What do these pic tell an experienced eye?

I’m newer to growing anything that needs care. I grew some tomatoes inside once and they seem tough to kill

This plant is a ghost og auto and I have tried it outside and almost had it die 3 times. Brought it inside a week ago. It has really grown. But now droops.

Idk. It looked more perky 2days ago.

Vpd has been between .8 and 1.2. The chart shows it.

The pics are greener= grow light off, shop lights on.
paler= grow light.

The lights is a spider farmer sp2000 turned all the way up.

It looks sad and like it hates your grow light being on full power.

Oh, I can turn that down I thought maybe it was fear from my meddling fingers that had it looking like that

Combination of adjusting to the light and wet soil.

Soil looks really wet, bottom of the pot has algae to confirm that. You could probably go a week without watering it. Wait 5 days at least and see how she’s looking. Lift the pot every day to get use to the weight

Roy O'Bannon said:

Oh, I can turn that down I thought maybe it was fear from my meddling fingers that had it looking like that

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Aye like nuttyskunk said water a bit less

I turned the light down to 75-80% where it started noticeably dimming.
I did water yesterday, to runoff in case it was some issue with that. It was droopy looking then, but it was also a very light bag. I have had that peat dry out on me. I felt I had to water even with a wet looking plant the soil was dry.

The lights, I never considered the intensity of those, except to make sure of the distance of 24".

I might have needed to mix some extra pearlite in that soil or not have it in that bag. I haven't used one before for a full grow.

Roy O'Bannon said:

I turned the light down to 75-80% where it started noticeably dimming.
I did water yesterday, to runoff in case it was some issue with that. It was droopy looking then, but it was also a very light bag. I have had that peat dry out on me. I felt I had to water even with a wet looking plant the soil was dry.

The lights, I never considered the intensity of those, except to make sure of the distance of 24".

I might have needed to mix some extra pearlite in that soil or not have it in that bag. I haven't used one before for a full grow.

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The key with soil growing is keeping it in a moisture happy window. Especially peat.

You also need to factor in strain/phenotype preferences. Some don’t mind a really wet cycle some hate it. Same with dry cycle

Trouble is weighing very light to you may not be to another… it’s subjective.

Did you pre moisten the soil prior to planting? It’s very important with autos on large final containers in fabric pots. Otherwise the edges dry out too fast.

She looks healthy enough just not happy with the wet/dry cycle and possible the light too if she looked perkier outdoors

Yeah, I had to mix the water into the soil by hand, took a while. Had a big mess in a 5 gal bucket.

It was dry, that 3 gallon bag took a half gallon of water/feed and didn't run off, took another half gallon to get some run off.

Feeding pretty light, 200 ppm, half of that is my water.

I kept having to move it around outdoors or try to keep it from drying out. Then I would find little critters eating on it...
Once Summer ( with the big S ) hit, it got over 100 and 30-40 RH. I had to bring it in, it was just melting.

Looks like she doesn’t like big wet/dry cycles. 1 gallon of water/feed in a 3 gallon is too much for a plant that size. Even an established plant I find takes just over 1/2 gallon every 2 days in a 3 gallon pot.

If I were you I’d wait a few days until it’s dry but not too dry and water it with 1/2 gallon. Forget about run off at the moment if your input is lower than the soil EC

It looks better now after these 7 hrs or so of the sun being turned down.

I have tried a slurry test, always get wonky numbers. It's new soil/ medium. Its ( Berger BM7 bark mix specifically ) and hasn't been watered with nutes before this plant.
I do plan on waiting for it to be dry again before I water. I will take your advice on not dumping a whole gallon on it.

I really wanted to be able to leave it outside where plants seem to do just fine without me

I think it's the type of media and amount. Bark mix will be heavy and hold lots of water. You also have a lot of it for a small plant.
I've found doing drain to waste you want full dryback in 1-2 days. If your plant is sitting wet for 6 days, you need to lighten the mix with perlite and/or use less of it. I've used Berger for cannabis before, the BM6 worked fine straight from the bag.

I can do some gentle repotting and add pearlite. Maybe the roots didn't go all that deep.

Thank you all, for all the help.

