1st time Autopot run

[Nate]

Currently I am starting my 1st run with an Autopot system with coco coir and perlite. My seedlings are on day 15 in their first pots, waiting to get big enough to go into the 15 L pots. I had a bit of a setback when hurricane Fiona knocked the power out for 2 days, and all they got was cloudy window light, and like 15-18 C for temps.

Iv’e had a bit of yellowing since transplanting them into their current pots (post outage). Initially I thought it was a calmag deficiency, so I did a foliar spray twice daily, for the last few days. I also tested the runoff EC yesterday, and it was a bit high (~1100 µS), so I dropped the nutrient solution down to ~550 µS and have been watering with that twice daily since then.

[Nate]

[Nate]

[Nate]

[Nate]

[Nate]

[asa.eco]

If u could post pics of the leaf yellowing and tell us what u have been feeding, maybe we could figure out what type of deficiacy it is. But more importantly; what genetics are u running?

[Nate]

Also, I’m using Medi One by green planet, combined with magnifical by Remo nutrients. First few days of feed after transplant was 598 µS, 3 days later I upped the EC of the nutrient solution to 953 µS. Yesterday was when I checked the runoff EC, and lowered the EC of the Nutrient solution.

[Nate]

The yellowing is in the last two photos. It’s a bit hard to see on the pictures though. The yellowing is on the new growth, and the cotyledons are still greener than the new growth coming in.

Genetics are a bit of an unknown. It’s bagseed from a friend who said it was Gelato, but I can’t remember if it was a self pollenated hermie, or if it was pollenated by another plant that had hermied.

[asa.eco]

Like someone said in the other forum – with yellowing, always suspect N deficiancy, although i wouldnt do anything about it yet since what youre feeding should be enough nutrients for seedlings. Maybe it really was a bioavailability of N problem, because of insufficiant watering, but it could also be the lack of light due to the power shortage. Either way, id wait a couple days/a week, to see if the problem goes away on its own, since it doesnt seem to be a huge problem/ a lot of yellowing and than change what you are feeding if the new leaves are still yellowing.

 

[Nate]

Yeah, they seem to be perking up since I lowered the input EC back down, so I’ll just keep things steady and see how they progress.

[Somatek]

I don’t know if that’s a good assumption to assume yellowing is related N deficiency when it could be a number of other issues, especially on a plant this small where you can’t tell if the issue is a mobile or immobile nutrient as there is no upper, mid, lower leaves on a seedling with only a set or two in total.

[Nate]

The seedlings seem to be bouncing back, definitely getting more vigorous growth, and darkening of the leaves. Could’ve been a number of different things causing the yellowing/slow growth, but it may have been as simple as just a delayed response to the power outage the week prior. Either way, I’m going to keep going with the same inputs/environment (~500 μS EC for the nutrient solution, a foliar calmag spray, and around 24 °C with 60-70% RH with the lights on, and around 20°C with the lights off). Once they have a couple more nodes, I’m probably going to add in a silica suppliment as well. I just didn’t want to complicate things too much as they were showing signs of stress already.

 

[Nate]

[Brad104]

Them auto pots are slick for sure.I like the fact that you can get away without worrying about your crop,that’s fantastic!

[Nate]

Yeah for sure, just gotta get to the point that I can transplant into the 15 L pots and turn them on. Definitely looking forward to seeing how they work.

[Brad104]

I wish you the best of luck with monstrous yield and the weed exceptional bro!

[Nate]

Thanks man, it feels like the seedlings stage is taking forever lol.

[Somatek]

I’ll be looking forward to reading your opinion about the autopots after the grows done.  What other systems have you tried before?

[Nate]

This is the first watering system I’ve tried. It seemed like the simplest to set up, because any other watering systems would still require me to remove and dispose of runoff. I’ve just been hand feeding into fabric pots, and then letting them run off into self draining saucers, and then testing EC, and removing the runoff containers. Pretty much I wanted something that I could set up and not have to fiddle with too much. I’ve never set up a reservoir this big and left it to sit before though, so I’m hoping the pH doesn’t drift too much on me. It would kind of defeat the purpose for me if I had to adjust the pH multiple times a day, but we’ll see I guess.

