl pop up, it's one of the Lemon Juice Express seeds, #3 of 3 planted. Last, but apparently not least. This strain is supposed to have a lemon flavor with an element of pineyness to it, and I don't know about you guys, but although lemon flavor seems to be a common terpene profile these days, I can't think of the last time I tried some piney tasting herb, so super stoked for this strain! Hope some nice, low-stress training can net me some extra colas from this stuff = ) Our first sprout!!
On the learning side went and got a ph pen today, yes I should have had one already, I know, but I discovered that silly me, I should have flushed and soaked the growing medium with properly ph balanced water since perlite is sterile, with a neutral (7) ph, and this system operates ideally a little above 5.5, (my netpot runoff tested at over 9!!) but not to worry, I caught the problem very early in the life cycle of any of these plants, for the first 2 weeks of it's life, cannabis draws it's nutes directly from the seed leaves, or cotyledon, and therefore for this time period, doesn't need to get them from the medium, I've begun a daily flush program with water ph balanced just on the low side (5.4), and I anticipate by the time they need to draw their food from the medium, ph levels will be where they should.
6/25/13: A Northern lights, and another Lemon Juice Express have sprouted today, continuing with the daily flushes and the runoff has come down a couple full ph points already, which is good to see. My buddy helped me hang the celing drywall in what is to become these ladies home today, we ended up being shy a small scrap, but another friend had a scrap of sheetrock, he'll bring it by tomorrow, and I'll sew up this celing. Here's a couple pics of how this room looked after I demoed the crappy flaky ceiling tile that was on the ceiling:
We will be upgrading to a carbon filter on the exhaust once the stink gets too potent, again, this is gonna be a 8.5' x10.5' room with 3200w of MH for which we already have the lighting. We have a much larger area in the rest of the basement that will in the course of the next month or so become our Mother chamber/cloning/veg. room/flower room for the regular, non-autoflowering strains, but in the meantime, since we had this little extra space, and have been intrigued by the idea of growing some autoflowers, we decided to get that started first, since it was more in the bud-get = )
Within the next week we'll start our first round of six regular photoperiod flowering mothers, and until we have the other chambers built, they can share the little room with the autos, there's plenty of space.
6/26/13: Finally got all the materials to finish the autoflower room, hung that last piece of sheetrock on the ceiling, and used a bag of fast set mud to finish the ceiling, filled all the cracks with foaming insulation, gonna wait for that to cure and paint ceiling and walls in the morning, only days from having this room up and running!! Check some pics of the ceiling with finished drywall on it:
Also on the positive side, the flushing has now brought the ph down to a "soil safe" ph of 6.6 (still a little high for hydro, but I'm not using the bubble buckets yet anyway, still top watering like soil) and in the next couple flushes should have it dialed in nicely at 5.6-5.8, in plenty of time before the roots hit the reservoir. I'm really happy with our germination rate, all but one of the pots are now showing signs of life. It's the purple auto. Obviously, you prefer every seed to germinate, but realistically, you know that some will not, I had hoped though, if I had a seed
that didn't germ, it would be one of the ones I had multiple seeds of. I gently moved aside soil with my finger on the Purple auto pot until I got down to where the seed was and, now nearly a week later, there are no signs at all of sprouting, plus that seed was kind of the sorriest looking bean of the bunch, small, and a little oddly shaped. I had sure hoped for some nice purple hues to complement the purps of the NL autos. I put it back, a quarter inch under the soil, and gave it another good watering, but I suppose if it hasn't shown signs of life yet, I may be simply hoping against hope......
6/27/13: Such a long day today, but rewarding, woke up and painted the autoflower room exterior flat white (it retains its reflectiveness through the years and doesn't yellow like interior) got some stuff done with a friend, that I've been meaning to get done, and also did some patchwork at a seniors home, subcontracting hourly to a buddy. When I got home and managed to get a look at the girls, it having been about a week since planting, I decided to change the water in the buckets (I had been ph balancing it down so as to buffer the medium and re-topwatering with the same water til this point) Since the runoff ph had been in the 6.8 to 7 range last time I watered them with
5.4 ph balanced water, I decided this time to ph the water down one point lower, to 4.4. After cleaning all the buckets out and top watering, runoff ph has hit a mean average of 5.6-5.8 and that's good to see (I've now decided with this airy perlite as a medium, I'll water smaller amounts, more frequently, say a quart, 2-4 times a day)
But the most wonderful surprise of all...... I gently dug down again in the purple auto pot, and there, a week after being planted, from this tiny misshapen bean..... showed the tiniest sliver of a taproot!! Buried it back 1/4 inch under and gave her a drink. That's right folks, 100% germination rate! And I am forced to say, that my first time experience, with both The Attitude seedbank and SeaofSeeds has been thoroughly satisfactory! Viable seed stock, fast service, both packages, ordered on the same day, showed up on my doorstep exactly a week later. The only advantage I give to The Attitude is that you can get the seeds still in the original breeders pack when you select guaranteed shipping, and you get a free gift with that 20$ guarantee(this time I got the Granddaddy Genetics coffee mug) but SeaofSeeds seems to give you more free seeds (except when Attitude runs a big promotion, which is the best time to buy from them) As first time
growers, who didn't have their game down as yet, and who got off to a less than perfect start, it's extremely gratifying to see all the girls doing their thing = ) Here's all the ones clearly showing above the medium
(going to post all the pictures I mentioned above tomorrow, I have to wake up in 5 hours, no time to post them right now. lots of fully fleshed out updates to come=)
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