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Im just a blonde, blue, not in great shape lady from mass!....hahaaaa
Never been to Cali, but lived on Honolulu for a while and tried surfing.
Good thing Americas Funniest Videos didnt get any footage of me.
Lets just leave it at that.
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Thank you hon. Neither have I.
I am wondering if it is the cups, or the MegaCrop, or a dialed in enviroment from my new little tent, or a combo of all 3! Anyhoo, I found my new way of starting babies.
I am petrified of transplanting them into the autopots and having to hand water. I dont even know where to start. I am almost thinking of transplanting them into 1g pots and keep the same method for a few weeks more before the autopots.
I was laying on the couch, asking my daughter to make dinner for my mom, to check the mail...all the daily stuff. Oh man, I was a pile of sweating, barely awake, delirious mush.
But I'll tell you I dragged myself up those stairs one at a time to make sure my ladies were OK!!
LOL, the maternal instinct is strong! Hi MassMom, glad to hear you feel better, were you sick during the windstorm day? We lost power for 7 hours, I ran around like a nut getting my generator out and going. All good in the end though, the girls were only dark for about an hour and it allowed me to fix a couple electrical things.
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Hi Flip!!
I was so lucky to not lose power. And we are supposed to get hit again tonight I hear? I LOATHE winter!
Here is a good one. I have a generator and have no idea how to use it
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I know auto's don't like to be disturbed too much, so it might be better to just take the plunge and get them in the AutoPots. Try not to worry, even if you mess up it's a process and you learn. I didn't learn much until I made some big mistakes.
It's inevitable and over time you will relax more and just keep growing in more ways than one!
Plus you can turn the res on the sooner they are established if you are using one.
I find the coco is really forgiving, it pulls the water down and dries fast, I have a fan on so it wicks moisture away as well.
I ended up watering more around the perimeter of the pot, but my plants are still really small. Also, if you like you can water the pots from the bottom as they have the float valve spot, but it's kinda small.
Check out the AutoPot threads in that part of the forum or some grows with them and see if you can pick up some good tips.
I'm still green with auto's and the AP's so take it all with a grain of salt!
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Yes, general consensus is to just take the plunge and plant the babies in their new home around 10 days old.
I just have to figure out how to water the pots before transplant. just a little? water rill runoff? I have a habit of way overwatering so I want to be careful. I will do some research and just jump in with both feet!
Mom. I'll add to the PM i sent you earlier. If you do transplant directly in to the autopots you need more coco to be primed obviously. Full strength nutes and calmag. But how much to water? I know you have the solo cups dialed in now. You could do something similar like using a moisture meter to tell you what a nicely moist pot is like (meter reads in the middle basically, slight towards moist instead of dry). You could get the Control Wizards Accurate PH and Moisture meter if you want something that is reliable and doesn't break. Or get a new cheap $5 one for now. Then just continue to use that to measure moisture level in the pot and when its approaching dry on the meter you water a bit until the meter looks good. Or you could get a postal scale and get a pot so its perfectly moist and weigh it and know that is the weight you want your pots at.
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I think I am going to do your 1g pot idea. No reason they "HAVE" to go into the 3g autopots. Then I can weigh and dunk the 1g pots and just put them on the bases and res to automatically water when the time comes. It might produce faster smaller plants, but hey, I would rather be safe and "get to know my plants" this way.
It's pretty simple and much less scary than the early germination part. When I start in cups, I transplant directly into the final pots (with the same coco/perlite mix) that have been pre-charged (watered) with feed. From there, unless you have high perlite content, you may not need to water for several weeks, until the pots get light(er) or it's time to turn on the automatic feeding.
With the cups, you can either dump the medium out and hope the medium and root ball do not fall apart (usually works for me); or safer, carefully cut the bottom off of the cup then plant the cup (and you can cut holes in the sides too).
Simply do normal drain-to-waste, top-feed with a some good amount of run-off with diluted feed, such as 1/4 your normal full strength, best with Bt bacteria to kill any insect larvae, maybe with a root stimulator product. From there, in AutoPots if needed (depending on lot of factors; I've gone from germination to turning on the AutoPots without any watering), just manually top or bottom feed as needed until you start using the AutoValves and have the full setup going.
