LST & Nutrients

First grow ever. Type of person who just jumps in with two feet. I have 3* auto afghan express in 5gal pots. I grow them au naturale: outdoors (move 4x a day to get roughly 12hrs of direct sun), bottled water, and nothing added. I suppose I bought very nice soil mix specifically for bud.

From my obsession with the forum, I've gotten intrigued with LST and on their 1month anni (today), I realized they were at their 5th node and I gently bent the tops over at 90degrees and tied them down w dental floss. No breaks, snaps, in fact it was soft and easily pliable. Rash and bold maneuver as a 1st time rook.

Question and panic ensued as they are now sleeping...do I need nutrients to support this LST or can I let it run naturally and see how Mother Earth takes over? Talk about being a bad parent, I cause them potential trauma and didn't even bake them a cake.

Thanks for the guidance and advice.

Any stress on an auto is not advised...they have a short life span so let them go with no stress...g/l

Next time, if you LST, recommend something thicker that won't cut into the plant. (insulated garden wire, IMO)

Thanks for the info, very much appreciated.

yeah bro as @Walter9999 said DONT STRESS your auto plants let me do their thing. are you not able to bring them inside for 20/on 4/off light cycle?

im interested because i just did the same with insulated garden wire (so cutting isn't the problem) and noticed a huge jump in nutrient problems… but it might just be a coincidence.

I didn't think lst would mess with nutrient needs, ill go read more.

You should remove the dental floss immediately and throw that idea out. The dental floss is going to cut straight through the tender branches.

The floss is gone and they were stressed for maybe 12 hours. It's amazing how quickly they adapted-- held the 90* degree bend and perked up; however, one is displaying deeper green leaves on the upper node that was stressed. I'm not concerned (unless I should be)... All three are starting to straighten themselves back out slowly apart from the deeper green one.

Regarding bringing them indoors for the additional light, they're heavy as frack and I haven't researched any indoor grow setups yet. They are already showing the female pistols. Is it too late to get acquainted with indoor growing and start doing this? Based on your comment, I may figure out which bulb I can buy cheaply and swop out th ceiling bulb for the time being.

(I seem hesitant bc I moved to South America and don't speak Spanish yet so getting what I've needed so far has been quite the challenge.) Thanks again everyone