Grow Mediums Autopot review after semi final grow result, no hydroton, no air dome.

[Olderfart]

Thanks for your reply, I work a lot of hours and sometimes have to water when I know I shouldn't. Using ffof soil and growing indoors I get gnats. Wondering if watering from the bottom up is going to make a difference. Thanks again..

Gnats are a pia. If you fill your pots up to the top with well drained mix, the top may stay dry enough to discourage the little bastards. I recall others here putting a layer of dry sand on top of the soil to keep them out. A layer of sand would likely stay drier than soil to the surface. Some mosquito dunks, sticky traps, and Diatomaceous Earth can all help. The DE kills only when it is dry, so it needs to be applied strategically so that is stays that way. If you are suspicious of your mix, definitely water with mosquito dunks in your initial waterings to kill the larvae. Its those little white buggers that do the damage.

Good luck with it, I hope you manage to avoid the evil gnats.

 

[Bill.de.Cat]

So far in my 3 pot setup gnats have been thankfully non existent. HF feels dry up to 2nd knuckle so not expecting troubles like I did last grow doing top watering. Olderfart did you ever try the flood tray idea with 1 autovalve?

 

[Olderfart]

So far in my 3 pot setup gnats have been thankfully non existent. HF feels dry up to 2nd knuckle so not expecting troubles like I did last grow doing top watering. Olderfart did you ever try the flood tray idea with 1 autovalve?

You bet. I have done one valve with three ten gallon fabric pots a couple times, and have done one valve with two 120l totes set up for subirrigation. Both setups worked perfectly, and this was with the original valves, not the recent ones with the larger holes. I used a DIY tray for both of those setups, basically a frame lined with a couple layers of 6mil poly.

Autovalves work well with good filtration, but I have to say that I do not like my results with salt nutes. I have had too much difficulty with nute buildup/imbalance. This is a problem with any subirrigation system, not just autovalves. Had I known what a nuisance that can be, I might have gone with automated top irrigation instead. A DIY setup like that described by Cocoforcannabis.com would not be expensive and would completely eliminate the nute buildup issue. I am going to try this with some solo cups shortly to see how it works.

OTOH, if you go with water only, using the autovalves to feed large pots avoids the salt nute issue, which is what my current grow is doing now. So far, the soil I mixed up looks a bit hot, but most of the plants are large and going to produce well. My three CBD plants didn't do quite as well, but I am not sure why.

Shoot me any additional questions if you have them.

 

[Frank_Spencer]

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.

View attachment 1155061

View attachment 1155062

View attachment 1155063

View attachment 1155064


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.

 

[Olderfart]

Thanks for the rep slap mate, much appreciated.

 

[Mizzo81]

I've been curious about an auto pot system to manage my mothers and I know they work but I do love good reviews lol.

I do like the no waste aspect, lack of electricity, and the auto watering. Is there a way to adjust the valve for different intervals of watering? I grow in stonewool and like rockwool has a field capacity for the amount of water it can hold so I like to flood more frequently in veg and simulate drought during mid and late flower through manipulation of the moisture gradient.

Is there any degree of control to this system?

I’m in growpito with autopots. The system adjusts itself to each plant and medium from what I’ve experienced. I don’t have enough to fill all my pots when I run extra pots so I just use promix in those pots keep them on same res and never had an issue.

 

[Zinku418]

Thanks for the detailed report with your findings. I've used the 3.9gal plastic pots for a few years now. Never used airdomes. Always used promix hp mycorrhizae. 3 four site units in 3 3x3s. I had great results first using earth juice seablast (grow,transition,bloom).it's a hydroponic synthetic nutrient line. Then I experimented with using dry amendments by roots organic (their terp tea line(grow,bloom,bloom boost,microbe charge)) as a weekly topdress. It was good initially but after a while midway into the flower i was running into some deficiency problems so I started to amended my promix with extreme gardening mykos and azos, kelp meal, worm castings and nectar of the gods one shot granular, and finally utilizing the terp tea again, but aerated/brewed and used as a weekly top feed, sometimes twice weekly based on genetics. That was where success rang in with this set up for me. The reservoir is just water. I cut off the reservoir the morning off a top feed and then feed it about 16 hours after, about 4 hours after the beginning of the light cycle. I've only done this with photoperiod strains though.

