1st Time Grower - First Post

[PDreer]

Hello all,

Thank you in advance for any knowledge you can share for my first grow. TLDR is I was overloaded with info as a first timer and kind of winged it or flipped a coin on a few things. My plants seem healthy other than a runt I believe wasn’t soaked long enough in shot glass. I just need a consensus on all the contradicting stuff I read and want to eliminate future potential issues. I’ve just read and absorbed so much and continue to do so and keep finding things that worry me and make me secind guess.

I started a grow diary that has some pics:

ETHOS Genetics Pluto Cut Autoflower R F3 grow journal by PDreer - GrowDiaries

Ticket details:

-What strain, Seed bank, or bag seed (photo or auto)
4 x Ethos Pluto Cap R F3 Autos
-Age of plants
Germed 5/20
3 sprouted 5/21 the other 5/24
-Method:
FF Cultivation Nation 70/30 Coco Perlite mix
-Vessels: Type and capacity of container (fabric, plastic, etc)
5 gallon fabric bags (AC Infinity) on self watering pots (also ACI)
-PH and TDS of Water, Solution, runoff (if Applicable)
Tap water ppm is 160 ph’d to piss yellow with wide range test strips that came with pH up/down kit so not sure of actual number but I try to match the color to 6 the best I can
-PPM/TDS or EC of nutrient solution if applicable
Started small nute regimen was 250ish and prepared next batch of water between 3 and 400 but not sure if I should keep it low.
Botanicare CalMag and very small amount of Fox Farms Hydro trio
-Method used to measure PH
Wide range test strips
-and TDS
HoneForest tester
-Indoor or Outdoor if indoor, size of grow space
4x4x6.8 AC Infinity 844 Tent Kit
-Light system List brand and wattage/spectrum
AC Infinity IONBOARD S44, FULL SPECTRUM LED GROW LIGHT 400W, SAMSUNG LM301H, 4X4 FT. COVERAGE
-Actual wattage draw of lights
Not sure
-Current Light Schedule
20/4 On 4pm, Off 12pm 50% power at top of tent by exhaust.
-Temps;
Day 73-76
Night 71-72
-Humidity;
Day 63ish
Night 66ish
-Ventilation system
AC Infinity 6 inch inline fan with filter, 3 vents opened at bottom slightly for intake
-AC no, lung room is my WFH office which stays around 70-72 and humidity 45-55 year round but may need one depending on light intensify and heat it generates
Humidifier
AC Infinity T3
De-humidifier No haven’t needed one yet but likely will eventually if my home HVAC thermostat can’t accurately and reliably get it lower when needed
-Co2 No

Not sure where to start as I have a few questions. Planted seed directly in final pot as recommended via jiffy pellet with liner removed and pellet preplanted in soil because transplanting is supposedly dangerous even though some folks recommended transplanting once or multiple times before landing in coco. Who is right and did I screw this up?

My real question about this is regarding watering. I’ve seen some say to only water the seedling in a circle 2 inches around the seedling which I’ve been doing to runoff, but then I see that when watering coco, the entire medium should be soaked to 20% runoff. Until the roots grow long enough to utilize the wicking feature of the self watering bases, who is right and did I screw this up?

Next question is about my light. AC infinity recommends 40% at 18" or 100% with light as high in the tent as it can go which is roughly 6’. Which should I do? I have had my lights at around 22" away at 20% but bumped it up to 50. A few hours after I bumped it up, it was noon and time for 4 hour lights out so I checked my plants and #1 had 3 points on one end of the serrated leaves ever so slightly starting to curl up, almost unnoticeably but you could tell it was. After looking up symptoms, light stress seems most obvious since it was hours after I moved the light power up to 50% from 20 but I want to be sure.

I want to rule out nute burn because Ive barely been putting nutes in at all because some people say no nutes first week while others say right away. I’ve been doing around 250 to 350 ppm with 125 to 150 ish tap water factored in that total and runoff is pretty close to what Im putting in. The coco blend I bought was 3000ppm when I opened the bag so I strained it until it was at around 100. I didn’t see the horror stories before buying what seems like an inferior product and won’t make that mistake again. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I’m sure there are other questions I have for this stage of growth and definitely for others but these are my pressing issues at the moment. Once again any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you

[NorseRow]

Ive never grown in ff, someone will come along with the experience to answer those questions im sure, i’ve hear their soil can be hot but dont know if thats just for like happy frog or the ocean one or whatever they call them lol. Seedlings dont need much water at all, i’ve grown in soil and now coco, i just dome my seedlings and mist the dome until roots are better established. Photone app is pretty handy for figure out height/intesity of your light, i use android and it was free, dont know if it is on apple. Heard a lot of negative things about jiffy pellets but have never used them, i use root riot cubes and have never had an issue. I typicall go right in my final pot, but have transplanted several times as long as i take my time and dont yank or drop the thing, i’ve never noticed it causing a problem.

[Alldogsfamily]

Most of growing is trial and error. Educating yourself is hard because everyone tells you something just a little different, you really need to read into things that concrete and fill in the gaps. When I first started I was like you, ppm reading,pH up and down and so much work. All it did was make my grow more complicated and turned me off wanting to continue. So, I stopped with all the useless crap and stripped down to good nutrients, plain water left out for 24 hours and with bubbler and 3 good lights. Put them in an 18/6 timer and literally my babies grow themselves now. I get a little leaf issues, guess what? Cut them off and go on. If I get another one I look the color up on leaf guide and fix it, but 90% of the time I will get several leaf color changes simply because autos die at end of cycle, it’s the process. You will figure out what works for you, but please don let your self get sucked into the over complicated stuff thats not needed.

