Auto Flowering

In my experience the AFs are not very good. Plants need the long summer days of sun to produce good buds. The AF weed that I have sampled tended to be rather tasteless and not very high in stoniness.

YMMV, oc.

They cross indica or sativa with ruderalis, which grows in the steppes of Siberia. Due to the growing season, ruderalis is dependent on time rather than light.

Auto flowers don't get big or yield a ton. I've found that the flowers are tighter outdoors than when grown indoors, and they're also stronger. I've also found that curing makes an immense difference on the potency. Although I haven't seen them, I've heard that there are new autos that are over 30%.

I have 6 autos outside right now. They're almost no work, and I'll harvest late July - early August. It's pretty nice to have dried and partially cured outdoor freshies in September.

Autos are kind of fun. It's like watching it grow in 3x speed. Two weeks ago a few of mine doubled in volume, almost overnight. All of a sudden they were pre-flowering. Three days later they're in full-on flower. In 3 days they'll be putting on red hairs.

Tim from Florida was posting about his autos for a while. Seems like he was sold on them.

Outdoors I get 14-18 oz of a real plant, and maybe 2 off an auto. The auto is 1/10 of the work, takes 1/10 of the space, and costs 1/10 in nutes. They are also done very early. There are definitely some benefits.

I have 6 real plants, a total of 3 strains. My 6 autos give me an extra 5 strains to play with.

This is our 4th summer with the autoflower.

We start a seed in a 20 hour lil $80 indoor herb garden, when we get the 4th leaf we transplant it to a pot with compost, top soil and vermiculite. water everyday and 2 times a day in the heat of summer. Fertilize once a week with Peters. Use safers soap every once in a moon. The plants are so short lived that bugs are not much of a problem.

Sativa in warm months, Indica in cooler months.

We have 16 different strains with most being an 8 week auto flower with a couple of feminized auto flowers. The feminized ones veg for 4-6 weeks then 8 weeks to finish,

We have had as a little as 6 grams off of 1 plant and as much as 5 oz on standard 8 week autos.

We just harvested 15.5 oz on a feminized Gold Leaf.

We cook with a lot of the stems leaves and lower buds. We have been making gummies for years and after a fuck up my wife is now making hard candies! approx 60-70 MG per candy.

We cure it all now for 3 months after a typical 1 week dry. This extra step is a real game changer. The THC levels are as strong with 1 or 2 stains (AK47, Blue Dream) being stronger than our medical weed.

We are huge fans of the autoflower, approx $11-12 per seed to harvest. We get all of ours from ILGM I Love Growing Marijuana. Out of approx 300 seeds, only 4 have not popped and you can toss it in an envelope and they will send you a replacement. Win-Win situation.

Final note when I write we, it is pretty much my wife.

>>just harvested 15.5 oz on a feminized Gold Leaf.

That's a real one, not auto, right?

Every one loves the GL. It holds up great, too. I just opened a jar from Fall and it's super stinky and perfectly moist.

FYI, I had 2 ILGM seeds fail. I sent them my technique and pics. They gave me an $89 credit. Not bad for 2 seeds.

Yes the gold leaf is what they call feminized auto flower

Veg for 4-6 weeks or so then jumps into a 8 week bud cycle.

3-3.5 months start to finish anytime of the year.

We harvest 1-2 plants per week. I think she has 4 in the house and 22 outside.

The Amnesia Haze is a fine strain too.

We smoke doobies too.

Yes the gold leaf is what they call feminized auto flower

Veg for 4-6 weeks or so then jumps into a 8 week bud cycle.

3-3.5 months start to finish anytime of the year.

We harvest 1-2 plants per week. I think she has 4 in the house and 22 outside.

The Amnesia Haze is a fine strain too.

We smoke doobies too.

Can these seeds handle full sunlight at over a hundred degrees or would it make a difference when planted in the shade?

My autos are in a spot where they get 12 hours of direct sun. We don't get to those kinds of temps though.

