I only ran autos once...I was very disappointed in the final size of the plants. They started blooming at 7 inches and did not get very big.
They say they are meant for outdoors and I believe them. Technically if you run Clones you can actually beat an auto in both time to harvest and final weight. I don't really see an advantage in growing them indoors. I have a buddy who grows them outdoors and is very happy. They aren't a bad thing just really a novelty for indoor growing.
Like I said if you do a good job cloning and have a taller mature clone waiting for the bloom space from the plant that is in there...as soon as the space is ready you can throw it in and start blooming it and get done faster than an Auto.
Not to mention that Autos have a handful of things that make them more difficult to grow than regulars so they really shouldn't be used by a beginner. For one they do not follow a standard nute program. Unless you understand the plant well you are likely to have reduced yield from not having an ideal nute program. I have only seen one expensive company attempt to make a nute program for them. For 2 they are immediately into bloom so you can't make any mistakes. A regular plant while in veg can rebound from just about anything. An auto is in bloom almost immediately so any mistakes are irrecoverable. You can't use normal tricks to try and accelerate root growth so you end up with a smaller root ball then you want and are stuck with it and have to do some tricks to get the plant to out grow its root mass.
So like there is a lot a newb can screw up here. That said growing weed is easy and kinda like falling off a log. So people get great results but don't realize they got half of what they should. I have posted pics of my pathetic autos multiple times and people always praise them to no end as being great and I just shake my head. Difference is I know what I screwed up.
Some guy posted like 2 days ago about how he thinks Femed are great (which they kinda are) but we were trying to explain to this newb that for a long term cloning program you want to use the best genetics you can. Well this guy goes off about getting half a pound a plant outdoors...well sorry you just proved the point. Half a pound outdoors is a failure. I can get a pound a plant indoors. Outdoors your should have a 6-10 foot tree with a few pounds. But I guarantee since he got some good bud he thinks he his right and will continue to tell others to ignore science.
I am getting better about unsubbing to threads like that...
Now that I have said some controversial things here I probably will have to unsub here soon
