Is this thread still about why noobs grow autos? I'm brand new to growing and was hoping some of you more experienced guys could help. I started growing an auto purple from SeedSupreme, under a 300W VIPARSPECTRA led, with just some fans and a quality garden soil. I use a 24 hour light schedule, where I use LED for 20 hours and a 125W CFL for 4 hours to give the LED some rest. I don't have a lot of space (my wife lets me use a closet in 1 of our guest rooms), and just care about getting decent bud for personal, and having fun.
Are autos that bad? Why are they that bad? Will autos still have ~15% THC? Will my LED be good enough to grow it?
Thanks in advance for any help!
Dude, do your thing. People on here are negative about anything new or that they do not understand or they are against anything that "Bro said was right". Also, people hate to admit they have been preaching the wrong thing and will backup their lies or fallacies with the skin of their teeth.
That said, do nothing fancy with your autos, just go along, plant and feed every other day, and switch nutrients during flower. Have a pesticide or pest fighting plan and treat them weekly or according to pesticide directions. That is it. Do not fuss with these clowns, they will fill your head with Bro Science. Auto are just fine.
Keep in mind, Yeld is directly proportional to plant size (Plant size is a limiting factor to yield). This means that no matter what you feed them autos, beacuse they have the "pygmy gene", they will never be big and therefore will never yield as much as a comparable strain counterpart due to size. If you can lift the "size limiting factor, wich you cannot with autos, then you should lift the root zone and cannopy or biomass factor by busihing it out with topping, and growing in hydro to increase root zone size and high quality bnutrients. (But if this is your first grow, only feed according to my first advice.
Auto are excellent starter plants for Newbs because
1) They grow fast (Newbies are impatient)
2) Because Newbs are impatient, fast growing plants allow them to see the life cycle of the cannabis plant in a short period of time. Otherwise, it is hard to keep up with your plants changes for longer grow periods. Knowing the plant is crucial to your success and Autos really allow you to experiment with much less of time and money due to short cycles.
3) Autos are perfect for Hydro, wich is perfect for Newbies (Some folks on here would not agree) But Hydro is less tediou to maintain (Pic a system that you understand) To the contrary, lots goes wrong in soil or moss because soil is part of the life cycle of many if not all cannabis pests. So removing soil solves a plethora of problems. Ebb n Flow is really really easy, and because you are in hydro, you lifted the limiting factor of nutrients, and by doing so, you can use less quality light or lower power lights because easy access to nutrients, and a 2-3 fold root zone size in hydro makes up for less light.
Buy an electric PH meter that type that dips into pools and keep and eye on the PH. I have a hydro setup and rather circulate the water because I find it churns it, and keeps the water temp low.
More than often, if you do the exact opposite to what fools say on here, you will succeed in growing good bud especially when it comes to limiting factors and Training. For example, instead of fastening the branches down to expose more bud sites, be evil and tie the branches up so they look like a witches broom.and keep them like that 2 weeks before you put them in flwer and I kid you not, you will have a better yield than doing just the opposit.
Knock yourself out with Autos, they are awesome! Fools on here suffer with them because of too much bro science and instead of blaming their stupidity, they blame the plant. They apply Dogmatic shit they heard from Bro and get all kinds of nasty results. Keep in simple, and treat it like you would any other inbred being, (al hybrids are inbred) Keep an eye on the flower, document weekly and always look to the previous week's or day's notes before moving forward. Never rush to fight pests you cannot see, especially if you have been treating them weekly. Soil creatures can afftect PH with their dead corpses and shit, so beware of soil of anykind. Soil buffers better in nature and not so well in pots for obvious reasons.
Start Hydro as a Newbie and then you will not have to worry about all the soil troubles and you will be on the lane that most growers turn to anyways.
PS. Coco Choir is soiless and if you are doing coco coir in pots, you are doing hand watered hydro and therefore use hydro nutrients and flush pots regularly as left over water could fuck up your ph in many ways