Slinger's Back at it! 600 watt LED autoflowers and such

Hello guys, it's time to start it back up again! Here's the idea so far.

Area: Grow tent 36 x 20 x 64 inches

Lights: 105 watt 6500k CFL for seedlings
2 x 300 watt Pro Series Quad Band for veg and. flowering

Medium: Soil FF Ocean Forest, FF Light Warrior, Perlite Mix.

Nutrients: GH Maxi Grow, Cal-Mag Plus,FF Tiger Bloom, HC Snowstorm Ultra, AN Overdrive and others as we go along.

Strains: 1 x 60 Day Lemon, 1 x DNA 60 Day Wonder.

So far the seeds germinated in water for 2 days til they cracked and the tails came out. Placed in soil today under the 105watt CFL while my previous harvest finished drying in the tent. Another journey begins, Grow On!
-slinger

holy shit, 600 watt for 2 autoflowers in 3ft x bit more than 1ft area?!?!!

I would be growing 20 lol

SnotBoogie said:

holy shit, 600 watt for 2 autoflowers in 3ft x bit more than 1ft area?!?!!

I would be growing 20 lol

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I know it's a bit much, just curious about autoflowers so I'm gonna overload them. I will have a bigger space in the fall and will be putting at least 10 auto's under the lights. There is a possibility I can squeeze 2 more into the tent but that maxes me out and it would be very cramped. We shall see what happens, thanks for stopping by!

I spy the Lemon popping up out of the ground, woohoo. 1 down, 1 to go!
-slinger

From what I know FFOF is pretty hot on its own so it has to cut with a light mix, hence the light warrior. But what I dont understand is the perlite. Light warrior has lots of perlite, why add more. Autofloweres prefer a more airy mix but at the same time are not very tolerant of drying out, with the extra perlite added to the soil mix is an aggressive draining mix. So I do have a few questions for you if you dont mind.

what type/ size pots are you in?
will you layer the soil for stages of growth?
what are the sprouts being placed in?
is watering/feeding automated?
night/day temps and RH%?

duckee1 said:

From what I know FFOF is pretty hot on its own so it has to cut with a light mix, hence the light warrior. But what I dont understand is the perlite. Light warrior has lots of perlite, why add more. Autofloweres prefer a more airy mix but at the same time are not very tolerant of drying out, with the extra perlite added to the soil mix is an aggressive draining mix. So I do have a few questions for you if you dont mind.

what type/ size pots are you in?
will you layer the soil for stages of growth?
what are the sprouts being placed in?
is watering/feeding automated?
night/day temps and RH%?

Click to expand...

Thanks for stopping by man, I will do my best to answer your questions. First off, as far as FFOF is concerned it is extremely hot and gave me a lot of issue during my last grow til I transplanted into this exact same mixture. I like to keep it air but not too much, I do plan on layering the soil, as of now they are in .5 gallon pots but will be transplanted into 4 gallon pots in a couple weeks. As far as the layering is concerned I am going to keep the FFOF+LW+PERLITE mix as the main layer of dirt but at the bottom I am gonna go strait FFOF. I will be adding some Dolmite Lime to the soil the plants will be transplanted into as well to help keep my ph right. I am very meticulous with watering/nutes/ph/ppm now since I learned a whole lot from the last one. so to break it down into a quick read for your questions.

Seedling Pot Size: .5 gallon
Seedling Soil Mix: FFOF+LW+PERLITE, there is a .5 in layer of just strait LW on the top where the seeds were placed

Veg/Flowering Pot Size: 4 Gallon
Veg/Flowering Soil Mix: Main Layer - FFOF+LW+PERLITE+DOLMITE LIME, Bottom Layer - FFOF+DOLMITE LIME

Watering: By hand as needed per dampness of soil 1 in down and weight of pots determined before and after watering

Temperature : Stays between 66-77 F for now while we are getting the seedlings working, but once the LED comes on we will stay between 80-85 degrees under a 24 hr light schedule.

