RetiredRN Gorilla Glue, Northern Lights 2021 First Time Grower

[RetiredRN]

Hey man I got a bunch of autos going too. Did you find that your plants could and actually wanted pretty much as many nutes as you could stuff in them? I'm using the same nutes as you and I'm getting ready to bump up my concentration for the third time!! They just seem to want more and more, greedy bastards. Lol. Also, did those gigantic buds start out like the ones in the attached picture? Cuz I'm looking at these little puppies and wondering how they can possibly get anywhere near what I would consider "big." They do seem to increase in size rather quickly though, I will say that. Did you find in the beginning of budding that the buds themselves grow rather quickly in both length and girth? I am SUPER curious to see the difference in what your plants look like and what mine do at the end. I have tried to eliminate the main giant cola you got in favor of an attempt at getting all the buds the same amount of light and see how it goes. So what you see in the picture is what all mine look like, and those buds are all at the same height. So I don't expect to get any humongous central colas like yours. I'm hoping for a whole bunch of medium sized buds and also hoping that will increase the yield. But the funny thing is that I am flying equally as blind as you. Never tried autos. No idea what's going to happen. Lmao. But man your results speak for themselves so I hope I get something even close to that kind of size, girth, and from the looks of it, density. Are they as dense as they look? I'm finding autos fascinating. I have some Strawberry Cheesecakes in the bank for the next auto grow already!

I chose autos because I thought they would be easy to grow and I would not have to think about when to flip them and they would stay a real small size since my tent is only a 3 x 3 x 6. It didn’t take me long to figure out from talking to others that autos are harder to grow because what you do to them really matters especially in training them because if you mess up they don’t have a whole Lotta time to recover. I started in living soil and within 3 weeks they were hungry so I been Feeding them weekly full strength Foxfarm nutrients and that big is auto that is 90 cm that is yellowing in the photo is requiring two times a week feeding!!!! My next grow will be fox farm ocean forest in the bottom half of the pot and the rest filled with fox farm happy frog mixed all with extra worm castings and some perilite. I plan on trying Geoflora nutrients for my next run. I am betting things will get crazy in the tent at the stretch. I started out training them and gave up is why my main colas are so big. My next grow I will stay with the training to eliminate that big main cola. Your plant looks great I think. The buds are tightly packed on the gorilla glue auto and the main cola on the northern lights auto is not quite as tight but required a stick to hold it up and is wider then the palm of my hand. I’m a woman so my hands are a bit smaller but its a good 3 inches wide I guess. The buds started packing on after the stretch and they continue to grow especially the last 2 weeks. I hope I answered everything, if not just drop me another reply my friend!

 

[Smoke em]

Alright, I hope this is where I post my next grow journal entry at. I am quite unsure of my navigational skills in this forum. Hey @InTheShed and @Maritimer . So I fed my girls 7.5 ml of FF grow big and 30 ml of FF big bloom per half gallon of water I gave them today. I waited a while and they were still thirsty so I gave them another half gallon plain water for the 4 plants. My gorilla glue (the biggest plant) is showing problems againnnnn with yellowing of old lower fans leaves. I also think I should have watered her yesterday because she was bone dry and droopy this morning, poor thing. They don’t seem to be growing vigorously as I would expect for their ages. The gorilla glue plant which is my biggest plant it’s 45 days old today and the other three are northern lights that are 36 days old. The one Northern light Plant showed pre-buds a week ago when it was barely 30 days old where is the others are behind but they are all the same age. I should probably smoke some more weed because so far this growing experience has been a little nerve-racking trying to figure out what they want.

Hey! I did the same thing but worse on my first and current grow. My autos were doing great, and I decided to give em a full dose of FF trio bloom nutes and I thought I was gonna lose em. Autos are definitely sensitive. Mine recovered, and my buds weren’t damaged(stunted a bit I’m sure) but they’re back on track now. Anyway, be careful with overfertilizing. I followed heavy feeding and it was too much.

