Amateur seeking weedgrowing advice from Zoner pros

First question: What size pots are those?

Okay. You probably shouldn't repot the auto again. Autos are on a strict timeline, so you just want to let them grow. No topping, no training, and minimal disruptions. Just water it, and do regular light feedings of a flower formula since it looks like buds are starting to form already.

The photo you should transplant up to a five or seven gallon pot at least. You've still got some time on that one before flowering starts. Maybe a couple three weeks. Give it regular light feedings of veg nutes until it's into flowering.

Rocks in the bottom of your pots might help with drainage, but it looks like your soil mix has perlite in it, so the rocks aren't really necessary, and they're occupying space that could be filled with an appropriate growing medium (soil). Just don't overwater. Lift your pots right after you water, and then lift them when they're dry, but before they wilt. That's the best way to gauge when they need water.

I use General Organics nutes. You can get them on Amazon. Their veg formula is called Grow, and their flowering formula is called Bloom.

Simple enough? The only other thing I would mention is the pH of your water. Weed tends to like it in the 6.0-6.5 range, but mayeb that's something to consider for next year.

Funny you should mention that, Alan, I was thinking maybe we should put this thread over in the cannabis folder. You may know more about Zoner habits than I do in terms of people going to other folders. But people do go to the cannabis  folder…

like I don't know if people look at the other folders and see what dates they've been posted in To see if there's activity?

Alan kudos , my mom's a stone carver.. Well, she's 96 but was. love the art and its cool to start growing your own SATISFACTION....

"Don't love your plants too much"

>  I was thinking maybe we should put this thread over in the cannabis folder

Other Stuff is pretty much limping along lately. I'd say we can use all the action we get here.

Id recommend Smart Pots or any other brand of fabric pots. Fabric pots allow the roots to self regulate and avoid getting root bound. Bigger pots more better. Mix your own soil with the best ingredients which includes vermiculite, worm castings, guano, and soil.  Check out Fox Farm, Happy Frog or Ocean Organic. They're pretty powerful so I only use it as part of a mix. Fertilize occasionally with an organic 10-10-10 fertilizer until flowering and then 0-10-10. Never use Miracle Grow.

I think the key is a solid foundation, regular watering, occasional fertilizer, and lot's of love. Admire it and hang out with it but don't smother it.

https://youtu.be/zDHEQ_I2f9Y?si=yhFBOQubUG39GVcP

This guy knows.

If you're absolutely stuck on smart pots, buy the ones twice as big as you think you need, fill them half full, and fold the sides down. Think short and wide more than tall and deep

and mulch the soil surface! Even grass clippings are better than nothing

personally I'd have just stuck them in the raised beds in the background

Growing weed = problem solving. Sometimes the best solution is already right in front of you

ymmv

For sure Alan. It's the journey. Always building on past lessons and steadily improving.

also you can use bacillus thurgensis in a foliar spray to keep caterpillars from eating your plants. Veggies too, especially brassicas.

every other week or so. It's very safe and effective. A quart (or less) will last you all season and most of the next one too

<<<also you can use bacillus thurgensis in a foliar spray to keep caterpillars from eating your plants. Veggies too, especially brassicas.>>

VERY important to watch out for caterpillars.  The reason I say is what can happen is the caterpillar shit will cause botrytis.to occur.

I lost an entire beautiful looking fully grown Chocolate Thai plant a few years back when it was close to harvest this way.  This can happen literally overnight too.

Was in a funk for days, hope that doesn't happen to you.

One good thing about indoor is I've never had this issue.

Jorge knows this too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyJzx0uUemI

How extensive is the leaf miner damage? I usually see some of that every summer, but not enough that I would call it a problem. It's just something that happens when you grow outdoors.

Spider mites, on the other hand, can be very destructive. I don't have first hand experience with them, so I'll defer to others on this one, but I'm guessing some kind of action is needed.

https://www.growweedeasy.com/cannabis-plant-problems/how-to-get-rid-of-s...

Can you post pics of what you're looking at?

On Photoperiod anyway you can try trimming off a few rows of bottom growth to stimulate apical (top) activity 

I no longer mess with Autoflowers, it's a waste of money fertz and space

I've sprayed diluted castile soap to get rid of aphids, and had good results with that. It's non-toxic, doesn't hang around long, and what I'm reading is it can help with spider mites too.

