Soil And DNA Sour Cream Help

Hello All!

Im not rally a noob to the hobby, but a sure shot noob to using soil so I figured I should post this in here with the hopes that more will get help than just myself. I typically run in coco. 60/40 Coco/Perlite and hand water with 10-20% run off depending on how strong of nutrients Im feeding. I am expecting my first child and in preparation I have decided to run with soil for the fact that I will be spending less time making new batches of nutrient and feeding by hand. I was well aware of the difference in growth between soil and coco before I started but I think I'm doing something wrong here. I am growing a Critical+ Auto freebie and a DNA Sour Cream. I am using the Dyna Gro nutrient line and Fox Farm Ocean Forest/Canna Coco/Perlite at a 40/40/20 ratio. No nutrients have been used yet. They were started in Dixie cups in a 20/50/30 ratio as I didnt want to fall victim to the FFOF burning my seedlings. Both of the girls have been taken out of their starter cups and are in their final destination-2 gal smart pots. The auto is 2 1/2 weeks above dirt and is about 4 days ahead of the Sour Cream. The auto has about 4 nodes on her while the Sour Cream is working on her 2nd. I am growing in a 3 1/2 x 2 x 6 portable closet. I am vegging with a 400 watt mh and will be flowering with a 600 hps. I am using a 6" inline fan to cool the hood and for extraction. Right now the fan is simply pulling the air through the hood and into my attic. Once the smell kicks up I have a 6" Phresh Filter that will be attached. I have a 6" intake hole on both the bottom left and right of the closet with a 6" oscillating fan moving the air inside. The temps right now stay around 75 with the lights on and I have no clue about the dark because I'm running 24 hours. To me the growth seems rather slow. Along with changing my medium I have also downsized as far as over all room goes. I dont have a clue about my Humidity. Where I live the rain is consistent and the humidity is constant and from prior experience Id say Im around 40%. I could be way off though as my fan pulls a ton of air each minute.Can anyone chime in and tell me Im trippin out, that soil is this slow? If not, can someone with experience in a smaller sized grow room let me know what may be wrong in my set up. Im wondering if my humidity is actually lower than I thought due to my fan and stunting growth. My run offs pH is coming in from 6.2-6.7 and water is going in at 6.3-6.8 so I dont think Im locking anything out. Im wondering if too much air is coming and going and no time for co2 to build up. Or even better yet, Im wondering if Im wondering too much and I should just sit back and enjoy. Someone set me straight please!

everything sounds good to me.. i'm not a fan of 24 / 7 personally though.. once read how 24 hours of light out grew 18 hours by 33% so i gave it a try and didn't see the extra growth, and if anything, seemed like they slowed down a bit imo... so i went back to either 20/ 4 or 18 / 6, depends on how i feel, but with an auto, i'd do the 20 / 4 and let it be..
other then that, i don't see any issues.. have you grown either of these strains before?? just wondering what you're judging the growth rates off of.

I have never grown an auto before. I figured Id get my feet wet with a few seeds I really didn't care about. I started a Sour Cream before along with some OG 18's and ended up tossing it. I think it was because of how much slower it was moving than the OG's but Im just not sure. I have read that with lights on the plant will focus on foliage while lights off the plant focuses on roots. I usually go a few 2-3 weeks of 24/7 to get some good panels in place to maximize the efficiency when they lose light hoursl. Typically start 18/6 after a month. With this grow I planned on starting 20/4 in a week or so and tying down the sour cream throughout the veg while the auto flowered. I have read that the Sour Cream is a stretchy mofo so Im hoping I can tie her enough not to get too tall when I flip. I just don't want to out grow the auto while tying the SC. Im debating trashing the auto and just running the SC in a SCROG. I have a wire shelf running across the bottom of the closet so that I can have a 3 gallon drip tray catching the run off. I actually set this room up to be a SCROG cabinet. THe reason I veered away from said plan, IDK. Too many ideas, not enough space I guess

I am really new to growing but had the same thing going on with my plants after 4 weeks i was ready to give up and start over i am growing in a small tent with ff ocean forest soil going 18/6 and i was sure my 2 little girls were never going to grow in the last 2 weeks they have gone from 5" or so to 18" and almost as big round as they are tall so just hang in there a while and give them a little more time. The only thing different i did was when i watered a couple of weeks ago i mixed in 4 drops of super thrive to a gallon of water and they have not slowed down since. Good luck and stay safe.

I only grow in soil and the SC I grew outside so I'm not sure how accurate this will be to your situation.

I can't give you advice on nutrients or lighting as I grow organically and under the sun, but I can say that the one Sour Cream I grew outside was a little slow to start on it's growth but when she hit her stride she was second only to one in the garden in height and production... She did get a little bit of bud rot tho... so you may want to watch out for that as she was the only one of my plants to do that...

Thanks for the heads up on the mold. Ive searched all over for some good journals with the SC and I have yet to find anything with decent info. I'm probably going to document the whole grow in detail then do a "delayed" journal just to have something out there for the next person trying the strain out. It's funny, I was under the impression DNA was strong gear then yesterday I read a few postings saying they have problems and that DNA means don't need any. Guess its like everything in life. When the output of product is in big number there's bound to be a few mishaps. Appreciate the input left in here so far

You're welcome and I hope someone else with more experience with the strain can help you out...


I'd grow it again if I liked the flavour...

I ended up yanking the SC. She was slow to germ and after 2 1/2 weeks still fighting to get a 2nd set of blades up. Her roots were smaller than a golf ball still. Think it was a bad seed. She smelled funky as all hell though. I'm trying to dial in the ph for this mix of 40/40/20 coco/ocean forest/perlite. Got the medium ph down to 6.0 last night and this morning the auto was praising the lights. Think they will like it closer to the 6 range than the 6.5 since its not straight soil. Lil learning curve when mixing "hydro" coco and soil. Tweaking it is what it's all about. Replaced te SC with my favorite the OG18. She's a fun one to work.

That sucks for the Sour Cream but good look on the OG18...

Yea. The 18 is great. Depending on the pheno you get she can be finicky with the nutes. I find less is more for her. Done right she can yield VERY good. Also notice she likes too claw a little bit later in flowering when her leaves get sugar coated. Best have some good air cleaning going on to because the lemon smell can leak through concrete walls. I did a defoliation test with her last run and she gave me some insane rock hard nugs that packed serious weight. She can stretch but a nice little trimming of fans blocking light to bud sites a couple days prior to flipping seem to have cut her stretch by 50% give or take. On average I vegged until they were about 20" and my talllest came in just shy of 3'. I started removing fans at 5 nodes and did so every couple of weeks during veg though and then again 21 days into flower. I don't care what people say about removing fan leaves. I didn't follow what theoretically is right I actually experimented. Done right defoliation will add weight to buds. Don't expect foot long nugs but expect 3.5g+ nugs everywhere. The canopy was nice and even too due to bending them in half after every lil spurt to bring the bottom branches up