Autoflower vs. Starting Indica on 12/12

Somewhere in my searches here, I saw an opinion that, indoors, doing an autoflower plant or a short flowering indica plant started from seed at 12/12 will give you the same yield from each (the poster said 1.5 oz per plant, fwiw).
Any opinions on whether this is true or not?
I could see how it could be, but I've never put a plant right into 12/12.

Are you saying that you saw a thread were a guy put his autoflower in 12/12 if so that's not right and should be 18/6 or 24/0.
Depends on your reg Indica. If you find one that yeilds good then 12/12 from seed should do better. It all depends on both sides really on the strain your growing but then you will have unkown phenotypes unless its from a stable gene but thats I diff. story on something I don't get into since people here know a lot more than me on breeding..
There's a good 12/12 from seed thead on here check it out. And there are strains that do well in this schedule the thread talks about. Ive vegged for week on one plant and pulled almost 2oz in bag soil 3gal pot.

yes i agree organic...

you cant run autoflower on 12/0 .. needs at least 18/6..

i think the guy maybe smoked 1 too many bongs before he wrote that lol

Uh sorry about the bong induced post there. The idea was:
autoflower on 20/4 vs. regular indica started at 12/12-do they yield about the same in about the same amount of time?

thanks-I'll look for the thread on starting seeds on 12/12. I didn't know you could go straight into 12/12. And I'll think about vegging for 1-2 weeks or so.

I dont know 100% but if im right.... id say they would not yield shit.... they would be smaller then an autoflower. Now from what ive seen this works with clones, so throw a tiny rooted clone into 12/12 and it should yield 1-3 oz depending on pot size/care.... im sure if u gave the photoperiod strains 10 days of vegging(18/6) light lets say, then start 12/12 id imagine it would yield 2 oz, they need atleast 2-3 weeks of vegging time to produce anything, so pretend the clone was a seedling, it would be bout 14-21 days old, perfect to start flowering and still get decent yield

Anyways dont mind my ramble

To answer my own thread: I did more research and found that you can start a seed straight from 12/12 and probably get a comparable yield to an autoflower. If you do it with a sativa it's going to take longer because you have to accept the flowering time of your particular strain. Or as others have said, you can veg for a couple weeks to be a little more legit.

I just was totally unaware of this. The Cervantes book says that you have to flower when the plant is done with its seedling stage after several weeks. Its interesting how, on the net, you find people doing things that they're 'not supposed to' do.

kamut said:

To answer my own thread: I did more research and found that you can start a seed straight from 12/12 and probably get a comparable yield to an autoflower. If you do it with a sativa it's going to take longer because you have to accept the flowering time of your particular strain. Or as others have said, you can veg for a couple weeks to be a little more legit.

I just was totally unaware of this. The Cervantes book says that you have to flower when the plant is done with its seedling stage after several weeks. Its interesting how, on the net, you find people doing things that they're 'not supposed to' do.

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This is exactly what I was wondering too. I have read a lot on the 12/12 from seed thread and its very interesting and they get decent yields and those seeds not being an auto seed the potency is better.
I have 1 large tent and 1 very small tent so I run my autos out of the small one and I will do a test on a 12/12 from seed to compare.

I have done both indica and sativa photo period on a 12/ 12 from seed and from my experience, it's a waste of time. First off, the plants won't flower until they reach sexual maturity, regardless of the light schedule.

What happened with my plants is that they stunted,only growing to about 30".They seemd to have a difficult time with nutes, easily burning the plants even when I diluted them to 1/4 strength. With seven plants I only pulled about an oz off each plant. I won't do it again, that's for sure.

I should said im 100% right, cause I am..... XD

But if we're talking about 1 oz per plant indoors, is that much worse than an autoflowering plant's yield?

ok as some one that spent 4 years doing 12/12 from seed indoors and 2 years of autos...My plant size was about the same but if you grow autos the turnaround rate is better then 12/12... my autos go into full flower at 2-3 weeks max and bud for 5-6 more weeks so 3+6=9weeks at max for my autos (65days is as long as one has ever went) most 12/12 I have ever done starts budding at 3-4 weeks and takes 7-9 more to finish.4+9=13 so 8-9 weeks vs 12-13 and that's for a fast budding 12/12...

kamut said:

But if we're talking about 1 oz per plant indoors, is that much worse than an autoflowering plant's yield?

