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Will flower the plants this weekend, let’s hope there is a bit of sun shine for them in the coming weeks

Just to clear up, the scientist type tinkering with his craft does not mean buying the cheapest bag of soil and trying his luck, that's just being lazy and calling it an experiment as an excuse. We don't pick apples from the citrus tree the exact same way we don't use azalea and hydrangea care products on cannabis plants. No "new frontier" information is going to come from someone buying already composed soil or products, as we all know each plant species demand their own specific kinda growing media, even within one genus like cannabis slight changes is needed. a tinkering scientist will be making his own soil, cause they're usually aware of the horrors of buying, well basically anything from the commercial nursery. experiment doesn't mean hitting google with a quick search and running to the commercial nursery for the cheapest product with that stuff in it. that's being lazy and wanting the quick fix. the more experienced you become as a grower the less time you spend running back and forth to the nursery or any grow shop for that matter. that's why we see the whole industry shift to biological control, living inputs. most nutrients your plants need is already in your kitchen and in the yard around your house

Howzit everyone, I'm Ky, an experienced Horticulturist from the Ornamental Green Industry since 2014 I'm very excited to be on a local forum, and hope I'll be able to learn plenty from fellow growers I've only been growing Cannabis since December 2021, mainly for research purposes, and inevitably I became captivated by this fascinating genus! I've managed to grow a couple proper harvests and have been hired to apply my expertise at my place of work, which is pretty aweskme! I'm hoping to bring something of value to the table when it comes to the local scene, or at least gain awesome plant knowledge that I can use on my botanical collection! And, of course, I am eager to make a couple friends along the way!

Lol na, I just like to see a thick layer of a mulch. Very beneficial for the plants and roots.

lol it's just normal hay stalks that I use for the mushrooms. would have liked to use barley, but didn't have on hand

I know the other Evan with the lights got a nice way to keep things dry under the canopy yet topsoil stays moist. he got some kind of plastic over the top of the pot. not sure right now if he grows synthetic or organic, but it'll benefit both situations. Oh hell yeah, good on picking up on that bro, that's the thing with auto watering systems and why I haven't gone down that route - It's the same as with most "weed knowledge" and I found a perfect picture on instagram the other day to describe it - we all went through this but we can replace the first and last picture with "watering by hand" and the one in the middle a guy ranting on about how a auto watering system is the best. Majority of growers start off watering by hand, then get to a point where auto watering systems will help them understand how media moisture works, then you hear professionals at the peak of their game talk about the "small private gardens", behind every big time guru is a private small garden grower that moves in silence. all the "new frontier" bits of information and methodology comes from a crazy scientist grower with no friends hardly every goes out and just tinkers with his craft day in and day out. those guys are the fuel to the fire we all gathering to catch some warmth from and they all water by hand. I also feel there's more authenticity to the bond formed between man and plant when watering by hand. anyway, joint almost finished so I'll jump back to the important bits. Yeah, auto systems work best when running one phenotype - clones of one mother. out of the random% of people that swing away from hand watering right from the start will get their motivation from synthetic growers. though these days I also see most auto watering growers letting go of their auto systems. not sure if they reached the next step in their journey or of they never got it right, but as of recent times, since no till living soil became the new focus, people have been using just clean water in the auto systems and it seems to work like a bomb. but then like you said, how do you manage when growing different phenos with different needs? I guess with synthetics in the res you can't cause of the fact that the feed goes with the water, but with organics the feed is already in the soil and you just giving clean water, the plants "self regulate" - take what they need and leave what they don't - in the soil. so you can grow different phenos. organics really just making everything easier for yeeeeeeears people wanted to pump organics through the auto system complaining organics is shit cause of this and that reason, but it's because people spend their time and money listening to retail floor staff that sell products, but doesn't even know 50% of the product they have in the shop. we forget where those people are and why they are there. I ask "where do you keep the aminos" not "would you please try your best to make up some randy shit trying to explain the depths of amino acids to me so your supervisor can see you talking to customers" and if I stand there listening to a guy explain to me how synthetics and organics are the same then that's my own lack of understanding will never forget how asking questions in the grow shop had one employee call the next employee call the next employee till the final boss master level employee came and still didn't even understand half of what I was saying

oh wait, you mean the leaves will make nice mulch?

