AF vs Regular for fast harvests

I want to have fast harvests with 8 plants at a time; ideally 60-90 days from clone to harvest w/ CFLs. I'm trying to figure out the best way to do it, and a big question is seeds. I want them to be <3ft fully developed (box constraints).

Is this realistic, and what kind of growing plan should I follow for an efficient harvest?

Should I be looking at AF strains (I can easily switch light cycles) or just regular?

Thank you!!

Go with regular. They flower just as fast and as small as autos but you can take clones and don't rack up the extra 6-12hrs in energy costs. Just flower the regs while they are tiny if you want a small plant.

Gastanker said:

Go with regular. They flower just as fast and as small as autos but you can take clones and don't rack up the extra 6-12hrs in energy costs. Just flower the regs while they are tiny if you want a small plant.

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this is good advice. it would be good too if you put some autos in your veg area with the mother while the small clones did there thing but i definitely agree that the extra energy costs almost dont seem worth it. i run a 600w hps and it sucks to get the bill after running that thing for 20 hrs a day for a month. after i thought about it, it would make more sense to have a 600 on 12/12 and have a LED or t5 on the mother and some autos.
i will say this about autos though. if you make your own seeds of a potent strain and plant them in the masses outside, you cant lose.

Awesome advice from both of you.

Gastanker said:

Go with regular. They flower just as fast and as small as autos but you can take clones and don't rack up the extra 6-12hrs in energy costs. Just flower the regs while they are tiny if you want a small plant.

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i agree with gastanker here.. i hear people saying how quick auto's flower, mostly breeders mind you, but it's a bunch of poo... auto's don't start to flower until about 3 or 4 weeks out from seed, than they take the normal amount of time for w/e strain it is to finish, whether that is 8 weeks or 12, don't matter much really..
you could always grow photoperiod plants out for 3 or 4 weeks from seed, than flip them to flower and have both plants finish at the same time so long as say you grow auto ak vs regular ak for ex..

not only that, i don't care what anyone tries to tell me, auto's are never going to be near as potent as their photoperiod counterparts are.. once you introduce ruderalis genes into a x, you just brought down the potency in the process as ruderalis is pretty much ditchweed with super lowe potency..

racerboy71 said:

i agree with gastanker here.. i hear people saying how quick auto's flower, mostly breeders mind you, but it's a bunch of poo... auto's don't start to flower until about 3 or 4 weeks out from seed, than they take the normal amount of time for w/e strain it is to finish, whether that is 8 weeks or 12, don't matter much really..
you could always grow photoperiod plants out for 3 or 4 weeks from seed, than flip them to flower and have both plants finish at the same time so long as say you grow auto ak vs regular ak for ex..

not only that, i don't care what anyone tries to tell me, auto's are never going to be near as potent as their photoperiod counterparts are.. once you introduce ruderalis genes into a x, you just brought down the potency in the process as ruderalis is pretty much ditchweed with super lowe potency..

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Agree with the first part, not with the second. Autoflowers do have certain advantages (see here: https://www.rollitup.org/auto-flowering-strains/502366-pros-cons-info-needed-autoflower-3.html#post6925856 ) but being "the fastest" strains around isn't one of them. (see here: https://www.rollitup.org/auto-flowering-strains/502366-pros-cons-info-needed-autoflower-4.html#post6941634 )

The absolute fastest way to get turnover is from clones put right into flowering. Once you have a 'mother' plant going to take clones from, assuming its a fast-flowering strain, you can go from clone to harvest in as little as 7 weeks or less. That's better than even the fastest of the autoflowers from seed.

On ruderalis genetics, I put up multiple long posts about this, that unfortunately got deleted in the massive hacker attack.

Yes, its true that natural ruderalis plants are basically like hemp in terms of potency. But we have ruderalis based strains now that have been crossbred with conventional (ie strong) cannabis strains for 20+ generations, to the point where they're barely ruderalis at all any more. There is no genetic reason why these can't be pretty good in their own right.

Specifically, just because ruderalis plants are themselves weak, there should be no reason why you can't cross and backcross a ruderalis plant with any strong inbred line of your choice to end up with something that is 99.9% inbred line and only 0.01% ruderalis, effectively retaining JUST the autoflowering gene(s) and nothing else.

Lets say you wanted to do something like this. This is how you might proceed:

1. Cross "Killer Indica Inbred Line" male x "Weak as Piss Ruderalis" female to create an F1 hybrid.
2. Cross F1 x F1 to create 32 F2 offspring plants. Of these F2 plants, 50% will be female and 25% will be autoflowering. Select your favorite autoflowering female F2 for step 3.
3. Backcross the KIIL male x your F2 female autoflower to create an F3 hybrid.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 four more times. Every odd generation, you do a cross to retain only the autoflowering trait. Every even generation you backcross to the original strong male to increase the proportion of pure indica genes and increase potency.

Your F2 hybrid will be 50% indica - 50% Ruderalis, but autoflowering. Already you should be WAY stronger than your WAPR momma plant.
The F4 hybrid will be 75% indica, but autoflowering
The F6 hybrid will be 87.5% indica, but auto
The F8 hybrid will be 93.75% indica, auto
The F10 hybrid will be 96.8% indica, auto, etc.

It will take you roughly 2-3 years to get there, but after you've done enough backcrosses to the original father plant what you'll be left with will probably be otherwise indistinguishable from your original "killer" indica, only autoflowering.

It probably wouldn't be necessary, but if you wanted to, you could literally do these backcrosses a few more times to the point where the ONLY genetic difference between your F20 (or whatever) generation and the original male parent strain was the presence of the autoflowering gene. If you started with a really strong parent plant, you should have something of equivalent potency.

Now in fact, this has been done. One example is with DNA Genetics "60 day wonder" where they took a lowryder auto, crossed it with a (super potent) William's wonder, then backcrossed it over eight generations to get something that is reputedly nearly as potent as the original strain. Unfortunately, they apparently didn't do all of the extensive crosses necessary to completely stabilize the strain to the point where it was genetically identical to the original WiWo parent, but in theory there is no reason why this couldn't be done.

Incidentally, FWIW, I've heard that it takes about 70 days from seed for the so called "60 day wonder" to mature properly.

zzoo said:

I want to have fast harvests with 8 plants at a time; ideally 60-90 days from clone to harvest w/ CFLs. I'm trying to figure out the best way to do it, and a big question is seeds. I want them to be <3ft fully developed (box constraints).

Is this realistic, and what kind of growing plan should I follow for an efficient harvest?

Should I be looking at AF strains (I can easily switch light cycles) or just regular?

Thank you!!

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Well, that's easy.

Conventional ruderalis based autoflowers can't be retained as "mother" plants for cloning because the mothers autoflower then die.
If you want to grow from clones (instead of seeds every time) you **MUST** use conventional photoperiod plants.

Next, yes, its perfectly realistic to grow plants inside of a 3 foot ceiling space. You will just need to pay careful attention to light cycles and training them so they don't get as tall, and ideally you'll start with strains that aren't that stretchy. Ideally for you, the fastest flowering strains are indica-dominant ones that also tend not to stretch too much. Smaller pots = smaller plants, and running less than 24 hours in your veg cycle may help keep overall plant heights down too. Some do 12-12 from seed, and that's a reasonable approach.

How to maximize yields is a tough one; there are multiple ways to get there.

*IF* you are willing to go from seeds every time, you can keep your box on 20-0, then run seedlings, sex them, discard the males as soon as they appear, and run the females to maturity all in one box in a continuous cycle with autoflowers. That's one of the easiest ways to do it, though there are others.