We are typically 88-95 every day for 3 months

Full sun most of the time, dead balls summer we will shift the pots and move to 12-14 hours sun with a lil afternoon shade.

I heard it's not what people prefer but there is a market out there for it. My wife works for these guys.

https://atlasseed.com/

I thought this had something to do with VW Beetles and decals

Carry on

...in all seriousness, some good info up in here! Thanks.

From Jamjuice to ...

I enjoyed reading the Atlas Seed site.

Fascinating.  Low yield yet low backyard risk.

>>Fascinating.  Low yield yet low backyard risk.

I know someone who lives right in town in Burlington. She said that regular plants always get jacked in late September. People are sniffing for it, and it's easy to find. She now does a dozen autos and never has an issue. Nobody's looking for it in late July.

We average 30 grams per plant

Again at $12 a plant from start to finish with little care, we feel its a good deal and it keeps my wife in the garden and that is her happy place.

Cooking and smoking a lot still hard to go through 1-2 oz a week.

There is a Cannabis thread. Pay attention.

Mark, Mark, Mark, after all these years, still trying to get stoners to color inside the lines.

Here's a pic of my Gelato auto, snapped a few minutes ago. She'll be ready by August 10, give or take.

Here's that same gelato, 10 days later:

>>Since it's not the way nature intends, can it be harmful to us ? <<

Lol, you're kidding, right?
It's absolutely the way nature intends. At the equator. When there is no light-cue for flowering.
All they did was breed in equatorial traits.
It's pretty genius, actually.

I've found the one downside of autoflowers, at least for me. I dry/cure in the basement. Although I have 3' fieldstone foundation walls, it's hot as shit out, and it's running 78-80 in the basement. With the dehumidifier the humidity is fine, but it's almost like mechanical drying.

Not optimal, but a first world problem nonetheless.

>>>>>They cross indica or sativa with ruderalis, which grows in the steppes of Siberia. Due to the growing season, ruderalis is dependent on time rather than light.

That doesn't seem right. Non light-dependent  plants usually are found in tropical zones, where the light doesn't vary much throughout the season.

Plants from central Asia would tend to be dependent on daylight hours to know when to flower. Most of central Asia lies north of the US in latitude.

 Chocolate Diesel  week 7  ready in 7-10 days

>>That doesn't seem right. Non light-dependent  plants usually are found in tropical zones, where the light doesn't vary much throughout the season.

I've read it from multiple sources, from seed bank lit to Wikipedia. The Ruderalis they use is from South Siberia.

...and auto's are also feminized too? Which, by the way, is done how? I have heard/read that is achieved by introducing certain stresses? Or somehow via genetics these days?

Since it's not the way nature intends, can it be harmful to us ?

aside from auto being the way nature intended for the areas of the world autos originate from, it is not possible to make cannabis somehow more(or less) harmful by changing growing conditions or via normal hybridization/selection. to make cannabis more harmful in some way, you would have to genetically modify it to produce harmful compounds the plant naturally does not have the ability to produce, or just straight up spray nasty shit on the buds. despite the ubran legends and hippie word of mouth bullshit, genetically modified cannabis is not yet used in any commercial farms, nor is it sold in any stores. we might be getting close but are not really there yet. 

if you want to try autos, get mephisto genetics seeds. however, i would strongly reccomend against autos of any kind if you like smoking good weed.

Yes, they are feminized. I don't ask how. It's manna from heaven.

My yield:

Gelato: 51 g

Wedding Cake: 53 g

I have 4 more left to harvest.

Aren't we already in GMO territory with the 'high THC low CBD' ratio weed, for example, that is widely available now?

Speaking of the Caribbean Sativa's, on top of the very long maturation times, are they on a perpetual grow/harvest cycle there or are the very mild differences in light cycling somehow factored into and picked up by the genetic sequencing?

