So it has been almost a week since these little ladies popped up out of the soil and they are doing great. During their first week, I had my lights raised up pretty high in the tent and had them on about 40% power, which allowed them to stretch quite a bit more than my last autos.
The reason I wanted them to stretch was because with autoflowers, they tend to grow short and bushy. I wanted to have them get a bit taller right off the start so that they can well above the rim of the pots when I start to cut branches off. I am going to be cutting the bottom three sets of branches off and probably just allow the plant to grow a total of six sets of branches before I cut their stem.
Since the stems have already stretched quite a bit, I lowered the lights and increased their power a bit more. That should keep them from stretching anymore, but still give them all the light that they need. Right now, I am just watering 1 liter every few days. The first few weeks, most of the growth is under the soil and once the roots stretch out, they will get a lot thirstier. The first few weeks, it is really easy to overwater and kill your plant, so make sure you do not overwater. It is important to let the soil dry out a bit because the roots actually stretch out to find water, so if the soil is always wet, you will have a pretty weak root system.
I have a bunch of new techniques I am going to be trying with these plants. I won't be using any super croppers for my low stress training. Instead, I am going to be bending the branches down each day and massaging them to break up the fibers inside to strengthen them and flush them with nutrients. I am going to be doing this to the stem as well once the plant is a bit larger because I want to make sure the stem is strong enough to hold the weight of the whole plant. I am hoping that having less branches will ensure the bud sites are more dense because the plant will have less places that it needs to form the buds.
Well, that is it for now. I am pretty excited for this grow. The two strains I have growing are strains that I have never tried and I want to make sure that I do not harvest them too early so I can really get their full effects.