First Grow - 5x Girl Scout Cookies Auto.

Hi all, was very cautious about posting a grow journal, however I feel it could be beneficial to me, in terms of tips and advice from others! This is my first ever grow. I would really appreciate any tips, pointers, anything you can give me to help.

Set up;
I’ll be growing 5x FastBuds Girl Scout Cookies Autoflower.

1.2 x 1.2 x 2m grow tent.

600W HPS bulb dual spectrum with reflector, ballast.

Full extraction system, carbon filter, 5inch extractor fan, ducting.

I’ve got 5x 12 litre pots, filled each with 10 litres of soil, which is 2.2 gallons approx. I read this would be more than sufficient for a decent auto.

Soil - plant magic soil supreme

Nutrients - plant magic old timer organic bloom and grow.

I’ve got a full digital thermometer which monitors temps and humidity.

I’ve also got various PH testing kits, and PH adjust.

Lights will be on 20 hours light 4 hours dark, controlled by a heavy duty timer.

I have fans inside the tent for air circulation. I have a 4 inch passive air duct. No intake air fan.

Day 1;

seeds are currently germinating in the old wet paper towel method. I’m expecting this to take a few days.

I’ve germinated 5x Girl Scout cookies, and ive also germinated a 6th Barneys Farm Glue Gelato which is a back up incase any of the 5 Girl Scout Cookie seeds don’t germinate.

Gave soil 250ml water per pot, to moisten the soil.
PH of soil is 6.8 , which I hear is acceptable?



I do have one huge issue which I’m really looking for advice on. When I have the extraction system switched on, the temps in my tent drop drastically, and the tent would appear to be sucking inwards. Pic below. I’m assuming from what I’ve read this means it’s pulling out a good amount of air, but could also mean not enough air is being circulated into the tent. For this reason I’m considering buying an air intake fan.. but is it really necessary when I can physically feel the air being pulled in from the passive air duct? Would a fan control be a better option? How does a fan control even work is it external to the plug? Any advice would be ideal!!

Day 3;

seeds are currently still germinating. No new update with that.

I’ve been running and testing my set up prior to introducing seeds to the soil, just so I can work out if there are any issues with my set up that I overlooked.

So far I’ve managed to sort the negative pressure in the tent, I’ve introduced a new fan speed controller which has turned down the fan speed and keeps the temps inside the tent at a good consistent temp, it doesn’t drop drastically like it did prior to me having the fan speed controller.

I’ve been also monitoring temps inside and out of my tent to make sure it’s staying at a stable and consistent temperature. I’m able to control the temperature inside the tent nicely so far, however this is with the lights on, when the lights are off the temperature seems to be dropping to around 18C which is no good - it’s winter here, so the ambient room temperature the tent is in is low. I have brought an electric heater for the room the tent is in, to provide additional heat to the room. When the lights are off I’ve managed to stabilise the internal tent temps to around 22C by doing this. Hopefully this will mean a consistent temperature for lights on and lights off.

now im just waiting for the seeds to germinate and I’ll be ready to pot the seeds

Update day 4;

6 seeds - 4 have fully germinated, 1 has only a small root and 1 also has a very small root appearing.

I’ve potted 4, I’ve decided to wait for more soil to arrive (next day delivery online) and then plant the other 2 tomorrow. ok so 2 will be behind by about 12-24 hours but I don’t feel this is the end of the world.

Light is currently 19inches away from the tops of the pots. Keeping this at between 18-20inchs. I don’t want to lower the fan much more as i wouldn’t want to scorch the new seedlings when they pop up, and also I don’t want the light too far away incase of stretching initially.

Day 5 update;

ive potted 4 of the 6 seeds. 2 more will be added later today, UPS are being slow with my delivery!

of these 4, 2 have now broken soil, 1 is just about to (I can see it just poking up through the soil) and the 4th is yet to break soil. Very happy so far. Soil felt very very dry I put my finger in about an inch into soil and it felt very dry, so I’ve given all 4 plants 300ml of 7.2 PH water.

I’m being overly cautious as I don’t want to over water at this early stage - but I don’t want them to have too little water and suffer. The temps inside the temp are a consistent and solid 29C (which is 84.2F) No nutrients have been added yet.

Day 5 further update;

I’ve now potted and added the two extra plants. The 5th is the FastBuds Girl Scout Cookies Auto and the 6th is the Barneys Farm Glue Galato Auto which came free with the 5 seeds I got!


