Grow along with Big Willie!

wil2279 said:

Nice, I was starting to think that I was the only one growing autos now. Lol.

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wil2279 said:

So I am doing an auto grow now. And I would like to encourage anyone that would like to share their grows along with mine. If you have a grow going share your pics. If you haven't started a grow... Then start one. Let's see your auto grows here in this thread.
I'm not going into great detail. I have a grow journal if you want to know all the details but here is what I am growing. 2 Strawberry Nuggets, 2 Sour Stompers, 2 Northern Cheese Haze, and 1 4 Assed Monkey. All Mephisto strains this grow. Who knows what I'll do next grow. This is all in a 4x4 grow tent. View attachment 5068100View attachment 5068101

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wil2279 said:

Neither am I. This is my first real indoor grow. My setup is nice and I have some money invested in it but I have no idea how this grow is going to turn out. And I will still show pics. If I screw it up maybe someone else will have suggestions to help me with the next grow.

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lusidghost said:

What is that mulch type stuff? I thought it was super dry coco at first, but I see dark medium underneath it.

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Humanrob said:

It looks like you did a bunch of research and are following proven methods, that's a smart start. My problem is that I started with photos (indoors and outdoors) and then moved to autos outdoors. I was growing in the ground, and found that I could set up the soil in a very similar way to what I did with photos. So when I moved to growing autos indoors, even though everyone said cut way back on the nutes I wasn't paying attention because outdoors basically what worked for photos worked for autos.

Oddly, my very first auto indoor grow was an experiment where I grew them under a light out in the open on a table in the back room, no tent or anything. The light was only on for 13 hours a day and the temps were in the low 70's for most of the lights-on time. They turned out small, but green and healthy -- somehow in that low impact light and temp situation my still leaning toward photo nute regiment didn't phase them. Seemed like more evidence that what I was doing was working.

Next grow I moved into a grow cab, ramped up the lights and temps, and promptly burned the crap out of them. I'm still trying to figure out how to scale back feeding them and how and when to add more, any instincts I had gathered growing photos don't seem to apply here. As a side note, I'm still making the occasional dumb mistake, I just discovered this morning that I thought my light was at 300w but for the last six or so weeks, I actually had it running at 400w... that didn't help.

This grow is mostly about sampling different strains, so I've packed six plants into a 2x4. Here's a quick shot of the girls from Saturday which was the end of week 9. About two more weeks to go...
View attachment 5068911

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Humanrob said:

It looks like you did a bunch of research and are following proven methods, that's a smart start. My problem is that I started with photos (indoors and outdoors) and then moved to autos outdoors. I was growing in the ground, and found that I could set up the soil in a very similar way to what I did with photos. So when I moved to growing autos indoors, even though everyone said cut way back on the nutes I wasn't paying attention because outdoors basically what worked for photos worked for autos.

Oddly, my very first auto indoor grow was an experiment where I grew them under a light out in the open on a table in the back room, no tent or anything. The light was only on for 13 hours a day and the temps were in the low 70's for most of the lights-on time. They turned out small, but green and healthy -- somehow in that low impact light and temp situation my still leaning toward photo nute regiment didn't phase them. Seemed like more evidence that what I was doing was working.

Next grow I moved into a grow cab, ramped up the lights and temps, and promptly burned the crap out of them. I'm still trying to figure out how to scale back feeding them and how and when to add more, any instincts I had gathered growing photos don't seem to apply here. As a side note, I'm still making the occasional dumb mistake, I just discovered this morning that I thought my light was at 300w but for the last six or so weeks, I actually had it running at 400w... that didn't help.

This grow is mostly about sampling different strains, so I've packed six plants into a 2x4. Here's a quick shot of the girls from Saturday which was the end of week 9. About two more weeks to go...
View attachment 5068911

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wil2279 said:

So I have a personal opinion on growing autoflowers in soil. Autoflowers are fast right? They need veg nutrients for maybe 2/3 of their life cycle and flower nutrients for about the same.... There is about 1/3 in the middle during stretch where they may want a little of both. Anyhow most autos are going to finish in about 10 weeks or 2 and a half months.

That's not a long time, and I don't think autos should be hard to get a respectable result with. The newer autos are not as nutrient sensitive as the older ones. They do differ from strain to strain but for the most part I think you should be able to run an autoflower in a good nutrient rich soil from start to finish without having to add much besides water and maybe a top dress about 5 weeks or so in. I think the big limiting factor is the water. I think a lot of people... Myself included don't really know how to water properly. I think for my next run I may not even top dress. I am wanting to use some earthboxes which hold about 10-15 gallons of soil. I think I will try mixing some soil using dry slow release fertilizer about 50/50 mix of veg and flower nutrients or just an all purpose 4-4-4 or 5-5-5. And I am just going to see what happens if I just add water to the bottom of the earthboxes. I am betting I get a pretty good result.

