I knew thered be one of you at least. I said nothing about hydroponics at all. Anyone whos grown knows that a dwc, under current or not, will produce way more than a soil/less grow in way less time. And the funny thing is that you mention that photo plants are doing great in rdwc and make no mention that autos do equally well in an DWC system. Ive seen some rediculous autos in DWC. They were looking like a lb easy. So yes youd have to run the lights for twice as long, but still pull a lb vs 220 in the same time frame. And if i could double the power bill and production, i would double them gladly.
I understand what you are saying, and mean no disrespect in what I am about to reply it is just my personal experiences and everyone's vary from person to person. I have always been a soil grower and for the most part have been mostly organic since day 1 with very little chemical nutes and for the last year absolutely no chemicals. For most strains with a month veg I have averaged around 8-12oz. I used to veg a little over that somewhere around 5 weeks to get 1 pound plants because I would run 2 under 1k. Not every time would they yield a pound, sometimes one would be 12 or 14 and sometimes it would be 18 or 20. The reason I am seeing people take so long to veg a plant is lack of light and small pots. Usually within 4-5 days of sprouting or somewhere around there I have the seedlings under at least a 600 MH/HPS and sometimes even a 1000 HPS. But after the first 2 weeks for sure I up it to a 1000 HPS. Once the plant is under the 600 it is at least in a 2-3 gallon pot, and once at the 2 week mark it is transplanted into a 7-20 gallon pot depending how many I run per light. Almost every time I see people "vegging" their plants they have them in some tiny half gallon container under a few CFLs. If you don't care about time this works great and you can get by with a lot less light in veg. But if you want them done quick then fire up the 600-1000HPS from day one and put them in big pots and you will see the difference. Once a plant starts growing in veg under a big light it starts growing fast. The first couple weeks are fairly slow but after weeks 3, or especially 4 they start to grow very very fast under a 1000 HPS.
What many people don't realize is how much the plant continues to grow when you flip it to flower, especially sativa doms like I like. Lets say I want to grow out 2 seeds that are very uniform from the same strain but one is put in a 5 gallon bucket and the other a 15 gallon smart pot. They can be vegged the same amount of time and be even the same size when thrown into flower, but by the time they go into flower the 15 gallon plant will continue to grow larger in flower moreso then the smaller 5 gallon bucket will as the plant continues to fill out the root space. I am not saying this is the best idea for people trying to make the most of their spaces running SOGS but I like large plants and smaller plant counts so this works great for me.
As for autos, I have grown a few of them out in the past and they weren't bad. I'd say they lacked slightly in the potency compared to the original they were made from but not a significant amount or anything. I'd say if you grew say a Critical + that tested at 16% THC, the Auto form would probably be around 12% but this is just me guesstimating. I can't comment on yield though as the Autos I grew were before I got into big plants. I did have them under a 1000 HPS though and if memory serves was getting around 4oz each in a 5 gallon bucket with about 70-80 days all together depending on plant. My favorite ones I grew out were from Sweet Seeds. But I bet the HSO ones are probably some of the best out there since HSO has the best fem seeds I have tried. I could see an auto yielding more then a photo strain under the same light with the same conditions because it has the light on for more hours of the day. But not by a whole lot. And I would bet anything from beginning of grow to chop day that on a per hour of light being on the photos will out yield the autos because that extra 4-12 hours of light each day really adds up.
And back to AlienWidow - I got to say one last thing, you said "And if i could double the power bill and production, i would double them gladly." .
You do know you could just buy another light and that would do exactly that right? You can always add more light, but you are going to gain the most by buying another light for more plants over running your light for more hours on some autos. Just my opinion and experience.
And let me say lastly I am not running autos down at all, they have their uses but for most things people use them for they seem pointless. In my opinion they are awesome for 2 purposes. First up in the veg room if you have extra space - extra bud for free that way. And secondly for planting outdoors early on in say April so you can harvest your buds at the end of June before any LEO are even out looking in their choppers or rippers/hunters for that matter. I still haven't done the last one myself but in the future I plan to do that with some autos outdoors guerilla style. And please AlienWidow don't take my post as offensive it really isn't meant that way. That is just my experience over the years and if it can help you in any way or anyone else then great.
Edited to add - If you do the last thing I mention and plan on running a bunch outdoors guerilla style I recommend making your own seeds to use to save cost since you can't take clones from autos and you would need a lot more of them to average a regular plant's yield. I figure a lot of people would consider a 100 plant Auto grow outdoors a average size since they would only produce around 4-6 oz each probably. I haven't made any of my own seeds yet but plan to here soon and from the research I done in the past I can tell you if you take 2 auto flower strains and cross them together the offspring will also be auto. But if you take an auto and cross it to a non auto then you will have different types and would have to further inbreed the line in order to stabilize the auto genes. But lets say you want to put out 100 HSO Blue Dream next year. Instead of buying 100 beans that would cost a small fortune why not just buy a 5-10 pack and pick the best couple growers of the bunch to reverse with STS spray and put the pollen on the other 3-7 and end up with thousands of seeds to grow out for many years to come.
