15 gallon no-till beds: progress update and LST

NFSOT educational purposes only! Running #morningstarseedcompany #purplemicrodot regular autoflower genetics. I have two 80w King LEDs over each 15gal no-till bed for now. These seeds broke through on Thursday, October 7th. 21 days from seed. LST has begun! The males came out of the bed without missing a beat! A few roots were through to the no-till bed, but not enough to hurt them. I will likely cull #2 in favor of #1. #1 will stay in solo cups until he drops his pollen, then off to compost. Females #3 and #5 appear to have successfully rooted in the Big Rootz without stunting! 😁 My weird solo cup cold plug worked great! And to prove it, I started a #grapeywalter seed in place of a PMD seedling that died. I just buried a seed and this is what I have after 16 days from seed! A bona-fide runt! It is helping prove my theory of one of the reasons we see so many autoflowers runting out... The starting soil is too freaking hot! It's a catch 22... You want to start your auto seeds directly in their final container, but if you use a heavilly amended bag soil, or mix your own soil that is too hot or "rich" with nutrients, it will stunt your seedling like this Grapey Walter. But you need all that nutrition in place when the heavy vegging and Flowering starts. Maybe the soil amendments in the mix weren't cooked long enough? Who knows, but if you want an auto to get off to a good start in a hot soil, use a cold plug of coco coir, don't go directly in soil! You can bury the cold plug in the final pot, then it should be good to go. I kept the solos above the surface to prevent adding cups of coco in my bed to create cold spots and make the nutrition levels uneven across the bed. I know this kind of goes against nature. Ruderalis seeds have been growing for thousands of years in the Russian mountains, and they don't need cold plugs? Well, the soil in the Ural mountains of Russia are likely not nearly as fertile as this no-till bed! They are genetically evolved to eat very little, so taking them to the Chinese buffet isn't a good idea! #dudegrowsshow growerslove #growerlab #growerscrognets #livingorganicsoil #autoflowerpodcast