I wanted to start experimenting with autoflowers and stumbled upon this forum. After seeing the autopot sub forum I had to make a account and now I felt a need to share my findings after reading your summation post. Autopots changed the game for me when I switched over from ebb and flow hydroponics back in early 2018.

 

[Olderfart]

Thanks for the detailed report with your findings. I've used the 3.9gal plastic pots for a few years now. Never used airdomes. Always used promix hp mycorrhizae. 3 four site units in 3 3x3s. I had great results first using earth juice seablast (grow,transition,bloom).it's a hydroponic synthetic nutrient line. Then I experimented with using dry amendments by roots organic (their terp tea line(grow,bloom,bloom boost,microbe charge)) as a weekly topdress. It was good initially but after a while midway into the flower i was running into some deficiency problems so I started to amended my promix with extreme gardening mykos and azos, kelp meal, worm castings and nectar of the gods one shot granular, and finally utilizing the terp tea again, but aerated/brewed and used as a weekly top feed, sometimes twice weekly based on genetics. That was where success rang in with this set up for me. The reservoir is just water. I cut off the reservoir the morning off a top feed and then feed it about 16 hours after, about 4 hours after the beginning of the light cycle. I've only done this with photoperiod strains though.

I wanted to start experimenting with autoflowers and stumbled upon this forum. After seeing the autopot sub forum I had to make a account and now I felt a need to share my findings after reading your summation post. Autopots changed the game for me when I switched over from ebb and flow hydroponics back in early 2018.

Glad to hear that the system works for you, and welcome to AFN. It is interesting that you have headed in the same direction that I have with this system. My current grow will be my first finished soil grow with water only, and it seems likely to produce well, if not with the prettiest finishing plants on AFN. I am pretty sure that my mix is a bit heavy to nitrogen and low in pH, but it didn't kill anything yet. The next mix will be better if I stick with soil. OTOH, my current solo effort might send me back to coco with automated top irrigation. Too many good options, too little time.

Have fun here on AFN, you will find us a pretty friendly lot, unlike some other forums on this topic.

 

[bboyfromwayback]

Excellent review and pics for proof. I had the 4 Pot XL system on my shelf over a year before I finally used it. My conclusion at the end…

Stupid easy grow. Cruise control actually once I got the ph fluctuations figured out. Only thing I can say is that anyone reading this post who’s on the fence about AutoPots, don’t be the dumbass I was (mixing and ph’n water a few times a week) when your grow can be SO much easier. Now if you’re someone who enjoys being in your grow room more often, this system may seem boring to you.

 

[Olderfart]

Excellent review and pics for proof. I had the 4 Pot XL system on my shelf over a year before I finally used it. My conclusion at the end…

Stupid easy grow. Cruise control actually once I got the ph fluctuations figured out. Only thing I can say is that anyone reading this post who’s on the fence about AutoPots, don’t be the dumbass I was (mixing and ph’n water a few times a week) when your grow can be SO much easier. Now if you’re someone who enjoys being in your grow room more often, this system may seem boring to you.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad the review was useful.

If I go with autopots and salt nutes again, I may try to deal with nute buildup/balance by pre-emptive top watering to runoff once a week or thereabouts. I have had issues with nute buildup in most of my autopot/salt nute grows, and find it a pain in the ass. It seems to me that the autopot system is better suited to water only grows, although I am not stuck on water only all the way till harvest, or organic, I just would like to defeat the nute buildup issue with minimum hassle. I do not mind adding some salt PK boost late in the grow as that is unlikely to cause the buildup mischief. Had I to do it over, I might have gone with a top watering system like the one I have now set up with my solos. It depends on electricity, unlike autopots, but for an indoor grow, losing the pump for a while would be the least of the problems. Lack of lights, fans, or heat would be the issue, not lack of nutes.

Thanks for checking in, good luck with your grows, and Happy New Year.