The closet is enclosed, but it’s 8 feet by 16. I have a semi enclosed open top 6 ft by 3 ft space within there that I am using as my grow area. I will be venting the entire closet to the outdoors.
It might be hard but don’t use soil that says “feeds for X amount of months.
It has time release ferts that might not impact your grow to much at the start.
Month or two down the road when u wanna flip to flower you will have issues because it will still be releasing those ferts into your soil.
Especially with auto’s.
The ONLY difference between auto flowering and regular (photo) is u can keep photo in permanent veg by leaving light cycle 18 on 6 off
With autos no matter what you do it WILL flower and you can’t stop it.
That’s why you don’t clone autos.
By the time it recoups from cloning it will be flowering and you can’t make it stop by changing the light cycle like you can on photos.
So in short
autos flower in X amount of time. period.
Photos (regular) flower when you change the light cycle from 18 on 6 off to around 12 on 12 off and can stay in veg pretty much forever.
Yeah, I know not to use soil with any chemical additives, I only use 100% organic soil so I know what’s in it and when.
With the clones, I believe a clone with it’s own root system fully exposed to good light will produce a better and bigger bud than the branches at the bottom of the plant.
The way you guys bend the branches to expose everything to the lights these days probably mitigates it to some degree, but once I have a few plants under my belt, I’ll experiment a bit probably.
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Oh yeah.
Mitigates it’s isn’t the word lol.
Check out YouTube and search Indica institute.
Nice videos on just about everything.
You def gonna wanna learn to LST your plants. Makes a massive different in my opinion and many many others.
Especially with autos, some LST will go a VERY long way.
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@shindig153 this dude is pretty good with organics
seen him handing out some good advice around the forum. Hope ya don’t mind me taggin you.
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Welcome to the forum.
Lights: I’d continue to use what you have. You have plenty of wattage draw from the wall. I started with a couple blurples as well. They grew great bud for me. My blurples stopped working half way through my second grow. I’m with @Covertgrower about Horticulture lighting group/HLG led light are awesome. They are well worth the investment.
Soil: I started like most using fox farm products. They grow really good bud but I hated to flush my plants. I felt it was a waste of resources and put more pressure on our environment. Super soil was a draw because I could truly grow organic and I was happy not having to flush the ladies. This was about the time my bud started to be consistently great quality. Super soil evolved to using a living soil. A living soil allows me to reuse the same soil/pot over and over again. I plan on using my current grow pots until spring/April, where I’ll add it to the compost pile.
Ph is by far the most important peace of the puzzel. If your ph is off the plant won’t get proper nutrition. It’s called nutrient lock. Tds/ppm measures the amount of nutrients you’re adding to the soil. Testing the run off will give what the plant is consuming.
Training: i wouldn’t go hog wild on training autoflowers. They can be very sensitive to being messed with. It’s a fine line. Just had a sample of the zkittles auto. It’s pretty good.
Exhaust: I made the mistake of ordering undersized exhaust fans. They couldn’t really keep up. I upgraded to a 4x8 tent. I got a infinity cloudline 8 inch exhaust fan. I’m very happy with the purchase. Go with the environmental control option if you decide to pull the trigger.
If you have any questions just give me a tag.
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I agree and disagree with training autoflowers typically it’s kinda a weird trade with HST autoflowers you do get slightly better results overall at the cost of ending up vegging longer to heal(the hard time limit for autoflowers is a bit of a wives tale they can and will extend veg till they think they’re mature enough) as for exhaust i run a cloudline s6 at half speed into a carbon filter in my pseudo 3x3 and it does an excellent job
3 posts were split to a new topic: My brother left me with these plants
@Nothingshocking Yeah I think I understand what you are saying about the grow area set up.
I’ve just never heard of a grow area having an open top before.
I was of the understanding the reason for having an exhaust is twofold;
- to push the plant ‘fumes’ away from the grow area but also
- to promote passive air circulation within the grow area (ie: it sucks up the old air causing new air to flow through the air intakes, thus creating circulation).
I guess with an open top you don’t have to worry about air circulation so much… so I guess there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work.
I could be wrong but if you want to contain the smell too then I’d have thought you’d need to contain the ‘fumes’ all the way from the grow area to the outside. The moment they get into the air in the rest of the room that smell is leaking everywhere else. Unless you have one heck of an exhaust going on…
Thanks for the advice, now that I’m happy with my lighting situation, or at least think I will be tomorrow when the new lights arrive, the next thing I’m starting to obsess about is the soil. Unfortunately I started 2 5 gallons yesterday and didn’t put the cow manure compost in. I’m thinking of mixing some into the top layer of soil so it leaches down over time. I’m mixing up a new batch tomorrow, so I will take the recommendations itt, but Living soil is probably something I will have to look into.
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I ordered a PH tester so I should be able to test my tap and runoff tomorrow. Like I said previously, the PH of our tap water is consistently 7.5 and it sounds like ideal would be 6.5 - is there an acceptable range? I was going to buy some PH down, but after reading through some of the comments on products on Amazon, it sounds like I would be just as good using apple cider vinegar.
I suppose I can look into a formal growing tent, I like the flexibility of having an adjustable grow area, I only added the mylar “walls” to increase my light capture on teh plants. Back when I grew in the late 90’s I had mylar on my walls, and some guy who had more experience than me told me I wasted my money, and white paint on the walls is just about as effective, so I painted the inside of my 8x16 closet white. But now Mylar is cheap as heck, back in the day with no internet it took a lot of looking around to find it and when I did it was expensive. Given I can get emergency blankets for $2 each, I added the “walls” after I saw how cheap it was. If I have a little smell it’s ok, I’m a grown adult with my own house, but if my house stinks like bud it won’t present well and my kids will ask why my house smells different than their mom’s. so if the exhaust fan in the big closet doesn’t do the job, I’ll look into a big tent like yours.
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@shindig153 and anyone else who has some experience…
I dropped 2 white widow auto seeds in water yesterday, this morning I checked, and they cracked one had a tail the other didn’t, so I put them back on my fish tank filter (80 degrees) where they sat undisturbed until just now. I looked, and both had tiny tails, but the one that had a tail earlier also spit out another tail. So I have 2 helmets with tails and another free floating tail. any ideas? I’m not planting them until tomorrow, but did I have twins or did the seed ruin itself somehow?
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Did the tail break off? Never heard of two tails from one plant. Two plants from one tail on the other hand happens sometimes.
That’s a great place to germinate seeds. I think I’ll try that next time. I use my weekly 10% fish tank water change for my ladies. They love it.
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Part of the living soil is feeding from the top. I top dress with compost and a few other things at the beginning of my grow, about a week before I flip the plants to flower and at least once more about half way through flower. You shod be fine top dressing. To help with ph you can use dolomite lime to buffer the soil to stay in the correct range. Then ph isn’t as big of an issue.
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How long do these autoflowers take from germination to harvest?
I was reading the 8-9 weeks to flower as the time from germination to harvest, but I’m thinking it may mean germination too the start of flower, and then another 45 days to for flowering? So more like 90-100 days germination to harvest?
Autos typically move from seed to harvest in 8–10 weeks. However, some varieties can take up to 12 weeks to fully mature
Some even longer…