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Humanrob said:

Interesting thoughts. There are a few guys over on AFN that use Earthboxes (or other SIPs) with living soil. I think the 'directions' that come with an Earthbox suggests making a "trench" of dry time release nutes down the center of the box. That works really well with photos (and tomatoes), but autos don't seem to be able to handle it at all.

I've done some experimenting in regular pots with mixing dry time release nutes into the bottom 1/3 of the soil and leaving the top 2/3's just plain soil - I did that for years with photos - but it shocked the heck out of my autos. I haven't found a way to use time release nutes successfully with autos because they seem to be really sensitive to over-feeding and there's no way to control how/when they release. I've moved to mellower liquid nutes for my current run. But that said, I haven't had what I consider a strong success with autos indoors yet, so far I've just figured out a few things that didn't work and by avoiding them things get a little better each time.

I've read a lot of opinions about proper watering, I'm curious (other than a SIP) what your idea of optimal watering is?

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Humanrob said:

Interesting thoughts. There are a few guys over on AFN that use Earthboxes (or other SIPs) with living soil. I think the 'directions' that come with an Earthbox suggests making a "trench" of dry time release nutes down the center of the box. That works really well with photos (and tomatoes), but autos don't seem to be able to handle it at all.

I've done some experimenting in regular pots with mixing dry time release nutes into the bottom 1/3 of the soil and leaving the top 2/3's just plain soil - I did that for years with photos - but it shocked the heck out of my autos. I haven't found a way to use time release nutes successfully with autos because they seem to be really sensitive to over-feeding and there's no way to control how/when they release. I've moved to mellower liquid nutes for my current run. But that said, I haven't had what I consider a strong success with autos indoors yet, so far I've just figured out a few things that didn't work and by avoiding them things get a little better each time.

I've read a lot of opinions about proper watering, I'm curious (other than a SIP) what your idea of optimal watering is?

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wil2279 said:

Well this run I am using a moisture meter to help me decide when to water. With living soil you want to keep the soil moist... Not dry or wet. If you haven't watched them yet, I highly recommend watching the 10x10 video series on the Build A Soil YouTube channel. They run earthboxes differently than earthbox wants you to run them and they do it very successfully. They top dress the earthboxes and use soil with compost and fertilizer in it... But they allow the boxes to run until they are dry before filling them again. Earthbox wants you to keep them full all the time. Still with autos... I imagine there would be a bit of a learning curve. You can't really fill the water reservoir until the plants get big enough to drain the res in a few days..

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Humanrob said:

There are so many ways to do things. When I used to run SIPs I would let the res get down to about 30% and then refill it. And I ran air stones in there, and 90% of the water roots were growing in the bubble stream, they seemed to love it. I've grown single big photos in a SIP in a 3x3 tent, and pulled 6-8oz from it. Not really an impressive harvest from a photo, but that's what I need to get from each grow space to meet our med needs. I haven't gotten good enough with autos indoors yet to get more than 1-2oz from each plant, since they stay small, I grow a bunch at a time to fill the space and reach the harvest I need.

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wil2279 said:

The "hotter" soils like roots organic green fields and fox farm ocean forest say they have enough nutrients for about 3-4 weeks. I think with autos there is probably more like 4-6 weeks worth of nutrients. So if you top dress around week 3-4 your plant should start seeing that food about the time the soil starts to run out... That feeding should last about 4 weeks so if you top dress again between weeks 7 & 8... Maybe about half as much... That should get you through to harvest...

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wil2279 said:

The reason build a soil let's their res run dry is because they are using a compost rich soil. And they don't want things to go anarobic.

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Humanrob said:

Not something I'm proud of, but I'm a bit too lazy to build my own soil, or maybe I'm just not into growing as much as I used to be. I'm looking for something simple that works. I'd like my plants to be as healthy as possible, but there's only so far I'll go to meet that challenge. It seems like genetics have come such a long way, that even plants that don't reach their full potential can still finish with excellent quality buds.

Ironically, I've had a hard time letting go of amending my quality bag soil before I plant, and it would be both simpler for me and better for the plants if I just left it alone. Maybe next time. This winter I'm only doing one indoor run, next winter I might do two, so there'll be more opportunities to experiment and learn. In the mean time, the buds keep piling up.

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