My Second Grow - Dinafem White Widow Auto

Hi guys. I am starting to work on my second grow and thought I would check to see what everyone thought. For my first grow I used a cheap ebb and flow hydroponics system, the bigger Emily's Garden one. I had issues keeping the reservoir the correct ph levels and my 5 Afghan Kush Ryders got severely nute burned. This time around I am planning on using soil, Fox Farm Happy Frog to be exact, and of course perlite on the bottom. One of my biggest questions is, will I have enough room in my 2 x 2 x 4 grow tent to grow 4 Dinafem White Widow autos in 3 gal pots? I think I will but still I'm not sure. Anyway here is what I have for equipment:

2'x2'x4' Grow Tent
150 Watt HPS Light
2' 4 Bulb T5 Light
2 - Cheap Ebay LED Dual Spectrum Light Panels (I keep these hanging on the sides of the tent)
I also have a 4'' inline duct fan with a carbon filter and General Hydroponics Flora Series that have yet to be used plus some other random starter nutes and some left over Fox Farm nutes.

I have yet to buy the pots, soil, and perlite. Should I get a soil PH meter? Or just use distilled and RO water and add low levels of nute to be safe? Also has anyone grown these White Widow autos from Dinafem in similar conditions? How was the yield?

I bought soil, perlite, and nursery pots that should be here this week and my seeds shortly after. I'm excited. Self bump for some experienced advice?

my opinion on your tent size is no. The general rule of thumb is for each square foot of floor space you have, thats 1 plant. But your hps is perfect for 2 plants. 100 watts per plant, then an additional 50 watts per additional plant is another general rule of thumb. My suggestion to you though, is use your tent as your so called flower room. Will be easy to avoid light from penetrating, and is a more controlled environment(also tents tend to be less humid, which is good for flower). Then use those t5 lights you got to make a makeshift veg area somewhere. You can do a 2 plant rotation to keep yourself budded. And would work out perfect since you have 4 seeds.

But otherwise you seem on point with everything else, good luck.

Drumroll, how ya do'in and welcome. Best advice I can give you is don't take advice from this guy! bmeat and this is why : Q about Harvest.

But I got a question for you, on your first grow was it an auto as well? If so, what did you like about growing autos vs deciding to switch to feminized or regular seeds?

Cheers
- SB -

didnt realize only 1 person on this site knew how to grow, thats wild.

I would do a two stage perpetual grow but I am very limited on space. There really doesn't seem to be a point in doing that with autos since they don't veg for long... Also 2 x 2 = 4 sq ft.

SB

My first grow was 6 Afghan Kush Ryders from World of Seeds that were indeed auto. Only 5 survived and I got a very low yield from them, roughly an oz. I found out later that they would have grown bigger if I hadn't kept them in 24/0 the entire time. My only reason for doing autos again was that I only have enough room for my one tent and autos are smaller and faster. I know you can always make a bunch of clones then trigger them to flower when they are small but I don't have the time for that as I am moving in a few months. If the autos suck this time I will probably try feminized photoperiod seeds next and go for a scrog method grow using clones which would save me some money on these pricey auto seeds. Lol

Also I wanted everyone to know, I placed my order from Attitude last Monday and received my seeds in the mail exactly a week later yesterday. This kind of blew my mind as I live in the rural Nebraska area and it usually takes about a week for normal packages to get to my door. My first Attitude order took over 2 weeks to arrive. Anyone else have recently quicker arriving orders from Attitude? I am very pleased. Still waiting on my soil though which I don't think has even shipped yet from Atlantis Hydroponics.

Buy a cheap pH test kit. One with the little sample bottle and you add drops of reagent and check the resulting color. Once you determine your water source pH it is easy to adjust your water to 6.0 for soil. Check the pH after you add your nutrients as well as nutes can change the pH - usually by lowering it. I would ditch the 150 HPS and go total CFL or buy a larger HPS - 400 watt minimum - and deal with any heat issues by using an enclosed hood or using a small room AC.

BTW my first DWC was a Dinafem WWA. That girl went 48" high, 52" wide and was very good smoke. Very smooth taste after just drying well. Once cured it was excellent!!! Very nice clear high that made it fun to do stuff in the daytime.

My Atlantis Hydroponics order showed up yesterday so after work I prepared the four 3 gal nursery pots and planted my seeds. I used hydroton for the bottom 1-1/2'' - 2'' and then did a thin layer of perlite before finishing with a 2/3 Fox Farm Happy Frog and 1/3 perlite mixture. I wasn't initially going to use hydroton on the bottom but the perlite was just so small and powdery I thought the small 1/2''-3/4'' hydroton that I have would work better. Plus the perlite kept pouring out of the bottom of the nursery pots' 1'' holes. Anyway I put the seeds directly into the soil. Is this a bad idea? The only other option I had was rockwool cubes but I didn't want to have them in my pots. I watered with roughly 8-10 oz of 6.5 pH right around the seed area. Is that enough water? Should I keep watering about that much once a day or so? I've never grown soil so I'm not really sure. I guess just try to keep it slighty damp? Oh and hotrodharley I do have a cheap pH test kit like that. It works well to test the water before feeding. Much easier than trying to use my cheapy digital pH tester that seems to constantly need calibrating. Its a Hannah beer pH tester.

While checking on my babies this morning I noticed that they had all popped up. I was a little nervous but am now relieved.