My First Soil Grow (May 2020)

Lean on over White Widow. Already flowering or not, I’m going to experiment with this one. First time LST for me

I’ve just started giving each plant ~16oz of water each watering. Only once so far but I have been watering roughly every 36-48 hours with about 8-10oz water each. At what point would any of you start dumping in like a litre at a time or more? Next grow I might go for smaller pots haha we’ll see

Alright, so two out of my three autos are showing white hairs. From everything I’ve searched the is a tell-tale sight of pre-flower. I had expected it from my White Widow since its actually about two weeks older than the others, but when I saw them appear on Zkittles I got concerned that these are all going to be very small, low yield plants.

So I have a few questions for the community.

1) does this seem like a normal time for pre-flower to start? The younger ones are about 3.5 weeks old

2) how much does an auto generally still grow and bush out during pre-flower and how long does pre-flower generally last?

3) are there any changes I can make now to maximize my growth and yields?

here are some pictures. It’s hard to see the white hairs but if you zoom you will see them in there. I’m more interested in finding out if I’m on track and if things look about average for the age of these autos.

How about a few pics of some early pistils!

they will explode now man, if you take a good care of them, expect to atleast double, GL

They will still get substantially larger. These two girls came out of the same pack of seeds and were grown under identical conditions right next to each other.

Autos do whatever they want which is why i stopped growing them. I need consistency. You can usually fill out a 5x5 tent with 12 of them pretty well but its still a gamble and for what it costs to run grow equipment, i really strive for 100% efficiency.


Both plants were good and the terp profile/potency very similar, but one was twice the yield.

JoeBlow5823 said:

They will still get substantially larger. These two girls came out of the same pack of seeds and were grown under identical conditions right next to each other.

Autos do whatever they want which is why i stopped growing them. I need consistency. You can usually fill out a 5x5 tent with 12 of them pretty well but its still a gamble and for what it costs to run grow equipment, i really strive for 100% efficiency.


Both plants were good and the terp profile/potency very similar, but one was twice the yield.

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Yeah I think I’m going to stay away from autos in future as well. My goal was to start three then start three more half through etc all in the same tent so the autos seemed to make the most sense for perpetual growth in a single tent. But I killed two seedlings and now I’m only doing the single grow so I’ll likely switch

BobChukowski said:

So I have a few questions for the community.

1) does this seem like a normal time for pre-flower to start? The younger ones are about 3.5 weeks old

2) how much does an auto generally still grow and bush out during pre-flower and how long does pre-flower generally last?

3) are there any changes I can make now to maximize my growth and yields?

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1) yes it seems like a normal time to start pre flowering.
2) autos continue to stretch a lot during the “stretch” phase. It’s an explosion. You come home and it’s grown an inch. Hard to say how long it lasts.
3) I would start my LST sooner next time. I start my LST when the top of the plant can reach the edge of the pot. Or when I can bend it down with some candy cane shape wire.

I think you need to saturate the entire pot so the roots have wet soil to grow into. I only do full water after day 14 or 15 on my autos. I don’t water just around the stem. Sometimes they go for 5 days with no water in the early stages. No big deal. Your plants are big enough to saturate until run off.

Wattzzup said:

1) yes it seems like a normal time to start pre flowering.
2) autos continue to stretch a lot during the “stretch” phase. It’s an explosion. You come home and it’s grown an inch. Hard to say how long it lasts.
3) I would start my LST sooner next time. I start my LST when the top of the plant can reach the edge of the pot. Or when I can bend it down with some candy cane shape wire.

I think you need to saturate the entire pot so the roots have wet soil to grow into. I only do full water after day 14 or 15 on my autos. I don’t water just around the stem. Sometimes they go for 5 days with no water in the early stages. No big deal. Your plants are big enough to saturate until run off.

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I would be waiting about a week before i saturated to runoff but i guess it depends on the medium. If the medium holds very little water, he can water to runoff now, if it holds a LOT of water, wait.

Coming along nicely. I’m surprised at how well the White Widow is doing seeing as it spent its first two weeks locked in a cheap rockwool prison looking like this
That was her at three WEEKS old! Pale yellow and about to topple over and croak at any moment.

