Subbed.
Edit: I have only tried my old school hempy bucket generic method the way I learned it which I believe is the most common way(prob not best, but conservative) way of doing it. I have only used a standard 5 gallon bucket with 5/16 to 3/8" hole drilled 2 inches from the bottom and 80/20 perlite/vermiculite mix. I have used this same bucket and the medium at least 5 times I think. And the material looks like it just came out of the bag. I am using MG medium. The first time I washed out the medium in the bucket to get some of that added fert out of it and have had no problems. In a perfect world, I would probably try and buy larger perlite. The MG has tiny perlite but it will work fine.
I have also only grown autos in it and I love autos because they are hardy and carefree, especially in hempy. I think the 5 gallon bucket is overkill because although I get a good root mass, they do not come anywhere near filling up that bucket. The autos are usually ready to pull 8 to 10 weeks and just do their thing really. I have used a lot of Dinafem(Road Runner and Critical Jack-love it- World of Seeds Afghan Kush Ryder-Awesome and Sweet Seeds Speed Devil-kinda generic but decent product and fast as always hardy and carefree. I have had 100% success with the autos mentioned above.
But, my next auto grow I am gonna size down, because the autos don't get large enough for that size of bucket and I think the pop bottles may be about the perfect size for autos. I will probably just use a 2 or 3 gallon bucket though. I only grow 1 plant and my wife and I don't drink pop.
I get my water from the super market, filling up a 5 gallon water bottle for .30 a gallon. Usually I feed water or feed water water depends on what I feel the plant needs and can take. I wait for the medium to get dry and the container to get light before the next watering. Although I may poor a small amount of PHed Water at the center of the roots just to be sure in between. I usually PH as close to 5.8 because my PH tends to creep up for whatever reason. Maybe twice later in the grow(flower) I will PH plain old tap water, my PPM is under 100, and maybe flush good with 2 gallons. Theory is I am washing out residual buildup from the nutes. Nothing crazy. Just let it drain cause don't want to drown the roots. Remember this is a 5 gallon bucket. When feeding a mix up a half gallon and poor about 1/3 at a time allowing it to wick up over a couple of hours. Theory is your not just wasting Nutes by pooring all at once and it draining out the hole.
Poppin beans. Drop em in very small amount of warm water in a Dixie cup for 24 hours. Then put them in jiffy pellet or I use Pargro quick drain cubes these days and place that in the Dixie cup. Couple of days or 3 or 4 later I have had 100% success and then I place the seedling in the window sill. In the winter I put them under a small lamp with a standard small CFL at night. Pretty much light em up 24hours. At some point I add some perlite to the cup and yes it has a hole 2 inch from the bottom. I move them to te final bucket(about 2 maybe 3 weeks old), when good roots develope and just water or feed.
I use GH Flora 3 part nutes and have some left over from Technaflora "Recipe for Success" but the latter has like 9 parts to mix. Both are great I just like the simplicity of the 3 part but will use the other at least once or twice during flowering. That's all I know about that because I have never used any other nutes. I am sure others work fine as well. I go by the instructions and mix at a percentage of 25 to 100% maybe, later in the grow. Depends.
I am really conservative. It is easy to obsess over your plants and end up over watering or burning them up with too strong nutes. After 2 weeks of straight tap water only, I begin my first feed at about 25% of what the instructions call for and go from there.
Then for autos I use 18/6 or even 12/12. I don't need a lot of smoke and am not trying to grow a pound or anything. Just enough for personal smoke in the evenings to help me relax and sleep mostly.
LED and CFL. I have 2 LED lights both are at least 3 years old the older probably 4. They are 3 and 5 watters and I know the last has like 7 diff spectrums. They are generic Chinese from ebay and yet work fine. I may also use some of those ginormous 65 actual watt CFLs from the home improvement stores. I have grown with just 4 of those(were $20 a piece) and they will wok fine. I may use 1 LED or both and even supplement with a CFL if I think it needs it. If I were a noob just starting out. I would think really hard and careful about the light that will work best for you and just buy that. Otherwise you can spend a lot of money for stuff that sits packed away in your closet. Basically you should only need 1 light for 1 plant or 3 or 4.
Remember, this post is about autos and hempy. I honestly have never grown photo. And I am conservative so I am sure there is a better way.
The thread starter in my opinion of having more experience than I and better results will hopefully give us a few tips in this thread to modify and improve our Hempy method.
Sorry OP didn't mean to hijack and as always feel free to critic my method. THX.