I have been curious about Auto Flowers for awhile, as I have zero experience with growing them, and really, limited cannabis growing experience overall. I just enjoy reading and learning about it. There are so many strains available these days, it can get very confusing and discouraging as well… not to mention the negative experiences individuals here on OG have had with seed purchases… at least to me anyways.
Well, thanks to the generosity of @Mr.Sparkle, who sent me an assortment of seeds, I am going to get the opportunity to “bust my Auto Cherry” sooner than I expected.
I will apologize now for the number of pictures or rambling on I will do, as I would like to document this as best I can, not only for myself, but for Mr. S as well as any others who may be interested. I will try my best to do them justice…
Before I started anything to do with the Auto seeds, I had to make a few changes to my current grow status… In other words, I had to clean house a bit and get things prepared. I thinned out my Skywalker OG stock quite considerably. I kept a few that I plan on putting outdoors, as well as a couple of clones to choose as a new Mother Plant. I had my original Mother Plant for 9 months, and She taught me a lot and provided several offspring, but it was time to move on and make room for my “continuing education”. My Unknown Plant was reduced to cuttings for clones, even though I am still unsure of it’s sex. If it happens to be a Female, then it’s probably best that I attempt those outside as they already smell pretty strong…lol.
I decided to revamp my Mother Chamber with materials I had on hand, and with as little extra expenditure as I could manage. I did however have to pick up a few more leds (5000K) and socket adapters, but the rest I had on hand. Funny, I purchased my original socket adapters when I was on OG 1.0, and now I’m doing it again on OG 2.0… (One of these days I will find the box with my DIY remote ballast HPS made from a HD security light, thx to OG 1.0) Full Circle…lol. I drilled out 2 passive intakes into the floor and covered them with squares of window screen. I mounted my DIY exhaust fan to a port I drilled into the back of the cabinet, removed my light socket in the center of the roof and replaced the lighting with 3 power bars mounted to the ceiling, and plug adapters with screw in leds. (4" total from back of PB to face of LED) I found a few racks to keep the containers off the floor.
From this…
To this…
As for containers, I have 3 that hold 48 oz of soil, and 3 that hold 32 oz soil. I measured the volume using a 16 oz Solo Cup. The three square containers needed drainage holes drilled in them, so I got that straightened out. They measure 5" at top, and taper to 3.25" at bottom. The rounds are 4". Heights are 6" and 5.5" respectively.
I will be using Pro Mix Premium Organic Moisture Mix again. So far, it hasn’t given me a reason to switch it to anything else, so I will carry on with what I feel comfortable with. For nutrients, I will be using Mega Crop, and GO CaMg+ and Epsom Salts as required. I would like to try and keep things as simple as I can…
To recap, cabinet measures 20"W X 20"D X 30"H. (2.7 sq. ft.) Currently 135W of SIL, so 50W/sq. ft. I have a bit of room to bump up the lighting, but for starters I will stick with this arrangement and see how things progress.
I started to germinate some seeds…
1 Dark Spark
1 Da Green
1 Easy D
1 Aubergine Toots Magoots (I love saying this name)
2 The Fuzz
I only started 2 of The Fuzz to give me an odd number of each strain of seeds remaining from Mr. S’s Gift… stoopid superstition relating to balance…
The seeds were soaked for 16 hours, put in damp paper towel, and bagged. The Ziploc bags were placed near an ambient heat source (laptop) and within 12 hours 4 of 6 had cracked their seed pods and 28 hours after being placed in paper towel, all had tails between 1/2" to 1", and were placed in their respective pots. Pretty viable seeds IMO Mr. S…
Bagged & Tagged
I had prepared Jiffy Pellets for the seeds, then just decided it would probably just be best to put them in their final containers. They were all placed in their pots, and within 24 hours they surfaced. I gave 3 of the 6 a delicate little flick with a Periodontal Scaler to remove the “helmet head” (probably didn’t need to, just wanted to lend a helpin’ hand) and they are off and running… looking forward to seeing how this turns out…
And a side by side…
Well, thanks for stopping by, and again, THANK YOU @Mr.Sparkle for your generosity … As a noob, I’ll try my best…
Peace
DaFozz
