1st Auto Grow journal.

Hey RIU, just looking for some feedback and constructive criticism, feel free to comment. This is just my 3rd grow ever, 1st serious attempt. just a diy grow room in my basement with limited funds. so nothing too fancy here. I'm picking it up a couple of weeks into flower. Let me know how you think I've managed so far! Notice anything that I can try to fix or adjust to get my best results down the home stretch?

Strains: Barney's Pineapple Express Auto, 2x Canuk Seeds Quarter Pounder Auto's, Canuk Seeds Magnum Auto. (All Feminized/female comfirmed)

Grow Space: Unsealed 'tent' made of black/white plastic. No real exhaust / filter system, just four fans positioned to circulate and draw air in and out. Needed humidifier earlier on in Veg (RH 50-70%) and a space heater to the keep temps up(18-20C) but have things stabilized now at RH 48-52% and 20-24C. Would like to get the temperature up a bit more but its a cool basement I'm trying to heat.

Lights: 2x 200W LED (I'll look up the specs later, but they're low-mid quality) (one each focused over a pair of plants respectively) + a 200W CFL 5600k

Feeding Drain to Waste.
Grow medium: approx 60% coco coir / 30%perlite / 10%SeaSoil+worm casting compost.
5 Gal pails for pots with lots of drainage added.

Nutrients: GH flora trio, CalMag, Nectar and KoolBloom, Epsom salts.

Started by following the 'Cocoforcannabis' nutrient schedule, but ended altering to suit the autos lighter EC needs. Ended up something like the Lucas formula I suppose in that I've cut out the 'Grow' entirely after a while. Feeding around 1-1.2EC during Veg, now up to around 1.3EC. Aiming for pH 5.7-6.3.

I'll follow up later with some more info and pics of the various stages of the grow up to now. This is currently 52 days since sprouting, 14-16 days into flower. Cheers


Quarter Pounder #1

Height=15"

QuarterPounder #2

Height= 16 1/4"

Pineapple Express

Height=24 1/2"

Magnum

Hieght= 27"

weeks 1&2: things started a little rough I'll admit. Beans all popped fine. Then I decided I would pop them into seedling peat containers before transplanting.

Not sure what i was thinking there. I quickly realized this was a bad idea and within a couple of days I transplanted into final pots.


Began feeding flora trio at 0.6EC
Also struggled with temps in my basement. Got a cold snap and temps dropped to around 13-14C a couple nights. Also struggled with a hot medium, runoff EC too high and pH was up above 7. So growth for the first couple of weeks was perhaps slowed because of these issues.

Weeks 3&4: finally got things under control and on track at this point. Got temps stabilized better between 18-22C. RH swinging between 40-70%. Increased fert to 1-1.2EC. Plants still growing slowly but looking healthier and filling out now.


Still only 2.5-3" tall at 3 weeks.

End of week 4 we did some LST.

Week 5:
The past couple of weeks were a little iffy at times but we've now gotten the grow room conditions stabilized nicely and nutrient schedule more or less worked out. The Pineapple Express (PE) and Quarter Pounder's (QP's) are looking better but the Magnum isn't looking so good to start week 5. I decided after just a day and a half after trying to LST it to stop and just let it grow naturally. By day 29 we are in transition as all plants are showing signs of preflower and are confirmed to be females. Continued to LST the QP's and PE as they grew.

Issues: got fungus gnats mid week 5. Didn't really have a IPM system going so...started to spray with insecticidal soap and neem oil. Got yellow sticky cards and more recently applied predatory mites/nematodes. Still got gone entirely to date but it's mostly controlled.

Nutes: Late Veg/Transition 0.8-1EC

Early Week 5: Height's = 6-7.75"


Late week 5: Heights =9-10.5"

Week 7&8:
How much change does a couple of weeks make! Plants are coming along nicely and all are starting to pack on the buds. Some minor issues some gnats and a touch of nute burn that popped up a week ago. Struggling with a cheap pH pen which is making me suspect I'm causing a slight pH swing now and then. First thing when I get rehired and back to work is buy a better pen/soil probe!

