Cheers!
So you're talking about nutes and autos and differences with strains. That's exactly where I am right now and you've grown autos four times. This is my first stab at it. So I thought I'd chime in with a question or two and maybe a comment.
So I'm growing nine plants, which are four strains: 3 Dutch Passion Cinderella Jack, 1 Barney's Farm Gorilla Zkittlez, 3 420 Fast Buds Pineapple Express, and 2 (unnamed at moderator request) Lemon. The first four are 8 days in the lead, then two more, then four days later the last three plants in terms of their relationship to each other when they sprouted, and the oldest four are not yet 40 days old. WELL into budding. All the others are either just starting to bud or will this week. So there's the background and I watch these guys religiously because things move so damn fast in Autotown. I monitor their water and nutrient intake very carefully as well. With that said, to your points:
- I am also finding that each strain is a little different and sometimes a lot different in terms of nutrient uptake/preference. For all of them, before I saw any preflowers/first signs of budding, I treated them as if that was their veg cycle. I fed them the Fox Farms nutrient trio as such. I started feeding them when they were in the Dixie cups before transplant to the threes. I started all the plants at 50% recommended dosage. As they all grew I gradually have upped the concentrations with the hoped for goal of getting to their 100% recommendation of each nute. On the first four (3 Cinderella, 1 Gorilla) they are all WELL into budding. They are getting this: 100% Big Bloom, 50% Grow Big, 75% Tiger Bloom, 1 tbsp. blackstrap unsulphured molasses. I am hesitant to raise the level of the Grow Big as that is the Fox Farms nute in this trio that seems to consistently burn my plants historically, thus the 50%. And now that they are well into budding the goal is to get the Tiger Bloom up to 100%. Anyway, I haven't gotten one single yellow tip, or any other sign on a single leaf of any kind of nute burn or negative response. They are taking whatever I throw at them with zero issues, which blows my mind. As long as they keep doing that, I keep raising the nutes till they tell me to stop. With the vegging Lemons and Pineapple Express, (yo, try the Pineapple Express, it is a big yielder supposedly, high THC, super dank, and if my vegging plants are any indication it is going to be all of that. It is by far the biggest plant of all mine, and has by far the most side branching already. It's insane, I heartily recommend it and it's a gorgeous plant. I trained mine into bushes and they're insanely beautiful), those guys also take whatever I throw at them.
I guess my point is to your question about is it better to go from the top down and draw back or from the bottom up and build up with the nutes? (I am paraphrasing you). I submit that my limited experience with autos is the same as with photos - it's WAY better to start below where you wish to be and work up to it. Especially with the autos. Cuz if you burn them with nutes and then draw back, fine, no problem, but you definitely cost them AT LEAST one day when you do that (stalling them as they recover and process the too much shit you gave them which comes out on the leaves as crap you don't want to see), and I submit it's usually way longer than one day if the burn is bad. Autos lifecycles are too short for that garbage, so I so bottom up I am feeding these guys with every watering as well by the way, only about every fourth watering they get a CalMag plus Iron in clean water treatment. And that one I do double the runoff, so it's kind of like a little "mini flush." I read that since they are processing so many hours of light per day (I'm on 22/2, lol, they love it) they cruise through the calcium and magnesium way more quickly than photo plants do and it's a good idea to give them CalMag all the way through the grow. So I have been doing that, and it seems to be working really well. With the molasses, I started it on the budding plants as soon as they had "appreciable" buds. Right now they are on Day 12 and 11 of budding (the Gorilla was first, the Cinderellas a day later) and they are frosting up. When I see the first frost I start the molasses and within two applications you can visibly see that they start to increase the frost count. I use a TBSP/GALLON and I use this all the way through the grow to the very end including during the flush! It makes the buds WAY sweeter than they would be otherwise, and it increases the number of trichomes or at least it sure did on my first grow. If you wanna see what I mean about the trichome count, check out the very first post of my journal where I post a few pics of my first grow. There's a trichome closeup. Trust me I did not have the light power to create those trichomes. I had crappy blurples. That trichome madness you see there is because of the molasses. It can't hurt your plants, the only thing is you gotta test your pH cuz the molasses can sometimes throw you off a bit and you may need to adjust it. So far I haven't had the slightest issue. Then my last thing is I give them a watering with mycorrhizae in clear water once a month. This is in addition to putting it as a dusting in the holes I transplanted into. The roots explode with that stuff and the microbes in the molasses help them stay healthy and white.
- I also notice all the strains take water at different rates. My Gorilla Zkittlez is a thirsty girl and drinks the same amount of water faster than any other plant. I water a specific volume of water each time so I can monitor their uptake better, and when you keep track of that you can really see how they drink. I only water my plants when the pot is bone dry from the previous watering, so this has proven very helpful. Overwatering sucks and cost me a ton of yield on my maiden grow. With
@Emilya's and
@Backlipslide's help I never overwater now and have an actual technique that works miraculously and I highly recommend.
So yeah, man, autos seem to be VERY strain specific in terms of their needs. It's fascinating to grow different strains and see that. That said, next time I will likely pick one strain and go for that by itself with a low scrog. I bushed mine out this time with LST, no topping, and I have a screen in now to separate buds and support a little, but a real actual scrog would have been the call on this grow and I'll try it next time. Thus, one strain. At least then they are all "relatively" the same, versus several strains where it's a bit of a crapshoot.
Hope you enjoyed the long post. Autos are awesome. Surprised I like them so much but the little girls are just so cute and so much fun.
. Yes by all means if its available from them in your country buy it 