[Nate]

[Nate]

My seedlings are coming along, although there seems to be two of them that are still stunted, which is fine because I only have 4 pots to plant in anyways. I’ll likely just transplant the smaller two into a slightly bigger pot, and put them off to the side until the canopy is too packed and then remove them from the tent. The two seedlings on the right that aren’t stunted have a slight wrinkling on their leaves, which I was thinking may be related to the fact that they were next to the humidifier, and the exhaust fan was drawing it across them, so possibly the VPD was higher than my thermometer/hygrometer was reading for the rest of the tent. I have since moved the humidifier further off to the side, so we’ll see if that makes any difference.

[Unholyfire]

Off to a good start.

[Nate]

Four of the six are doing just great, I’m thinking I might transplant them into their final pots within the next week. Two of them are really struggling, one of them has some pretty severe tacoing on the leaves, and hasn’t grown in days, and the other has grown a little bit but it’s very slow, and has some green algae growing on the coco/jiffy puck. I gave them a hydrogen peroxide solution today to try to aerate their roots a bit. I’ve been feeding them the same nutrient solution at the same pH as the others (5.7-6.4), but they never really bounced back after the power outage. They’ve been fed nutrients with an EC of roughly 500µS except for one batch that was closer to 1000 µS. I could probably figure out what’s wrong with them and nurse them back to health, but for now it isn’t really worth it as I can only keep 4 of them at the end of the day anyway.

[Nate]

So I decided to just go ahead and transplant the 4 best plants into the final pots because I had time this weekend. Last night I buffered the coco coir with a 150% strength calmag solution for about 8 hours as per this guide on coco for cannabis.

 

[Nate]

[Nate]

Then this afternoon, I flushed the coco with a nutrient solution with an EC of 675. I also switched the nutrients to the dual fuel line from the medi one from green planet. I had been using medi one as I had some left over from the last run. From here on out I will be following the dual fuel feed chart from green planet.

[Nate]

After that I transplanted the four best looking plants into their final containers. 

[Nate]

I then realized when I set them up that I wouldn’t have any more space in the tent to keep the stragglers, so I decided to break out the space bucket that I had built when I first started growing. I took the better looking of the two stunted ones and transplanted it into a larger pot with some promix I had laying around. I’m hoping this allows me to water less frequently.

[Unholyfire]

Space Bucket, nice. I’ve done a few of them myself. Looking great .

[Nate]

Right on. I built it when I first started growing, but I was given a tent setup before I went into flower so I never ended up finishing in it. I honestly kind of struggled with it, but I think I bit off a little bit more than I could handle trying to learn to grow at the same time as trying to dial in my space bucket. Hopefully this time around it’ll be a bit better lol.

[Nate]

A couple of individual update shots:

[Somatek]

Looks like the leaf issue sorted itself out nicely.  Are you still feeding them at 675PPM?

[Nate]

The reservoir I mixed yesterday came in at 668 μS and my runoff was between 750 μS and 765 μS.

Lights on temp is around 22 °C the last couple of days, and lights off is around 19°C.

RH% is between 53% and 61% with and average of 57%.

VPD is between 0.9 kPa and 1.33 kPa

[Nate]

Just a little update with some new pictures of the girls (hopefully lol).They seem to be liking the new pots and nutrients, and are starting to grow quicker. As a side note, I noticed the runoff EC drop off below the input level in all 4 pots, so I upped the nutrient ratio to the second week of the feeding schedule, as well as adding silica into the reservoir. I did it by following the instructions in this video. As a summary, I measured out my dechlorinated water, and pH’d it to 6.8 so that the silica didn’t precipitate out of the solution, and then added the silica (cyco brand silica). This brought the pH back up to about 7.8, so I pH’d back down to 6.9. I then added my calmag (remo nutrients), and checked the ph again to make sure it didn’t jump up again. After that I added my base nutrients, and pH’d back down to 6.1 for feeding. This method worked well, as I had no clouding of the nutrient solution. Having switched nutrient lines, it’s nice to see that it’s playing well with the silica and calmag I already had on hand. Also, it seems that the pH is much more stable than Green Planet’s medi one line, as I would have pH swings sometimes as big as a full point (1.0) overnight, and the dual fuel line seems to be staying within a couple tenths of a point (0.1) from where it was set the night before.