Safer's insecticidal soap as long as your plants don't have resin yet. (No experience with bonide specifically)

hand management if they do

"strong stream of water" just never really cut it

You'll need multiple applications to break the larval cycle

leaf miners i ignore. never had a problem with them over 10+ years of growing and thousands and thousands of pounds.

spider mites on the other hand...the only way ive ever been able to get rid of an infestation has been with strong chemical pesticides like avid, forbid, akari, hexygon, etc etc. i have not used any of those products in years and have had good luck by simply keeping them out of my growing space - we make all of our clones(thousands per year) ourselves, and if we do bring in clones from outside the farm(usually to compensate for some kind of loss/mistake or just a few plants to obtain new genetics), we keep them in a quarantine area for about 2 weeks, spray heavily with insecticidal soap and micronized sulfur, and inspect them regularly, leaf by leaf.

the insecticidal soap/sulfur combo mostly just works as a preventative, if you already see spider mites its probably to late to have a mite-free season, and if there is already webbing, you might be fucked. the insecticidal soap does kill some mites but is something that i use more because its highly effective against aphids. sulfur is a dual use product for me - its an amazing fungicide that really helps against powdery mildew, and it also acts as a repellant for mites, but if you already have a mite population, its probably not going to drive them all away. to spray sulfur, you need to use  a sprayer that sprays VERY fine particles, like a mist/fog.  youre looking to cover both sides of every single leaf with a thin layer of sulfur, that will dry into yellowish-white stains all over all of your leaves. you need to spray this in the evening, you cannot allow the plants to be in direct sunlight or high heat with either of these products wet and on the leaves. DO NOT spray sulfur on buds. sulfur sprays are a veg only thing. i always make a big deal of a "last sulfur spray" before the plant goes into flower so that everything is covered in a film of sulfur. 

when the plants get larger, its VERY important to keep them properly trimmed/pruned. if your plant is in a globe shape, that globe should be hollow. any branches whose tip is totally shaded by other branches should be removed. fan leaves that dont get direct sunlight should be removed. you want to leave everything that will produce buds that get full sun, and remove most everything else. often, when people talk about pruning cannabis, they refer to it as trimming "bottom growth", and in pro gardens, its often called "doing lowers", but IME, although bottom growth/lowers do need to be removed, the proper way to prune isnt to focus on bottom growth/lowers, but to think about it more as "doing inners" - in a proper prune on a decent sized plant, you often find that you remove more of the plants inner leaves/branches than lower leaves/branches. when the plant is hollow, there is less habitat for bugs, better airflow, and your sprays will get better coverage with less labor/materials. its INCREDIBLY important to keep plants properly trimmed like this. it can be a bit difficult to teach/explain how to do this at a really high level, you kinda just have to do some grows, and when you harvest, pay attention to which branches only yield small, airy, leafy buds - those probably should have been removed. lots of home growers opt to leave a lot of this stuff on the plant, because weed is  weed, it still tastes good and gets you high, but removing a large amount of inner/lower growth is important for pest control and overall plant health.

you might want to look into beneficial mites. i like to use arbico organics due to the wide variety of other beneficial insects they offer. you will need to do quite a bit of research to determine which mite predators are best for you based on the temps/humidity the plants are growing in and the type of spider mites you have. they are quite expensive, but its the only "organic" method ive ever had any luck with aside from preventative maintenence.

if you are not able to get rid of the mites, youre basically looking to keep their numbers down, baby your plants as much as possible, try to keep them healthy enough to get thru flower with decent buds, and if there is any webbing on the buds themselves, you can remove most of that with a shop vac during harvest, either as you cut them from the plant or just before you hang them to dry. youre probably not getting everything here,  but i can virtually guarantee that anyone who has been regularly smoking black market cali weed for a significant period of time have smoked buds that were covered in spider mite webbing that was shop-vac'd off before it was dried. you've all probably smoked a bit of webbing, mite poop and dead spider mites in your day, sorry to break it to everyone.

youre mostly going to want to worry about removing the webbing - as mite infested buds dry, the spider mites will "evacuate" the branches and will form these big weird drippy clusters at the highest tip of the branch where you cut it from the plant and along the line youre hanging the branches from, so most of the mites will remove themselves from the buds.

If this is the product you have, looks good I would use it

https://files.plytix.com/api/v1.1/file/public_files/pim/assets/43/37/8d/...

sometimes they (the industry) likes to sneak pyrethrin in there as ingredient and you definitely want to avoid products with this

I hit mine with copper sulfate last week. Too many fungi around. Going to spray BT tomorrow. Once I know all critters and fungi are dead I'll maintain with a shot of biologiques and then organic bug/funges/bacteria stuff.

you might have some luck with a dish soap solution or a mixture of essential oils since you have such a small grow, but both of those things have yielded ZERO results for me in a commercial setting. like i spray at night, get up the next morning, all the mites are still crawling, no sign of dead mites at all.

to remove them manually, a strong stream of water might have some effect, but youre probably better off doing it manually by hand, pinching each leaf blade between your thumb and pointer finger and sliding down from the base to the tip to squish them or get them to fall off.

spider mites are probably the most serious and threatening insect to a cannabis crop IME. 

Growing with James in Canada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywYgH9hfmUQ&t=1016s&ab_channel=GrowingWi...