I’m growing an auto but I’ve cut here and there. I topped it at 9 nodes, took the bottom 2 early on amd just for shits and giggles to see if I could, took the top 2 limbs and cut at the second flowering stage to see if I could clone them for hydroponics. surgury was not a success, but you never know till you try it. The first pics were the middle of august till just recently. I’m a first time grower. I’ve got all kinds of ideas for the future, just takes a while. I’ve got several different auto strains. 18/6 is best lights schedule I’ve found but I did find out that the little hairs come up even if its 24/7 Light. Just experimenting.

Your first grow is going a lot better than my first grow lol. My first grow I was given four plants out of the blue (that had already been neglected and were started out in clear plastic jugs that were cut in half) and despite being two months old were barely 10'-12" tall) and since I wasn't expecting to get them I had to rush and get what I could afford. I was gifted a 4-pack of 42w grow lights, instead of pots I used the bath tub in the spare bathroom and just lined the walls with mylar sheets, I used a mix of topsoil and compost/manure mix, as my grow medium, I couldn't afford nutrients until about a month and half after I got the plants, and I had no temperature or humidity control. Two plants went hermie on me so I just pulled those and the other two barely yielded an ounce total. My brother knows a commercial grower and told him about our first set up and he said we were lucky the plants even lived until harvest.

Now we're on our second grow and we have a 4x4 grow tent, fabric pots, a mix of Happy Frog and Ocean Forest, proper nutrients, portable a/c and cool mist humidifier, added 6 more 42w grow lights (and going to add 4 more when it's time to flower), and basically we fixed all of our issues from the first grow. Another issue with the first grow was that the guy that gave us the plants had used bag seeds but this time me and my brother went and bought Gorilla Glue #4 and Fat Bastard seeds while the commercial grower my brother knows also gave us some Royal Runtz and Royal Runtz x Lemon Drop seeds. Right now we have 1 plant of each strain going. They're not even a month old yet and they're already bushier than the plants we were given for our first grow.

We're trying to plan our third grow early and we want to go a head and grow Big Bang Auto because it's such a high yielding plant and has a very fast turn around time so we feel it'll be the best use of our grow space.

You have done a nice job with your auto.
I do have 2 suggestions for your next grow.
1 fill your bucket up almost full. The plant will be happier.

2 - If you are going to grow bud, you may as well grow really nice bud.
Skip ahead to 8 minutes in this video ans strip to the tip.

All the best bus. Nice plant.