 

[Jon]

I chose autos because I thought they would be easy to grow and I would not have to think about when to flip them and they would stay a real small size since my tent is only a 3 x 3 x 6. It didn’t take me long to figure out from talking to others that autos are harder to grow because what you do to them really matters especially in training them because if you mess up they don’t have a whole Lotta time to recover. I started in living soil and within 3 weeks they were hungry so I been Feeding them weekly full strength Foxfarm nutrients and that big is auto that is 90 cm that is yellowing in the photo is requiring two times a week feeding!!!! My next grow will be fox farm ocean forest in the bottom half of the pot and the rest filled with fox farm happy frog mixed all with extra worm castings and some perilite. I plan on trying Geoflora nutrients for my next run. I am betting things will get crazy in the tent at the stretch. I started out training them and gave up is why my main colas are so big. My next grow I will stay with the training to eliminate that big main cola. Your plant looks great I think. The buds are tightly packed on the gorilla glue auto and the main cola on the northern lights auto is not quite as tight but required a stick to hold it up and is wider then the palm of my hand. I’m a woman so my hands are a bit smaller but its a good 3 inches wide I guess. The buds started packing on after the stretch and they continue to grow especially the last 2 weeks. I hope I answered everything, if not just drop me another reply my friend!

You did and thanks for letting me grill you. Apparently that's what I do. I'm sure people are getting sick of my endless well of questions but it is what it is. If I don't know I research and I ask. Just trying to learn.

Yeah there's a large amount of conflicting information on autos I found. Top or no top. Transplant or no transplant. Etc. I chose NOT to top, but I said yes to transplant and that worked out great. Now that I see how they grow I don't think I'll top them in the future either, although I will likely experiment. I did nothing more than tie down branches in a circular even pattern as best I could to open up the middle and the lower bud sites as much as possible. I started bending the main stem over as early as I could. In one case I was a few days early and stopped just in time to not pull the plant out of the ground, lol. Everything is SO fast with these up to budding that it's hard to know what or when to do stuff to them. I went safe on the LST and I'm ending up with all these round little bushes. The lower growth when you expose it grows out so fricking fast you can almost watch it in real time. Crazy. As far as stretching, that's what I'm super curious about and expect to be very strain specific. My Gorilla Zkittlez is barely stretching at all. She may not even break the screen with the stretch, she's been an inch from it for a few days now. The buds are growing exponentially but I don't think she's gonna stretch at all. The Cinderella Jacks on the other hand (world's strongest autoflower) are stretching crazy right now. The Pineapple Express' are the biggest plants of my four strains by FAR. And the ones taking the longest before showing any signs of budding. I hope they stay in veg forever. Since I'm making these short bushes I don't expect height is going to be an issue at all. My tent is 5x5x6'11". Below is a picture of the LST I just now performed on the Pineapple that was ready for it. They are so soft and flexible it is simple as hell to train them. I really just have the screen to separate buds and for support, it's not a scrog or anything. I just shortened that plant a good six inches with that training and you can see the center is wide open. I'm happy with what I have going on with training. The little bushes are way easy to manage. I hope I'm not COSTING myself yield by doing it this way but I guess we'll find out.

On nutes, did you START at 100% with the FF nutes on the autos? And did you basically use the FF feeding schedule concentrations and just consider each "week" maybe four days in "auto time?" How did you decide when to move on to the suggested feeding schedule for each next week of the chart? Also, how did they do once the Tiger Bloom hit the mix? That's the one that scares me a little in terms of burning the plants.

 

[Jon]

Hey! I did the same thing but worse on my first and current grow. My autos were doing great, and I decided to give em a full dose of FF trio bloom nutes and I thought I was gonna lose em. Autos are definitely sensitive. Mine recovered, and my buds weren’t damaged(stunted a bit I’m sure) but they’re back on track now. Anyway, be careful with overfertilizing. I followed heavy feeding and it was too much.

Hey Smoke em, I'm Jon. Nice to meet you. I saw your post and wanted to chime in with a thanks for sharing that. Cuz this is my first shot at autos and I haven't made a mistake yet. But I was considering bumping them up to full strength nutes and I'm not going to do that. I'll continue to inch my way up. Thanks. Check out my journal if you like. I have nine autos and four are budding. Four different strains in a 5x5.

 

[Jon]

Hey Smoke em, I'm Jon. Nice to meet you. I saw your post and wanted to chime in with a thanks for sharing that. Cuz this is my first shot at autos and I haven't made a mistake yet. But I was considering bumping them up to full strength nutes and I'm not going to do that. I'll continue to inch my way up. Thanks. Check out my journal if you like. I have nine autos and four are budding. Four different strains in a 5x5.

