Late Bloomer outdoor mixed bag of autos

[DTOM420]

It’s pretty late but I’ll go ahead and start a journal for my late-started outdoor auto grow. I live near 28.5°N so our growing season runs really late and typically don’t get a frost except in January and Feb. So, I started popping some seeds in late August. I had lots of issues with some ILGM White Widow Auto seeds (see my germination thread) but, to make a long story short, I ended up with a wide variety of auto strains from several breeders. The seeds popped between July 26 and Aug 15. These are the AUTO strains I have going right now:

3 ILGM Amnesia Haze

2 ILGM White Widow

2 New420Guy Paul’s Crystal Aurora

2 New420Guy Paul’s Super Dense

1 Dinafem XXL Cheese

1 Dutch Passion Auto Mazar

I’m growing in grow bags that are mostly 10 gallon sized except for 2 15 gallon bags and 2 3 gallon bags. Soil is a mixture of FF souls with several amendments and I’m feeding FF nutes along with Great White, H&G Roots Excelurator and Sea-90

We have been enduring our brutal summer heat with daytime highs at or above 100°F/38°C for 3 months straight with RH around 35% and haven’t had any rain in 2.5 months until last Sunday. God finally remembered us and sent us 6” on Sunday night! Then, on Monday He sent us another 3”! On Tuesday we got .5” and 1” on Wednesday and another 3” over the last 24 hours!!! The forecast shows 50%-80% chance of rain every day for the next 4 days. Ugh! Nonetheless, the plants are doing better than ever! The rain brought our temps way down into the 80’s and all the nitrogen-infused rainwater has really woken them up from the heat.

I’ve tried some pretty sever LST on them but no topping or fimming. Anyway, here are some pix from today for ya!

FWIW - This is my first auto grow, my first outdoor grow…and my first grow in 25 years! Long ago I did pretty well as an indoor grower back in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Now I’m restarting and re-learning! What a blast. SO much has changed. It’s amazing having a resource like this with growers helping growers. Back in the day, pre Internet, growers were VERY secretive so info was hard to come by. Group like CAMP and HBSO were NO joke and clannish secrecy was an unfortunate necessity This is just a prep for next year’s outside garden of both autos and photos. Thanks for looking!

ILGM Amnesia Haze Auto - 35 days

New420Guy Seeds - Paul’s Super Dense Auto - 31 Days

New420Guy Seeds Chrystal Aurora Auto - 33 days

ILGM White Widow Auto - Day 25

Dinafem XXL Cheese Auto - 22 days

[dbld55]

Looks like your doing a great job. I’m in the same boat first grow since 83 and I have 2 plants in flower in outside grow. I’m thinking about trying a couple autos over the winter but waiting for sun to finish moving south to find my spot because your not aloud to grow here

[DTOM420]

I kinda like these autos. There was no such thing back when either of us quit growing before. Lol. All I had was the Rosenthal book I bought out of High Times, bag seed and a few I ordered from the original Seed Bank in Amsterdam - I sweated that delivery for months, lol!

I started too late in the season to do photos but wanted to jump in. I’m glad I did. I’m setting up an indoor grow right now and, by the time April rolls around I’ll be ready for a big outside garden - guerilla style.

[DTOM420]

As of this morning, we’ve had 18” of rain in the past 7 days! For a semi-arid climate, that’s just…RIDICULOUS! I’ve never seen anything like this. Right now I’m actually glad that I don’t have and big plants in the ground.

[DTOM420]

Well, he officially hit 19.5” in 8 days today. Fingers crossed that we get a few days of our normal blue skies. Freakish weather for this area! I’ve never seen anything like this, around here. Our annual rainfall is less than 25”. So, we got nearly our entire annual rainfall in just over a week!!

The girls seem to be coming through it well, though. Since they’ve just had a super flush, by Mother Nature, I went ahead and gave them a strong feeding yesterday. I was torn about watering them when they’ve been getting so much rain; but thanks to the grow bags and the really well-draining soil I put in them, they didn’t seem to mind. We got another 1.25 inches of rain on it last night as well. Lol!

Today, we did some training and I supercropped and redirected a couple of branches on the “Paul’s Super Dense.” The side branches were catching up with the main stem so some training had to be done!

[DTOM420]

Here’s o e of my ILGM Amnesia Haze that’s really putting on some flower. She got a little LSTing and, after the picture, some defoliating to improve airflow. She the most progressed of all my girls:

Here are 2 of my ILGM Amnesia Haze Auto that we’re twins for 3 weeks but, then, one stunted out. They could t look more different. “stunty” is putting on flower while my ‘good girl’ is really taking off!