Aren't we already in GMO territory with the 'high THC low CBD' ratio weed, for example, that is widely available now?

no, not in any way, shape, or form. all modern cannabis varieties were created thru simple hybridization/selection, which is how plant breeding has been done by humans for literally thousands of years.

also, the idea that the massive increase in THC levels of most modern, commercially available cannabis is dependent on the strain alone is just flat out wrong - improvements in growing conditions, growing techniques, and harvesting/processing techniques is also a huge factor.

those bags of mexi brick that tasted like ass and barely got you high you remember from the 70's and 80's could have actually been marginally ok weed that got you pretty fucking stoned if it was grown and processed using modern techniques/technology.

of course the older strains were most of the time not capable of getting up into the 25%+ THC category, but the differences in a strains genetic potential for THC production between what was being grown/sold in the 60s, 70s and 80s and modern varieties is vastly, vastly overstated.

all modern cannabis strains were made using the same basic methods of hybridization and selection that humans have used for millenia to turn things like bannanas from little tiny fruits full of seeds with barely any flesh into the large, much sweeter, seedless cavendish bannanas you can buy at the grocery store today. there are no exceptions to this within the scope of modern, commercially grown cannabis strains today. GMO cannabis, or anything even resembling it, does not exist outside of maybe a few research laboratories and in the imaginations of hippies.

From Wiki:

"The strain Lowryder by breeder The Joint Doctor was the original large scale marketed autoflower.[4][5] Lowryder contains genetics from a Mexican strain that was referred to as Mexican Rudy and is believed to be created from a cross between a Mexican sativa and a Russian Cannabis ruderalis. "

Seems likely that the Mexican genes contributed the lack of photosensitivity, and the Ruderalis contributed the short sprout to harvest time.

This is the best article I've been able to find about equatorial sativas v. ruderalis.

Equatorial plants could be defined as autoflowering to some extent, as they will produce flowers after several months of vegetative growth without the need for a change in light cycles, but they clearly do not follow the same mechanism as the true autoflowering cannabis, C. ruderalis, if for no other reason than the gene signalling the end of vegetative growth once just 5-7 internodes have developed does not appear to be present (although it may be expressed later in the plant’s life), and its presence is not the key factor triggering flowering.

https://sensiseeds.com/en/blog/equatorial-cannabis-varieties/

So, equatorial sativas may be seen as autoflowering in some ways, but c. ruderalis reliably starts flowering  once a developmental milestone has been reached. That reliability makes me think breeders are using ruderalis, and not equatorial sativas, for one parent of the autoflowers they produce these days.

I believe the only commonality to all autoflowers is the Russian ruderalis.

Meanwhile, it's so fucking humid that burping my jars is letting more moisture in.

Do you use Boveda's, BK? They add or subtract moisture based on what's needed.

I have in the past, but didn't need them last year. Temps and humidity have dropped, so I can get them back on track. 

Some people claim they're terp killers, but that hasn't been my experience. I still have stuff in jars from last year with Bovedas, and if it's lost any fragrance or tastiness, I'm not noticing it.

Good info and thanks in particular for that sensiseeds link, Mike. Like many others have noted in the comments section of the write-up, I am not a fan of the more commonly available high THC strains and would like to see more of the old school stuff, some of which was VERY good and more balanced/enjoyable in many ways...IMHO and preference anyway.

I had my best cure ever last year, and for the first time didn't need Boveda. I just opened a jar and it's pristine. Probably luck more than skill.

>>>GMO cannabis, or anything even resembling it, does not exist outside of maybe a few research laboratories and in the imaginations of hippies.

I have a friend who is chief scientist on what is now his 23rd or something like that cannabis start up. None of them are trying to produce GMO flower and he would know how if he wanted to. They are all about extracting medicinal properties without the THC or even CBD and or less expensive ways to test. Unrelated to him I also saw that there is a start up trying to replicate depression remedies from psilocybin with out the trip.   

....   Sour Diesel Autoflower.  20" long.  Lunkadelic baby!!!

I don't follow, Ras. Do you think the peppermint, or the bees, will affect the bud?

You can just add a nutrient that naturally bees up the natural terpenes.

I started using Humboldt's Secret Sweet and Sticky. I think it's just glucose.

I use Bud Candy. It's loaded with carbs.