New Grower - Confused by Results

[Crabgrassfarms]

See this all the time with autos. Plant them and if you even look at them wrong and they’ll stunt like they did for you.

Autos will flower on their on schedule and certain strains do not deal well with topping. Most will only LST if anything. Odds are you topped right before as it was flipping to flower and it was healing while it was supposed to be stretching.

Also 12 hours for an auto isn’t a lot of sunlight, 14-20 hours is what most recommend.

Also transplanting causes stress which require it to heal. Every minute counts in an auto grow. Most successful auto grows, usually will not transplant and will sow their seeds in the final pots

I am down with you man. Some people disagree, of course. After I germinate in peat plug I move into 5 gal bags. I also use a hotsoil method where I use a supersoil in the bottom third with the rest of the pot filled with Ocean Forest. I don't add any perlite or filler to the Ocean Forest, I think if their product needed more perlite they would have put it in their soil. They know more about it than I ever will. In theory everything the plants need comes organically, unless I delayed the flip for long time.
My last auto I kept the lights on 24/7 with no ill effects but the light bill. I am running a 20/4 schedule on my autos this time.
I topped my autos once and will not again.

 

[Eledin]

I am down with you man. Some people disagree, of course. After I germinate in peat plug I move into 5 gal bags. I also use a hotsoil method where I use a supersoil in the bottom third with the rest of the pot filled with Ocean Forest. I don't add any perlite or filler to the Ocean Forest, I think if their product needed more perlite they would have put it in their soil. They know more about it than I ever will. In theory everything the plants need comes organically, unless I delayed the flip for long time.
My last auto I kept the lights on 24/7 with no ill effects but the light bill. I am running a 20/4 schedule on my autos this time.
I topped my autos once and will not again.

They cant know what are your conditions when growing, only you know, so they use a "universal" recipe that would work for most people. Im not one of them, due to my low wattage lights, living in a humid place and lack of dehumidifier my soil takes forever to dry and the easy solution for me was to add more perlite and coco to my mix. Even Fox Farm themselves sell perlite that they recommend to add to your soil if it needs better drainage. Not to mention the benefits of adding some clay and/or clay colloids. Clay has benefits in the soil but it holds more moisture than perlite, so in order to add it you might wanna add more perlite aswell. There's many situations, it all depends on what you want to do, same as adding more supersoil components than it already has. You could add volcanic ash for example, thats something that doesnt come with ocean forest that heavily benefits your plants. Of course I wouldnt recommend to touch the original recipe if you dont know what youre doing, you can end up with burned plants or just a messy soil overall.

As for training autos, you need a strain with a lifespan 3months+ if you wanna do HST like toping, which as I mentioned before kinda defeats the purpose of going for autos for quick harvests but for some reason people do it *shrugs*. I showed how my matanuskas auto did well with toping, the problem was when the harvest time was delayed by 1 month and at that point I was very annoyed. I got more than 100g from those two plants tho, but I wouldnt do it again. Now I have 2 months strain that I have not even done LST to, because I know that this strain has very limited grow time unlike the matanuska auto (Currently growing Skywalker OG Runtz XL auto)

 

[Novaracer69]

Autoflower's have their place but not for new growers to the cannabis plant IMHO. There's also what is known as a fast version. It's a auto/photo cross that you can top. I have made a few of my own and I man handle them. In the summer last year I successfully cloned one. Now it was about 75% of the moms size 4' tall. Here's the mother plant.

 

[Eledin]

Autoflower's have their place but not for new growers to the cannabis plant IMHO. There's also what is known as a fast version. It's a auto/photo cross that you can top. I have made a few of my own and I man handle them. In the summer last year I successfully cloned one. Now it was about 75% of the moms size 4' tall. Here's the mother plant.View attachment 1986026

Yup, Im in my last auto grow but Ill keep growing autos in a small indoor, blueberries to be precise, their size is perfect for that, I dont have to worry about them getting too big. I agree with you, I dont know why some sites and people recommend autoflowers for a first timer. Sure you dont have to worry about how many weeks of veg youre gonna give and they wont get out of hand in terms of size but if you fuck up there's no time for recovery and you will most likely fuck up in your first grow. I have never grown F1 versions and I read recently in the forum that indoors is better to switch to flower slowly because their genetics are a bit unstable (I guess outdoors thats not needed since it happens naturally). Did you grow the clone indoors or outdoors aswell? How long did it take from clone to harvest?

 

[Novaracer69]

Yup, Im in my last auto grow but Ill keep growing autos in a small indoor, blueberries to be precise, their size is perfect for that, I dont have to worry about them getting too big. I agree with you, I dont know why some sites and people recommend autoflowers for a first timer. Sure you dont have to worry about how many weeks of veg youre gonna give and they wont get out of hand in terms of size but if you fuck up there's no time for recovery and you will most likely fuck up in your first grow. I have never grown F1 versions and I read recently in the forum that indoors is better to switch to flower slowly because their genetics are a bit unstable (I guess outdoors thats not needed since it happens naturally). Did you grow the clone indoors or outdoors aswell? How long did it take from clone to harvest?

No I grew the clone outdoors. I found a picture of it. Thats a 7gal pot the mother was in a 20gallon pot so a comparison is really unfair.

 

[Eledin]

No I grew the clone outdoors. I found a picture of it. Thats a 7gal pot the mother was in a 20gallon pot so a comparison is really unfair.View attachment 1986074

Nice buds! A fair ammount of big colas. Would you say they handle toping better than long seed to harvest autos? I was expecting them to be more frail since people apparently switch them slowly to flower as I mentioned before, but I guess its a different genetic trait. A plant can be able to recover well but maybe be more photosensitive or viceversa.

 

[Novaracer69]

Nice buds! A fair ammount of big colas. Would you say they handle toping better than long seed to harvest autos? I was expecting them to be more frail since people apparently switch them slowly to flower as I mentioned before, but I guess its a different genetic trait. A plant can be able to recover well but maybe be more photosensitive or viceversa.

These plants are not frail at all I can say I took the clone when I noticed it stretching and it showed a pistol. This was my first cross of a kush bagseed and a ilgm blueberry autoflower here in Michigan it's a struggle to finish a photo period outside some years. These get big and finish in September

 

[Eledin]

I see, thanks for the info! It definetely makes me wanna try them indoors since I cant plant outdoors right now, I might buy a small strain to try in my small indoors first before trying it in the big one. Hopefully they will do equally well indoors, only one way to know.