Your leaves were not "canoeing" or "tacoing". I don't see any indication that levels were excessive. What am I missing?

Drop $32 for a Uni-T light meter and check out the document that I wrote on converting lux to PPFD. Cannabis is a light whore loves light and will thrive at 800-1000µmol in ambient CO2. I run my autos at 80DLI and my photos at >1100µmol, Yield and quality increase as light levels increase, up to the light saturation point. If your plants can't deal with 800-1kµmol, it's worth it to figure out why.

A research paper from 2021± showed that yield increases by ≈4% for every 50µmol increase in PPFD.

I have photone on my phone, does that count? I have forgotten all the stuff I knew about this it seems. Rings a bell.
I printed that pdf off to have in the shop. Thanks.

Roy O'Bannon said:

I have photone on my phone, does that count? I have forgotten all the stuff I knew about this it seems. Rings a bell.
I printed that pdf off to have in the shop. Thanks.

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I recommend against using Photone unless you can calibrate it. I've tested it twice. It failed to give a result when I tested it against a blurple (in 2021 when the app was called Korona) and again a couple of years ago when it read 16% high. I understand what the programmer is trying to do — I've been a software engineer for > 30 years and traded email with the programmer back in 2021. Two bit issues - you need to use a diffuser because a cell phone camera is designed to take in light coming from within the field of view of the lens. In contrast, a lux meter or PAR meter have a parabolic cover to capture light coming from a very wide angle. The diffuser attempts to correct for that design limitation.

The other issue is that it could be very accurate or it could be quite in accurate. Unless you're using a cell phone that growlightmeter.com has tested, it's a crap shoot.

After Photone failed in 2021, I bought an Apogee but that's pretty spendy so I'd probably go with the Uni-T now.

If you're using Photone you have to use the diffuser on the iPhone. If not, there's no way it will be even close. But if you're using Photone, you shouldn't need to use the conversion factors — that's what Photone is doing for you automatically. When you pick out the type of light//the spectrum of the light, it's using the conversion factors to go from lux to PPFD. There's no magic to it — the biggest problem is the horribly kludgy (that's a programmer word) diffuser which is needed because the design of the camera is to not accept light coming in "off axis" so it's a workaround for a workaround.

Putting that aside, a meter will give you an estimate of how much light is falling on your plants but only your plants can tell you how much light they can use. With a very accurate meter, you can set the light level to say, 800µmol, watch the plants and, if they're doing OK, add another 100µmol, check the plants, etc. Once they start reacting negatively, you know you're in the ballpark so back off a bit, say 50µmol. If you're PPFD reading is wrong, it's going to take longer to get your grow to that "light saturation point". You'll still be able to dial in your grow, it'll just take longer to get there because you've got to be more cautious since you don't know if your Photone+phone combo is reading high or low.

The biggest thing is just to get the plants to the light saturation point and keep them there. If you do that, you can end up with a staggering amount of weed. I've never grown anything other than cannabis and it's really an amazing thing to watch.

I ended up picking a par of 500 to try.
iphone XR. I went to calibrate and photone popped up with my phone being already calibrated. So I just needed a bit of paper to diffuse with.

I repotted it today with about half the soil media replaced with chunky pearlite. That set it back pretty good.
Good thing it's an auto, I hear those are the best to mess up with

Roy O'Bannon said:

I ended up picking a par of 500 to try.
iphone XR. I went to calibrate and photone popped up with my phone being already calibrated. So I just needed a bit of paper to diffuse with.

I repotted it today with about half the soil media replaced with chunky pearlite. That set it back pretty good.
Good thing it's an auto, I hear those are the best to mess up with

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"phone already calibrated" - meaning that it's one of the phones for which growlightmeter.com has published results? That's great!

"So I just needed a bit of paper to diffuse with." - without the diffuser, your readings will be…100±µmol low.

That's my main concern about Photone. He's not doing any magic - the code is picking up the lux reading from the light meter in the phone and applying a freely available conversion factor, according to which spectrum you choose. I just Googled around and ended up with about dozen conversion factors and put them in my PDF.

The problem is the diffuser. When growers don't read the directions//don't put on the diffuser, the numbers can't be correct. That's the nice thing about a "purpose built product" like the Uni-T - push the power button, hold the meter at the canopy and get the number. No muss, no fuss.

