Confused

[Hibiscus]

I read the reviews of some strains and they claim to produce X amount in 8 weeks. Are they only talking about the flower stage time? I'm currently growing blue dream auto and just reached flower stage after 8 weeks of growth. Also, are there categories of seeds or strains that take less time?
Thank you.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Yeah, the flowering stage. And they often lie are somewhat optimistic. Also, they tend to not start counting until they've seen enough flower development to suit them instead of counting from day one of the flowering phase.

Because... sales.

That's with regular photoperiodic strains, of course. With autoflowers, people are concerned with time "from sprout to harvest," so that's generally stated. Might not always be the case, IDK.

Indicas have shorter flowering periods than sativas.

From sprout to harvest, autoflowers might be a little quicker than photoperiods, assuming the gardener switches the photos to a flowering light schedule, because it's automatic in the case of autoflowers (this the name) instead of being dependant on number of hours of uninterrupted darkness. If the gardener used a 12:12 schedule early enough, it might be comparable (depending on the specific strain being grown, of course).

If you were to start with clones instead of seeds - well, you can't really do that with autoflowers, LMFAO, but if you took a bunch of clones and compared the time to harvest with autoflowering plants, the photos would be faster. Er... Unless you wanted your photoperiodic plants to get LARGE, then you'd just keep them in vegetative growth phase until they attained the size you wanted, in which case, the autos would likely finish first.

If, on the other hand, you wanted your autoflowers to become "trees," you'd... Take three steps back and punt, I suppose