Oops. Here's the pic.

 

[InTheShed]

My next grow will be fox farm ocean forest in the bottom half of the pot and the rest filled with fox farm happy frog mixed all with extra worm castings and some perilite. I plan on trying Geoflora nutrients for my next run.

If you're going with the GeoFlora you'll be fine just going with the HF, though I've seen folks grow from seed in both.

 

[RetiredRN]

You did and thanks for letting me grill you. Apparently that's what I do. I'm sure people are getting sick of my endless well of questions but it is what it is. If I don't know I research and I ask. Just trying to learn.

Yeah there's a large amount of conflicting information on autos I found. Top or no top. Transplant or no transplant. Etc. I chose NOT to top, but I said yes to transplant and that worked out great. Now that I see how they grow I don't think I'll top them in the future either, although I will likely experiment. I did nothing more than tie down branches in a circular even pattern as best I could to open up the middle and the lower bud sites as much as possible. I started bending the main stem over as early as I could. In one case I was a few days early and stopped just in time to not pull the plant out of the ground, lol. Everything is SO fast with these up to budding that it's hard to know what or when to do stuff to them. I went safe on the LST and I'm ending up with all these round little bushes. The lower growth when you expose it grows out so fricking fast you can almost watch it in real time. Crazy. As far as stretching, that's what I'm super curious about and expect to be very strain specific. My Gorilla Zkittlez is barely stretching at all. She may not even break the screen with the stretch, she's been an inch from it for a few days now. The buds are growing exponentially but I don't think she's gonna stretch at all. The Cinderella Jacks on the other hand (world's strongest autoflower) are stretching crazy right now. The Pineapple Express' are the biggest plants of my four strains by FAR. And the ones taking the longest before showing any signs of budding. I hope they stay in veg forever. Since I'm making these short bushes I don't expect height is going to be an issue at all. My tent is 5x5x6'11". Below is a picture of the LST I just now performed on the Pineapple that was ready for it. They are so soft and flexible it is simple as hell to train them. I really just have the screen to separate buds and for support, it's not a scrog or anything. I just shortened that plant a good six inches with that training and you can see the center is wide open. I'm happy with what I have going on with training. The little bushes are way easy to manage. I hope I'm not COSTING myself yield by doing it this way but I guess we'll find out.

On nutes, did you START at 100% with the FF nutes on the autos? And did you basically use the FF feeding schedule concentrations and just consider each "week" maybe four days in "auto time?" How did you decide when to move on to the suggested feeding schedule for each next week of the chart? Also, how did they do once the Tiger Bloom hit the mix? That's the one that scares me a little in terms of burning the plants.

I Started out only feeding them half strength and one of my mentors asked me why I was doing that and that I should give them the full strength nutrients and so I started feeding them at about a month and when I realized my stupid living soil was not going to feed them to the end for me.

 

[RetiredRN]

If you're going with the GeoFlora you'll be fine just going with the HF, though I've seen folks grow from seed in both.

Ok, good to know. I may do 2 plants with just happy Frog and the other two with the bottom half ocean forest and the top half happy frog and do a comparison and see which one does the best.

 

[InTheShed]

Unless you're growing clones, that's just for fun!

 

[Bill284]

Ok, good to know. I may do 2 plants with just happy Frog and the other two with the bottom half ocean forest and the top half happy frog and do a comparison and see which one does the best.

Hey @RetiredRN . Garden is coming along wonderfully.
Sorry I was late and missed everything, looks like shed has you covered. And everyone else. Your rocken my friend. Congrats on upcoming harvest.

 

[RetiredRN]

Hey @RetiredRN . Garden is coming along wonderfully.
Sorry I was late and missed everything, looks like shed has you covered. And everyone else. Your rocken my friend. Congrats on upcoming harvest.

Thanks!

