Not much to post in terms of an update. Just a little info on the set up. I use water only soil, Coast of Maine and Detroit Nutrients, light with Mars Hydro, and grow in a 4x4 tent. The twist in my grow is that I run autos anywhere there is a hole in the canopy, regardless of where I am in the light cycle. Right now I have 2 photos 5 weeks into flower with 4 autos all at staggered stages. The strategy means my autos often under perform, but I'm able to pull down a plant every 2-4 weeks with big photo plants keeping the annual productivity where I need it. I'll drop some photos in the next update.

We're in! This little auto critical orange punch from Dutch Passion is up and reaching for the light. I started this in its permanent home, a 3-gallon fabric pot with Coast of Maine water-only soil.

My challenge will be topping at the appropriate point. I suspect it's because of my light schedule my autos usually hit flower when they're someplace between 3" and 6" tall. The last time I ran this strain it started flowering at 3.5."

We're in! This little auto critical orange punch from Dutch Passion is up and reaching for the light. I started this in its permanent home, a 3-gallon fabric pot with Coast of Maine water-only soil.

My challenge will be topping at the appropriate point. I suspect it's because of my light schedule my autos usually hit flower when they're someplace between 3" and 6" tall. The last time I ran this strain it started flowering at 3.5."

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At 1 week from germination this little critical orange punch is looking good. I haven't watered it yet. At this stage the water held in the soil is sufficient with a fine mist of clean water from a spray bottle a couple times per day. It looks like we're on pace for a 10/1 flip date.

Autos are tricky. This is my third run with auto COP and the first one I will attempt to top. My past runs have begun to flower between 19 and 24 days from the day the seed pops. At that point the plant is still tiny with almost all growth coming in the stretch. I'm going to try to carefully top this one in about 8 days, at which point there should be another set of leaves to help guide the cut. I won't be surprised if this experiment is a failure, but that's why it's an experiment. Who knows, it may work. This technique has worked with other autos with similar growth patterns.

I topped this little plant a few days ago. It's still super small, but it's showing signs of stretch and rapid growth already since topping. I'll add an updated picture soon. Here's the topped plant.

Disaster struck the grow. Everything in the tent got hit with some kind of a rust that I've never seen and couldn't, despite some significant efforts, beat back. Everything in the tent has gone the way of the dodo. After a thorough cleaning, I'm back up and running. I know this isn't the plant I started with, but I'm going to continue with the journal and the grow along. I'm now running a whole new room and the journal will follow the progress of my purple pineberry auto from Next Generation Seeds. pictures to follow.

The other plants in the tent:

Zkittlez auto (back left)

Romulan x grape god (middle row, 2 pots on the left)

Maui wowie (furthest right in the back and the middle row)

Sour Melon (front row in plastic nursery pot)

Maui Wowie, Kilimanjaro, and Lucille's CBD (starter pots, front left)

Can anybody help me out here? These aren't my grow challenge plants, but they're in the same tent and I thought this would be a good place to find an answer. The leaves on a couple

of my seedlings are making me a little worried. Image #1 is a Sour Melon from Mantis Genetics (it's the plant in the front right corner in image #3). Image #2 is a Romulan x Grapegod from Next Generation Genetics (it's the plant in the front center in image #3). the leaves aren't dry yet, but they seem to be headed in that direction. The tan stuff on the top of the soil in a few containers is coco coir dust (I add a little into the soil, Coast of Maine water only, whenever I up pot then clean up the spillover and drop it on top). My thought is that this is an issue with overly intense light. I'm using a Mars Hydro 2000W that's 2-3 months old. It' set at 100% and was about 12 inches above the seedlings, I raised it to about 20 inches today. Thank you for any ideas.

My grow challenge plant is looking good and showing some early flowers. The leaves are a little pale for my comfort, but I'm thinking that may be the genetics. It's getting plenty of nutrition between the water only soil from Coast of Maine and some Roots Organics grow formula in every 2nd-3rd watering.

Everything is looking pretty good. I up-potted the 2 Romulan x Grapegod today. I'm going to try to run them in 3 gallon fabric pots, it's a risk, but I think they'll make it. Once some of these plants start showing sex I'm likely to find a couple males, which will free up some room that I may use to go up to a 5 gallon.

