Outdoor Rig Autos
Zkittlez
Jack Herer
Day 26
Good morning
@BubbaKush909! Hey, so I was thinking about it this morning as I was working with the outside autos and I realized I had a nice opportunity to show you in more detail what I do (related to our topping discussion) and how and why it works. I also thought maybe I'd give you a few things I have come to believe are "basic" to the auto growing thing. My hope is that this might help you going forward with autos and topping.
Let's do this pictorially.
This first picture is a shot of the Zkittlez auto from overhead. Today is Day 26. I topped this plant just one time, on the main stem, above the 4th node as soon as the 5th was out enough to cut. That was five days ago on Day 21. So in addition to the one topping as early as the plant allowed, I also have read this plant as simply begging me to canopy her. I say this because her lower node stems were practically caught up to the main colas very quickly, and they provided me significant stemage to work with. So what I did was create a symmetrical 8-cola ring using the two new growths from the topping, the next node down, and then the next two nodes down. I removed all the growth below those branches, which amounted to the two 1st node branches and the two big fans attached to them as well as the cotyledons and three-pointed first leaves. All that is really nothing. Like ten minutes of easy work total if I added it up. And so now what I have is this sweet ring on Day 26 all at a very even level with time to spare yet before she starts throwing pistils. If she begins soon, which I suspect will be the case, then I'm done. If she give me another week, we'll see if anything further may happen in terms of more topping, but I doubt it. Other than this Watermelon WeddingCake BEAST I've never really had an auto allow me two rounds of topping, and if I did do it they didn't amount to much because there wasn't enough time for them to grow out. Here's the overhead shot:
And here's a side shot of the same canopy:
Two "tricks" are on display in this training you might like and find helpful. The first one is the "tie the topped shoots to the fan leaves below them" trick that
@InTheShed turned me on to. This is a great trick that I absolutely love and use very often.
The other one is using a stake not to lower a branch, but to raise it. I refer to these as support stakes. They help to bring longer, lower branches that have enough stem but aren't naturally staying up and tall, up to same level as the colas you're tying down. Very cool little trick that really helps to even out canopies, again, one I use often.
Now let's contrast that plant with the Jack Herer. Jack was also topped only once, the same spot, on Day 22, four days ago. Here she is from overhead. See how different this plant looks versus the Zkittlez? Shorter branches. Bushier. Tighter nodal growth. Bigger fans. More fans. I've seen plenty of Jack grows (it's my all time favorite strain almost) and I feel comfortable saying I got a more indica pheno in this case, as the plant tells me it is. She simply doesn't appear to WANT to get that same treatment, even though I could do the exact same thing with her and make the same kind of ring. But to do it on this plant is difficult. Not enough stem length to really spread it out. Too big of fans that I won't want to take. Going to stay as a shorter, bushier plant I believe. So with the Jack, again with just the one topping, I am going to let her go as she is. There are the exact same amount of branches, colas, and nodes on this Jack as the Zkittlez, but Jack is telling me to let her go. This is sort of my limited experience/understanding of one of the ways I'm learning how to "read" my plants, if that makes sense. Here's what the Jack looks like:
Again, all I did to her, literally, is top once. That's it. She's a nice little plant.
Here's a couple "basics" about autos that might help. To reiterate: These are only
my opinion of what the basics are. Others will strongly disagree with parts of this I'm sure. So know that, cool? Just because I consider them as such doesn't mean it's the right or best thing, just that I've gotten consistent results.
- Genetics. MOST important. This should always be the starting point. ESPECIALLY with autos. There are more crap auto seeds out there than you can shake a stick at. Stick with proven breeders who do extensive and long term testing and have consistent, proven results, like the Ethos' and Mephistos and 420FastBuds of the world, to name a few that are excellent for autos. Barney's Farm and Dutch Passion are others which are very good.
- Watering Game. Also VITALLY important for autos. You simply do not have the time to not water very disciplined with autos in soil especially. Otherwise the root balls won't fill your pots and you'll be disappointed over and over again. Build those roots out and let the pots dry out between waterings. It's also important to begin doing that "ring of targeted water" thing while the plant is still a seedling. I begin using that methodology immediately.
- Up Potting. This will be unpopular, but I'm going to tell you to always begin in a Dixie with autos and up pot them to their final container. You will have a well established root ball before day 20 in the Dixie cup. You can do anything in the Dixie in terms of starting to train that you can do in the pot, including topping, and the plant can be up potted in a trained state if necessary. This is going to save you two or three or maybe even four or five DAYS in terms of rapid plant growth, trust me. That's a lot of lost growth time to an auto. When you start in the final container (I've done it successfully more than once) you have to work WAY harder to develop that root ball from scratch. It's WAY easier to screw it up. And, you don't water to runoff right away either when you start in the final container, which I also don't like. When you instead work with a well established root ball from the Dixie you can immediately upon up potting begin to water to runoff and soaking the entire container when necessary or appropriate.
- Nutes. I see over and over again people displaying small autos and talking about how they used 50% of their prescribed nute dosage, or 75%, or whatever. The idea that you will burn the plant if you go full bore on nutes is an often repeated falsehood. Autos want to EAT. Regardless of what nute system (non-organic I'm talking) you use (Fox Farms, Canna, Prescription Blend, Blue Planet, Botanicare, whatever), in my humble opinion, and btw backed up by science extremely well by
@Emilya when I discussed it with her, the system should be used AS INTENDED. I mean from day one. I go exactly by the prescribed dosages always. There is no cutting back. They are designed and engineered by people smarter than me to work as a system and are much more effective when used as such in my experience. To do otherwise is trying to out-think people who do this for a living on a high level armed with all the knowledge in the world. That, I've found, is counterproductive.
- CalMag. I've found autos under LED need it more often than photos. I generally add it to my feed maybe every third or fourth watering, and I use the light, amazing stuff, Humboldt's Secret Cal Mag plus Iron. It's very lowish across the board and works very very well.
- Light. I've found that the average auto can take and wants more light than the average photo. I only burned one auto ever from light. They seem to eat it for breakfast (which they do, lol). So with autos, on the light intensity side, I almost always go push the limits with them. The two autos in the outdoor rig are already at around 800 ppfd at the height I have them, and it's only day 26. They love it. Don't skimp on light with the autos.
So there's a bunch of stuff, let's call that part one of the response. Part two of the response is my next post on the Watermelon WeddingCake. Obviously she's a beast and in my experience a bit of an aberration. She gave me 35 days and TONS of branching to work with on training her, and her rate of growth was awesome. That's forever in autoland, and with that much time and growth your options open up completely. Note the sweet lower ring on the plant. That was almost every side branch topped. The main stem was topped one time above node 4. Everything else is topping side branches and arranging them. And now you can see I have a three tiered plant. I have the lower main ring, a next level up six cola ring, and then the tops which are no joke. If this plant isn't my highest yielding auto ever I'll be quite surprised. Check out the post, I'll tag you as a continuation.