Humidity: Right now we are staying between 36-45% Humidity in the tent but I am misting the seedlings at least 4 times daily. Will be getting a humidifier soon.

Hope that answers your question sir, I am new to auto-flowering plants so this will be a new experience, this is also my 2nd LED grow so its a whole new game.

UPDATE: Put 2 feminized GHS The Church seeds into a cup of water today. Im most likely getting another tent before I move so I want to get it started now!

-slinger


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I in no way mean to run your thread or try to school you in your methods. Everyone has there own style and I respect that, but if I could kindly add some experience and advise to help assist you, it would be this...

Autoflowers have a deeper taproot and are very sensitive to any drought conditions even if for a few hours it still stresses the plant and growth slows or stops. In my experience, a selfwatering/selfwicking container is best with autoflowers. They take as much water as needed and never dry out. Also the risk of salt accumulation and burn or PH lockout is greatly reduced as the salts dont settle on the bottom of the grow media like they would with top-watering. Please note that container size matters only to point with autos. Anything larger than a 4gal pot is wasted. I am going to tell how I have always grown my autos- any they were always solid bud and had so many trichomes they were white. Short plants to tall the key is to 1 know the strain or 2 do some research on phenos for your plant.

start with a selfwatering 55gallon storage tote. make a selfwatering/selfwicking container. I use 4" drain tile thats corregated. cut as many pieces as you need to fill the bottom. In big totes i like to use a combination of cotton rope and net pots. calculate the inside diameter of the tote and cut out a piece to fit from the lid that came with the style tote you got. Drill a shit ton of holes in it and 4 4" holes evenly spaced. insert a 4" net pot into each one. I like to place 4-5 airstones in the water at the bottom to force air up thru the grow medium and to oxygenate the water and act like a Deep Water Culture. Then layer with soil. ocean forest first in full strength. then happy frog then light warrior

Thank you very much for your advice. I did not know that auto's were super sensitive to water issues, I will be very careful to not let them dry out too much. Unfortunately I cannot do any sort of hydro/dwc at the moment, I live in an apartment and a reservoir would be a big NO NO. I have not yet grown hydro or dwc, the closets Ive gotten is I built a DIY DWC Cloner which works pretty well. This first auto run is totally a test of my skills and ability to adapt so we shall see how it goes. Any advice as far as nutrient feeding and such would be appreciated! I would assume that auto's want a balanced nute like 10-10-10 for the first 4 weeks then switch to something like 2-6-8 for the flowering stage. Gonna test it up and see what happens! Thanks again.
-slinger

I do not know which seedling is which....blah. They are both working hard though!
-slinger

I just call it DWC but the reality of it is, it's a container soil grow with a little extra room on the bottom for a water reserve. the same can be accomplished with nursery pots and lechate saucers. put a 4" bar/brick/disk style airstone in the bottom of each plastic pot you have now. run the air stone out the bottom drain hole. add just enough chunky perlite/hydroton or something very agressive draining to cover the height of the airstone and fill the rest the pot with your soil. add a saucer under the pot and you created a water resivore and with the airstone in the bottom bubbleing away. this is where that long taproot is goin to go very soon after sprouting. The reason that yeilds are soo much larger in hydro systems is the amount of O2 in the rootzone. also plants in a hydro dont sense restrictions in their rootzone. bigger roots give lot more bigger buds, and LST keeps them trained/short. Now you would have the best of both worlds and just imagine those buds. Then add some magnesium sulfate in the begining of week 1 BLOOM along with some molasses and hit then with mono po

^^^^^^^thats just the Soma soil bed method in a pot plus an airstone. The airstone vibrating against all that perlite is annoyingly loud. Been there. Oxygen is important for roots hence perlite, vermiculite, coco, etc... I get a much bigger root ball in 7 gals than I ever did in hydro. Buds are same size but denser in soil. Better quality by far in soil too. But to each their own.