 

[Jon]

I chose autos because I thought they would be easy to grow and I would not have to think about when to flip them and they would stay a real small size since my tent is only a 3 x 3 x 6. It didn’t take me long to figure out from talking to others that autos are harder to grow because what you do to them really matters especially in training them because if you mess up they don’t have a whole Lotta time to recover. I started in living soil and within 3 weeks they were hungry so I been Feeding them weekly full strength Foxfarm nutrients and that big is auto that is 90 cm that is yellowing in the photo is requiring two times a week feeding!!!! My next grow will be fox farm ocean forest in the bottom half of the pot and the rest filled with fox farm happy frog mixed all with extra worm castings and some perilite. I plan on trying Geoflora nutrients for my next run. I am betting things will get crazy in the tent at the stretch. I started out training them and gave up is why my main colas are so big. My next grow I will stay with the training to eliminate that big main cola. Your plant looks great I think. The buds are tightly packed on the gorilla glue auto and the main cola on the northern lights auto is not quite as tight but required a stick to hold it up and is wider then the palm of my hand. I’m a woman so my hands are a bit smaller but its a good 3 inches wide I guess. The buds started packing on after the stretch and they continue to grow especially the last 2 weeks. I hope I answered everything, if not just drop me another reply my friend!

Regarding your soil idea for the next grow, just fyi, my soil mix is similar to that. Mine is 40% Ocean Forest, 40% Happy Frog, and 20% added Perlite #3. I got the mix directly from the Fox Farms customer service people, most of whom are growers using Fox Farms products. The person I spoke with was responding to my question about doing my soil exactly as you describe - with half the pot one kind and half the pot the other. They told me it would be better to mix the two soils together and to amend it with either perlite or vermiculite or both. So I took their advice and all 14 of my plants, both the autos and the photos, are loving this soil. I decided not to go with the vermiculite because I wasn't as confident about water retention/drainage relative to that as I was with the perlite. The Ph is always on point, and the mix drains very well with the larger perlite (#3 is pretty big, way bigger than the perlite that comes in the soil). Anyway, for what it's worth. Regarding your stretch, I'm still waiting on mine to get into high gear, and since four of the autos have been budding for a whole week, I frankly expected more by now. Stretch on the Gorilla Zkittlez is basically almost nothing. The Cinderella Jacks are stretching pretty well but not as quickly as I expected. I expect the Pineapple Express' to stretch a lot based on how fast they are vegging, but who the hell knows? And the Lemon I already know is going to stay small as it's a small plant. I'm wondering if LST/training the autos into a bush rather than letting them grow like a Christmas tree affects the stretch?

 

[LizardMate]

Hi RetiredRN. It looked very rough early on but you battled through those problems like a pro. I hope you get a great smoke from them you certainly deserve it! Rollercoaster of a grow!

 

[RetiredRN]

Regarding your soil idea for the next grow, just fyi, my soil mix is similar to that. Mine is 40% Ocean Forest, 40% Happy Frog, and 20% added Perlite #3. I got the mix directly from the Fox Farms customer service people, most of whom are growers using Fox Farms products. The person I spoke with was responding to my question about doing my soil exactly as you describe - with half the pot one kind and half the pot the other. They told me it would be better to mix the two soils together and to amend it with either perlite or vermiculite or both. So I took their advice and all 14 of my plants, both the autos and the photos, are loving this soil. I decided not to go with the vermiculite because I wasn't as confident about water retention/drainage relative to that as I was with the perlite. The Ph is always on point, and the mix drains very well with the larger perlite (#3 is pretty big, way bigger than the perlite that comes in the soil). Anyway, for what it's worth. Regarding your stretch, I'm still waiting on mine to get into high gear, and since four of the autos have been budding for a whole week, I frankly expected more by now. Stretch on the Gorilla Zkittlez is basically almost nothing. The Cinderella Jacks are stretching pretty well but not as quickly as I expected. I expect the Pineapple Express' to stretch a lot based on how fast they are vegging, but who the hell knows? And the Lemon I already know is going to stay small as it's a small plant. I'm wondering if LST/training the autos into a bush rather than letting them grow like a Christmas tree affects the stretch?

I don’t think the LST affects the stretch but it does affect I believe how long the plants total life is. If I’m not mistaken the stretch happened to me a few weeks after it started blooming so I think there’s still time yet before your stretch. I know when the stretched happened with my biggest auto I got nervous because I thought I was going to run out of tent room and now I think that the yellowing on the top half of my one girl is from the light being too close because it’s within 6 inches because I just simply ran out of room in my tent because she’s that big.