Look at her now! She’s in the back.



Despite the two coloured spotty leaves, I’m impressed with her rebound. It seems like it’s in almost the same stage of development as Zkittles. Both showed white hairs and entered pre-flower within a day or two of one another. Critical Mass remains a bit smaller and doesn’t have any white hairs yet. It’s the exact same age as Zkittles at 4 weeks from seed.

It’s almost as if the first 3 weeks of the White Widows desperate cling to life didn’t exist at all. Maybe the clock on autos doesn’t start ticking as soon as it germinates after all? Curious...

looks good. guess it depends on the strain and the conditions about when they gonna decide to switch, mine showed hairs on day 19 or 20... seen some showing sex and buding a lot later.

Did a little more LST this morning and watered until runoff. Didn’t take much water to run out of these felt pots tho. I didn’t snap any pics but I’ll take some tomorrow probably once the LST takes and things start to point upwards again. I always find initially any LST makes the girls look really sad haha

The girls are filling in and well into their “explode” phase I think. I’m not sure how much more they will grow but I’ve been doing daily LST/tucking fan leaves to expose more Bud sites and getting the canopy more levelled off. I’m not sure how much more LST I should do since I’m sure even “low stress” training is still some stress. Anyway here they are today.

BobChukowski said:

The girls are filling in and well into their “explode” phase I think. I’m not sure how much more they will grow but I’ve been doing daily LST/tucking fan leaves to expose more Bud sites and getting the canopy more levelled off. I’m not sure how much more LST I should do since I’m sure even “low stress” training is still some stress. Anyway here they are today.
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That your toe knife on the floor?

JoeBlow5823 said:

That your toe knife on the floor?

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I used it to make holes in the rim of my felt pots to tie my limbs down. But if I botched it and cut myself I would just put some trash on it like Frank.

The girls are looking a bit sad this morning. I watered them but I think I’ll lay off the LST for a few days. Just going to let them bounce back a little bit. I flipped on my carbon filter today so my temps are down to 20C.

Day 37

I ran into some very droopy and sad leaves. There are a few reasons I can think of specific to my grow that may have been causing it.
1) Under watering. I thought maybe I was watering too much but maybe I should have been watering more. I started watering about 2L per plant and let it dry up and the plants look healthier.

2) Soil may have been too hot! I’m using a super soil pre-amended with all sorts of beneficial things like worm casting, bone meal, bat guano etc. Maybe not the best choice for autos.

3) Grow tent gets too cold. Basement grow. During lights on it stays around 20C and light off goes as low at 15C.

Anyway, here are the plants today. Still doing LST on a weekly basic and tucking fan leaves to expose bud sights to more light.

I’m not overall impressed with the way these are turning out for day 37 but that’s how we learn I guess.



Please feel free to chime in and tell me how I’m doing!
Cheers

I’m also thinking of starting 2 photos in here 18/6 light cycle in small pots and then hopefully these autos finish by the time the photos get too big. Bad idea?

Day 38

The plants are still very droopy and now I have to rule out under watering since the soil is still a bit wet even on top. I’m really starting to believe that my temps are way too low at 15C for 6 hours during lights off and only up to 20C during lights on. And it’s a slow climb to that 20C.

I don’t have a thermostat control or any way of increasing the temperature in my tent. I’m thinking about ordering a chicken coop heater. It’s a black panel that provides radiant heat with a built in thermostat. It doesn’t emit any light, is only 220 watts, and seems much safer than a space heater.

Day 43

My Critical Mass “autoflower” still only shows a few white hairs at its nodes and is way far behind the other two autos in their flowering stages. So I’m beginning to think just maybe this one is a photoperiod and I’m debating cutting the light time to 12/12 but I don’t want to sacrifice the quality and growth of the other two by depriving them of the extra light they get.
Do you guys think that at day 43, over 6 weeks, this plant should be well into flowering in a very obvious way? Or is this still normal for autos. The other two plants are obviously completely different strains so I’m just not sure. The plant in question is the one in the back.