I'm gonna pass on the airstone, reservoir idea for the moment, it sounds cool and I would totally test it out! on a side note, I put 2 x The Church seeds in a glass of water 2 days ago, put them in the dirt at 4:20 am on 4/20/13, since their tales were showing they were ready.

Happy 420 guys, if you find yourself in San Francisco, near Golden Gate Park, hit me up PM style, ill be there all day!
-slinger

Day 2 of VEG

So to get started on this, I am setting the start of the 60 days beginning on 4/20/13, seems most appropriate and it was around the time when both seeds shells fell of revealing the new seedling. Since I dont know which seed is which due to heavy medication when planting, but they are both 60 DAY auto's I am going to assign them as A and B, A being at the moment the seedling that is furthest along right now. Getting a 2nd tent so we will have room for these 2 autos, 2 x The Church fem'ed that just popped out of the dirt and possibly a couple others along the road. I turned on 1 of the LED panels today, the auto's are sitting about 24in below it, dont wanna shock them with light, gonna slowly harden them.
-slinger



A



B
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Day 4

Everything looks good, they are starting to form their first leaf. Again plant A is still further along than plant B. Been misting them constantly and adding small amounts of water out of my spray bottle directly at the base of the seedlings. Water was Ph'ed to 6.5 and was De-chlorinated.
-slinger



A


B

Looking good brother Sling! I found that a couple of my autos didn't like the constant light, and appeared stressed. After a little research I heard that it can be common for autos to stress from 24hr light. With that said, I vegged my reg seeds with 24/0 and intend to do the same with my next go round. I'm diggin the square planters.. Good luck!

Edit: Through my research I found 20/4 appears to be the preferred/optimal lighting schedule.

blowincherrypie said:

Looking good brother Sling! I found that a couple of my autos didn't like the constant light, and appeared stressed. After a little research I heard that it can be common for autos to stress from 24hr light. With that said, I vegged my reg seeds with 24/0 and intend to do the same with my next go round. I'm diggin the square planters.. Good luck!

Edit: Through my research I found 20/4 appears to be the preferred/optimal lighting schedule.

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I was just thinking last night about putting them on a 20/4 schedule, thanks for bringing it up and confirming my instincts. Square pots are a necessity in small spaces!!
-slinger

Day 7

Been on a 20/4 lights schedule since last I posted! Everything is looking really good, one of my Church seeds finally lost its helmet as well!. The other is being slowwww. Been misting and watering as needed. No nutes yet. Gonna be making some BHO today with trim and some nugs from the last grow! Here are some pics for you guys.
-slinger



A


B


The Church

Day 9 of Auto Flowers
Day 3 of The Church


I have continued to mist the plants and make sure the soil was damp enough with Ph'ed water. Have not really been measuring how much of the water at this point. Will do as soon as we get into the bigger pots. Only 1 of the 2 The Church seeds survived, the other just stopped its root growth and the root shriveled and was dead. Put two Gogi OG regular seeds in water the other day, they are now in planters as their root appeared out of the shell. I want to cross The Church with a Kush strain so this seems to be the best way to go about it. If I get two females I will be ok with that, we can cross further along down the road, but I should get atl east 1 male.
-slinger

A


B


The Church

I ordered some powdered dolomite lime today, gonna be mixing up the soil real soon cause I need to get these Auto's transplanted which i know i should have started out in the right size pots but oh well, we grow and we learn, I should be able to transplant them without causing too much shock, put half a cap full of Elenor's VF-11 in my spray bottle last night with Ph'ed water, hopefully it does something, a lot of people say its snake oil, I'm always down to test that theory. One of the Goji Og seeds I put in the soil the other day has popped up out, still has its helmet on but that will fall off soon enough. Super Stoked!! Gonna grab some clones soon, 1 of some kind of OG and 1 of something fruity-licious! We are going big this grow, time to test my skills and ability to adapt.
-slinger

Day 1 Goji Og

Popped up so quick, Super strong seeds!