Author: thcscout

Auto-flowering cannabis is extremely easy and advantageous in yielding plants in a very short time, sometimes as little as 6 weeks from germination.

Today we have listed our Top 10 Tips for Growing Auto flowering plants, reaping the ultimate benefits whilst producing heavy yields.

Tip #1: Plan your Grow before you begin.
Because auto-flowers have a pre-set lifespan you need to first plan everything. Review your whole setup including pots, lights, airflow, and growth medium whether it’s indoor or outdoor! A little mistake may result in lesser yield so be careful and plan ahead.

Tip #2: Choose the Right Pot
Auto flowering cannabis doesn’t like being repotted, so stop Pot transplantation. Growth rate is fast for auto flowers and repotting can disturb their progression. It’s better to use 11-18 liters of growing medium as a first and final pot so their roots can grow freely without becoming bound. If you are going to repot, do It sooner rather than later!

Tip #3 is Proper Nutrients Supply
Remember to avoid supplying nutrients in the Seedling phase. Auto flowers have a smaller root mass so try to be gentle in supplying nutrients. Otherwise your plants can suffer from nutrient burn and can be easily killed with heavy fertilizers.

Tip #4 Provide Light
For indoor growing, Try to give them 20/4 or 18/6 of light hours throughout their lifespan by HPS & or LEDs. However, for outdoor growing, 10 to 12 hours of natural sunlight should be sufficient.

Tip #5 Don’t Overwater
Try to sprinkle water to moisten dry soil. Otherwise overwatering will invite the bad bacteria to stick around the plant roots and further down the line can cease plant growth entirely. So AVOID OVERWATERING! Check out our previous video for more on that.

Tip #6 is to Check PH
Always use a proper PH meter or testing kit for better results. The PH level varies according to different mediums such as 6.0 to 7.0 for soil, and 5.5 to 6.5 for hydroponic growth. Moreover, PH variations suggest a disturbance in nutrient levels. So keep an eye on it at all times!

Tip #7 Train Your Auto-flowers
Use Low-Stress-Training techniques and try to avoid topping and pruning as it causes a poorer harvest. Make sure to get them equal light using strings and toothpicks, yoyos and zip ties for better growth.

Tip #8 create the perfect Environment
Auto flowers are reliable and should display healthy growth around 20-25 degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, make sure to have good airflow and proper moisture, and use shading in hot sunny outdoor climates. You can also consider adding additional Co2 to aid plant growth.

Tip #9 Harvest Patiently
Indeed, all buds can be harvested at the same time, but bear in mind top buds often mature faster than lower buds. So, start harvesting from matured flowers and leave the lower ones for later on. This technique will give you greater yields.
Last but not least,

Tip #10 Take care of them
Along with nutrients, lightning and watering, make sure to pay love and attention to your autos. In return, you will be left with a heavy harvest in a short amount of time.
If this is your first time growing Auto flowers, then chances are it’s not going to go perfectly. The best way to learn is to make mistakes and ensure you don’t repeat them.

We’d love to know about your experiences working with autos, so do let us know how it went in the comment section below, and of course if you enjoyed this video make sure to like and subscribe so you too can become a cannabis expert!

Imagine the Usain Bolt of cannabis plants.

While all the others are just beginning to flower, yours are already showing fat, juicy buds.
Sounds a bit like a fantasy, or does it?

In truth, there are a few things you can do for indoor growing, and outdoor growing too, that can dramatically speed things up when it comes to producing your own cannabis.

Autoflowering strains tend to flower appreciably quicker than photoperiod strains when grown under similar conditions.

You can take a photoperiod strain straight to flowering by using a 12-hour period of darkness straight from the point of germination, though yields will be smaller as a consequence.
Why not grow your plants from clones?

Not only does this mean that you can reproduce one of your highest-yielding plants, but it takes far less time to grow a plant from a cutting than it does growing plants from seeds.