[Nate]

Also, here’s an update pic of the spacebucket plant.

[Brad104]

Those ladies are showing out my dude,hell of a great start, you’re off and running great job @nate keep it up bro!

[Nate]

This is the 9th day since I transplanted into the Autopots.

They recommend 10-14 days hand watering before turning on the feed system. From what I’ve read online about it, generally people say to wait until the leaves reach the edges of the pots. I will likely turn it on this weekend. I’m very tempted to turn them on tonight, but I think I’ll give it a couple of days and wait until I can be home for the first couple days just in case there’s any hiccups with it.

I’m also considering topping fairly soon. I think the smallest one is just starting on its 5th node.

[Nate]

Also, the spacebucket plant is doing fine, not as vigorous growth, but I didn’t expect it to grow as fast under a CFL. I’m planning on not doing any of the usual training, as I want it to be tall and skinny due to the shape of my bucket build (I have lots of spacers to extend the height, and led strip lights to provide side lighting).

[Nate]

I got impatient waiting for the weekend, so I went ahead and turned the pots on on the 19th lol.

Here’s they are after one full day with the pots on.

[Nate]

One thing I’m going to have to keep an eye on, is I noticed my reservoir pH drifted from 6.2 to 6.8 after one day, and the pH in the bases of the pots was as high as 7.0, so it’s pretty high. I pH’d back down to 5.6 in the res, but it hadn’t affected the pH of the bases before I went to bed last night because they need to drink up what’s in the bases before they’ll refill. I’ll check again once I get home from work, and hopefully it’ll have dropped into a better range.

[Somatek]

Welcome to the joys of hydroponics and figuring out how to keep the res pH stable!

Couple notes that might help: chlorine evaporating off will change things so making sure the water is dechlorinated will help.  The other common issue is not properly mixing the res as nutrients are added, I use to leave the pump running in the res (disconnected from feed lines) to make sure the water was properly mixed so it was more stable.  Figuring out how much ph up/down you need and adding it first seems to help as well.  Last thing that comes to mind is minimizing evaporation as that’ll also help, although that’s probably not a big deal with autopots as they just feed the trays and  let the water soak up from there, so it’s not like the water is recirculating which is when evaporation has more of an effect.  Although my buddy found it improved things in his water farm when minimizing evaporation, which is a similar system to autopots except using DWC instead of coco/soilless medium.  Good luck figuring it out

[Nate]

The water I used had been open to the air for 2 days at least before I mixed this reservoir. I have been hand stirring, but I may end up getting a small submersible pump for the res if it seems like things aren’t stabilizing. I was asking about one at the hydro store, and they convinced me to get an airstone/pump, but after testing it out in a res before I had the pots turned on, I found it made my pH skyrocket, so I haven’t been using it. I don’t think evaporation is a major factor, since the res in covered except for a small air hole at the top of the res (maybe an inch across), the bases of the pots also have covers, and the res/base water temp has stayed steady around 20°C-22°C.

I checked when I got home today, and the res had climbed back to a pH of 6.1, and the bases were still around 6.9-7.0. So I turned off the feed line to the pots, and sucked the nutes out of the bases with a turkey baster, and then pH’d the res back to 5.5. After I turned the feed line back on I checked the bases, and they all were at 5.8. I’ll check again before bed and see if there had been more drift.

Do you think getting a submersible pump would work to keep the Ph more stable?

Also, do you think having a bigger res would help mitigate the drift? I only mixed 20 L of nutes, and the res has a 47 L capacity.

Also, you mentioned adding your pH down first, I have been pH’ing to around 7, adding silica, pH’ing again, adding calmag, checking pH (usually it doesn’t change that much after the calmag though, and then adding nutes, and then pH down again to where exactly I want it. Should I pH down to 5.8 or so instead?

Lastly, how do you figure out how much pH down is needed ahead of time? I know that you can calculate the shift of the pH of a solution when combining two solutions with different pH, but how do I find out the pH of the pH down I’m using (GH pH Down). All I could find online was the SDS and the actual pH isn’t listed.

