Afghan Auto Flower - Auto Pot

I filled the res this AM. Put about 35L in res. I think mixed and added the nutes to res, and opened the valves. I wanted to wait a few more days, but I got excited to get started. Let's hope it wasn't too soon.

So far, this week as been really good for me to learn Autopots. Learn in the sense that you don't need to do as much LOL. This is my first use of the Autopot system, so it was more about me becoming confident that it was in fact working. When i put my finger into the coco coir like I would with soil, its perfectly moist. The other thing I have learn't is, 1 ml of nitric acid PH's down .1 in my res. Given its size, it makes the math very easy to maintain. It had gotten up to 7.2PH! I put in 10ML of PH down, and it settled right back to 6.2. The one issue that I have also seen happen, is the res temperature has raised the same ambient temperature of the tent. I am hoping, that in these case the Soil will act as a buffer against that temperature. Otherwise, I worry like a DWC it might develop some kind of root rot. If you have used Autopot's before and have experience in this topic, please let me know :) Thank you

Very close to beginning to LST. I figure either in this week, or starting next week. Overall each day these plants have grown a good amount, They have good color, they are all growing quickly (the one small one is 1 week behind and had a rougher over all experience. He was planted into a tent that already had higher wattage being pumped into it, so I don't expect much from it.) So far, they all appear to be female!

This week, I tried to LST them in the beginning of the week, but the stalks were flimsy and weak. I put a fan on them with a significantly more vigorous wind :) This helped, then I tried to LST train with my bending clips, the distance between the nodes was still to close. So I raised the light 2 inches, which helped, I figure by 2-3 days from now, I will be able to start the proper LST. I also flushed the res and put in new water and nutrients. Some of the plants are showing what appears to be Cal/mag deficiency. So I added an increased dosing into the res, I then took about 10ml of the mix and put it into the small res's at the bottom of the AutoPots to give a boosted dose to the plants directly. Other than that, this grow is *boomin*. I'm very happy with the progress, and these plants are thick, bushy and growing like crazy.

This week was huge. They drank down like 40L of water this week. They have been upping PH all week, I am at the point where I need to check it daily to keep it in range. I also began significant LST training on these plants this week. I used an entire pack of LST clips, which work awesome, but i need more than 5 per plant (Pack of 30). I hurt a few of them when bending them this week, but they recovered so fast, I had a hard time tell the next day which branch i had broken. I upped the Silicate they were getting, and it made a difference. They were soft and bendy..to the point just bending a stem was enough to keep it in place, now they are firm enough to require clips. I removed about 30% of foliage per plant, it was more than I wanted to, but it was legit necessary. These guys are 💥💥boomin,💥💥 I can't believe they are only 5 weeks old. I had grown a batch of 4 seeds (of the same strain) in a soil configuration, and they grew for about 16 weeks and were about this size at week 10. I have nothing but good things to say about the 🥦 AutoPot

💀💀 DISASTER 💀💀 -Also the Autoflowers have started to flower! ⚘⚘⚘ ⚘⚘⚘ I went away for the weekend, and came back to 50L inside my tent!!! Thank goodness, I have the water proof tray liner installed. Something happened, I think one of the Auto-pot valves got stuck open. I took them all out, cleaned them top to bottom, and in some cases, re-trimmed the hosing to have a perfectly straight end. A few were slightly slanted. So they went 2 days without water or humidity, as the flooding killed my Humidifier (there goes 100 bucks 😭) I didn't take any pictures of the flood, as I was in hardcore mode trying to clean it up. This week also had other challenges, where I live has been having a brutal cold snap and I had issues keeping my house and my tents in good temperature ranges. Week 6 has been very difficult. 🌳 The plants still grew about 5 inches this week. 🌳 I had a plant that was smaller than the rest, by a significant amount, I found out during the clean up, that the air flow had been restricted to the line, so it wasn't getting oxygen. I'm hoping this allows the plant to catch up, and its not genetics!

