First Grow

StickyFin Hey y’all, I just finished my first harvest today! My first grow was two LSD Autos from Herbies. I germinated them on June 28th, and they shed their shells on July 4th, putting me at 72 days from sprout to harvest. I was trying to hold out as long as I could, but based on the coloring and deficiencies I was seeing toward the end, I decided to pull them today. The grow itself was pretty simple: Shot-glass germination FoxFarm Happy Frog soil 5-gallon fabric pots Dechlorinated tap water A couple of Recharge teas early in the grow Spider Farmer auto-watering/wicking bases starting around week 4 Once I switched to bottom watering, I stopped using the Recharge teas and basically let the wicking system take over. I did a pretty heavy wet trim today before loading everything into my Cannatrol. Total post-trim wet weight was 394.6 g. I’ll update with the actual dry/cured flower weight once the Cannatrol finishes rather than trying to predict it from the wet weight. I also separated out a fair amount of larf that I’ll probably use for edibles. Overall, I’m happy that I made it through my first grow and harvest, but there’s also a lot I’m unhappy with about how I executed it, and that’s really what I’m hoping to improve on next time. One thing I’m particularly curious about is what happened with the Spider Farmer wicking system. It worked really well, but once the plants got into flower, I almost wonder if they effectively turned themselves into a semi-hydro grow. The root mass that developed inside the watering bases was INSANE, while the soil itself eventually became completely bone dry. That has me wondering what I should have done differently. Once the root system became heavily established in the reservoir, should I have started supplying nutrients through the bottom-watering system? Could the heavy yellowing I saw during the final week or so have been caused by the plants no longer getting much nutrition from the dry soil? Should I have resumed top watering once I realized how dry the soil had become? I left it alone at the time because I was worried that top watering while the reservoir was supplying water would result in overwatering, but looking back I’m wondering if that was the wrong call. I also intentionally grew the two plants differently just to see what would happen. I topped one and gave it some light LST around the middle of week 2 from sprout. I left the other completely alone for comparison. They developed VERY differently. The topped/LST plant developed much more of a short, bushy structure, while the untouched plant grew much more like a Christmas tree. The untrained plant eventually became WAY too tall for the tent, and I ended up having to supercrop it extremely late in the grow just to keep it under control. So that was definitely a lesson learned. For those of you with more experience, I’m also curious what you think of the yield once I have the final dry weight. This was two autos in a 2×2, and I’d really like to establish a realistic baseline for what this space is capable of rather than just chasing a particular number. For my next grow, I now have two 2×2 tents, and I’m planning to grow one plant per tent. I have a lot of ideas for things I want to change, but before I start the next run I’d really like to crowdsource some advice from everyone here. My ultimate goal is to develop a growing method that’s as repeatable and dummy-proof as possible. I’m particularly interested in automating watering and nutrient delivery wherever it makes sense so that I’m not constantly making subjective decisions about when or how much to water/feed. Any advice, criticism, or observations about the grow are absolutely welcome. This was my first one, so I’m here to learn. Ohh and the smell today was CRAZY. Very floral and sweet, but underneath it there’s this funky smell that I can only describe as a sour baby diaper.