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Exactly my thought- It would produce about the same yield.
I have a small grow area as many here so I need to keep my stuff small in one of my tents.
I will try this. I might keep the plant 1 week in veg light so it can get a little larger but I would love to see if i can get a reg plant to get me about the same yield and about the same amount of time as an auto.

Scyntra said:

ok as some one that spent 4 years doing 12/12 from seed indoors and 2 years of autos.......12/12...

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very nice info. Thanks. My main thing isnt so much on time but mainly space so if i can get a little higher potency this might be more my game.

kamut said:

The Cervantes book says that you have to flower when the plant is done with its seedling stage after several weeks. Its interesting how, on the net, you find people doing things that they're 'not supposed to' do.

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I don't have a copy, but I strongly doubt that Jorge Cervantes said you "have" to flower when the plant is done with its seedling stage after several weeks.

In fact, many (if not most) growers do NOT do that, and I'm 100% sure Cervantes knows this. Instead of flowering immediately after a few weeks of seedling stage, when the plant becomes sexually mature, many growers will then let their plant continue to grow in vegetative stage while training it (or not), until it reaches a desired size and or configuration. At that point, once its the size/shape they like, THEN they'll force it to flower.

So I'd imagine what Cervantes probably said is that after only a few weeks you COULD make the plant flower (not you "have" to!).

In terms of the premise of the original question, yield is HIGHLY strain dependent. That makes it a bit unfair to generalize comparisons between autoflowers vs regular strains without specifying which exact strains you're comparing.

The biggest yield advantage of something like an autoflower is that during flowering, instead of running the lights 12on/12off you're running them 20on/4off (or even 24 on).
So in, say the 4-5 week period where the autoflower is flowering, its receiving the same amount of total light as a photoperiod plant would receive during a full 8 weeks of flowering.
That's why autoflowers fill out so much in relatively few calendar days, and why you can get a respectable yield with what amounts to only a month of real flowering.

I think FROM SEED, all else being equal, the ability to run lights longer would give autoflowers a yield advantage in a given number of calendar days compared to normal/photoperiod plants. But I think its also fair to point out that seriously interested in maximizing yield per square foot usually aren't growing from seed. . .they're growing from clones.

If you compare a rooted clone at 12-12 (or even 14-10) vs an autoflower from seed, the comparison becomes a lot more interesting. I won't rehash my whole argument here, but I'll excerpt it briefly from the 7th post in this "autoflower" thread:

https://www.rollitup.org/auto-flowering-strains/493268-if-any-strain-can-crossed.html
I'm also not entirely convinced that autos are more space efficient than classical sea of green gardening using large numbers of rooted clones.

In general, autos don't like transplanting, and from germinated seeds, you still need at least 3 weeks of seedling type growth before they start to flower. Unless you're using feminized auto seeds, you'll then have to cull out males, meaning you'd have to start with potentially twice the number of seeds as plants you'd ultimately want to keep. Meanwhile, rooted photoperiod clones (which can be started in a relatively small space and are amenable to transplant) will start flowering literally as soon as you plant them into 12-12, and you can do this with ANY photoperiod strain you like.

Assuming you planted the two side by side, by the time your female autoflowers have just started to flower under 24-0 lighting, the 12-12 photoperiod clones have already been flowering for three full weeks. At that rate, it would take until week six before the clones and autoflowers have received the same number of hours of light during active flowering time. If harvest were at week 7 or 8, the autos only get the added benefit of 24 hour lighting for another 1-2 weeks over the conventional photoperiod clones before harvest. That's not all that much of an advantage, and you have to weight it against the need to acquire and start from seeds, cull males, etc.

Meanwhile, some people believe that dark time is necessary for plants to achieve max potency. If you believe this, you might want to flower your autos under 20-4. Conversely you might want to flower your photoperiod clones under 14-10 for max bud production. Under that comparison, the autos and clones don't achieve flowering light parity until the end of week 8. . .now you're already at harvest time. If your autos don't flower until week 4, you're at harvest before they "catch up" to the clones.

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If you run your autos at 18-6, they also probably won't quite "catch up" to rooted clones in a reasonable 8 week harvest cycle.