This week was a good recovery week, after this previous disaster at the beginning of the week. They took about 3 days to bounce back. I had to defoliate pretty heavily. You can't tell 4 days later that I did. I wanna avoid defoliating too often, as these poor buggers are already stressed. I think in about 3 days I will see if they stop growing in height, when they do... I will defoliate again. All for all, I'm pretty happy that they bounced back so well. I also have upped the EC a touch to 1.5 this week, and I'm only seeing the tiniest hint of tip burn. So I think they are at the max before it starts to really burn them. The rate they are drinking, its a struggle to keep the mix at 1.4.

Overall this week was very steady! They drank a lot, between Sat-Sat I had to fill res twice. I think my res is 50L, so they went thru 100 L (or so) in a week. Or about 2L per plant per day! Probably on Tuesday, I might defoliate again. It's a pretty solid sea of green, but there is a lot below canopy and these are Autoflowers, So I will promote the Larf growth, to use in edibles etc. Generally I try to avoid defoliating into flower, but desperate times! Haha The interesting thing is, when I look at my week to week data, I can see as the canopy thickened, the overall temperature of the Tent went down, then stabilized at about 24c. So to me, that indicates the canopy is absorbing much more energy than previously (avg was 27.5c). So what use to raise the tent by 3c, is now going right into the Plants. I'm very hopeful about this run! :)

This week had some exciting moments. I defoiled about 1-2 days after my last post. As you can see that growth came back within a week. They are officially so bushy, they are getting in their own way. I will defoilate them this weekend, and post a picture after that. I also had added some potassium silicate, and it caused a brown algae bloom :| So I ran H202 thru the system, and upped the amount of Enzyme Komplete i was using. This squared it away real quick, it did a great job of clearing it all out. Since this is my 2nd time growing this strain (1st was in soil, and had environmental issues, but did grow) this is where they were about 4-6 weeks before harvest in soil. They have the same coloring and puffy-ness to the buds. They also started with a heavy frosting on the sugar leaves that spread all over the plant. So if I was to guess, i would venture they are 4-5 weeks from harvest. The control plant is about 3-4 (maybe a touch less). These plants are still drinking like crazy, and its becoming expensive feeding them Emerald Harvest every 2-3 days >:|

This week had a few things go wrong :| The first, I had to do a legit defoliation, as some of the inner kola's were being blocked from light and going yellow. Then recovery process got interrupted when the PH go swung down to 5.8 when the res was full and I did not notice for 8hrs :| So they had been defoliated then couldn't grab up the P while absorbing more light over less leaves.... Then the res got blocked (there is a small filter in there, which technically did its job) but I also noticed 12 hrs. after that they hadn't had any water for about a day. They are drinking about 2.5L a day, so this hurt. They will recover, they still have time. I am just hoping its not going to be a huge impact to the result. At this phase I wanted my PH to be at 6.5. -> So that it's in the fat-band region of Absorption. I have it dialed into that range now. I will keep it at 6.5 for the rest of this week. **UPDATE** I had to defoliate, there are sections on the plants that were not getting light and air. I didn't want to defoliate this far into flower, but it was required.

This week was still about recovery from last week. Given the phase this plant is in, this week was a stand still... but I'm glad it did not move backwards. We did a heavy defoil in the middle of week, as some of the sites where blocking each other quite a bit. The air flow and color has returned the middle of these plants. I was getting worried about bud rot. All for all, these plants are doing well and smell like yummy weed! When we defoliated I went outside to take out the garbage and the whole neighborhood smelt like these ladies 😂😂😂 I hope that they keep growing and thickening up. They are putting weight on, I hope Week 12 is huge on that front. I am probably only giving them up until 13/14 before I give them the chop. I wont be flushing. I will be feeding up until the last res before harvest.

