I wont make this a true journal, but I would like to share my experiment. I'll take suggestions or input. (it's long, but I think it addresses the questions people may have about this grow...read on if you're interested!)
I ordered 10 beans each from Dope Seeds about a year ago: Auto White Russian, Auto AK-47. I'm currently on day 46 of my 3rd grow.
My garden is in a closet under a stair. It is about 3'6" wide x 4'8" deep and the height angles, but the max light height is about 5'0" off the floor. I have fresh air in, Exhaust with a 6" can fan, and carbon filter. 400 w HPS cool tube.
My first grow was soil, in 2 gal bags. I germ'd 3 each WR/AK. Out of that, I got 2 fems of each. The photos attached from this grow are the ones titled day 65 (i dont know the order they will display) I used FFOF soil, and FF trio of nutes. I consider that grow successful. The plants reached a height of about 23" for the AK's and about 20" for the WR's. I dont own a scale, but my dry yield estimate was about 4 oz bud, 1 oz of popcorn bud and chopped leaf. (estimate was based on my stash jars that I used to put my "store bought" weed in. So I do have an idea.)
The second grow I did not document. Same set-up as the previous grow. only got 3 fems, and these were very stunted. they got a hard start and never took off. The bud was quality, but my dry yield was only about 1/2 - 3/4 oz per plant. I was a little disappointed when comparing with the previous grow.
For my 3rd grow I decided to try a hydro setup. Its going to either be spectacular, or a disappointment.
here's my setup: Ebb/Flow. 10 gal res w/ 2 large airstones, and a huge air pump. flooding 3x day for about 24 minutes each flood. Using Recipe for Success Nutes. I have been maintaining 5.8 pH and check it daily.
I have been changing the res once a week. As the plants drink (about 1 gal/day) I add plain tap. about day 5 of the weekly cycle, I will add one gallon of water with 100% nutes (for that one gallon, not another 100% based on 10 gal res...just to clarify). So I just try to maintain that 10 gal level throughout the week. I dont have a TDS meter yet, so I'm just applying knowledge from a year's worth of reading in here and watching the plants to tell me what they need.
I started 3 WR and 3AK beans again. this time i got 1 WR, and 2 AK fems. The photos from this grow are the ones titled day 45. The bush you see in that shot is really just 2 plants. my 2nd AK is quite stunted, in the back and you cant see it in that main pic. I attached a shot of that runt. Even though that plant is younger (it was last to get it's 2nd set of leaves by about a week), it's ahead of the other 2 in terms of bud development. The runt is starting its trych development, the bushier plants have not started to form crystals yet. I would kill it, just to make room for the 2 bushes, but it looks like it will will be a good hash plant. no need to kill the little guy...it's half oz of little flowers will still bring joy.
The one WR and AK are truly huge from what I've seen. I LST'd the main stalks from each plant. They are currently about 21" above the lava rock, but all of the side branches have reached that height too...the side branches really stretched out between nodes.
But in terms of the calendar they seem to be a little behind. At the similar time with my soil grow, around day 45, the soil plants had already started to swell, growing crystals, and my notes show that I saw the first red hairs at day 48. I dont think I'm anywhere near that with these plants in hydro. So they may go longer than the typical 70-ish days for these autos. my guess is that I will need another 1-2 weeks for about 77-84 days or so.
These plants have gotten so big, i added a 150 w hps to catch the growth on the end. Thats the fixture that shows up in the photo. I started to LST early but was unprepared for the bushyness of these things. Had I known, I would have turned my table 90 degrees and got rid of the other herbs for my other garden.
I would like to know if others are having some success with autos in hydro. (I just discovered this Auto-thread and have not had time to dive in and read all 270 pages - there has to be some hydro talk in here!). I wont be the nag and ask too many questions before i dig in and do my reading!! (no body in this forum does that!)
This could become a disappointing grow if these plants rush themselves to maturity of the buds, leading to fluffy stuff....i.e. the plant is trying to hurry up and die at day 70. If they do that, I wont get much, and quality will be suspect.
But if they can keep going and run their natural life cycle and I get similar buds to what was grown in soil, then this is going to be a monster auto harvest. Any ideas about this?
anyone else do a similar experiment with same strains - soil vs hydro? i'd be interested in hearing about that.
Thanks for reading and for your comments. I'll try to answer questions if I can. I still consider myself a total rookie. I may post some future pics if anyone is interested, but I wont do a journal for this one. If it is a successful grow (quantity plus quality), then I will do another grow starting in september and document that all the way through with some new fem beans.
The images are as follows:
1: soil-garden - day 65
2: soil-bud - day 65
3: Hydro-garden - day 45
4: Hydro-Bud (main cola AK) - day 45
5: Hydro-Runt - day 45
6: Hydro-Runt Bud - day 45
