Newbie ignorance

[TommyinCville]

Hello All, New grower here. I have a bit of vegetable gardening experience but not much in the cannabis field.
I did grow a nice Gelato 45 photo clone last summer with decent success and a nice end product. (Sadly down to my last 1/4)
I recently started an autoflower Durban Poison plant. it's growing in a mix of 1 part coco, 1 part organic container mix, 1 part pearlite, and a bit of mycorrhizal inoculant.
I'm really surprised at how fast this thing is taking off. It's growing fast but not looking great. I feel the color should be darker.
I've been feeding it a GP fertilizer 24-8-16 at half strength every other time it needs water. Its in a tent under a 150w LED light (Viparspectra 1500)
The light is about 12" away and the PPFD is around 600 when measured by the Photone app. Light is on 16hrs. Air Temp is around 78F

Also, I read a post on here that was saying to top after the fifth node. In other places, I've read that topping is not advised since autos have a short
growing period and the recovery time needed from topping/stress is not worth it. Stick to LST.

All advice on lighting, feeding, and to top or not is always appreciated.

Pic 1 Durban Poison on 2/25/23 (White Afghani photo in the background)

All pics are of the same plant

 

[Rasterman]

They're looking really good to me. You can top it now if you want to, and it will probably respond the way you expect. I haven't grown that auto before, but I have applied much HST to autos in the past without regrets. Personally, having never grown a DP auto before, I would just push the main over and see how it comes out.

 

[PeaceLove&Buds]

Top the hell outta your autos!!

 

[Cannaficionado]

General rule for topping is to top at the 5th node, generally has rooted and matured enough to handle the stress from a top.

As for feeding, im not experienced with anything with coco. But it looks like your soil is a peat and coco blend. I've seen this done before but both have very different properties. Feeding them is definitely different. Coco is a hydro-like medium and holds water great but not nutrients, peat is the exact opposite, great at holding nutrients long term but needs to be watered regularly to keep from getting hydrophobic. Mixing the 2 could have some adverse results long term. Especially feeding it so often the peat could start giving you a slow nutrient toxicity build or even worse it could hold on to too much of a nutrient and lock out others completely. It happened to me during my last grow on all 4 of my plants.

With that said your plant looks a little pale but not really bad at all. It may just be the strain some do run a little paler than others.

 

[Mañ'O'Green]

@TommyinCville Welcome to AFN You need to fertilize like it is soil not coco. In that regard you are way over fertilizing and troubles are just around the corner.

I do not see signs of too much light in fact that big stretch can be from not enough. I would not worry about topping this grow. Just concentrate on growing a healthy plant. Top next time.

Read about feeding balanced nutrients here:

Tutorial - A word on Nutrients

The proper use of “salt” based fertilizer to grow Auto Flowering Cannabis. Salts: Natural and man made any chemical compound formed from the reaction of an acid with a base, with all or part of the hydrogen of the acid replaced by a metal or other cation. Learning how to use salt based...

www.autoflower.org