I’m told I should invite some people to the party. So, here’s an invite to some folks I really admire:

@Mrcrabs @PurpNGold74 @Growit
@SmoknGranny @LF-the-OG @HvtAnna1987 @Hogmaster @TDubWilly @tanlover442 @mountainman1

[DTOM420]

Here’s some more invites: @Countryboyjvd1971 @highcountrygal @1BigFella @CovertGrower @garrigan62 @dbrn32 @HvtAna1988

[Covertgrower]

They all come in different sizes, but they look good. @DTOM420

[Countryboyjvd1971]

Autos are funny and i grow them for fun while growing my photos

You can do everything right and still get a dwarf
Ive had tbem grow to 5 foot and others never got over 18 inches ?
Looking good

[PurpNGold74]

Haha right. They do what they want. Stubborn kids autos can be. But looking good. Love the baby flowers

[tanlover442]

Nice looking Ladies. Hope you get a good harvest…

[LF-the-OG]

Do you have some of the autos inside of plastic pots in the bags? Are the bottoms of the plastic pots cut at least to allow roots to spread out?

Here is what I see that is concerning to me.

The rains are still coming in for the next couple days in your area, so its going to keep that soil very wet… that means lack of oxygen to the root zone… even in cloth bags and even more so if they are in plastic pots inside of them. If the perlite is floating to the top of the soil that means there is less and less air pockets inside of the soil and it is compacting on your roots holding moisture to them. This will rot the roots very quickly if the RH in the area stays high.

I would recommend placing them out of the rains to dry out before its too late. So, relocate for a little bit to dry out, or place a small plastic hoop house of some kind over the top of them to keep the direct rains from hitting the plants.

[1BigFella]

It’s a good idea too to put your pots or cloth bags up on some kind of rack, so they don’t sit in the water that drains out the bottom. Some people only water by putting the pot in a tub of water and letting it wick up into the medium. You don’t want that going on all the time or it WILL rot the roots.

[DTOM420]

One of the reasons for different size plants is that I popped beans, a few at a time, over about 3 weeks. Originally I planned to plant mostly ILGM White Widow autos that I got on a buy 10, get 10 free deal and a few ILGM Amnesia Haze. Unfortunately, I got a bag batch of WW seeds. That started me buying some beans from 2 other banks and I popped them as they arrived. Lol. Then, there were some of those random outdoor issues you get, like birds yanking seedlings, wind blowing pot over or a branch falling on a plant. Ha!

[DTOM420]

@LF-the-OG & @1BigFella I hear ya. The plant that LF-the-OG so keenly noticed is a heavily modified pot. It’s a system I learned from another grower on another site called an “instatransplant” pot. You take 2 pots that are identical and fit inside one another. You cut most of the bottom out and remove large slots on the sides until you’re left with a flimsy looking sort of basket. You put that modified basket pot inside the unmodified pot, fill with soil and plant your bean. When it’s time to transplant 2-3 weeks later, you simply pull off the outer pot and lower that modified, basket looking pot into your hole and fill in around. ZERO transplant shock. It’s a terrific technique. I might not do it for some outdoor photo that might get enormous, but for autos, that don’t like transplants, “it’s da bomb, donkey Kong!”

I did move them around, between storms, to make sure they weren’t in standing water except during an actual downpour. There’s a slight grade to the ground so the water cleared off pretty quick after each storm and at times I had them on a berm. In the pix they’re sitting where they can get the most sun as it comes back out. I’m hoping the sun and the gentle breeze will dry them out. I’m afraid to bring them inside as I think they’ll dry even more slowly. I gave them some Serenade today trying for some prophylactic effect. I also put some of them up on tables or boards. I’m praying and have my fingers crossed!

[1BigFella]

That’s what I use: A wooden rack to keep the cloth pots up out of the waste water. That waste water contains all your accumulated salts so you really don’t want the pot to suck it up. I’m an avocado grower as well, so I know all to well about accumulated salts killing or stunting your plants.

[ryry]

Oh man thats sweet I’m definitely doing one of those transplant pots next year! now when the plant is done i can probably dig modified pot out and reuse huh?

[DTOM420]

@ryry

Oh man thats sweet I’m definitely doing one of those transplant pots next year! now when the plant is done i can probably dig modified pot out and reuse huh?

Absolutely!

[DTOM420]

Well, we’ve got more rain in the forecast (UGH!!) so I built a little shelter for my girls. It ain’t pretty but I think it’ll work. What do you all think?

[HvtAna1988]

You shelter for your baby girls looks great! It is a good ideeeaaa to overcome rainy days! i m gonna move my girls too tomorrrowww… rainy will knock on my yard too! Hehehhe !