[Somatek]

What I was taught, which may not be the best way but has worked for me, is to mix up say 5-10gal with all your nutes/additives, see where the pH is coming in and then figure out how much pH up/down you need to add, make notes and then use that as a base to mix your res.  So if you need 10mL of pH down to get the nutes right in 5 gal and you’re making a 20 gal res; you’d start by adding 40mL of pH down, then potassium silicate, then your nutes (if it has one, a lot of 2 parts don’t) in the proper order and any other amendments. You may have to adjust a bit but with taking notes you’ll get the right amount quickly.  The key is making sure it’s all properly mixed/diluted before adding the next thing.  A lot of people stir and create a vortex assuming that works but it’s not even, if I’m hand mixing I’ll stir back and forth making a vortext, reversing direction and repeating at least 2-3 times.  Some elements are reactive and want to bond to each other if they aren’t diluted enough before being combined.

Pumping air into water causes CO2 to off gas which increases the pH.  Which is also one of the threats to the oceans as the CO2 level increases it’s acidifying the oceans as they absorb more CO2.  So, if you’re having a problem with pH drifting down then an air pump is great.  In your case it’s a problem lol, smart move taking it out.

Mixing more nutes will help stabalize the pH, assuming their properly mixed which is where a submersible pump is handy as even a small one in your res left running while you mix nutes will make sure they are properly mixed (air stones really don’t mix the water much).  You don’t want to leave it running as then it’ll increase the off gassing of CO2 like the air pump.

Hope that all makes sense but let me know if I can clarify anything.

[Nate]

Yeah that all makes sense. I’ll have to start taking notes about how much pH down I’m adding. I had been adding less than 1ml at a time previously, so I hadn’t kept track of it.

Should I be mixing my nutes directly in the res? What I had been doing was mixing two 10 L buckets of nutes to identical measurements, and then pouring into the res, and then measuring pH and EC again.

[Somatek]

Diluting the different parts in equal volumes of water and mixing together in the end is perfectly good way to minimize the chance they aren’t mixed properly.  You don’t need a pump to be clear, mixing up 5 gal buckets with a good lid that you can invert a couple times will mix things up perfectly well.  Assuming you’re up for that of course, the thought is enough to make my back angry at me though so I naturally think of the lazy way first lol.

[Nate]

I would be more than willing to get a pump to save my back haha. Also I wouldn’t trust the lids enough to risk my basement being flooded.

I just rechecked the pH of everything (5 hours later), and the res has only risen by 0.1, and the pH of the pot bases are between 6.1 and 6.3 now. I’m assuming if I can manage to keep my res ph in range, the pH of the pots will slowly come back down since it’s probably just the left over nutrient solution in the coco mixing with the new stuff from the res.

What I was more concerned about regarding the pump was do I need to keep one in the res and turn it on periodically to keep the nutrients mixed? Or if it’s mixed thoroughly, will it stay in solution without agitation once mixed?

[Somatek]

My friend didn’t have any issues with his green planet nutes in the waterfarm res, you should be fine as they seem like a stable fertilizer once mixed but I haven’t used them myself so that’s second hand from a friend.  I’ve suggested he join the forum as his rosin/bubble hash is better then mine but have yet to convince him…

[Nate]

Okay sweet. That’s good to know. I’ll keep testing and hopefully I can get it to settle into a more stable pH range.

[Brad104]

If you were to make a 12 gallon DWC resivior with 4 plants total, how would I be able to find out what size air pump I’d need for the plants and what size air stones would I buy

Thanks in advance

[Nate]

I’ve never done a DWC, but I found this article that says “as a rule of thumb the air pump needs to supply: 1 litre of air per minute for every 4 litres of nutrient solution”.

[Brad104]

As always @somatek spreading the good word great explanation

[Brad104]

I appreciate your response @nate that surely answers my question ❓

Thanks again

[Nate]

No problem dude.

[Brad104]

I appreciate your help on the subject @nate Keep on doing your thing with the autopots and soon you will be enjoying the fruit of your grow as we all love right my friend.

[Nate]

I figured I’d just keep a log of my measurements here, just so anyone interested can follow along as well.

