I do ok. Small auto might work but you need to keep in mind the height of your chamber and the stuff you'll need in that chamber. Lights and pot height.
Had some friends over for a BBQ when I was living in California. One of them had just picked up some green from the local dispensary. It was a hybrid. Skywalker OG. I had just finished curing an 8' x 4' tray of that cultivar that I had going in a garage a friend of mine had asked me to setup. I had a couple of Roors glass on the patio table so I wanted to do a comparison since I don't buy dispensary weed. They took a hit of the Dispensary weed and liked how smooth it smoked and, after around 15 minutes, said it was really nice smoke. I gave them mine and they hit it. After around a half hour one of them commented that his face was melting and the others got mad at me accusing me of spiking the weed! LOL!
My friend with the melting face laughed at them and told them how short their memories were(They were all college mates of mine!). We all started cracking up and decided we needed a few shots of Jack Daniels with a beer chaser to celebrate a great harvest!!!
So.....here's my priority list in regards to stages of the plant and what I look at and work on:
If I start from seedling I use the paper towel method. Basic tips would be to use the cheapest paper towel you can find. Expensive paper towels have fabric fiber woven in to make them tougher. We want them as soft as possible so that the tap root and any ensuing sub roots can easily penetrate the towel. Put the towel in a zip lock and stick the ziplock into a cup or container that is black/no light and cover the cup. Place the cup in a warm dry place. On top of your fridge works well since it gets warm up there or a bathroom that stays warm. Once they pop I use tweezers to remove them from the towel but before I do that I take a solo cup and fill it with soil. I take a butter knife and stick it in around 1/2"(12mm on your side of the world) into the soil. Basically whatever the length of the tap root plus a couple mm more. The butter knife is to slightly open the soil. Almost like an envelope. I slide the sprout and tap root, making sure the tap root is facing down, into the envelope and press the soil together to bury the sprout so that I get good soil contact with the tap root. The solo cups have holes poked in the bottom for drainage. I bottom water the solo cup by dunking the newly planted seedling half way into a weak nutrient solution and let the water wick up the soil. Once the media is wet I let it drain which also helps the root make contact with soil as the soil settles back in. This is the point where root development needs to start happening. I let the seedling start to develop its roots naturally, around a week, then add in a root enhancer like
Voodoo Juice to supercharge the microbial activity happening below soil line for a couple of weeks every feeding. I use a soil called Roots Organic Original that already has mycorrhizae but I enhance that with
Xtreme Gardening MYKOS mycorrhizae just to make sure there is plenty of fungal/microbial action happening at the root horizon.
Essentially we're building as large and healthy a root system as we can to support the later explosive growth we all like to see. This is especially important if you're using a technique that involves topping and fimming to even out the canopy like scrogging where you're splitting up the apical dominance of the plant into several sites rather than one. Having a strong nutrient delivery system is key and roots are the way you'll get that.
After that it's pretty easy sailing since the root system will bring you healthy vibrant foliage that will grow VERY quickly. Later on when you have tons of bud sites the optimized root system will also be able to supply those flowers with lots of nutrient so you'll get bigger, denser colas but before that it involves you moving on to the next phase. Vegetative.
In Veg I concentrate on maintaining bioavailability below surface(large healthy root structure, fungal/microbial network for better food solubility) and start to look at the development of branches and leaves. Here's where the silica and
hormex, along with the basic grow nutrient, come into play. Feeding them these nutrients will establish a very healthy branch structure which will be the second part to your nutrient highway. They'll also alleviate a lot of the stress the plant may have to endure as it continues to strengthen or if you make a mistake.
After that it pretty much does it on its own. At this point it's training and watching to make sure no pests or disease infect your plant.
Fun fact.....if you get a mite or powdery mildew infection you can use cows milk as a fungicide to kill off the invaders!! LOL! 60/40 water to milk. Put into a spray bottle and spray down the ENTIRE plant top and bottom of leaves and branches but especially the bottom where mites like to hide and lay eggs. If I'm doing a large grow I'll use a pesticide like
Azamax and fog it into the room with a hand fogger to get complete coverage.
Sorry for the long winded post but I thought you might enjoy a breakdown of the areas you want to prioritize when you start up your new grow!