End of Week 4 of Flower:
The Quarter Pounders have stayed shorter than I was expecting, a little disappointing but they are packing on very sticky buds quickly so should still get a good harvest from them. The Pineapple Express is the star of the show, a little stretchy I guess but the buds are looking and smelling just beautiful. Not going to be super big buds I think but this will be the nicest quality of the bunch. Not sure what to think of the Magnum still. It's never seemed 100% happy it's whole life, just not sure what conditions or fert it wants exactly, but it's still grown bigger than I was expecting and has been throwing out a ton of long straight hairs for the past few weeks and started bulking up a little recently, but the trichomes are tiny, like just little buds or bubbles on the surface of the plant, hardly any stem to them at all so far. Not sure if genetics or just an unhappy plant in general. Hoping to get a better scope soon so I'll upload pics when I can to get some feedback.

Any feedback is welcome. cheers

Quarter Pounders #1&2

Pineapple Express

Magnum

Been a couple of weeks since the last update. Jumping to WEEK 11 since sprouting, Mid-WEEK 6 of FLOWER:
Basically all stretch had stopped weeks ago and the plants have just been developing buds since and are coming along nicely. Been giving a late bloom fert mix, they seem sensitive to high PPMs and pH so I've kept it low between 0.7-1EC and 5.5-6.0 pH. Encountered some light stress a few days ago on the Quarter Pounders. Raised LED's a few inches out of caution. Basically just watching them put on weight at this point and thinking when I'm going to harvest these.

QP#1 took the light stress the worst and I'm worried it's starting to foxtail and produce fluffy buds. Showing some browning on top leaves & buds.

QP#2 didn't seem badly affected by the light stress and it's budding is still nice and compact. Only a touch of burn/browning anywhere.

The Pineapple Express is looking and smelling just great and I'm having to keep telling myself to wait. I think its almost in the harvest window. Most pistols are turning a nice red/brown and pulling into the buds and seeing the start of some amber in the trichomes. But the buds are still packing on weight and putting off a few new pistols so I'm going to wait another week before I flush I think.

And the Magnum, which I was worrying throughout the grow has started to pack on trichomes and weight now, the buds are filling out very nicely after all. Guess it was just a slow starter but the buds have quickly outgrown the QP's and the PE for sheer size, great bud definition, I'm really surprised how nice it looks now.

Ive been horrible at updating this so figured i should at post some pictures of the final(almost) results.

Harvested the Pineapple Express about a month ago. 2.5oz dry. Pretty happy with the results, tasty smoke and a nice energetic high.

Harvested two Quarter Pounder two weeks ago. Not the best results here. One plant got stressed pretty bad in flower and went all foxtails. Both had a bit of nute burn, was pushing too much nutes during flower i think. Lessons learned.
Had it hanging for a week and been in paper bags for a week. About to do the final trim and wieght tonight/tomorrow.

And finally my last indoor auto of this grow is just days away. Magnum auto by Canuk. This one has been going forever it feels like and is still throwing some pistols but its its mostly foxtails now and the overall plant looks very much done. Nice bud structure and feels dense. Was worried about it early on but this might be the best result of this grow. Will update with final dry weight and bud shots in a couple weeks.

Final dry harvest of the Magnum was a little over 6oz.

I have 2 magnum autoflowers in 4" rockwool cubes that are 10 days old. I believe they are Buddha seeds as they were freebies from Seedsman.
They look good so far. I would be happy with half of that production shown by WintersBones... maybe 75 grams.

SuburbanHero7 said:

I have 2 magnum autoflowers in 4" rockwool cubes that are 10 days old. I believe they are Buddha seeds as they were freebies from Seedsman.
They look good so far. I would be happy with half of that production shown by WintersBones... maybe 75 grams.

Click to expand...

Hey, cool I'd be interested to see how yours turn out. I got a decent harvest from mine but honestly the quality of the bud wasn't that great. Possibly partly my fault but might have just been a lower potency pheno from Canuk Seeds. Ive been disappointed with their autos tbh. But I hear good things about Buddha though, good luck!

They seem to be doing fine...
Here they both are at day 9 and 7 respectively... Images are from 5 days ago...

Hello again... My Magnum autoflowers are now around 30 days. Also, I have added two more seeds to my dwc buckets. These are both Original Glue autoflowers by Nirvana... They are around 18 days old... I needed to defoliate on all of these as some of my fan leaves were yellowing.