First time grower with Question about watering Autoflowers.

ERK · Jul 3, 2025

Hello All,
First time grower. Using autoflowers (gorilla glue & Girl Scout cookies). In 5 gal grow bags. 18/6 light schedule. Currently in flowering stage see pics. Approximately 3 1/2 foot tall. Using Sunshine Mix #4 and Mills nutrients (currently lower A/B with appropriate Ultimate PK). Humidity stays 48-50% and 70-74 degrees Fahrenheit. Plants seem to be doing fine meaning no signs of nutrient issues. I’m watering (slowly) early morning 8am.
They WERE drinking about a 1 1/4 gallon with appropriate run off, by evening still ok moisture/weight of bags, then ready for watering by next morning.
Now, by evening they are pretty dry and light weight. This morning they were super dry.

Should I be watering autoflowers twice inside of 24 hour period? If yes…with nutrients or without?
Thanks for the help.

Galgrows · Jul 3, 2025

Very nice looking auto flowers. Man i never need to water my autos 2x a day but hey maybe you soil or ?? is super draining/airaited you have lots of perilite vs soil in those pots? If there light i'd guess they are really sucking up the fluids? I don't think it's enough time inbetween nute feed for them to absorb the nutes in it if you just water the next time. They do take in more during flower to a certain point then slow down absorbing. If you do use nutes in every watering i'd cut it back 1/4 so they don't get overload and lockout. Kudos on the nice looking plants good luck and keep us posted

ERK · Jul 3, 2025

Galgrows said:
Very nice looking auto flowers. Man i never need to water my autos 2x a day but hey maybe you soil or ?? is super draining/airaited you have lots of perilite vs soil in those pots? If there light i'd guess they are really sucking up the fluids? I don't think it's enough time inbetween nute feed for them to absorb the nutes in it if you just water the next time. They do take in more during flower to a certain point then slow down absorbing. If you do use nutes in every watering i'd cut it back 1/4 so they don't get overload and lockout. Kudos on the nice looking plants good luck and keep us posted

Thanks so much for your input! The “soil” is primarily Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss with some perilite. I may do a light watering at night with plain water just so they don’t stress out. If anyone else out there has had this experience let me know how it worked out for you.thanks growgal.

ERK · Jul 3, 2025

ERK said:
Thanks so much for your input! The “soil” is primarily Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss with some perilite. I may do a light watering at night with plain water just so they don’t stress out. If anyone else out there has had this experience let me know how it worked out for you.thanks growgal.

Oops. Sorry. Meant Galgrows.

RoadKillSkunkHunt · Jul 3, 2025

ERK said:
Oops. Sorry. Meant Galgrows.

Sunshine #4 is like Promix, isn't it? Your watering schedule seems more in line for coco. As @Galgrows pointed out, that kind of watering in soil sounds excessive. How much perlite? Plants look healthy despite the unnatural watering if indeed your mix is peat moss based like Promix.

ERK · Jul 3, 2025

RoadKillSkunkHunt said:
Sunshine #4 is like Promix, isn't it? Your watering schedule seems more in line for coco. As @Galgrows pointed out, that kind of watering in soil sounds excessive. How much perlite? Plants look healthy despite the unnatural watering if indeed your mix is peat moss based like Promix.

This is what description says on mix#4:
“
A premium mix for indoor growing, Sunshine®Mix #4 with Mycorrhizae contains a higher amount of
horticultural perlite for plants that prefer greater air porosity. Its our classic #4 boosted with endomycorrhizae. This product contains RESiLIENCE®, which may improve resistance to wilting. Low phosphorus fertilizer has been included to better support mycorrhizae establishment and growth. Start your own feeding program within 14 days of planting or seedling emergence.”

ERK · Jul 3, 2025

ERK said:
This is what description says on mix#4:
“
A premium mix for indoor growing, Sunshine®Mix #4 with Mycorrhizae contains a higher amount of
horticultural perlite for plants that prefer greater air porosity. Its our classic #4 boosted with endomycorrhizae. This product contains RESiLIENCE®, which may improve resistance to wilting. Low phosphorus fertilizer has been included to better support mycorrhizae establishment and growth. Start your own feeding program within 14 days of planting or seedling emergence.”

ERK said:
This is what description says on mix#4:
“
A premium mix for indoor growing, Sunshine®Mix #4 with Mycorrhizae contains a higher amount of
horticultural perlite for plants that prefer greater air porosity. It’s our classic #4 boosted with endomycorrhizae. This product contains RESiLIENCE®, which may improve resistance to wilting. Low phosphorus fertilizer has been included to better support mycorrhizae establishment and growth. Start your own feeding program within 14 days of planting or seedling emergence.”

