from my experience autos grow slow and flower around 2 weeks, although this would change with each strain, but i have grown 3 strains all auto and all flowered between week 2 and 3, they was also only about 6 inches high, i thought they was just showing sex but they wasnt they carried out to flower,
now with autos we are not sure whats best for them, what i read said they prefer moist soil all the time and weak nutes, how true this is i just dont know, i am breeding autos at the moment to try and increase the yield, ive crossed an auto that yielded around 20g dry with a big hitting ak cross cheese strain that produces big buds and is fast growing, so im hoping the results seeds with the auto trait will produce more.
another thing i want to try is growing autos in a dwc set up, soil seems to restrict growth but im not using the best compost, some autos get huge and can produce 4oz plus dry, but the most i got was just over an oz, and this was by harvesting the plant 3 times, i harvested the top then put it back under the lights and so on,
im averaging around 20g dry per auto, im ordering some more tonight to add to my stock and ill be breeding these to try and gain as much yield as possible.
now autos grow in places like russia, where its cold and have more light than needed, so this is why autos flower due to age and not due to light schedule, i was told they wont start to flower if you give them 24-0 of light, but i did this and they started to flower at week 2, so clearly this info was not correct, this brings me on to something im trying to sort out, now ruderalis flowers due to age, so they dont need any night to flower, but we are not growing just ruderalis, we are growing ruderalis cross with usually an indica dominant strain, so now its crossed with a plant that reacts to light and dark, so which lighting schedule is the best to use.
i have tried 24-0 and got the same 20g per plant, so im thinking as the auto is crossed with a none auto to give us the buds we want, then does this mean that an auto will also sort of respond to light, im only wondering this due to what i seen happen when i had a power cut about a month ago,
the power was off for 24 hours and when the lights came back on all of my plants had grown more in the dark than they had all week, so clearly none autos benefit from this night and day and this is possibly why glr works so well, so im wondering if autos will also respond to some dark time, such as an 18-6 schedule, now im thinking that giving it 24 hours of light makes it reach maturity sooner, so would giving it 18-6 drag out the veg period a bit longer and get us some bigger autos.
i got some seeds out the blueberry auto i grew, i planted 2 and 1 has sprouted, now ill be growing this under 18-6 from the time it has got leaves, this will then allow me to test this theory that some night time is a benefit to these plants.
dont get me wrong their are some amazing autos out their and some produce oz's, but i have not come across them yet, the best strain for yield is the big bang auto, another grower on here grew some and got over 4oz and so did another grower, so clearly that auto is more stable, if it was a problem with my grow set up then my none auto plants would be slow to grow and not get very big, now my set up is not the best but my other plants do ok, so clearly it has something to do with either the strain or the lights, now i cant see a breeder selling seeds from a plant that he knows wont produce much, so either they are ripping us off or their is more to this.
i think their is more to it than that, such as growing conditions, light schedule, where the ruderalis grows its pretty damn cold most the year and they got lots of hours of light each day, so this suggests they would benefit from the extended light period, but we are not growing ruderalis, we are growing ruderalis cross with an indica dominant strain, so we are crossing a plant that flowers due to age with a plant that flowers due to light schedule, so we need something in between, it might be possible that they would grow well using 12-12 from day 1, im ordering 10 seeds tonight so ill be able to run some tests with the different light schedules.
but what i did find out is that they prefer a more moist soil than regular plants, and they prefer weak nutes, so start weak and work your way up, i use bpn and started weak and kept upping the dose, and the plant took it ok,
i also read that its best just to give them 1 feed with the veg feed then let the plant use all that up, so when you notice the leaves going a light green colour then your suppose to give the flower nutes at this point.
theirs just to many unknowns, are we giving them the wrong temps, as they grow in cool to cold climates, are we giving them to much light, are we giving them to much nutes, are we keeping the soil to dry for them to have the best conditions, we the answer is that its hard to know, each strain would be different, if we get the conditions right for a ruderalis then it might not be right for the indica its crossed with.
they would not sell all these autos if the yielded low all the time, so their must be something wrong with the method of growing, so im going to rule out soil as the issue, ill try some autos in a dwc set up so then i can monitor the exact nutes and can see how much nutes the plant is using, i am breeding autos to try and find a good mix,.
so far ive got 2 seeds from an auto i did not put pollen on, i did not even have a male in my grow at the time, but out of the bud it produced their was 2 seeds in the very middle of the plant, i planted these and one has sprouted, the auto it came from was a blueberry auto.
now the auto i have pollenated is a royal queens bluematic, i crossed this with a big hitting and fast growing ak47 cross uk cherry cheese, so once these seeds are ready ill be growing them out and only 1/4 will turn out auto, so ill pick the strongest male and female that is auto and cross them back with each other, this should then give me 100% auto seeds,
