First Grow Autos
- Thread starter LordEnki
- Start date
Eugenios
Well-Known Member
Looks great. Enjoy your smoke
MATTYMATT726
Well-Known Member
If you can smoke it... came out perfect IMO.
LordEnki
Well-Known Member
thanks
I will definitely be smoking it. lol
i think its small because its my first plant to harvest, so I have no baseline. other 2 look like they'll be a bit larger in the end.
Humanrob
Well-Known Member
I appreciate your posting it. It seems to be human nature to post our best successes and not our lessor successes, and I think it skews the perceptual bell curve of how big the average auto plant is. This may have been your first plant, but it might have been this same size even if it was your 10th or 100th plant, because that was the full genetic potential of this particular pheno. Or you could have messed up and stunted it... either way, it finished and you'll learn something from it.
LordEnki
Well-Known Member
Not a problem! I didnt think i was going to have some crazy harvest, but they are smaller than I expected. Once the other 2 finish and are in jars I'll be starting a run of photos. I will definitely try to apply the knowledge I've gained from my first attempt.I appreciate your posting it. It seems to be human nature to post our best successes and not our lessor successes, and I think it skews the perceptual bell curve of how big the average auto plant is. This may have been your first plant, but it might have been this same size even if it was your 10th or 100th plant, because that was the full genetic potential of this particular pheno. Or you could have messed up and stunted it... either way, it finished and you'll learn something from it.
I'm pretty sure I stunted their growth, though. I'll be better next time.
Humanrob
Well-Known Member
I went the other way, grew photos for years and now I'm trying autos. So far I would say autos can be more difficult to grow, so you might find photos to be even easier or maybe more forgiving.
LordEnki
Well-Known Member
I was going to grow more autos, but I feel doing a few photo runs will be more helpful for learning purposes. I don't have enough experience to know when I'm running into trouble
Humanrob
Well-Known Member
Looks nice and frosty! Good work. Fluffy is just the nature of the beast, as far as I can tell. One nice thing about the loose bud structure is that it dries more quickly and evenly when you hang it.
LordEnki
Well-Known Member
yeah, but i was hoping for dense, hefty buds... can't always get what we want, though. lol
LordEnki
Well-Known Member
my fast buds gelato is starting its 11th week from sprout now. still not done.
Humanrob
Well-Known Member
Wow. If mine goes over 11 weeks, it'll still be going in May when I'm getting ready to start my outdoor.
How much longer would you estimate yours has?
LordEnki
Well-Known Member
im hoping only a few more weeks, but I'll let them go as long as it takes.
they're 24/0 and I'm probably going to switch to 18/6 to start a photo run shortly, though.
LordEnki
Well-Known Member
Am I incorrect to think these plants should be a bit larger? I understand I trained them a bit, but dang.... seems like a lot of wasted space. 
Fastbuds Gelato on left. Right is Barney's Farm Zkittlez OG.... taking their sweet time.
Both seem on the way out. At least the Gelato seems like its almost done.
Every time I look at them I keep thinking "only a few more weeks". lmao
The Z.OG looks like I may get an oz dried from it. A disappointing first try, but I have a few things I can change for the next grow, so I'm excited for that.
Fastbuds Gelato on left. Right is Barney's Farm Zkittlez OG.... taking their sweet time.
Both seem on the way out. At least the Gelato seems like its almost done.
Every time I look at them I keep thinking "only a few more weeks". lmao
The Z.OG looks like I may get an oz dried from it. A disappointing first try, but I have a few things I can change for the next grow, so I'm excited for that.
Humanrob
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I'm still new to growing autos indoors. I was concerned because my grow space is short, but until I figure out how to grow them well, it's way too easy to keep them small. My next indoor grow won't start until October, but I will be doing things completely differently when it comes around.
LordEnki
Well-Known Member
from my current experience, I doubt I'll worry about height with autos ever again. chances are I'll wait until i can do a medical grow before I grow autos again, so I can do more than 4 little plants at once.
Humanrob
Well-Known Member
I've been pondering the small stature of my first autos, and this is what I've come up with so far. When I was growing photos, the guys growing monster plants were usually using coco or hydro. I've always been a soil grower, but with photos I could make up for some of that medium disadvantage by vegging longer. I might veg for twice as long as the super growers and still only have 2/3's the finished weight, but it was enough for me and I got to grow the way I like to, so it was fine. I never really thought about it that much.
It seems to me that with autos, it's much more difficult to make up for the inherent limitations of growing in soil. I made some HUGE mistakes this first grow, trying to carry over methods that I used with photos (for some reason it worked outdoors, indoors in nearly killed them). I need to do more research to try and figure out what it is about coco/hydro/etc. that makes plants grow so much bigger, and see how much of that I can recreate with soil.
From what I've gathered, non-soil paradigms have very loose airy mediums which allow for unfettered root growth. They also have way more frequent light feedings that are capable of contacting the entire root mass. Soil has far fewer opportunities to feed since we water less frequently, so we end out putting larger amounts of food into our less frequent watering/feedings. So far I'm thinking about adding more perlite to my soil mix to lighten it, and I'm going to switch to liquid nutrients instead of dry for more accessibility and control. I'm definitely moving back to fabric pots from plastic, they dry out more quickly allowing more opportunities for gentle feeding.
I'm sure there are a lot more variables, but for me this will be the starting point. There is only so much I'll be able to do as long as I am me, which is to say, inherently lazy, and a fan of growing in soil. And everything I've said is probably obvious to most growers, it's just news to me. Sorry for the ramble... hope something in there was useful to you.