 

[RetiredRN]

Hi RetiredRN. It looked very rough early on but you battled through those problems like a pro. I hope you get a great smoke from them you certainly deserve it! Rollercoaster of a grow!

Thanks. I hope for great smoke and edibles too.

 

[Jon]

I don’t think the LST affects the stretch but it does affect I believe how long the plants total life is. If I’m not mistaken the stretch happened to me a few weeks after it started blooming so I think there’s still time yet before your stretch. I know when the stretched happened with my biggest auto I got nervous because I thought I was going to run out of tent room and now I think that the yellowing on the top half of my one girl is from the light being too close because it’s within 6 inches because I just simply ran out of room in my tent because she’s that big.

Ah....that makes sense. A little lag between when you notice the first preflowers and when they actually start stretching in earnest. That seems to be what's happening for me too. I hope you're right. It would be okay if they don't stretch, but I have plenty of vertical space so I hope they do. I'm curious to see if my raising the light a little bit and lowering the par on the canopy as whole in favor of more complete coverage will cause them to stretch a little since their par numbers just dropped from around 1250 to around 950. I would have loved to have kept it where it was cuz 1250 par for budding is awesome if they can handle it. But not at the cost of compromising six others significantly. That's one example of the type of compromises I'm finding necessary when growing multiple strains. I am also erring on the low side with the nutes, as I am certain they will all respond differently and I don't want to burn them at all. So I'd rather leave a strain wanting more than burn the ones who don't.

 

[Emilya Green]

Regarding "burning":
Take a look at this picture and notice all the yellow tips that the modern growing world considers to be "burning."

This is my current Poison Daddy, growing like crazy and about a week into bloom. She constantly shows this symptom... but here is the point. She is not being fed traditional nutes. She is being fed organically, using Geoflora Nutrients. She is not being overfed. She is in the organic feeding cycle, where the microbes and the plants form a symbiotic relationship and the plant tells the microbes exactly what nutrients it needs and in what quantities. So, is the plant overfeeding itself and burning those leaves??

Every organically grown plant I have seen, does this. Whether I am using the TLO organic method and applying regular Actively Aerated Compost Teas, Realgrower's Recharge to supply the microbes, or Geoflora as I am now using... every organic grow acts this way.

There is also an adage out there for those who do use traditional fertilizers, that if you are not at least "burning" the tips, you aren't trying hard enough. So I went to my AG professor to ask about this... does organic growing really burn the plants?

It turns out that the tip burn that we all look for, is not actually a burn, but is a sign of a process that is going on in the plant that has had enough of nutrient and is signaling to the microbes below that it does not need any more for right now. The very same process is happening at the tips of the leaves and the tips of the roots... the message down below is that these roots no longer are taking the nutrient... come back later. Of course, the leaves being mirrors of what is happening at the roots, show the same indicator... we have had enough on this round. My prof explained that this tiny "burn" at the tips of the leaves is akin to a good belch after a great meal, and just as this is a complement to the chef in some areas of the world, it is also an indication that all is perfectly well fed... it is not always simply an indication that you have given too much.

 

[Ossi Ossi]

I don’t think the LST affects the stretch but it does affect I believe how long the plants total life is. If I’m not mistaken the stretch happened to me a few weeks after it started blooming so I think there’s still time yet before your stretch. I know when the stretched happened with my biggest auto I got nervous because I thought I was going to run out of tent room and now I think that the yellowing on the top half of my one girl is from the light being too close because it’s within 6 inches because I just simply ran out of room in my tent because she’s that big.

I'm sure you know that those pipe cleaners if they get wet they rust so be careful imo.
looks nice but , yummy

 

[Jon]

I'm sure you know that those pipe cleaners if they get wet they rust so be careful imo.
looks nice but , yummy

I use the long plastic coated green wire from Vigoro. They work great and they're waterproof and way cheap. Bags of 100. If I need length I just twist two together. Super easy. For what it's worth. I would have never considered rust with those but of course they do now that you say it. Good call.

 

[Ossi Ossi]

I use the long plastic coated green wire from Vigoro. They work great and they're waterproof and way cheap. Bags of 100. If I need length I just twist two together. Super easy. For what it's worth. I would have never considered rust with those but of course they do now that you say it. Good call.

hey bro trust me i learnt the hard way
cheers