First grow newbie. Advice needed

Grow Support Autoflowers
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Hi guys, first time grower here, need some advice.

A little bit of backstory into my grow so far. I have started growing 3 autos, my plan was to do a really low maintanace/resources grow just to test if I can do it in my conditions. I’m not interested in a big harvest, I just want to grow them healthy, and see them go through the entire life cycle. (No nutriens so far, only what the soil has and tap water. I only plan to feed them a bit during flowering. Also most nutrients and soil brands recomended on the forum and other websites are not available where I live).

For the first 3 weeks, they were placed on a window shelf. After realising that the window does not provide enough light (only 3-4 hours of direct sunlight) and they are just stretching or stagnating, I got a light and moved them into a tent. They have been under the light for about a week.

Tent size: 2x2
Pot size: 2 gal
Light: Marshydro TS1000 at around 70% and 18" (18-6)
Humidity: 50% - 60%
Temp: I can’t really control the temp and I am bound to weather. At this moment it’s usually 65-70 at night to 85-90 during the day.
Day 31

I am experiencing a couple issues. The first one would be soil moisture. The soil (just a generic universal mix from my local market) doesn’t seem to want to dry, I try and wait as much as possible between waterings but I still feel the soil is still moist when watering. Last watering was about 500ml per plant 3 days ago as the leaves were starting to drop(previous one was 5 days before) and the soils shows little signs of getting dry. Any advice on what I could do?

The other issue I’m experiencing, is about 2 days after my last watering, the leaves started to get a black/dark color and now (3 days after watering) they started to taco a bit. Any idea what might have caused this? I raised the light a bit and dropped 10% in intensity and the blackening seems to have stopped.

Overall, do you think they look healthy?

(Photo left to right: Amnesia Haze, Moby Dick, Pineapple Express. Sorry for the long post :slight_smile: )

Thanks

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Looking good. Is your soil medium mostly peat? Also i would definitely add more drainage holes to your pots.

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It’s a peat perlite mix. I have about an inch or two of mostly peat on top as I topped the pot after the first one settled with a different type of soil. Could that affect how the soil beneath aerates? Should I Maybe try and remove the top inch and replace it with some perlite reach one?

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Peat retains moisture like crazy. I would def try to mix some perlite

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I know you’re not concerned about yield, but you COULD employ some LST at this point. That would be tying them down to the pot with some garden wire. You could use binder clips clamped to the pot as tie down points.

This would give you more bud sites when you get to flower and make sure they don’t get too tall in your grow space.

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I will give it a try with the one that seems to want to grow really tall.

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Coming up with an update. They grew like crazy in the past week, almost doubled in size. I just realized that my smooth brain messed up the timer and I actually had them on a 16-8 light cycle.

Should I leave them on the cycle that they’re used with or could I bump them to 18-6? Would increasing the cycle have any negative effects/shock them?

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