It's hard for me to imagine autos that tall! Mine are both only about 14 inches tall. They are canopies and just starting to flower but still. What size pots are yours in? Mine are in 5 Gal and I think they could go to 7 in future. What height do your canopies average? I can go quite a bit taller on the tabletop than I first thought. I have a high ceiling. I'd like to get a list of higher yielding, bigger autos pls
Ok, well let’s unpack that.
The List: I have six guaranteed giant autos so far on my list.
- Watermelon Wedding Cake XXL auto (Growers Choice)
- Platinum Mimosa Cookies XXL auto (Growers Choice)
- Apple Frittter (Blimburn Seeds)
- Pineapple Express (Royal Queen Seeds)
- Chunkadelic (Humboldt Seed Company)
- White Widow (Greenpoint Seeds)
Those breeders are the ones I grew, but other than the two from Growers Choice and the one from Humboldt Seed Company which are very specific, you’d get large plants from any breeder with the other three. Growers Choice and almost all auto breeders now offer the XL or XXL or “Super” autos - generally they are the ones bred to get bigger. I stick with them mostly.
Pot sizes: I only use fives for autos if I’m out of sevens. I always use sevens and am considering trying a ten for the two Growers Choice strains, as I have grown them both enough to know they’d have a real good shot at filling a ten. I think in terms of fish - they grow to the size of their aquarium. Yes, pot size has something to do with plant size. All my sevens in this grow have long since filled the pots with roots. Keep in mind that I grow in coco, so compared to soil…well, there isn’t really any comparison. Take any two seeds on earth of the same strain and I’ll destroy the soil plant every time. The results I get, in my opinion, cannot be duplicated in soil. That said, one *could* argue that soil plants taste better. But for size and yield coco laughs at soil. Still, in soil, all the ones on my list will be big. Also - I uppot autos to start. That’s a big thing because my roots are very well established before they hit their final pot.
Canopies: my canopies are not exactly even this time as I chose to let any rogues grow out and have their dominance. So each of the five is a nice canopy with buds sticking out the top. But if I went just by the height of the main canopies they come in between 20 - 24”. This is the first time I’ve canopied autos this way - as if they were scrogged. I wouldn’t do it again. Better yields from minimal training and topping and letting them get big. Plus it’s way more work. I’ll save those kind of canopies for photos in the future.
Training: I went to your journal and saw what you have going on. You’re doing great. They’re small but you’re doing everything right. One of the ways I generate so many bud sites is by topping side branches. You double your colas with each topping. I also do nothing to the plant at all, just let it grow, until the 5th node is pushing out. I top there at four. So my plants are taller than yours (for example) before I begin to train. All my training begins when I top the main stem. That way, when you then start pulling branches to the side, they already have a bit of length and are easy to work with and manipulate.
If you train your colas in the shape of a ring you might do better on yield. That shape is the most natural and lends itself to side branch generation very readily. Doing it as you are works too, but it’s more difficult to figure out what to do with what. Also - IMPORTANT - you do not want to top anything once you see pistils. At that point your topping window is closed. There’s no point. The two you make won’t have time to become significant. I do all my topping as early as possible and never top after pistils. I feel there is a sweet spot somewhere in terms of number of colas that results in the best case scenario. Still trying to find it. But it’s way less than what I have now in the tent. Somewhere between 12 and 30 I believe.
I think that covers your queries??