Ayy welcome welcome, hope you need someone to consume your research, always got empty jars for more weed Show us what you got going on Does your place of work also grow cannabis or am I misunderstanding that part?

So the girls got the chop. Nice dense nugies with a awesome terpene on all three. The Boo Berry I must say has a very sweet terp. Sweetest I have ever encountered. A definite keeper. I would say about a 20g dry per plant. Was a joy..

Nice mulch

damn more than half a year, a lot has changed... since building my own soil and moving away from bottled nutes things have been looking different. got a small batch of 5 different phenos of the Strawberry Sugarcookie by our local master @Totemic will be cloning them all, looking for the best out the bunch, after this gona dig to find a good male to knock up a lady with. time to start crossing, also got sts long time ago to do some reversing, gotta pull my socks up and get busy! plant is about 30 to 45cm high and throwing leaves bigger than my hand. one finger one one of the girls leaves made a duck foot, not the whole leaf, just one finger bottom left finger

Nice looking setup. I don't have as much exp as these guys however I am om day 73 of my 1st auto-run as well. Just a mention on the wire you are using, I did the same, the wire got hot under the lights, and the ladies didn't like that. (I could see some slight brown impressions where they were in contact with the stem and branches, so I replaced them with the green wire ties. RE: LST, you want gradually guide the plant. I found that simply adjusting the training wires/hooks/bends works well for the autos. I started doing this because I broke the main cola on 2 of the 3, one by being a complete bull in a China shop and turning with the main behind me and snap. The other one I truly believe I LST that one too late, so it got stronger than the rest and so less bendable compared to the other 2 and I over pushed my luck. Good news is that the is still 1 with it's main cola and I think I cocked up early enough that the plants was still able to divert the energy to the rest of the buds and I consider myself lucky in the sense that the genetics of the plants were of a strong so it could recover and I think I should be getting a decent result, however I share the same goal as you and that is to just get through it best way I can and enjoy the journey. I mentioned before that growing cannabis is just as addictive as using it. You will be surprised at their stretch phase, followed by the fattening of the buds phase. (I was, especially what most people had to say about autos and how finicky they are. (I guess good genetics would be a factor, because I fckd up a couple of times, with different small things that my ladies didn't like and they still forgave me. I suppose I will have to wait until after dry and cure to see how much she penalised for my mistakes. But "there is much more learned in defeat than in victory" as the Japanese saying goes. (I will make a post of all my mistakes when the run is done, a blooper post so to speak. ) The whole point is to get all the buds exposure to the light and that you will best see from the top view. (Added some pics to show you what I mean, although there might be better ways in achieving that goal, I did what I thought would work best) My Northern Lights Auto I took a different approach, also guiding them piece by piece and I will see how that turns out. I am pretty optimistic, since you can see 4 nodes coming up from the stem while the others now do almost a fishbone kind off effect. It looks like you're off to a way better start than I was so I am sure your autos will treat you well. Happy Growing

