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My current grow has now been chopped, so I would like to review performance of the autopots I used. Details of the grow are in the link in my signature. In summary, the medium was ~60/40 coco/perlite, and no air dome or hydroton or equivalent was used. It was 60/40 all the way down. The pots were fabric smart pots provided by AutoPot with the xl single pot packages, and the pots were rolled down to contain ~3 actual gallons of medium.
After the chop, I cut through the root mass to check health of roots, especially in the mostly saturated zone at the bottom of the pots. The pictures tell the story, pretty much, but I will note that there were healthy roots throughout the medium, top to bottom on all three plants, with the densest mat in the 30 or so mm in the bottom of the pot. The roots in the saturation zone were densely packed and all healthy. I will re-use the coco, so I pulled it apart from the root ball, and the smell was pleasantly sweet throughout.
I used 3 part hydroponic nutes for the first half of the grow, and MegaCrop, BE, and SC thereafter. The nute solution was filtered through a standard household water filter element mounted inside my 40L reservoir, I did not use the ones provided by Autopot. I had no plugging in the standard small diameter feed line or the valves during the grow which lasted over 90 days before the final chop.
The yield from the grow was reasonable, roughly 150+ grams from the CQ, and something similar from the two 24C's combined. Final weights will be posted once everything is down to ~62%.
The first two pics are of the chopped CQ, the first with a cut part way from the edge to the tap root, and the second cut at the tap root. The remaining pics are of the two 24C's cut at the tap root.
Overall, I could not be happier with the Autopot system, and highly recommend it. As others have pointed out though, get the single pot configuration, not the one in which two pots are attached. There is not enough room between the plants in the dual configuration. I doubt that the XL size is needed, but it works fine and can be downsized easily by rolling down the fabric bags, or buying smaller pots that fit. Also, the price was right when I bought it compared to the alternative setups. OTOH, if trying to go full organic, the larger pot size might help. At some point I may make a big tray and run multiple plants off a single autopot valve, so as to have even more fun with a bunch of small pots with different strains.
Autopots grow them big, so plan on ~4 sq. ft. per plant unless the strain is known to be small, which my 24C's were, or unless you intend to control size in a significant way with small pots or the like. Had I grown only full sized plants, I would have just done two of them in my 2x4 growdrobe.
Happy growing all, if you have questions about this system that I can answer, I will be glad to try to help.
After the chop, I cut through the root mass to check health of roots, especially in the mostly saturated zone at the bottom of the pots. The pictures tell the story, pretty much, but I will note that there were healthy roots throughout the medium, top to bottom on all three plants, with the densest mat in the 30 or so mm in the bottom of the pot. The roots in the saturation zone were densely packed and all healthy. I will re-use the coco, so I pulled it apart from the root ball, and the smell was pleasantly sweet throughout.
I used 3 part hydroponic nutes for the first half of the grow, and MegaCrop, BE, and SC thereafter. The nute solution was filtered through a standard household water filter element mounted inside my 40L reservoir, I did not use the ones provided by Autopot. I had no plugging in the standard small diameter feed line or the valves during the grow which lasted over 90 days before the final chop.
The yield from the grow was reasonable, roughly 150+ grams from the CQ, and something similar from the two 24C's combined. Final weights will be posted once everything is down to ~62%.
The first two pics are of the chopped CQ, the first with a cut part way from the edge to the tap root, and the second cut at the tap root. The remaining pics are of the two 24C's cut at the tap root.
Overall, I could not be happier with the Autopot system, and highly recommend it. As others have pointed out though, get the single pot configuration, not the one in which two pots are attached. There is not enough room between the plants in the dual configuration. I doubt that the XL size is needed, but it works fine and can be downsized easily by rolling down the fabric bags, or buying smaller pots that fit. Also, the price was right when I bought it compared to the alternative setups. OTOH, if trying to go full organic, the larger pot size might help. At some point I may make a big tray and run multiple plants off a single autopot valve, so as to have even more fun with a bunch of small pots with different strains.
Autopots grow them big, so plan on ~4 sq. ft. per plant unless the strain is known to be small, which my 24C's were, or unless you intend to control size in a significant way with small pots or the like. Had I grown only full sized plants, I would have just done two of them in my 2x4 growdrobe.
Happy growing all, if you have questions about this system that I can answer, I will be glad to try to help.