Growing Auto's

[Chris Jay]

Howdy fellow growers

Needing some advice as I am getting information overload here. An opportunity has arisen to grow some dank auto's from Dutch Passion. Below is the information I have received, and it seems auto's have their own growing style. I am fairly new at auto plants, but now see their value after my first winter harvest. Information have learnt from seasoned growers. 

- top the plants for more bud sites and bigger yield
- auto's dont like nitrogen rich soil
- auto’s need about 2/3 weeks extra light time from seed to get as big as possible
- 40 litre pots are too big, 10 - 15 litre. 
- they dont like being transplanted. 

Due to the speed of lifecycle, I think anything would compromise the growth, like topping, transplanting or changing the growing medium. I am planning on sprouting the seeds in rockwool, reduce the horse manure in my soil mix e.g 1/5 horse manure, 2/5 coco perlite, 2/5 kak compost. Only going to fill 40 litre bags to the 25 litre mark. Would love any other suggestions and information you might have. 

[Prom]

I wouldn't top or cut any branches off an auto. Let em be ^^

[Totemic]

Ive also only just started growing autos...

They respond well to LST if you start early, between day 14 and 21.

They dont like as much water at all, so i let the pot really really dry out and get light before watering. 

They might not tolerate as much N as photos, but dont make your soil to light. I use reammended FF premium, with no need to feed the soil for the first month. 

Plant 2 or 3 autos in a 40l if you want to maximize yield for that volume. Mine are in 15l and they are a pretty decent size, between 60-100cm.

Otherwise im still on that same learning curve right now

 

 

[Chris Jay]

@prom, thanks for that

5 minutes ago, Totemic said:

I use reammended FF premium

Love it, thats what we have going, was not sure whether to use it or not, maybe a waste. 

 

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Mine are in 15l and they are a pretty decent size, between 60-100cm

Going to go for 20 litres which was recommended to us. 

Thanks for the advice and support in this learning curve. Yip I have never been fond of auto's, great to change my mind though. 

Edited September 26, 2022 by Chris Jay

[Prom]

For people like you guys, knowing the plant in and out, you will go on an amazing ride with Autos... my first batch of autos left me speechless by amazement.

I try now to push my clones to go same harvest results but still fail. With Autos i reach harvest results I can only dream about by using clones. As you have to start from seeds, the taste factor is where clones win, but potency Autos don't have to hide anywhere. Last time I chatted with Qure and Cannabliss.. Autos were the top spot of THC content chart, they produce highly potent plants.. you just can't pheno hunt em and need the breeder to do a perfect job. Breeder is key here.. and why I enjoy 42Fastbuds so much for autos. 

Auto seeds I would only get from breeders offering ONLY auto plants.. and photos from breeders only offering photos. They focus on their job and not on a huge selection. Having 10 strains stabilized in terpenes will result in better harvest material as the 'jack of all trades' resellers looking for a fast bug.

Best auto genetics you get from the US boys.. would skip the Europeans on Autos.. they missed the train for years.

[SkunkPharm]

What I have learnt over the last 6 months is that plants like to grow together. If you are doing these outdoors I would do 4 plants in a 40l pot. Do lst training on each plant in a different direction. It does not take much for them to be happy. 

[Chris Jay]

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What I have learnt over the last 6 months is that plants like to grow together. If you are doing these outdoors I would do 4 plants in a 40l pot.

Ohhh, ohhh why dont you just break my mind. It makes sense what you are you saying. I might even try that. 

My beans landed at lunchtime and have part of a variety I have always wanted to grow, Mazar Auto. Got gifted about 5 varieties, plus 2 packs of Think Different and white widow . So starting out with testing 3 different germination methods first. 

1. Polystyrene cup with leached freedom farms soil
2. rockwool
3. egg container with homemade compost

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Best auto genetics you get from the US boys.. would skip the Europeans on Autos.. they missed the train for years.

I have heard that tooo many times, even on a group that would ban me if I posted anything about an Auto dutch seed or any auto seed for that matter. But its time to #thinkdifferent . 

Thank you for your input @Prom, @Totemic and @SkunkPharm. Much appreciated. Updates coming, thick and fast. 

[Chris Jay]

Another tip, add silica to your auto's, it fattens them up. Well add silica to your soil, it helps many ways. 

[ORGANinc.]

33 minutes ago, Chris Jay said:

Another tip, add silica to your auto's, it fattens them up. Well add silica to your soil, it helps many ways. 

What type of silica are you adding to your soil?