I’ve also added the fan/temp controller. Good bit of kit this, I’ve tested it out. I set the fan on a low speed which keeps temps maintained inside the tent, and doesn’t cause too much negative pressure in the tent. It comes with a temperature probe which is located in the tent at the same level of the light. The temperature control is set so that if the tent temperature exceeds 31C then the fans kick in fast and automatically switch to full speed to lower the internal temps. Once the temps drop the fan resumes it’s normal slow setting can finally leave the house and go to work without getting anxiety that it’s too hot and I’m not tjereNot bad for £50!




I’ll post an update tomorrow with regards to the plants.

Day 8 update;

The UK is currently getting battered by storms, where I live has been hit hard, we’ve suffered very very cold temperatures, heavy snow, and now another storm with 100mph winds. I’m finding it very hard to maintain a decent temperature inside the tent when lights are out due to the fact the temps in the room are so cold! The room has an electric heater and so even with this on, it’s not making a significant enough difference to the ambient temperature in the room. The room temperature is around 18C and the tent temps drop as low as 19C which I’m not comfortable with. It’s too near the “danger zone” - 1 degree less and I could be causing potential damage to my plants. I’d be happier around the 21-22C mark.

Due to this, I’ve had to make urgent and necessary changes to my set up.

A new timer switch now controls the oscillating fan inside the tent, so that during lights out it’s off. This has helped raise internal tent temps by a degree to 20C. The main extraction fan will be turned right down also, so not to draw out too much of the warm air inside the tent. This has helped raise internal tent temps by 0.3C.

A new timer switch now controls a 2KW heater inside the room my tent is in. It’s programmed to switch on 15 mins before lights out, and run consistently for the 4 hours of darkness, then switch off 15 mins before lights come back on. This has massively helped. The room temperature is now 22.9C and the tent temp is 21.8 C now, which I’m much much happier with. I appreciate a fan heater will create dry air, but my humidity has stayed between 49-53% throughout.

Here are the babies, lights just went out so managed to get a few shots in the dark using flash. Appreciate some aren’t as clear as others. I’m not an amazing photographer!

for my first grow, it seems to be going relatively smoothly so far.

All 6 are looking happy and healthy so far with good growth. 4 are bigger, 2 are smaller and are behind the other 4 by about 36 hours. They’ve had a water. 250ml per plant. That was this morning. Plants have gone the entire day and had fast growth so a water was defo what they needed.

Please note; it’s day 8 update but 4 of the plants have been potted for 5 days and 2 for 4 days.

Has anyone got any replies to the plants? Anything you’ve spotted I might be doing wrong? Pointers to improve?

All looks good so far

Bose said:

All looks good so far

Click to expand...

You have a nice set up. I look forward to see how this goes for you. I'm not great grower but if you have any questions feel free to message me.

Morning all. Monday morning. Day 10 update!

4x plants are on day 6
2x plants are on day 5

I’m very happy so far. Honestly, I have 0 concerns currently.

Bit more bud porn for you all. Some under leaf shots, plus a group selfie ahaha!

Today just now I’ve given the plants their first proper feed with nutrients. I mixed 2ml of Old Timers Grow nutrients with 1ltr of water, PH was around 7.2 - gave each plant 500ml each, not a full litre as I want to go light on the nutrients for now. So each plant got 1ml of grow. We will see what happens. In an ideal world they’ll adapt nicely, grow bigger in the next few days and not show any signs of nutrient burn. Lights have been moved up a further 2 inches, so it’s still 20inches away from the plants. Temps are still around 28-29C during lights on.

Left hand side is today, right hand side is yesterday. Amazing what 24 hours does

Day 11 in soil. All the plants seem to look healthy. One is very small. Its the one that was behind 36 hours, I thought it would have caught up but nope, still very small in comparison to the others.

I’ve had a few issues with the plants falling over under their own weight as the stalks haven’t been thick enough.. but I’ve propped them up and they seem alright. Noticed a bit of curling on the leaves of one or two plants - will be keeping an eye on this but I suspect it’s a PH problem as my PH has been very high. Looking to lower it moving forward for future feeds. I don’t think it’s heat related as the temps have been around 28C which I wouldn’t have said is too hot, and the HPS light is still 20 inches away from the plants - I think my most recent measurement inside the tent, the light was 22inches away to be exact.

some pics;

Day 12 in soil. Plants seem happy. Noticed some possible heat stress on one of the plants, leaves seemed blistered looking, so I’ve just lowered my tent temps ever so slightly from 28-29C to 27-28C. I’m not really doing a lot to them at the moment: the last few days I’ve just left them to grow. Occasionally looked in on them, made sure they’re ok.

Thought I’d mention about the smell. There is no smell at all right now, but I was touching the leaves to see how the felt (see if they were feeling crispy or just normal) and my fingers stunk of weed after rubbing them.. not sure if that’s normal.. ahaha I am growing weed after all!