Well them sure look stanky !!
Marty
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Nope i typically dont exceed 3 gallons grow bags. I find more media = more waste. Because it takes more of everything when you go bigger. I start seed in tiny shot glass solo cups. Then i move to 1 gallon bags or 3 depending if the plant is for stock or for flowering. I typically clone all plants and flower the mother to see if i want to keep it. So some plants are like mothers but i call some stock plants vs mothers. Im currently running 12 living strains and i have 36 plants running about 650sqf of my 1,600 sqf grow space.
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Yeah I moved from 2 gallon to 1 gallon, seems less wasteful 
12 strains nice! Iâm only running 3 and attempting to harvest seeds before summer hits.
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And wellâŚI use 10 gal bags in 25 sq ft. of grow space lol. BUT I have used the same media for the last three grows, that is one of the beauties of all organic gardening. When I add more fresh compost and worm castings and re-aerate the medium with more pearlite, I just throw the extra into my garden outside. Itâs all organic so it doesnât screw up the microbes or worms outside. About the only thing I havenât gone to organic wise is adding redworms into the grow pots.
Iâm gonna try the autopots this round, but I am staying organic with the nutes in the soil and going with the 4 gal autopots, my whole thing is to get the watering down to better consistency and without the pain of crawling around in the bottom of the tent lol. Getting too old for that shit.
Marty
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I wanted to automate the watering without adding to the electeic bill. So i went this route. I kinda liked hand watering so it forced me to keep a better eye on the plants for pests and things. But the auto pots give me more time to care for the plants instead of making nutrients and filling plants up. Its a lot nicer to just dump my nutrients into the resivoir and forget about it. and a key bit of autopot info if you want to add say and organic tea or any organic liquid. Turn off the water supply hose let the plants suck up a little water then you can pour directly into the tray and not the aqua valve keeping it all clean. You cant add organic things into the water system at all. Its not recommended buy autopot. Once you have one and you see how it operates you will under stand why you cant use it like that because it could clog the float vent holes and cause the entire resivoir to drain and flood the tent. But this little tip lets you still add stuff to the watering trays.
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Wouldnât that raise your soil ph over time ? I love the ideal of composting and recycling the soil but wouldnât there be a specific use case for this IE things that like higher ph such as blueberries ?
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Heres a few of my baby mothers tonight.
I have another 2 tents full of 11 more plants. Right now im running at 25% totally capacity.
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No organic soil takes care of itâs own Ph. It is a natural microbe based system, where the microbes slowly break down locked mineral/organic nutrients and make them available to the plants, as the plants need them. I donât water with anything other than water right now, when the available nutrients are depleted from the grow medium, I introduce them and more microbes from the top of the soil. And actually I put in a lot more than recommended Gaia Green dry nutes and havenât had an issue with low nutrients. I didnât add the power bloom on my first couple of organic grows when I mixed the soil up, but this one I put the power bloom in at the start and so far that is working. I just water from the top.
The one thing I have found is that even though you can reuse the soil from one grow to the next, by just adding more compost, castings dry nutrients, and other organic amendments, the soil becomes too heavy for good root aeration in the pot. You have to add in more pearlite each new grow in the same volume that you added all the heavy amendments like castings and compost and nutrients. Thatâs the reason I have extra to put on my garden outside.
Now that may or may not work as the autopots are a bottom up feeding/moisture system. This will be my first try with them. There are actually several podcasts and instructions concerning the use of all organic nutrients in the autopot system. And I believe Build a soil has developed a soil mix for the autopots as well, it is probably much like what I am doing now slower release bloom nutes that become available as time goes on.
I also am right now using 10 gal pots, so the ability to put enough nutrients to last the grow is possible (it may not be possible with only 4 gals), and so far has worked for me. Nature is amazing, plants put into very fertile soil will use N to grow when they are young, then begin using P&K when they need it with still plenty of N left and available when they flower, no reason that canât work in pots as well as long as the volume is there to contain enough of each for the grow.
You can use liquid organic nutes as opposed to âmineral saltâ nutes in the autopots. It involves the cleaning of the lines and reservoirs every time you add water to the tank, and in addition you must keep the water in the tank moving via a pump or air stone.
I may decide to just go back to mineral salt nutrients such as Dakine 420 or crop salt nutes. (have both) Havenât decided yet, still have around 6 weeks to decide that before the current tent comes out. And Prey is right, they warn about the clogging up of the system with organic based nutrients. Basically he is saying just shut off the water from the tank, put in the organic nutrients into the pan underneath the autopot that has the valve, let it get absorbed then turn the system back on for water only to flush and keep the valve from clogging. I also opted for the air kit, to introduce oxygen to the medium from the bottom along with the water.
From what I have been reading pretty much the ultimate system using autopots is the Crop salt nutes, with the air introduction. Supposed to be very close to the growth rate of DWC systems. And a kick ass system for those that like growing autoflower plants.
Marty
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Very cool, thanks for the explanation. I use Jacks 321, very stable ph vs other things Ive used. excited to see the results.
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I also thought about getting some Jacks, but I started comparing and the Jacks is just as expensive as the Crop Salt. And from all the reviews I read, where folks used the autopots, they recommended the Crop Salt as being way better than Jacks at least in the autopot system. And one of the things mentioned the most was the product called Cake in the Crop salt line, tons of people said it made a huge difference in the trichrome production over the Jacks.
I also got their run clean tank additive (crop salt) that is extremely stingy in use, only 1ml per ten gallons of water to keep the valves and lines clean.
Marty
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Prey what is Monkey Slapz a combination of? And also a quick question the thanksgiving giveaway you did were the seeds regular or fems? Need to know so I know how many to put in.
Those look great, your plants are always so healthy.
Thanks
Marty
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Monkey slapz is a Runtz x Greasemonkey x Runtz *preybirds cut purple pheno.
There femanized photos
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Cool thanks Prey!
Marty
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Im trying the living soil method now.
I have 2 monkey slapz in a large earthbox now.
Great genetics. Full thumbs up to @PreyBird1
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honestly 99% of salt based nutrients are the same. I ran Athena AG, Cyco and Jacks side by side with the same strains and the differences were with in a gram or two. I honestly believe people run into issues when they deviate from the feed schedule and/or try and make potions because in there opinion âthe color is wrongâ lol. this is based of listing to talks from several different people who work at the various companies who make the nutrients and have drâs in different AG fields.
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Did you purchase your living soil or make your own recipe?
Marty
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Iâm using the 3.0 recipe from buildasoil .
Earth worms and their full line. Iâm still in the learning process. But I have to say it has been very easy so far. Except i fell a little behind on a feeding. But it is starting to come back from it now. I have been working nights and watching my kids in the daytime. So i havenât had much time to be on here as much as I want. I will definitely start a journal on my next run.
I will post some pictures of everything before the end of this run
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Would love to see some pictures!!
Best
Marty
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Heres the plants in the closet.
I run a little hot on the nutrients all the time and get a little tip burn. But a couple of these plants when they started to cannibalize the fan leaves they sure got fried looking edges. And since these are just free seeds and this is the 1st time growing these strains im not to worried about it. Also im not used to growing a ton of plants in the Autopots. So ive been trying to use less nutrients. But im more interested my strains and refining how they feed. But i do have have more of these plants for later. The Hawaiian snow plants smells killer and ill grow more of it if is a good strain.
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