APRIL 13th 2009 (15 Days old)

hello .. im kinda tired so Ill just post an update in pics.... thank you!


















Lata!

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Ok everyone, the newest peice of information I have gathered from my intel is the following stolen sentences from a thread I found and pasted earlier in my journal.

"As a rule of thumb, treat Lowryders like seedlings for the first 2-3 weeks, then switch them onto a light bloom program. So, you feed them a seedling/transplanting formula the first 2 weeks, then switch to a bloom fertilizer with something like a 5-10-5 or 1-2-1 ratio of N-P-K.

Give them a feeding of bloom fertilizer every week on weeks 3,4,5,6. Just pH-balanced water on week 7. Flushing solution on week 8."

now that im almost on week three and was confused about when I should switch them to bloom since they are autoflower..... well now i know and its what im going to do. If anyone on here has grown the auto flower and has another suggestion, or even just a green thumbs up for me doing this. Thank you!!

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Well, I would honestly wait until they actually start to flower a little to start your bloom nutes, otherwise the plant has a surplus of nutrients that it is not using and you run the risk of hurting it.

A lot of people will give you the advice that they start to flower within a certain period of time, but a whole bunch of factors come into play. It's only the best case scenario when they flower in three weeks. I have had them flower as soon as three weeks or as late as 6 or even 8 weeks. I think it has to do with the amount of light they get, because they will bloom sooner under powerful lights.

My biggest piece of advice I can give about autoflower plants is that they flower when they flower and they are done when they are done. Don't get too excited and try to force it to be done in 60 days like the advertisements say. It can take longer, and if you wait you will get more and better bud.

My first batch was under low-light growing for seeds and it took from early November until early February. But yeah, let the plant tell you when it is ready to flower and receive bloom nutes. I let it take its time finishing and I got over 200 seeds and about 1/2 oz smokable per plant.

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Sinsemilla deserves to be free, just like any other plant or tree

Yea I agree wit not rushing it.... ok well I will continue posting pics and maybe at one point someone will tell me to go bloom if I hadn't noticed already

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APRIL 15th 2009 (17 Days old)


Well just two days after the previous picture update, have been maintaining constant 6.0 ph. I find it sometimes creeps to 6.5 and I just fix it with a little ph down. They have fluffed a whole bunch and im noticing they are starting to drink more. I filled the res up last night with enough ph tested water to get it about 1/2 inch ABOVE the 6 gallon mark and it was about 1/2 BELOW in the morning when I woke. Here is the results of an overnight party with my ladies binge drinking the water and nutes... they fattened up for me..lol enjoy..

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Hi growthspurt!
I just subscribed to this thread as I will be using a similar system in the near future. I'm happy I caught this thread early so I can watch it from beginning to end. Is this grow strictly CFL's or are you flowering with something else? Your plants are looking pretty healthy and I'm interested to see this autoflowering strain. Thanks!

Yes I plan on staying strictly CFL. thank you for subscribing, let us know when you start yours!

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Good job so far growthspurt. I just read through and I'd like to give you a little of my own input. First of all you should follow thatgrow guide by the joint doctor pretty closely until you figure things out for yourself. That's what I did when I started with autoflowers. I've been growing them for about 16 months with a harvest every 3 weeks and I love them. I'm at the point now where I average about 20-30 grams per plant. I've grown LR2's solely up until 3 weeks ago. I know have a few White Dwarfs and a few Afghan Kush Ryders going. I grow in soil, and started out with cfl's. I don't mean to step on any toes, but I wanted to say that it definitely shouldn't take 6-8 weeks to show sex on an autoflowering strain considering it's life cycle is at most 10 weeks. Mine always show between 15-21 days. It didn't seem to effect your babies this time, but as with all strains you want to give your plants at most a vitamin/hormone solution like thrive alive. No nutes. It also looks like your plants are a little hot. See how the ridges on the leaves are real spred out and pointing upwards? That means they are trying to dissapate the heat. The thermometer you have is on the wall which is a completely different temperature than where those plants are. You need to get a small one that you can put right by the plants. I'd be willing to bet that it's at least 85-90 by them. I saw you asked a question about harvest too. The pistils (or "hairs"), should just be a tip for you ( once about half of them turn orange), to start looking at the trichomes (the crystals). Go to radio shack and pick up a mini handheld microscope. It's like 12 dollars, it has a light on it, and it can zoom 60 to 100x. Here's a link so you can see what it looks like - http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=2179604
When you notice about half of the pistils turning orange you look at the trichs and as time progresses they will go from clear to cloudy to amber. If you want more of a sativa "head" high you want the trichs to be some clear some cloudy, and if you want more of a body buzz you harvest them when the trichs are more cloudy to amber. I should say that if a strain is indica dominant and you harvest it earlier, it's not going to be like a sativa it's just going to be more of a head high. I like to harvest my LR2's when they are clear to cloudy but that's just me. I'll probably do the same with my white dwarfs since they are a white widow cross and white widow is 60% sativa and 40% indica. Sorry if I rambled, and if you have any questions that I might be able to answer feel free to ask. If you feel that I helped some positive rep would be appreciated. Thanks and good luck.

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I'm a soil man ba bana boom ba bana boom I'm a soil man....

So you are suggesting that I shouldn't be using the micro/grow/bloom nutes as they are bad for autoflowers or that they just aren't the best choice? I was planning on switching to to micro/bloom as soon as I start to see them flowering do you not recommend that?

Also thank you so much for all that information, I hope you can follow along my grow and offer more advice in the future if you feel nessacary, this is my first grow and I hope it to be a successfull one.

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It looks good so far, especially for your first grow. I wasn't suggesting that you shouldn't use those nutes, I was just saying that in the beginning you may want to use something like thrive alive in the first few weeks because most auto's are sensitive to nutes. After that I change to 1/2 strength grow and and 1/4 strength bloom along with 1/2 strength micronutrients every other week for a couple of weeks increasing each slowly, and then on the 6th week I use 3/4 strength bloom and 1/4 strength grow increasing the bloom gradually to full strength by the 8th week and phasing out the grow nutrients. I continue using the micronutrients every other week and I also use the thrive alive at 1/2 strength every watering. I wouldn't cut out the grow nutrients like the other guy said unless your bloom contains some nitrogen. Mine does not, that's why I use mine as long as I do. If you don't have nitrogen your fan leaves will yellow and die and your fan leaves are what gathers the light and CO2 for your plants.

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I'm a soil man ba bana boom ba bana boom I'm a soil man....