I’ll be honest and say I’ve made a lot of mistakes:
1) transplanted at end of 2nd week instead of just starting it in the 5 gal grow bag.
2) should have cut back on N alit earlier
3) defoliated a bit much and I think it stalled for a bit.
4) didn’t start flower booster early enough I think
These are 68 days from popping out of soil and compared to pics I’ve seen of other autoflowers…I don’t think they are where they should be.
At this point I’m just keeping fingers crossed.

JIMKSI64 · Jul 3, 2025

I have autos in a tent about the same age and I am close to harvest. Apple Fritter Auto.
As you have found out pot plants are on their schedule not ours.

ERK · Jul 3, 2025

JIMKSI64 said:
I have autos in a tent about the same age and I am close to harvest. Apple Fritter Auto.
As you have found out pot plants are on their schedule not ours.
View attachment 2468476

Looks great but
What grow medium?
Are you using nutrients? If yes what kind?

JIMKSI64 · Jul 3, 2025

Way different than yours. fox farm soils with foop nutes all organic fish poop. 18-6 40k lux at tops. 5 gallon fabric pots. learned a lot about autos and lights for autos.
Your type of grow has produced a larger plant but it looks like the veg state was extended. Do you have any data on light energy for your grow? I know I started slow and then ran the lights too high at first in flower and backed off a lot. Seems the ones I have liked jacking up the lights at the 4th node emergence but a week in flower I went over the recommended DLI for autos and got some leaf stress.
My education on this particular pheno was lights up fast, max 40k by week 2 and flower temps at 75 day. Due to a well balanced tent I do run a pretty high transperation rate at 1.5 vdp by week 3 flower.
Ran into early fade and will amend for more Nitrogen longer in the grow. too dress every 2 weeks until week 5 flower. Very happy with foop nutes but wish I caught the fade earlier.

RoadKillSkunkHunt · Jul 3, 2025

ERK said:
I’ll be honest and say I’ve made a lot of mistakes:
1) transplanted at end of 2nd week instead of just starting it in the 5 gal grow bag.
2) should have cut back on N alit earlier
3) defoliated a bit much and I think it stalled for a bit.
4) didn’t start flower booster early enough I think
These are 68 days from popping out of soil and compared to pics I’ve seen of other autoflowers…I don’t think they are where they should be.
At this point I’m just keeping fingers crossed.

You'll get a lot more productive responses that way ... acknowledging there's been some mistakes. The good news there is you're already learning from it. If this grow, you yield less than expected, don't worry about it. With some practice, your skills will improve. However if you're growing indoors, it might be time to consider photoperiod plants for your next run. They're more forgiving of mistakes and you will have a lot more time to correct your mistakes before you hurt your yield.

Without mistakes, you wouldn't learn. You're on the right path.

ERK · Jul 3, 2025

JIMKSI64 said:
Way different than yours. fox farm soils with foop nutes all organic fish poop. 18-6 40k lux at tops. 5 gallon fabric pots. learned a lot about autos and lights for autos.
Your type of grow has produced a larger plant but it looks like the veg state was extended. Do you have any data on light energy for your grow? I know I started slow and then ran the lights too high at first in flower and backed off a lot. Seems the ones I have liked jacking up the lights at the 4th node emergence but a week in flower I went over the recommended DLI for autos and got some leaf stress.
My education on this particular pheno was lights up fast, max 40k by week 2 and flower temps at 75 day. Due to a well balanced tent I do run a pretty high transperation rate at 1.5 vdp by week 3 flower.
Ran into early fade and will amend for more Nitrogen longer in the grow. too dress every 2 weeks until week 5 flower. Very happy with foop nutes but wish I caught the fade earlier.

Hmmm. Don’t think I’m quite ready to do all organic just yet. I’m using spider farmer se1000w. I eased light % up gradually to 100% by week 3.5 and they seemed to do well. But by that time they were 24” from top and kept there until about a week ago which may be mistake #5. Maybe should have kept them closer?

ERK · Jul 3, 2025

RoadKillSkunkHunt said:
You'll get a lot more productive responses that way ... acknowledging there's been some mistakes. The good news there is you're already learning from it. If this grow, you yield less than expected, don't worry about it. With some practice, your skills will improve. However if you're growing indoors, it might be time to consider photoperiod plants for your next run. They're more forgiving of mistakes and you will have a lot more time to correct your mistakes before you hurt your yield.

Without mistakes, you wouldn't learn. You're on the right path.