[PDreer]

@Alldogsfamily I’m sure I’m overthinking a lot of this. I’ve spent weeks on countless forums and sites absorbing as much as I can It’s just gotten to be so overwhelming. Like I said the plants look good so far so I’m not too worried I was just hoping I wasn’t doing anything too far out of line that would cause me problems down the road. Thank you for your advice I really appreciate your input. Nice buds BTW!

[PDreer]

@NorseRow The Jiffy pellets worked great, the issues from them that I’ve seen involve the liner stunting root growth so I removed it before putting the pellet in coco (not using soil} then planted the seed. Worked great and sprouted quickly. I didn’t mean to imply that I was having issues with the Jiffy pellets so my apologies for the misunderstanding. I was just wondering what others thoughts are on the transplant versus plant directly in medium sides of the argument. My primary concerns are with the light and the contradiction between the “keep coco wet at all times” and “coco must be dried out between feedings and only water in a 2" circle around the plant” folks. My Android phone is not compatible with Photone or any other light app and why I was asking advice here before I spend money on something I may not need. I should have stated that previously so that’s my fault. Thank you for your response I appreciate it.

[Alldogsfamily]

What model of phone do you have?

[kellydans]

Welcome to the community ,

[Bawstan_boi]

All dogs family is 100% right. I was just like that, now just the basics don’t tweak out on every little leaf.
The best advice I read today but I just woke up LOL great advice you are awesome people like you are an asset to The forum

[PDreer]

@Alldogsfamily Samsung Galaxy A32 SM-S326DL when I try to use the app it says myphone is not compatible.

@kellydans thank you.

[PDreer]

@Bawstan_boi I’m trying to understand the basics. That’s why I’m hoping someone with experience growing autos in Coco could help me understand how I’m supposed to be watering with such conflicting information such as feed nutes right away and keeping it wet vs no nutes or letting them dry out before watering. Which basic am I supposed to be sticking to is my question. I’m new so I may be miscommunicating so my apologies if that’s the case.

[Bawstan_boi]

I’m a soil person all fox farm products. I do a mixture of Happy frog ocean Forest and a little cultivation Nation. I feel just using Coco you better be on point with nutrients all the time. We all know Coco has no nutrients except for what you put in it. I also never read on hydro pods seeds etc on how to grow that way. I showed a few of my friends the soil method give him my two to three cents even a caveman can do it in soil but that’s me. Always ask questions if you don’t understand.
Remember it’s like cooking you can get a hundred chefs you tell them to make chicken soup, there’s going to be so many variances of chicken soup out of those hundred different chefs so that’s what I’m getting at exorb it all in use what you think is best suited for your situation good luck

[NorseRow]

I dont let coco completely dry out, the top might be dry at times, but even after ive chopped my plant, there will still be moisture in the coco a week later. I buff my coco. Before i plant my seedlings i give it a 50% strength feed to runoff, plant my seed and dome it, and then just mist my dome until the seedling looks big enough for watering. I dont water a 2 inch ring, i water to run off every day, in flower i water them as much as they can handle which is sometimes more than 4 times a day. I know that might not be very helpful to a new grower since i dont have specific times or amounts, but every plant is different, for example i currently have 2 granddaddy purples going and one is only able to take 1/3 of the water/feed as the other. Only with experience will you be able to read your plants unfortunately, but luckily theres a lot of helpful folks on here that’ll give advice. And like others have said everyone has there own way of doing things, this is just what works for me

[Alldogsfamily]

Not sure if you are able to grab the beta version, it’s the only one that works for my android.

[PDreer]

Great thank you, that’s exactly what I was looking for, someone who could vouch for a method. I feel better about the keep it wet and fed way so I’ll keep doing that.

Thanks again you’ve all been a great help! I’ll check in here again if I have any more questions.

[PDreer]

@Alldogsfamily nothing works but I’m going to see if one of the kids has an old iPhone laying around and try that out.

[PDreer]

@NorseRow

Here’s the plant I initially showed concern about. 1 week since sprouting now. It hasn’t gotten worse since I moved the light up after noticing the points on the leaves curling slightly. None of the other plants are showing this and look exact same otherwise as far as color goes. Do these colors look right or is my light distorting them? They look good to my untrained newbie eye just want to make sure there’s nothing that catches a more experienced eye.

Something I also worried about that you touched on was my coco was really dirty when I got it so I rinsed it down to 100ppm which likely negated the buffer from manufacturer. I’ve been doing 1ml of calmag per gallon and just upped it to 2 for my next round of watering. Is this ok considering I removed the buffer by cleaning the cocoa or should I use more calmag? It’s 2-0-0 Botanicare if that helps.

[NorseRow]

It looks good, might be a little light on nutes with the flush, i typically want my ppms around 600ish at this stage, that could explain the slight light green color or it could just be the age of the plant. Id recommend bringing your ppms up a but theres time and no need to rush

[NorseRow]

This one was 10 days in the pic, and it did great

[PDreer]

Thanks I appreciate your help, feeling much better now.

[Alldogsfamily]

Kinda crazy but I found a an app on my smart watch today that measures light.