Scyntra said:

ok as some one that spent 4 years doing 12/12 from seed indoors and 2 years of autos...My plant size was about the same but if you grow autos the turnaround rate is better then 12/12... my autos go into full flower at 2-3 weeks max and bud for 5-6 more weeks so 3+6=9weeks at max for my autos (65days is as long as one has ever went) most 12/12 I have ever done starts budding at 3-4 weeks and takes 7-9 more to finish.4+9=13 so 8-9 weeks vs 12-13 and that's for a fast budding 12/12...

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Thanks for that comparison. That's really helpful to know.

If there weren't *some* advantage out of autoflowers, nobody would ever grow them at all!

For indoor growing, overall small size, and fastest way to go from seed to bud would be the two biggest advantages I can see. If you're trying to maximize yields from a really small space, autos certainly have a niche.

But again, I think if you're really trying to maximize turnover, or yield per square foot, the more apt comparison would be with autos from seed vs. clones since that's usually how the pro commercial growers usually do it.

You can see my discussion above (or in the other thread) on hours, etc, but even assuming for the sake of argument that autoflowers and clones will give you similar yields over a similar time frame, clones potentially offer you a few other advantages over autos, such as not having to sex them, and much more importantly, a much wider variety in terms of strain phenotype availability.

From what I understand there are some pretty good autos out there now, but if you look at the "best" strains, in terms of potency, flavor, desirability, etc, none of them are autoflowers. . .at least not yet!

Of course there are disadvantages to cloning too. Maintaining mother plants and cloning them is more work than just running from seeds, and it does take more space. It may or may not be cheaper, depending on whether or not you're generating your own auto seeds. With seeds, you can go into "time out" after any harvest, and stop growing entirely, only to start again when you feel like you need to. You can't do that with clones.

Autos are very robust even when they arent fed anything lol I think they are more dummy proof than the finicky 12/12 go-round if youre still learnin some.

I know this thread is a few days old but I just had to chime in here.

Everything stated above I totally relate to. I've been growing autos to attempt to get more yield due to the longer light period during flowering. It seems to be working, I'm averaging 1.5 to 2 oz. per plant which I think is not bad. HOWEVER, I am about to start some photo period feminized plants at 12/12 from seed because my space will not allow a plant over 27", which was another reason I was growing autos.

But I'm changing for the following reason. The first plants I ever grew were autos, Sweet Seeds Fast Bud and it was absolutely a knock out stone, one of the best I had ever smoked, I was totally patting myself on the back for my first grow. My second grow was another Fast Bud and a few ones called Gnomo from Kannabia. The Gnomos were supposed to be autos, but they weren't and after more than 30 days I forced them by going to 12/12. But the Fast Bud and the Gnomos turned out to be killer, so I'm thinking I can do this.

After that, I have grow several each of more autos which are Fast Bud #2, Speed Devil #2, Dinafem Haze Autos, and I just finished some Dinfem Fruit Automatics. All of those I just mentioned in the previous typed text have turned out to be total and complete shit. OK, the Speed Devil #2 gets me high but it doesn't last long and is mainly a head high and is not intense. And the Fruit Auto, I have to admit, is not yet completely dry, but preliminary test smokes are not promising. The others are not even as much buzz as a wine cooler.

So therefore, I'm thinking I got lucky with the original Fast Bud and the Gnomos weren't really autos, so maybe it's just me, but if after I harvest the next batch which will be photos, and if they are good, then I claim that the introduction of Ruderalis into the mix to get the autoflowering and hardiness cause enough of a THC hit that it's not as good, or worth it, for me in my opinion, and in some strains, perhaps not all, with Fast Bud being an exception.

Maybe I've done something wrong but to grow and care for a plant for weeks and harvest what seems like perfect, sticky buds and when it's dried a little and to take 5 or 6 good hits and as I set there I'm saying to myself, "you know I'm not really high", makes me so angry I want to blow my top!

So I'm going to grow some from seed at 12/12 and see what happens.

I was just reading this post as I'm wanting to put some autos in when my normal plants go into flower next week and I was hoping to do them on a 12 12 cycle, I see there's alot of myth around not been able to do that with good results so here's a link to a guy who tried it out and it actually worked really well this. HTML class. Value is http://forums.strain