First Grow Wrap Up
This first grow, while being extremely "educational", ended up surprisingly well. I got 7 oz from 3 plants. 2 from the Double Grape and Creme de la Chem, and 3 from the Zamaldelica Express. The Zama just got taken out of a 5 day dry today at 62% for a rough cut, and we'll manicure and longer term cure tomorrow. She ended up going 79 days and despite all the initial issues I'd had with her, turned out beautifully. She's got a bit of the purple pheno in her, and is absolutely covered in fine crystals, dripping with diamonds. The CDLC went 74 days, could maybe have gone a few longer, but also turned out super high quality, if not quantity. Super solid nuggetroid crystal golfball buds that are stank to all hell 5 days into cure, and large municipal water-reservoir tower shaped trichromes everywhere. The smell at harvest was of old industrial rubber bands from a forgotten warehouse, which my girlfriend found aggressively offensive, a tragic development given that this is my favorite of the three. And the Double Grape, which went at Day 69 since it looked like she was going downhill, still turned out super frosty and smelly, despite some paper bag drying a little faster than planned. The initial drys all ended up right around 63-66%, and I'm curing each in a large 4 oz-ish size jar.
I'll bullet out the lessons learned as a first time grower, some of which I'm sure are inaccurate or not quite right, but for any future growers using this forum in particular to try their first grow with MegaCrop and autopots, here they are.
Lessons Learned
1. Don't go heavy coco/perlite, and then add ~25% soil. It was a high-dea I had at the last minute, and ended up fucking me up as to what to aim for pH-wise with the MegaCrop, I think. Overall I treated it as a hydro grow with the pH being around 5.9-6 thoughout and they all turned out well enough, to be honest. Next grow will be all Roots Organics original with 25% perlite, with airpots in a 5 gallon fabric pots.
2. If using the DIALING IN MEGACROP thread and you've got a new batch of MegaCrop, realize the first 50ish pages are about previous versions of MC. It appears that straight, unamended MC (August 2020 version) is plenty sufficient through flowering. (It took me over a month to figure out this simple fact, hence the boldface). I got nute burn at 600 ppms, and better results at 550 ppm and under. The next all-soil grow will instead be pH 6.5ish Megacrop alternating with water (I think), ramping up to 500ish ppm or so.
2a. DON'T ADD CAL-MAG to the new MC. At least not at first. Their instructions for dosing are good but I'd watch going over 550ish ppm total. Next grow, I'm sticking to stock MC, 300ish ppm starting ~2 weeks in top watering, and turning on the autopots with 400ish ppm ~3 1/2 weeks in.
3. It occurred to me late in the grow that my MARSHYDRO SP-3000 light was stressing out the tops of the plants when used per their specs, and also responsible for the stress I saw in the upper leaves. The next grow, when at full power I'll keep it 26"+ from the tops, possibly 3 ft. This light puts out plenty.
4. Twice, I had to "flush" my pots. I "flushed" each time with 500 ppm MC, so it wasn't a true all water flush, which sounds super stressful for the plant. The lesson I learned was that multiple flushes will compact your medium and result in yellowing/browning. Next time, I'm staying with soil, minimal nutes and NO FLUSHING. I'll also up the soil volume from ~3.5 gallons to 5 gallons in each fabric pot, and multi-pot a couple seeds as an experiment on LST, yield, and quality affects.
5. I didn't flush with 2 weeks of water toward the end, and don't intend to ever, however I did reduce the MC ppms in the last two weeks of the Zama's life (she went last) and she seemed to respond very well. First I went from 550 to 400, then to 250ish for the last 10 days. Seemed to provide enough stress to frost her up nicely.
6. Reach out with specific, pithy questions in the forum when you run into issues; there is a finite set of variables to deal with and the happy path is wider than it appears. Even if at points the plants look unhappy, after adjustments they bounce back incredibly well.
7. Paper grocery bags worked decently enough in a pinch to keep humidity up a bit for the initial dry, but avoid laying big buds flat on the bottom, and if so, move more than once a day or they could flatten in spots. The buds slow dried at in the tent at 63-65 F and 55% RH turned out so much nicer than the paper bagged ones, I intend to hopefully do that from now on.
That's it! I really appreciate everyone who read and especially replied to this thread and the DIALING IN MC thread with advice. I never thought I'd harvest 7 oz my first attempt, and 5 of those ounces are better than anything retail in WA. I can't wait to start the next grow - the seeds are in paper towels above the warming tent and moist pots as I type this. More to come...
(mebbe cuz i smoke weed-? 
) but anyhoo, gratz on ur first harvest & u now have a shiny lil badge to show for ur effort 
to display it under ur name, jus go to profile > badgez & click the lil megaphone icon beside it 
ppp