Last night I mixed 30L of nutrient solution.

pH was at 5.6

EC was at 1353 µS

 

Reservoir readings:

pH was at 5.8 when I checked it this afternoon. I gave 1 ml of pH down to bring the pH to 5.5

EC is at 1355 µS

 

Base Readings:

Gelato #1:

• pH is 6.4
• EC is 1350 µS
• water temp is 21.3°C

Gelato #2:

• pH is 6.5
• EC is 1360 µS
• water temp is 22°C

Gelato #3:

• pH is 6.5
• EC is 1360 µS
• water temp is 21.9°C

Gelato #4:

• pH is 6.6
• EC is 1350 µS
• water temp is 21.8°C

Environment:

• 23.5°C
• 65% RH
• 18 inches for light distance

[Somatek]

It’s unusual seeing the pH drift up some much unless the coco you’re using is buffered for a higher pH.  Unless the pH you were watering with was on the higher end and it’s taking a while to lower.  Any idea how much water they’re sucking up? I’d assume it’s on the lower end at this point if the roots are still filling out the autopots

[Nate]

Yeah I think it was pretty high from when I first set it up. The day after initially setting up my res, the res was at 6.8, and my bases were at 7.0. So yeah, I think that it’s just still mixing with what was in the pots. If it doesn’t drop down over the next couple days, I might turn off the feed line for a day or so to let the plants drink up whats in the bases. I’m guessing that since there’s no runoff, it’ll take a while to replace the higher pH’d water in the pots.

Also, yeah I don’t think that they’re drinking a crazy amount yet. I’ve only seen a couple of them with a lower amount of water in the base, so they don’t seem to be going through it too quickly.

[Nate]

I also did some training with them, but I did it in a bit of a backwards order. First I topped them:

I then set up my first trellis for a scrog. After doing some thinking about it, I decided that I wanted to do some LST before they grew into the screen, but I didn’t want to pull down my trellis, so I just did it under the screen.

[Brad104]

I just started Lst on my gals I just ordered my trellis’s and I am curious to see how I get it set up with my plants, for I’ve never placed a net before so I guess we’ll see tomorrow is when my Amazon prime shipment will arrive yay for me

[Nate]

The one I have is just a cheap plastic netting from the hardware store I bought last year. I just finished the pack with this one, so I’ll probably get a new one for the next run. I probably should’ve waited to put mine up, because doing lst under one is a pain in the ass. I originally was going to say fuck it and not train at all, but then changed my mind.

[Somatek]

Are you thinking of where you’re going to train the branches on the screen as they grow already or will you make it up as you go along?

[Nate]

I’m just gonna make it up as I go along. I’m not good at planning and following through lol. I’m also not sure how fast they will grow since people have been saying they blow up in the Autopots. I mainly just wanted the lowers to catch up a bit so I can have more than the two leading tips.

[Somatek]

Seems like the perfect time to super crop, looking forward to seeing how it fills out

[Nate]

Yeah I might give that a shot. I did a small amount of it last run, but I didn’t want to go too hard on it.

[Somatek]

It’s really not much different the LST, I find a lot of things in pot are exaggerated when the reality is the differences are usually minor.

[Area 415]

Those girls look lovely, glad to see the setup is treating you  nicely. I believe super cropping the branches to lay along the top of the trellis would get you enough tops to fill your spot.

 

 

food for thought

[Nate]

Yeah, I’ll definitely keep it in mind. I’ll just have to see how they progress and see if it needs it/if I have room to fill. I usually do a second trellis above the first one to spread things out even more/support the buds.

[Nate]

Here’s an update pic of them after training them one way for two days, and then the other way for two days. I probably could’ve let them go for a bit longer, but their stems are getting pretty thick, and I didn’t want to have to bend the shit out of them to get them back upright. Now that they’re standing back up, they’re pretty much right at the netting, and have filled out a bit.

 

[Nate]

The spacebucket plant is getting to be a decent size, I might just flip it to flower soon for the hell of it. I added some LED strip lighting to the sides as a bit of supplemental lighting, although I don’t know if it’s really adding all that much (I had it from when I originally set up the spacebucket, so no big deal if it isn’t doing much).

[Nate]

As far as the reservoir, it seems to have settled a bit in the past few days, possibly because the plants have been drinking a bit more. It was unseasonably warm here the past few days, and I also had to turn on the dehumidifier again, so I had temps in the mid to high 20’s, with it topping out at 28°C one day.

