To kill? Or not to kill? That is the poll.

okay... 3 of the 8 seeds that sprouted with group one (on 4/28 ) are very strong, a beautiful green, and showing a second leaf set already. And 3 of them look small, with these tiny leaves barely poking out of the open cotyledons, and possibly like they might end up being runts. The other 2 from this group look to be average.

out of group two (sprouted 4/30) I had 1 casualty out of 7 seeds germed, and the other 6 are all developing fast and healthy at the same rate as the good ones from group 1.

so my question is...

if I have these 3 shitty looking little sprouts, that may die off or be runts anyway, would it be a better idea to just be patient and let mother nature take it's course? Or should I pull the defective ones and plant some new ones in their place in search of better genetics?

wait it out. here is why
I once took some clones that all but 1 sprouted roots in a timely matter. But the cutting never died so I left it in my cloner. About the time that I was half way through the flower cycle with its sisters it amazingly sprouted roots. So I took the chance and planted the runt. Skip forward in time a bit it turned out that the runt was the best looking heaviest producing plant that I had during that grow. Dont know why it turned out so good, but I was glad I did not kill it.
Give it time, especially if the others turn out to be males you will be happy you still have a chance with your runts.

very good question. i like to let nature take its course and see which plants are the best. but if you notice the weaker ones are slowing you down or taking up too much resouces. ( i usually kill my weaker ones when they start bieng a bitch to water. and i dont want to waste food on them if i know they suck anyways. dont rush your judgments if you dont haveto because you never know if its something you did that made the plant slow down. ( overwater, lack of light)

i usually start about 12-15 seeds and have 2 as the strongest in the end. then its a whole nother thing when it comes to flowering characteristics. but in the seedling stage i always go for the strongest and pest/mold resistant.

hope this helps and good luck

thanks man... I appreciate it.

yeah I planted 15x regular autoflower seeds in hopes of 6-8 females so if I had one casualty and 3 runts that means I'm down to 11 healthy seedlings. I also know the autoflower runts are infamous for giving up a single 1-2g bud... I'd just rather not have my harvest spread out too far, so if I'm going to do a "kill-n-replace" I would want to do it sooner than later.

Motobomb62 said:

wait it out. here is why
I once took some clones that all but 1 sprouted roots in a timely matter. But the cutting never died so I left it in my cloner. About the time that I was half way through the flower cycle with its sisters it amazingly sprouted roots. So I took the chance and planted the runt. Skip forward in time a bit it turned out that the runt was the best looking heaviest producing plant that I had during that grow. Dont know why it turned out so good, but I was glad I did not kill it.
Give it time, especially if the others turn out to be males you will be happy you still have a chance with your runts.

Click to expand...

missed this post, sorry.

thanks for the info man... That's really cool how it ended up being the best.lol.

I'm not sure if this would work with autoflowers though because, unlike a photoperiod plant, their life cycle has a set expiration date. So I need as much progress from each plant as possible on a daily basis. Do you see what I mean?

I just had the same experience from seeds, I had 8 sprouts out of 15 but one just looked weak and sickly all the time. My brother even uprooted it and threw it in the sink. i spotted it after he left and said " fuck that it's still alive lets give the little guy/girl a shot". That was about 4 months ago and now I'm about 5 weeks into flower. It turned out to show sex first(obv. female), flower first, has the most trichomes(looks like chicago in jan), and generally the most textbook looking plant, although it is still the runt it is yielding just as much as two others that are bigger. I've got one that's an absolute beast though I wouldn't expect a runt to compete. Pfft, my bro tossed it in the sink and now it's gonna yield probably 2 1/2 - 3 ounces. He actually wants me to trade him the runt for two of his

that's hilarious... Good call!