First Autopot Grow - A troubled start

Dragosani666 This grow has some firsts for me. I wanted to try out AutoPots with Airdomes. Since they recommend Coco it's also my first grow in Coco. Also I added an AC Infinity Cloudforge T3 humidifier to my setup. The grow started off with some trouble and I almost scrapped everything. So I didn't plan to post anything here at first. But what looked like a failed attempt at first later exploded in growth. White Widow started off by germinating from the wrong side. Instead of a tap root the green part poked out of the shell. Few days after planting them I noticed WW started to grow but was causing trouble again. Her root was growing up and then horizontally blow the surface of the substrate instead of down. I carefully dug her out and replanted in the correct orientation. As you can see the development of all 3 plants started VERY slow. Especially the White Widow looked weak and extremely small for 2 weeks old. I suspect the substrate temp and initial nutrient supply might have been too low. Also I had to learn how to water properly for coco. Using 50/50 perlite and coco right away was probably a bad idea too. But look to the next weeks for a pleasant surprise. These are Autoflowers so I did not expect them to grow to a useful size before they switched to flowering. But since 2 looked at least somewhat healthy, although small, I kept going to see what happens and to learn from it. Now (a few weeks later) I'm glad I did. 😁

Dragosani666 2 weeks later, so 4+ weeks old at this point, the plants grew at least a little bit, but still way behind expectation. They were still below the recommended size for transplantation to the AutoPots, but I did not want to wait any longer. For ~10 days I watered the them by hand twice daily. Remember this is 50/50 coco and perlite, so over watering was supposed to be almost impossible. After that turned on the water supply and Pump for the Airdomes.

Dragosani666 Now look at them only 10 days later. Guess the ladies like their new home. Especially White Widow in the front exploded in growth. The other two already switched to flowering and began stretching. They are still relatively small but proofed incredibly resilient.

Dragosani666 Im logging this as flowering since Z-Up and OG Kush are already flowering for some time now. White Widow in the front is about to start soon too. As you can see WW did not slow down, growing into a respectable bush, especially considering how tiny and sick it looked at the beginning. She has already grown higher than the others and that's before stretching. Her leaves are among the largest I have seen so far. At this point I am happy I did not start over the whole grow when it started bad. The AutoPots and Airdomes seem to work wonders for the plants health and I don't have to hand feed them all the time, only check pH and refill the tank from time to time. Can't wait to see how much roots have developed once they are harvested.