As far as the measurements:

 

• This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by Nate. Reason: The table formatting didn't work, so I had to make a spreadsheet lol

[Nate]

Also, I turned off the feed valve after taking the readings on the first day (Monday) and then turned it back on after taking the res readings/adjusting pH. It ended up leaving some slat deposits on the top of the coco, so I don’t think I’ll do that again. My reasoning was that I could possibly get them to drink up the nute solution in the bases, hoping that would even out my pH drift a bit.

[Somatek]

Those pH numbers are looking pretty stable, glad you figured that out easily which also suggests that as long as the nutes are properly mixed and there’s no air being pumped in you’ll be good.

I wouldn’t worry to much about the salt deposits that showed up as the soil dried, that’s fairly normal and doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve been over fertilized, although they wouldn’t be available for the plant to use with no hydration.  It was a logical thought to try but as you learned it’s best to let the autopots do their thing as the pH has stabalized.

[Brad104]

Dude, this journal is off the charts! I enjoy all the details you are placing in it for us all., and as I’ve told you in the past the auto pots are slick.I am glad you are showing all your EC and pH info and etc cause I plan on putting together a dwc container I’m going to try one if it don’t make it oh well at least I will know what not to do next time and I will not be out of any medicine but I have been wanting to try one out for the last year pretty bad I am just getting tired of the soil I miss the fuzz that they sold for years and now they no longer sell bails they want to charge you a fortune to buy it in cubes so that is why I’m doing soil and I’m so wanting out of it my friend,but sorry I’ve rambled your grow is taking a nice shape, best of luck till the end my friend

[Nate]

Thanks man. My main motivation for doing it so detailed is I was having a hard time finding any information on how I should be maintaining my reservoir pH, and what the relationship between what is read at the res, and what is read at the pot. I had read one user on Reddit posting a few times about how you have to keep the res pH a little lower than usual, as you have a rise in pH after the nutes reach the pots, but I didn’t see it anywhere else so I wanted to keep a log of it here.

I’ve also wanted to do a DWC grow, but I went for the autopots instead. I’m not sure how much the data would translate to a DWC, since my plants aren’t sitting directly in the res. But at least you can see the struggles I encounter in trying to maintain a stable pH (and maybe get some good advice from @somatek ).

[Somatek]

You can measure the pH of soil directly with either a soil pH meter (expensive for the quality ones that’ll give accurate readings) or by diluting a soil sample in distilled water with a pH of 7, letting it soak for awhile then filtering the soil out of the water (pouring it through a coffee filter is easiest/most accessible) and measuring the pH of the water.  I think it’s 100g of soil in 150ml of water but those might be reversed, double check if going that root.

Obviously this isn’t a good plant for growing plants as you don’t want to have to disturb/damage the roots in order to check the pH, although I have done it before when transplanting sick plants if I’m worried the pH may be the issue.  If you gently roll the root ball in your hands you can usually dislodge enough soil to collect a usable sample without setting the plants growth back too much.

[Nate]

I’ll likely avoid having to do a soil pH test at all costs lol. Good info to have for the future, but these guys aren’t showing any signs of deficiency, so I’m just going to keep going with keeping the res on the lower side, and see if it keeps coming down.

[Somatek]

It’s a good idea to check after you harvest when it won’t affect the plants.  Simply way to see if there’s anything to adjust on the next run but it doesn’t make sense to do them while growing unless you have serious issues….

[Nate]

Yeah I’ll try to remember to check it when I harvest then. Do you think it’d be a good idea to test the coco for pH? I have a bunch of it left over after potting up. I’m also wondering if maybe my issue stems from when I buffered with calmag. I believe I was following the guide by coco for cannabis, and I don’t think I checked the pH of the solution before buffering.

[Brad104]

I know that is right @nate thank you for your response and as stated that is cool for you and every other person that needs a good reference point,I’ve learned so much on here this month I honestly have and I think that you are doing well as your girls are doing the talking for you, thanks again @nate and I wish you the best with your grow and a huge yield to you as well!