What's goooood bud, hope and trust all is well on your side For autos going through the HST you threw at them you got great results! Generally the rule of thumb with autos is "just add water" and it's not too literal, I mean they do need nutes, but the notion goes - you want to cause them as little stress as absolute possible. in most cases even LST will be too much for an auto to handle, things like topping and training is considered fringe practice when talking about autos. for the most part, you don't wana touch them. you don't wana defoliate them, you don't wana top them. you don't even wana repot them, that can also be too much stress for them. so going by the "just add water" thing, it's best to never have fluctuations in the soil, this will happen much easier when you're relying on yourself to understand how synthetic nutrients work. there is a point of growing you reach where you understand soil so well that you really do only have to add water, those will be your best growing conditions (talking rhizosphere) and it will be the safest bet for growing autos as everything is "pre-balanced" you literally just give clean water. don't get me wrong, some dudes achieve MAGIC results with synthetic bottled nutes, they have their place, but seeing as you starting out you in a very good position to decide to "go with" one thing or "go with" the other thing. in the long run, it's just a matter of time before synthetic nutes will dwindle and become obsolete, some huge movements being made in the world of organic growing. the misconception based around plants growing faster with synthetic nutes is based on the fact that people actually follow recommendations on the bottles instead, the marketing sector has mislead the masses into synthetics, cause there's a higher profit margin on these products than with organics, organics when done right will keep you away from the grow shops. and trust me, the grow shop is the very last place you wana go for growing guidance, those guys are there to sell a product and up their KPA within the company, they don't give a hoot about you aslong as you come back to buy more products. Anyway, as I was saying, you did great here brother. Probably got better results from that auto than I would have. I've never tried autos, cause of the -no time to forgive mistakes- characteristic all autos come with. I still run into hickups with each grow I do. Learning every day still. Just another note, those plants got stunted at some point right, and a stunted plant will obviously not be taking up nutrients the same way as a raging prolific plant. so maybe rethink the way you're cross referencing and approaching the next grow. the leaf necrosis you see there might be from root stress. nutrient lock out from not being able to use the nutes you gave it, cause it was spending time standing still from the HST you put it through. What may have saved you is that you planted directly into your final pots, so root space was more than abundant, but as the knife cuts both ways, it's also very easy to get the watering wrong when dealing with any small plant and big pot. even with photoperiods, most new growers over water their plants when starting out. the moisture levels and the watering technique for organic growers and synthetic growers also differ a bunch, but in both situations it becomes harder when it's a bigger pot and smaller plant. so with autos it becomes that much harder as they don't allow any slip ups. so yeah bud, pat yourself on the back, you did great here! If you going same route next grow one thing I would suggest is leave the training completely. those photos of Mr.Canuk training, not sure if it's autos, but if it was he probably mentioned that autos shouldn't be trained but he is taking chances, I would argue that it's based on his skill and experience level. that man knows exactly what's going on in his soil, I've probably watched all his videos and he also knows exactly what to do and when and if he runs into problems it's a matter of hours before it's resolved. If you're at the level of being one step ahead of the plants then you can take the chance to train an auto, but I wouldn't recommend it for beginners. Honestly I wouldn't recommend autos at all for beginners, you can't clone them either. so it's a one and done, what's the fun in that? also a bit counter-intuitive if LST/HST is meant to increase yield, but try it on an auto it'll cut your already smaller yield into half or even worse you only yield like 20g best way to get the most out of an auto is no training, no stress at all and then still you wont be able to achieve the yield of a photoperiod. one should never expect photoperiod results from an auto not even if everythings 100%

