I've never run autos, but I've read they're not ideal for outdoors... I believe their life span is predetermined, and they need as many sunlight hours as possible during that life span to reach their full potential ... I bet they would do much better at an extreme northern or southern latitude in the summer when they have 23 hour days
Yea, I guess you could call it super soil .. i filled the beds last year with peat, local compost, mushroom compost, manure, and a bunch of different organic DTE amendments. I won't till the beds this year, they've all shrunk by about 3-4 inches so I'll just top them off with the same type of soil after planting, and then about once a month throughout the season I'll top dress. Other than occasional AACT they'll only get water throughout their life.
I honestly can't understand why people use salts outdoors ... it's just so much easier to mix up a good soil with everything the plants will need in the beginning and just let them go ... I can understand it indoors for people without a lot of space to mix, store, and cook soil... or in hydro obviously ... but it just doesn't make sense to me outdoors. Through millions of years of evolution mother nature has already provided everything a plant could ever need to reach it's full potential ... it's absurd to think that some company has come along in the last decade and reverse engineered mother nature.. all they're doing is re-packaging the same salts as everyone else, slapping a cartoon sticker on the bottle, and calling it the next best thing.