[Chris Jay]

Liquid Silica, no name brand, unopened and not used yet. 

[ORGANinc.]

17 minutes ago, Chris Jay said:

Liquid Silica, no name brand, unopened and not used yet. 

Cheers man, ya I'm looking for some type of organic mineral amendment that I can add to the soil without altering the functionality of the soil and being harmful to the microbes. 

I have seen a product on Hydroponic but its really acidic, like 1ph, so im not too sure. Its called Eckosil. 

[Ill_Evan]

30 minutes ago, ORGANinc. said:

Cheers man, ya I'm looking for some type of organic mineral amendment that I can add to the soil without altering the functionality of the soil and being harmful to the microbes. 

I have seen a product on Hydroponic but its really acidic, like 1ph, so im not too sure. Its called Eckosil. 

I've been using AgriSil K50 for the first time and so far so good. Managed to revitalise some plants after transplant using it. pH was pretty high though and they recommend not mixing with any other nutrients when using it. I managed to pH the solution quite easily and used it initially as a foliar spray. I will do a soil drench with it in a week or so. 

[SkunkPharm]

Barley has a really high silica content. That is another reason I add it to the soil and make teas with it.

[ORGANinc.]

17 minutes ago, SkunkPharm said:

Barley has a really high silica content. That is another reason I add it to the soil and make teas with it.

How much do you add? I put malt barley as part of my top dress, but I’m thinking about doing much more. 

[SkunkPharm]

6 hours ago, ORGANinc. said:

How much do you add? I put malt barley as part of my top dress, but I’m thinking about doing much more. 

1l per 100l then dilute that mix even further

[The_StonedTrooper]

8 hours ago, ORGANinc. said:

Cheers man, ya I'm looking for some type of organic mineral amendment that I can add to the soil without altering the functionality of the soil and being harmful to the microbes. 

I have seen a product on Hydroponic but its really acidic, like 1ph, so im not too sure. Its called Eckosil. 

Diatomaceous earth 

8 hours ago, Ill_Evan said:

I've been using AgriSil K50 for the first time and so far so good. Managed to revitalise some plants after transplant using it. pH was pretty high though and they recommend not mixing with any other nutrients when using it. I managed to pH the solution quite easily and used it initially as a foliar spray. I will do a soil drench with it in a week or so. 

This too, very interesting 

1 hour ago, SkunkPharm said:

1l per 100l then dilute that mix even further

 

[The_StonedTrooper]

Diatomaceous earth is pretty much pure silica, and has other added benefits 

Liquid, as mentioned by Evan, can fall out of nutrients and doesnt hold lekker in a medium 

[Bay Seeds]

Once you start looking into autos and then stumble into the bigger superautos like ''think big and think different from dutch passion'' you will realize that autos are here to stay and the bad reputation they had is no longer relevant with the modern improvements in size and thc. They just finish better. Just dont mess up in the first 4 weeks and you will be fine. Never overwater an auto and dont skimp on perlite. 

[ORGANinc.]

8 hours ago, The_StonedTrooper said:

Diatomaceous earth is pretty much pure silica, and has other added benefits 

Liquid, as mentioned by Evan, can fall out of nutrients and doesnt hold lekker in a medium 

Yes I do use diatomaceous but I’m not looking at ultimately feeding it to the soil, as an amendment it serve a good purpose, but some say it can also be hard on the creepy crawley as it cuts them up very often. However it’s not the end of the world, just wouldn’t add more than I do already 

[Chris Jay]

diatomaceous earth is a beautiful resource, we use it for our dogs, chickens and soil. Its a total necessity for farming, never realised it had silica in it, thanks @The_StonedTrooper.  Ironically I used to sell it to the ladies at our local farmers coop. 

 

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How much do you add? I put malt barley as part of my top dress, but I’m thinking about doing much more. 

I am starting to think, Bokashi? I attended a workshop recently, and the guys hosting it were not selling the product, just sharing the knowledge. You had to see their smiles, and their damn plants, FIRE. I think it was bran they were mixing the EM ( ? ) with, but I am sure barley. Next step is the bokashi trail and looking forward to it. 

Edited September 29, 2022 by Chris Jay

[The_StonedTrooper]

I'm also using bokashi or how ever written 

Great stuff, every bag of soil has it, and baked with it as a top layer

The silica will slowly leach out with waterings on the diatomaceous earth 

[The_StonedTrooper]

8 hours ago, ORGANinc. said:

Yes I do use diatomaceous but I’m not looking at ultimately feeding it to the soil, as an amendment it serve a good purpose, but some say it can also be hard on the creepy crawley as it cuts them up very often. However it’s not the end of the world, just wouldn’t add more than I do already 

I believe, only sharp when dry, and when in soil, it's not active enough to kill off microbes or small bugs.