This week we did a very heavy defoil, the canopy was so thick I was getting worried about bud-rot or something else starting. There is also a decent amount of larf on some of the sides where the bushes where bumping into each other. Next time, I'm only doing 5 in this tent as they could have been bigger with more space. I will do the next layout like a 5 on a 6 sided dice. Once again, I had Algae try to start. However, I was prepared with H202 on hand. I put 1ml per L in, and it cleared that up in 1 day. I have decided that after next week, they will get the chop. By Feb 26th, they will be chopped and weighed wet, then 7 days later, weighed dry!

So this is the Tear Down week. The timing of it makes it so i will need to the harvest flag in a few days when I can weight and test the plants. I have included the Cleaning, and Cutting and some Root Porn. I will make the harvest post in about 4-5 days, when I can trim these plants. There is a lot of Plant here. I got way more than I was expecting. I don't have a scale that measure this amount of plant, without taking like 10 measurements and then adding them together. So I will just be posting the dry weight. I will post the wet weight as dry weight * 1.65. Autopots: Wow, what a great product. I have been blown away by how well and how easy it was to work with them. They really did solve the watering issues. Excellent product. If you are a beginner, start with Autopots. -= Lessons Learnt =- - Overdrive the air to your Autopots. In my control plant, I used a small rectangle air stone (instead of a standard air dome). This lead to root rot and some other issues, it also put significantly less air into the water. The root rot, give the material for the Brown Algae to grow. Using a huge Air-disc-Air-Stone would be an excellent combo to mix in with the air dome itself. Something like this: https://www.amazon.ca/Pawfly-Diffuser-Suction-Hydroponics-Aquarium/dp/B01MY3AQ33 at the bottom and the air-dome on top of it, will be what I do with my next experiment. - Air stone in the reservoir. I had two instances where algae grew into the res. An air stone would have helped. It would have also helped my control plant get less root rot. Given the amount that the air-domes and air sources got engulfed, having the water have more o2 in it would have only been beneficial. - Don't grow 6 plants in a 4x4. Since my control plant was about 1/8th the size of the others, I think I could have grown 5 in the shape of a 5 (on a 6 sided dice)⚄ This placement would give a much more spaced canopy for airflow and more importantly light. The sides of some of the plants were lighter green and produced larf due to lack of light penetration. - This tent was on 19-5 schedule. This worked out very well for this strain. After every lights on, they were in the praying position, so this strain was able to recover in that 5hrs off. If I had more seeds, I would run these again, and try 20-4. I think this strain could handle it. All for all, I think I'm going to 19-5 as my default timing. This kept up a solid DLI. - Staring at .9EC (really .7 EC cause my water here is .2 EC) Then bumping up at .1 a week, until 1.6EC worked out VERY well. I experimented on this crop all the way up to 1.9EC, which burnt the tips of this plant. I think if I did this strain again, I would do 1.6EC until 3-4 weeks left then crank it to 1.9. It did plump them up when I went to 1.9, however it left them looking rough. Bulk was added though. - Sticking to 6.0PH for all of veg, and 2 weeks into flower worked great. The plant had solid and consistent color and leaf shape . The plant's did get hurt, due to some issues (as noted on the weeks). I switched to 6.5 PH in the last 3-4 weeks and it helped them recover, and plump up noticeably. -VPD. The #1 thing I focused on was VPD. I keep it .9kpa range, as best as humanly possible. It was honestly, HUGELY noticeable compared to my other grows. I know truly understand the value of properly dialed in VPD. This is the one lesson that will stick with me forever. - Super-cropping: On the plants I give the chiropractic treatment too, had much thicker stems as much larger channel internally. I did this treatment to 4 of the 6, and the 4 that had it done has larger buds and recovered from defoliation faster. TLDR; VPD is king. Super-cropping is worth the time. Keeping PH and EC dialed in were all wins. Autopots kick ass.

What an exciting grow this turned out to be. I had several hiccups with the system, but in the end, it was a very rewarding grow.