The Zkittles in the back left has gotten very spacey. This is the last bean from a 10 pack if really disappointing seeds.  Not one of the 10 grew into a plant with strong similarities to any of the others and none of them have performed as good as this one already has.

The Purple pineberry on the back right is starting to develop its main bud and the nodes in the interior and on lower branches are starting to show pistils.

Lots of good herb here that should be ready for a staggered harvest starting somewhere around 12/4 and running through somewhere around 1/25.

There's been a lot of action in the tent in the past few days. Here's what you're looking at in the attached pictures. In image 1 you see zkittlez auto (from a breeder I'd rather not mention) in the back left, auto purple pineberry (Next Generation Seeds) in the back center, Mauie wowie (Ocean Grown Seeds) in the far right of the back and middle rows, Romulan x grape god (Next Generation Seeds) in the left and center of he center row, sour melon (Mantis Genetics) far left in the front row, and prayer pupil (Mass Medical Strains) in the center and right positions of the front row.

Zkittlez is growing vigorously and starting to fill out some buds.

Purple pineberry is stretching and showing some early flowers.

I've topped 1 of the RxGG's and it's developed a really strange growth pattern. I've never seen anything like it. The center is becoming a traffic jam as everything is trying to become the new top.

I've also topped both of the MWs and the SM.

So far I've had a few scares with some strange leaf formation, but every time it looks like it's going to go badly the plants self correct. I have one of my own strains that needs to get repotted from its starter, but space has become a issue. My base soil is Coast of Maine water only, but every time I up pot I add some old soil from a past run, a little fresh coco coir, and some worm castings.

I'll probably flip to 12/12 in 7-10 days. I need to find a couple males to cull to make some space.

Hey growers,

The last few days haven't brought a lot of action to the tent, but I've been battling an unseasonably hot a humid patch of weather. The temperature in the tent (which is in my basement) is hitting 80 and humidity is reaching 60%. This is complicated by my dehumidifier in the lung room seeming to be failing. Because I haven't been able to pull the humidity down with the dehu I've been running the exhaust fan 24/7, which is pulling my overnight temperatures lower than I like. The amount of vegetation in the tent isn't helping with the humidity issue either.

All of that is context for the images, which show some problems that I believe are symptoms of over watering. I'm hoping to get this under control within the next 48 hours. My general watering practice is to water when the top inch of the soil is dry. I never water to run off--I'm an organic soil grower, so that would definitely drown the plants.

Zkittlez

Purple pineberry

2 Romulan x grape god (topped)

Mauie wowie (topped)

This has been an unusual grow. Because I had to cull my grow challenge crop and reset, I ended up behind the schedule. I'm hoping to do everything I can here to get on track to hit the NYGC on time. It looks like that's going to be a challenge.

A couple grows back I made a couple changes. I switched from an old HPS to a new LED and decided to change up my soil. The soil is an ongoing process. I used to grow in Roots Organic then switched to Detroit Nutrient Company water only. The DNC soil seemed to work pretty well, but I wanted to get away from peat moss so I switched again. Now I'm using Coast of Maine water only, but it seems that ever since that change I've had a problem with over watering, a problem I haven't had in the past. I'm also seeing the plants have some trouble getting all of the way to the finish line. I'm working on addressing these issues and setting myself up to start reusing soil by amending the soil with pumice and worm castings. All of this is still underway, so I suspect it will be 1-2 more runs before I get all of these new factors worked out.

Images:

In general, the tent is looking pretty good.

Zkittlez, auto--probably 3 weeks to harvest, if I can get it there.

Purple pineberry, auto--it appears that this auto is not an auto. After 5 weeks it still hasn't started to produce flowers. A couple of the nodes developed unusually and I thought they would pop some buds, but no luck.

Maui Wowie is looking nice. I'm really excited to see how this looks in flower.

Sour Melon is doing well too. The unusual thing with this one is wen I topped it, the side shoots didn't jump up to the top the way most plants do. This one is going to be some amazing smoke.