It only works on mites when they hit with it dry.

As mentioned, it kind of dissolves into the soil, and that is the silica you will get in slow release 

[ORGANinc.]

29 minutes ago, The_StonedTrooper said:

I believe, only sharp when dry, and when in soil, it's not active enough to kill off microbes or small bugs.

It only works on mites when they hit with it dry.

As mentioned, it kind of dissolves into the soil, and that is the silica you will get in slow release 

Thanks for the clarification, I have heard it has much less of a pest ipm type of affect after consecutive waterings and good to note that. 
 

aswell as the available silica to gain 
 

I will be combining my next top dress with some soil, and more amendment with diatoms and I’ll add the total topdress, I did it once before and the results were noticeable. 
 

thanks for your input 

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

when buying DE it's important to get the expensive / food grade stuff as you only want the diatoms, but what most people seem to look over is that the powder you get is not the diatoms, that's just the carrier powder. that's why every second DE product looks slightly different in colour or texture and if you buy the cheapest stuff you putting talc powder and all sorts of other unwanted compounds in your soil.

the product is much like mycos in the way that it needs a carrier, because diatoms are living micro organisms. they're phytoplankton. they live in bodies of water. like rivers, lakes, ocean and what not. they're extracted and kept dormant in a dried state for many many many years and they'll come back to life when introduced to water. much like algea, because as a whole, that's what phytoplankton are. your soil is not a body of water so they cannot thrive there and because they're microscopic once introduced to water or moisture they come to life again and because they're in some unfavourable habitat they quickly die off and get consumed by other microbes

diatoms have bodies like cells and what makes up the outer layer of their bodies/cell wall is a pure silica compound with a sharded glass like texture, though this too gets broken down by other microbes. that's the silica release. 

when used as pest management it really only works when kept in the dry dormant state on your top soil where other microbes can't access it. they really only do any kinda harm to larvae. even very very soft bodied soil dwellers such as any kind of earthworm will be unphased by the diatoms. anything that can jump or fly just gona laugh at the diatoms. once you ontroduce water or any kinda moisture to the diatoms you wake them up and they basically immediately start dying off and consumed, cause they're not in their preferred habitat.

if you can kill off any larvae in the top soil that's a big win already that's why I use it a lot, with most DE products you'll run into an overload of the physical powder used as a carrier creating negatively charged or dry pockets in your soil way before hitting a silica toxicity. obviously depending on the given silica content in the soil. 

[The_StonedTrooper]

12 hours ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

when buying DE it's important to get the expensive / food grade stuff as you only want the diatoms, but what most people seem to look over is that the powder you get is not the diatoms, that's just the carrier powder. that's why every second DE product looks slightly different in colour or texture and if you buy the cheapest stuff you putting talc powder and all sorts of other unwanted compounds in your soil.

the product is much like mycos in the way that it needs a carrier, because diatoms are living micro organisms. they're phytoplankton. they live in bodies of water. like rivers, lakes, ocean and what not. they're extracted and kept dormant in a dried state for many many many years and they'll come back to life when introduced to water. much like algea, because as a whole, that's what phytoplankton are. your soil is not a body of water so they cannot thrive there and because they're microscopic once introduced to water or moisture they come to life again and because they're in some unfavourable habitat they quickly die off and get consumed by other microbes

diatoms have bodies like cells and what makes up the outer layer of their bodies/cell wall is a pure silica compound with a sharded glass like texture, though this too gets broken down by other microbes. that's the silica release. 

when used as pest management it really only works when kept in the dry dormant state on your top soil where other microbes can't access it. they really only do any kinda harm to larvae. even very very soft bodied soil dwellers such as any kind of earthworm will be unphased by the diatoms. anything that can jump or fly just gona laugh at the diatoms. once you ontroduce water or any kinda moisture to the diatoms you wake them up and they basically immediately start dying off and consumed, cause they're not in their preferred habitat.

if you can kill off any larvae in the top soil that's a big win already that's why I use it a lot, with most DE products you'll run into an overload of the physical powder used as a carrier creating negatively charged or dry pockets in your soil way before hitting a silica toxicity. obviously depending on the given silica content in the soil. 

Interesting, and good points.

Looking at it again, as I was of slightly different understanding. Found this on wiki