A word of warning, though, don’t clone autoflowering strains as they retain the age of the host plant and will flower before the plant has had a chance to grow to any reasonable size.

Consider 24 hours of light – this can greatly reduce veg time, but watch out for deficiencies. If your plants look unhealthy, go back to 12 hours darkness for a few days to allow them to recover.

You can then jump-start the flowering process.

Put your plants in total darkness for 48 hours before beginning a 12-hour, 12-hour light and dark cycle. You can then use an 11-hour, 13-hour light and dark cycle to trick the plant into thinking that winter is arriving.

How about hydroponics?

This is often forgotten about as an option, especially if speed of production is important to you.
The advantage of hydroponics is that nutrients are delivered direct to the roots. The result is that your veg time can be reduced by a couple of weeks or so.

As for tips to help you speed up the growth of your outdoor plants – there are two main ones we would recommend.

First, cove your plants with a tarp or light-blocking cover at night for a 12-hour period. This is similar to how you operate an indoor grow tent.

This will force the plants to bloom earlier and will usually result in fatter buds.
Second, pollinate late and harvest early.

Here we recommend you pollinate your plants yourself, by hand, roughly a week before harvesting. This will stop the plants’ energy being focused on flower production.

Finally, whether growing cannabis indoors or out, choose your variety carefully as some strains have an appreciably faster time-span between sowing seeds and harvesting cannabis, already giving you a head start!

Not all of us or, in fact, quite a few of us just don’t have room for a grow tent where we live.

Maybe you share a house with friends who aren’t avid potheads, or perhaps you live in a bedsit.

Ideally you need a spare room for a grow tent if you don’t want it to become the focal point of your entire life.

So what if there just isn’t the room, what then?

Well, what’s wrong with your windowsill, as long as it doesn’t face due north?

Okay, it’s not so easy to control the growing environment, and you can’t control the hours of daylight the way you can with an independent lighting system, but that’s not a crisis.

Aside from that, the only other downside is that if your windowsill is on the first two floors of the
property, passersby, who generally tend to have a nosey nature, may spot your botanical exploits.

In order of priority, you want a south-, east-, or west-facing window. West-facing is not brilliant as the afternoon sun tends to be more dehydrating in strength.

You can increase the light with LED lights that you can buy which have a flexible stand so you can direct the light accurately. However, we recommend that you only do this with the curtains drawn as you’ll attract as much attention as a hooker does with a red light in her window!

Your next potential problem is keeping the soil sufficiently moist, but without keeping it permanently waterlogged.

If you can’t afford a connected moisture sensor, then it’s down to sticking your finger in the soil. If nothing sticks to it, then the plant needs watering.

Just make sure you get no water on the leaves as drops of water act like mini magnifying glasses and you’ll burn the leaves on a sunny day.

Choosing the right pot can also help with potential watering problems.

Obviously you don’t want a ten litre pot if you have a narrow windowsill, but anything from two litres upwards will do, bearing in mind that the smaller the pot equals the smaller the plant.

Then comes the soil, and with limited space, nutrient-rich soil is essential. The soil should be rich and dark, but still airy, not claggy and clay-like.

Make sure that as well as abundant micronutrients, you have plenty of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous in the soil.

Finally, you have the choice of plant, and some strains will give you far better yields than others in the less-than-perfect growing environment.

Try varieties such as Auto White Widow, which in a windowsill, will grow up to about 60cm in height. After all, you don’t want plants blocking out all the light from entering the room!

There’s also Formula one auto and quick one, whose names are pretty self-explanatory.
Of course there is one great advantage of growing your cannabis plants on a windowsill, and that providing the window opens, you have plenty of ventilation to avoid the tell-tale smell of terpenes as the plant matures!

Have you grown plants on your windowsill before? Let us know how it went in the comment section below, and of course if you enjoyed this video make sure to like and subscribe so you too can become a cannabis expert!