June 12 Felt a bit anxious to update, as the grow has been having some complications. However, teaching myself to learn to accept error and being okay with mistakes is part of the reason I got into this . Wrote this update while quite cheesed btw, so apologies for sentence structure. Reflection/Things I will do differently next time. 1.) Train completely differently.. My lawd. You'll see what I mean by my photos at the bottom. I started by following guides and examples. These are EXAMPLES (Not my plants) I was aiming to follow, in order of growth: Instead, I was very overzealous (First time excitement) and ended up keeping the plants very low constantly to try and achieve the most "even" canopy Ending up with a plant very low and close to the grow medium, little to no stretch. An extreme version of this: In hindsight this has made watering a nightmare, as its difficult to get the water under the canopy without it touching the leaves. Have had many leaves get nute burn on them via being touched by the feed. This makes diagnosing possible nutrient issues more difficult, as it could be either from feed touching the leaf, or something else. 2.) Use gardening rubber soft ties for LST. Every guide does this, everyone uses it. So why didn't I? Idk. I used galvanized steel binding wire from a hardware store, which I snipped and bent to create little tie downs I push into the soil. If they get wet, I'm not sure if they will oxidize/corrode and this leeches into soil or onto plants. 3.) Water More.. As you can see at the top of this diary, my setup actually came with a big black catching tray for all the runoff. I thought to myself "How tf am I going to take out all the pots, carry this thing outside and empty it. That's dumb". So I watered less, to avoid all this crazy runoff, aiming to get little to no runoff, as I thought that made sense. Then I saw @The Grass Baas mentioned vacuuming the runoff in his set-up where he uses the same runoff catcher. I literally have a workshop vac that can vacuum liquid. I'm dumb. As of now I have put the big runoff tray back in my tent, and watered properly. Then, I simply vacuum all the runoff. Thank you @The Grass Baas, you helped me there tremendously. I feel that this lack of proper watering is what has caused my younger plants to be so small in Week 5. (You'll see what I mean) 4.) Measure my EC/PPM , I didn't realize it was important. I don't have a pen, so as of now I haven't done this once in my first grow. tsk tsk.. 5.) pH check my runoff, I couldn't do this as I didn't have any runoff to pH >.< But as per point 3, that will now change. Will start to check. 6.) Feed based on the bottle instructions, Instead of just reading the bottles, and halving the amount per litre for my autos, I followed a US YouTuber's feed guide. Using a gallon measurement and converting everything back and forth is an absolute ball-ache. Been way easier working with litres instead. If any of you read through these reflections, I would love your feedback and input! Moving onto the actual update (no judge plz ty) Plant #1 - Critical Auto - 45 Days Old Plant #2 - Critical Auto - 45 Days Old Plant #3 - Fruit Salad Auto - 36 Days Old (Regular, idk if female, see this thread) Plant #4 - Amnesia Haze Auto - 36 Days Old (Also check this weird ass leaf. Never seen a leaf split like that at the bottom.) Plant #5 - Critical Auto - 36 Days Old Plant #6 - Amnesia Haze Auto - 36 Days Old (Probably the best of all the younger ones) Honestly I am enjoying the whole process, even though it was waaaaay more complicated that I expected xD But that is what makes it exciting and fun Special shoutout to @Ill_Evan for being a certified ganja guide and taking the time to answer my constant questions through Steam. Legend, thank you! Even if my yields are sub-par, I've never grown indoor and will be happy that I managed without a complete disaster. If you made your way to the bottom of the thread, congrats! And thank you!

So the girls are in their final stretch.. About a week or so, then the ✂. Boo Velvet Catalina

Below a pic update of the girls. They going into week 7. Loadshedding is a real pain..

there is P and K in both the Grow and the Fish mix... why do you think they do that? they need it in all phases of plant life just smaller amounts at first. I understand the force feeding thing with some liquid organic inputs, but like I mentioned, they where lacking in all departments and the same way you give grow and focus on the sugar that keeps the microbes happy, I give P and K not only cause they looked like they needed it, but also to keep enzymes alive, because as we all know it takes a specific enzyme to break down specific compounds and they all need to be present to form a complete symbiosis. most plant enzymes are stimulated/activated strictly by K ions. phosphates are broken down by phosphatase. they all need to be present at all times to make the soil "alive". there's also elemental blend in the soil as mentioned before, which has to break down a bunch and slowly release nutrients over time. either way, I clearly overdid it here with the P and K, but I am sure had I not neglected all the plants for a month then try to make up for it by being heavy handed, maybe one feed less wouldn't have caused the roots to lock out N like is now. because of this, instead of dark green, the new growth turned bright yellow as seen in the photos, older growth stayed green turned a little darker. looking back the amount of P and K in the grow and fish mix might have been enough, anyway we live and we learn. thanks for the help and inputs!