[Brad104]

I promise you @nate if you get you a good compost tea like (recharge) I swear it will straighten out any of the lockout issues and such.Im on the 8th day from my first use and they are all looking incredible now

[Nate]

I’ll keep it in mind if I do end up with any lockout deficiencies, but so far the pH hasn’t really given me any major issues, it’s just a little higher than I’d like it to be. Also, as far as using a compost tea, I’m not sure how I’d feed it, since you’re not supposed to top water when bottom feeding, and I wouldn’t want to put any organics in my reservoir for fear of bacterial build up in the res/lines.

[Brad104]

Oh I see I’m sorry about that, I have never ran any hydro ponic before so I’m not up to par on what needs to be done for that,I do apologize @nate Thank you for the information.

[Nate]

No worries man. I just figured I’d point out the fact that I’ve been told you shouldn’t top water when bottom feeding. You might be able to add recharge to a DWC setup though, I’m not sure since I’ve never done one.

[Nate]

These girls are blowing up pretty quickly, so I decided to flip to flower yesterday. I’m at the point that if they double during the stretch, I’ll have just enough clearance to raise my lights all the way up.

Here’s the tent before the flip:

First day with the HPS bulbs in:

And I also added a second layer of trellis netting.

And of course there’s the spacebucket plant as well:

[Nate]

As far as the reservoir is concerned, it has pretty much completely settled, with little to no drift in the res itself. The readings at the bases are sitting pretty steady around 5.8 to 6. I’ll update that spreadsheet this weekend and post that later on.

As far as my thoughts on the Autopots so far, I’m really loving not having to water multiple times a day, and not having to mix nutrients every single day. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the plants are able to take a fairly high EC since they aren’t drying out at all. I’ve been pushing the EC at about 2000 μS now, with no signs of nute burn so far.

[Brad104]

Great information in this post @Nate I especially like where you are giving them a higher EC in the auto pots.Just a great journal bro, thanks for sharing it with us all.

[Nate]

The higher EC wasn’t exactly a plan from the beginning, it just happened to work out that way. I’m following the feed chart for the dual fuel line for the Autopots, but I’ve also added calmag and silica, so that’s where the higher EC comes from. If you go by the feed chart alone, I should be somewhere around 1.6 mS (1600 μS) right now, but I’m actually closer to 2.1 mS (2100 μS). I was just noticing that they weren’t suffering any nute burn, and that maybe it was because there’s less opportunity for the EC to raise in the pots between fertigations (watering with nutrients).

[Nate]

After talking to my buddy that I got the bud from that had the seeds in it, we think we’re pretty sure it was actually a gelato x Granddaddy Purple cross that the seeds came from, so I will be referencing them as G x GDP fro here on out.

These girls have stretched quite a bit after flipping to flower. So much that I actually had to remove my light hangers and my light is zip tied to the bar at the top of my tent lol. With my light all the way up, I have about 14″ to my highest tops.

G x GDP #1 & #2 have been throwing out full pollen sacs, and today I found a couple of raw nanners on G x GDP #2. I had cut off any branches with even a single pollen sac earlier in the week on both plants, and have been checking all the nodes on all plants daily since. I have not found any pollen sacs on G x GDP #3 or #4 so far, and none on #1 since removing the ones earlier this week.

G x GDP #2 also had been about 8″ shorter than all the other plants, and had not been progressing as quickly into flower. So I made the call to cut my losses on it, and cut it down. I used the empty space to spread out G x GDP #3 as it was the most crowded.

So I’m down a plant, but I’m hoping this will save me some heartache later on with getting only seeded bud. I think I managed to catch it before any of the male flowers put out any pollen. I guess this is what I get for running Hermie genetics again lol.

Here’s the remaining 3 plants in the 3×3:

A closeup of one of the tops on G x GDP #4:

A closeup of one of the tops on G x GDP #3:

[Nate]

Forgot to mention that it’s day 25 of flower today, and it’s too late to edit the post.

[Nate]

I kind of dropped the ball on this grow journal, but I figured I should finish it off now.

I ended up taking them all the way to somewhere around day 74 of flower, and one of the plants honestly could’ve gone another week or two judging by the quality of the smoke. All told I ended up with 263 g of dried bud, so a little over 9.25 ounces. Pretty good haul for 3 plants in a 3×3 if you ask me.

 

 

[Nate]

Post harvest:

 

 

 

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