This is my first grow. I tried to create a grow journal but couldn’t figure out how to get an account set up. I have one existing topic over in the Grow Room section. Decided to just copy some of the stuff from there to get my journal started here.
Here is my grow setup:
AC Infinity 2x2x72 tent
AC Infinity CLOUDLINE PRO T4 Inline Duct Fan
AC Infinity Air Carbon Filter XL 4"
AC Infinity IONBEAM S16, Full Spectrum LED Grow Light Bars 16”
Nature’s Living Soil Super Soil Autoflower Concentrate
FoxFarm Happy Frog Potting Soil
FoxFarm Ocean Forest Potting Soil
I only have one plant at this time. The seed was germinated in one of those peat discs. Once the seedling was a few inches tall I transferred it to a five gallon AC Infinity fabric pot on 8/14/2023
In the 5 gallon fabric pot I chose to use a Supersoil approach where instead of making my own Living Soil I mixed 1lb of the Nature’s Living Soil with enough of the SunGro Advanced Mix #4 to fill the bottom third of the 5 gallon fabric pot. The remaining two thirds of the pot was filled with a 50/50 mix of the FFOF and the FFHF soil.
Looks great! Nice setup! Get ready for take off! I’ve found with autos, not long after you see the first pistils sticking out from the main stalk, they will begin to flower. Yours looks really good!
OK, here are pictures from today. The plant is 12" tall. Over the last week I have removed fan leaves from the lowest two branches. I’m thinking about removing the largest two fan leaves that are on the second node from the top so they are not shading the branches below. Anyone have any thoughts?
This is located at the top of the plant, second node from the top. There are a lot of calyx’s all along the plant but this is the only place I found pistils.
Today’s update at day 38. More pistils are showing up all over the plant. Fabric pot was light so I took it off the self watering base to clean it out. There are a few small roots peeking out from around the bottom of the pot. Good to see.
I have a question about stretching. The height of the plant has been stuck at 12" for several days. Is this to be expected? How much taller can I expect this particular strain to get?
Also with the Supersoil approach I took, when will the nutrients in the top 2/3 of the pot run out? Will I ever need to water from the top with a light nutrient mix or will the Living Soil in the bottom of the pot take my plant all the way through to harvest?
Cannabis typically will stretch to around 2 times the size when it started.
To my knowledge there is no amended medium that will feed a plant from start to finish. Are you going the organic route or plan on using synthetic nutrients? Testing the run off or a soil slurry test are the 2 methods for checking available nutrients in the soil
Hi! Thank you for your response. The approach I took was based on information I gleaned from several sources.
For instance an article on the High Times site stated:
After choosing your base soil, the Super Soil concentrate is placed in the bottom one-third to one-half of the container and blended with the base soil. (With strains that require high levels of nutrients, we’ll go so far as to fill ¾ of the container with Super Soil, but this is necessary only with a small percentage of strains.) This allows the plants to grow into the concentrated Super Soil layer, which means that in the right size container, they’ll need nothing but water throughout their full cycle.
In my case the upper 2/3 of the pot was filled with a mix of FFOH and FFHF. This mix was to provide nutrients to the plant during the early to mid stages of vegetative growth. Over time the roots would reach down into the soil the was amended with the Super Soil concentrate. The roots have reached down into the Super Soil at the bottom 1/3 of the pot as I have found roots starting to poke through the bottom of the pot.
I do have the FoxFarm Liquid Nutrient Trio Soil Formula: Big Bloom, Grow Big, Tiger Bloom but so far I have not seen a need to use any of it since the plant is doing so well.
I have also purchased some Tribus Microbial Inoculant. I apply this along with a kelp product Kelpak by watering from the top just enough to stop short of complete flow through to the bottom of the pot. With the approach I’m taking you don’t want to water too thoroughly because you don’t want to flush the nutrients from the Super Soil at the bottom out of the pot.
I’m also applying a foliar spray comprised of a light solution of the Fox Farm Grow Big and Spray-N-Grow Micronutrients every three days.
So far the plant is looking extremely healthy. Since this approach doesn’t recommend adding any additional nutrients to the soil I’m a little worried about running out of nutrients in the potting soil before the plant finishes flowering.
This got kind of long but once I start yammering about something I just keep going!
