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What is the best soil to use when growing auto flowers? Should the soil be airy or more compact? How does this affect germination and seedling stages of growth?
Hi
You can buy lots of premix bags already done for you at grow shops,
I use 80% soil and 20% perlite and its great ive not had an issues,
Best of luck bro 🌱
I am extremely happy with how quickly the seeds germinated; although I was still a bit nervous to plant them since I have never grown auto flowers. I’m just trying not to put too much thought into it as I find overthinking can lead to mistakes; like overwatering, excessive nutrients, too much light, or not enough heat. I would say it either gets excessive, or lacking, when overthought! Gonna go with the flow/grow.☮️💚
So this being my first time growing auto flowers, I would say the main difference from a deep water culture grow is, obviously, how different watering is! I actually find this to be a little bit easier than an automated drip system that’s used with Autopots; at least at this point, since I am used to leaving or keeping the soil at field capacity, that is not an issue with these auto flowers!
Everything is going very well! I added a Crimson Clover cover crop this week! Crimson clover has many benefits that can be an asset to a farming system. prevent erosion and builds soil. It prevents nutrient runoff and allows more precipitation to go into the soil. This builds the soils for future crop systems. Crimson clover is also a nutrient scavenger, so it brings up nutrients from deeper in the soil. Crimson clover offers elongated, deep red blossoms to beneficial insects such as bees. The blossoms are 0.5-1 inch in length and produce lots of nectar. Crimson clover also serve as a habitat for beneficial predators.
So being somebody that is used to growing photoperiod plants, I find it extremely boring to grow auto flowers; even though they do grow much more quickly, they do not require as much hands-on care, and. in my opinion, don’t have enough time to truly reap the benefits of a no till, living soil, since the mychoriza and mycelium, do not have the time that it takes to be truly effective to the rhizosphere, in a way that makes it worth paying $15 per seed not to sound pompous, as this entire grow could go south in a week, but I am somebody that likes to get in my garden and get my hands dirty as opposed to getting a high yield that is trash, just so I can call myself a drug dealer.
I have to be completely honest and say this week was a little disappointing since were the first auto flowers that I ever grew I somehow was able to get much larger but I am grateful for whatever I get! I think the main component into size is genetics! The plant that I was able to grow much larger it was an MK ultra from TH seeds who is out of Amsterdam, and have great genetics
They are growing nicely after feeding a compost tea ☕️ that was heavy in fungal matter. The buds are beginning to take shape and a couple of the plants have begun to deliver some bud formation. Smells are beginning to take effect as well, with heavy whiffs of earth and diesel.
This week I decided to defoliate just a bit. I was sure t remove only three leaves a day, to each plant, as to not over stress the plants overall health! Bud formation has begun, showing bright, fluorescent, orange stigmas with a light odor beginning to occur. Smells floral and diesel, very nice. I will continue to feed with H20 from my tap, which runs through an AquaOx and is pH’ed at 6.2-6.5. Looking forward to another great week!☮️💚
It was nice to see a lot of developments this week! Particularly, the elevation of bud structure and plant formation. The plants that were topped seem to performing very well, which is always good! Look forward to these being ready for harvest around Christmas!
This week I set up the blumats on all of these except for two just because I’m curious how the final product comes out I’m not trying to compare and contrast any type of yield I’m just curious about the actual quality; although I don’t think this will really make any difference, it just makes it easier to keep everything at field capacity, to allow all those nutrients to be consumed by the plant. Not sure exactly when these will be done, but they are looking great, have been extremely easy to grow, and have a terrific terpene profile on the come up ⬆️ Lots of floral fragrances, hints of lime and grapefruit, while lagging diesel overtones seem to hold her down! Exactly what I was looking for. The H20 that is being fed through the blu-mats consists of only my tap, which is pH’ed to 6.5-6.7, so I’ll bring that down to around 6.2-6.4 with a small amount of molasses, to keep the microbial life thriving. So far, this grow has been nothing but pleasurable!☮️💚 Happy growing to all!!!
This week I fed Tea ☕️ that consisted of my own worm castings from the bin I made a few months back, molasses for the microbes , and a chicken manure product from Coop Poop. I can already see the difference, unless that’s my mind playing tricks on me, but I like to think that it is working! I think my own castings are the real catalyst to new growth; both now as well as in the future! I did check the trichomes on the plants that seem to be entering senescence (final stage of life). They seem to be still somewhat clear, so I will wait at least another week to harvest. As far as everything else, it has been an easy, uneventful, grow! ☮️💚
This week I’ve just been keeping an eye on the trichomes, which are ripening nicely. Starting to see a somewhat fading as the plant enters senescence. I have seen a huge benefit from the tea I fed last week! I stopped watering after this tea was fed. Looking good so far!☮️💚
I did harvest 3 plants this week, but those were ahead of the others. They were also the runts of the group! There are another three plants that have not been chopped. (As pictured). These plants were a little larger and are taking some extra time to finish up.
I would have given this all ten stars, the only reason being that I didn’t is because there were a few runts. That could also be me as well, so I tried to be as fair as possible! The buds are extremely dense and smell like grapefruit and plums with large diesel notes. Purplish hues throw show through the extremely dark green and lots of different orange hues.