Autos rock. My first five grows were autos. They're beasts. I switched to photos because they're easier to control.

There are two plants in the tent. Chris takes up about 80% of the tent, including the branches that are falling out of the tent. Wilma is the same strain, Gelato, and she's visible on the left hand side of the tent. That grow was 25 ounces between the two.

Yeah, I used a little strip of paper and set it aside so I could use that same piece and be consistent at least.
I don't mind getting a meter. I'm just trying not to spend money.

The plant bounced back well after removing soil and mixing in pearlite.

The soil wasn't so wet, but it was really compacted from when I put it in the bag so wet after I rehydrated the peat. I should have at least fluffed it up I guess.
There were roots everywhere though and I could avoid tearing the long ones at the bottom.

I set my tent at .8 vpd and left the lights low.

That is a ten year supply for me
You plants look good. Do you dwc or is that a different type of setup?

Roy O'Bannon said:

Yeah, I used a little strip of paper and set it aside so I could use that same piece and be consistent at least.
I don't mind getting a meter. I'm just trying not to spend money.

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I get that. A filter for Photone is $5, a light meter is $32. We don't really need either - a lot of people cannabis grows turned out really well without either of them - but better equipment allows the grower to make better decisions. Two caveats - that's personal bias from a long time software engineer and the "80/20 rule" is in play meaning that you can get a fine crop (80%) without "this stuff" but you will only get the extra 20%, over the long term, with good data.

Roy O'Bannon said:

The plant bounced back well after removing soil and mixing in pearlite.

The soil wasn't so wet, but it was really compacted from when I put it in the bag so wet after I rehydrated the peat. I should have at least fluffed it up I guess.
There were roots everywhere though and I could avoid tearing the long ones at the bottom.

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Good to hear that. I've seen two grows where the plants could not tolerate >500µmol. In both cases, the soil was hydrophobic from not watering the right way.
Must have been tough to try to work around the roots. Even if you're really careful, I'd guess that there would have been casualties.
At least you got things figured out, though.

Roy O'Bannon said:

I set my tent at .8 vpd and left the lights low.

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0.8 is seedling. You're in veg so I'd go with 1.0. That will help keep the soil from being too wet as well as being better for the plant.
At that stage of growth, your plants should be at 500µmol±. I'm guessing at the age, though.

Also, have you looked into low stress training and high stress training? I would strongly recommend that you top your plant. Topping is a safe and easy way to get an even canopy. I've never not topped my plants, autos or photos. Yup, that big mangy auto was topped. Topping is just cutting the center stem above the fourth node. That allows the branches below the center stem (the "apical stem") to grow out instead of having the apical stem dominate (the "Christmas tree" look). Non-topped plants are a PITA to light well vs topped plants which will tend to give you a much more even canopy.

I top and LST my plants. That how I got the plant in the attached photo. It was child's play to get good light on that plant - it was 30" across, 20" back to back, and only 24" tall because it as grown under a veg light + topped + LST'd.

It wasn't destined to have the yield of the Gelato but the shape of the plant made it very easy to harvest.

Roy O'Bannon said:

That is a ten year supply for me
You plants look good. Do you dwc or is that a different type of setup?

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It's DWC but the res is unusual because it's a SuperPonics res, part of a tent kit. It's a big fiberglass tub. The manufacturer calls is a "35 gallon" res but it hols 28 gallons. I like using a res that size because it's very stable, in terms of pH, and because it holds a lot of nutes. I typically swap a res only three or four times and that's over the course of a 110 day grow.

I have done lst, but it's been a while. I was hoping to keep one alive and unmoldy.
I wasn't sure how much time I had to train on an auto. I was thinking not much. I'll be happy to hit the flower stage now

I wasn't planning on topping it, but I could. The training time thing again. It would keep it more even for sure.

I have done it with photo plants.


Not real sure what a veg light is, I grew my vegging stuff under some cheap fluorescents and they did really well it seemed. The tomato's and peppers did really well under those lights also.
Other than that I just have amazon stuff. A100w mars hydro, sp1000 and sp2000 from spider farmer that came in tent kits.