Thank you so much for the encouragement. Plz forgive the title. First time grower of autoflowers. Only did one other run but that was photoperiod. Did very well on that according to my husband who is daily consumer of high THC for better than 4 decades. You are right they are more forgiving. I did take some notes on this autoflowers run so hopefully I will do better next time.
Thoughts on height of led lights?

JIMKSI64 · Jul 3, 2025

Both my grows on the very different lighting specs I pushed the lights to the stress mark. It was part of the plan I had as I do not have years of cannabis experiance. Rasing light energy to the stress point allows me to have that bit of information for the next grow and ensures I get as much growth and yield as possible for the time involved.
This grow when pushed past DLI exibited an easy to identify stress condition. Between 6 and 7 pm the big fans started to stipple a bit. Edges pulling up towards a taco. New growth would start to curl. looking for this showed me the max daily light amount for this grow appears to be 36. This is a bit above recommendations but I attribute this to measuring in Lux and converting to ppfd for figguring dli. As long as I measure the same way the values allow me to use them as a target.
almost every idea I use in my plan came from the 100's of diaries I read during research. Pushing lights to stress points was an advanced technique that comercial growers use.

RoadKillSkunkHunt · Jul 3, 2025

ERK said:
Thank you so much for the encouragement. Plz forgive the title. First time grower of autoflowers. Only did one other run but that was photoperiod. Did very well on that according to my husband who is daily consumer of high THC for better than 4 decades. You are right they are more forgiving. I did take some notes on this autoflowers run so hopefully I will do better next time.
Thoughts on height of led lights?

Strain dependent and how much light your plants can take has a direct relationship to plant health. You can drive healthy plants harder. They will take more light within reason. If your plants have some health issues, first move should be to turn your light intensity down to give yourself time to work through the issue.

I typically run my bar lights around 18 inches. Sometimes less but that depends on plant response. I prefer to have the plant grow into the light. It will let you know where its comfortable. Too many people cause light stress because they think more light is better. You're better off looking at your whole grow and keeping everything in balance. Many times that means you might not be running your lights at 100% intensity.

ERK · Jul 3, 2025

RoadKillSkunkHunt said:
Strain dependent and how much light your plants can take has a direct relationship to plant health. You can drive healthy plants harder. They will take more light within reason. If your plants have some health issues, first move should be to turn your light intensity down to give yourself time to work through the issue.

I typically run my bar lights around 18 inches. Sometimes less but that depends on plant response. I prefer to have the plant grow into the light. It will let you know where its comfortable. Too many people cause light stress because they think more light is better. You're better off looking at your whole grow and keeping everything in balance. Many times that means you might not be running your lights at 100% intensity.

Makes perfect sense. Thank you!

ERK · Jul 3, 2025

JIMKSI64 said:
Both my grows on the very different lighting specs I pushed the lights to the stress mark. It was part of the plan I had as I do not have years of cannabis experiance. Rasing light energy to the stress point allows me to have that bit of information for the next grow and ensures I get as much growth and yield as possible for the time involved.
This grow when pushed past DLI exibited an easy to identify stress condition. Between 6 and 7 pm the big fans started to stipple a bit. Edges pulling up towards a taco. New growth would start to curl. looking for this showed me the max daily light amount for this grow appears to be 36. This is a bit above recommendations but I attribute this to measuring in Lux and converting to ppfd for figguring dli. As long as I measure the same way the values allow me to use them as a target.
almost every idea I use in my plan came from the 100's of diaries I read during research. Pushing lights to stress points was an advanced technique that comercial growers use.

Thank you.

ERK · Jul 9, 2025

Update day 73?
They are looking a little better. A friend said I’ll probably be able to go 14 weeks. He said that sometimes 12-14 weeks happens with some autoflowers. Guess I’ll final out.

Bigbudfarmer25 · Aug 14, 2025

Galgrows said:
Very nice looking auto flowers. Man i never need to water my autos 2x a day but hey maybe you soil or ?? is super draining/airaited you have lots of perilite vs soil in those pots? If there light i'd guess they are really sucking up the fluids? I don't think it's enough time inbetween nute feed for them to absorb the nutes in it if you just water the next time. They do take in more during flower to a certain point then slow down absorbing. If you do use nutes in every watering i'd cut it back 1/4 so they don't get overload and lockout. Kudos on the nice looking plants good luck and keep us posted

When do you see the thc on autoflowers and do you need any special feed for it

JIMKSI64 · Aug 14, 2025

Bigbudfarmer25 said:
When do you see the thc on autoflowers and do you need any special feed for i

This can answer all the questions you have

First time grower with Question about watering Autoflowers.

First time grower with Question about watering Autoflowers.

ERK

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