Is there any disadvantages with auto flower other than not having control of when they flower?
I cringe every time I see potency brought up with auto flowers. Just like photo's, potency is different between every strain. You have the option of picking high THC strains and low ones. Some auto's will tester higher then some photo periods and vice versa.Biggest cons for me is weight and potency
I cringe every time I see potency brought up with auto flowers. Just like photo's, potency is different between every strain. You have the option of picking high THC strains and low ones. Some auto's will tester higher then some photo periods and vice versa.
You can potentially get more weight with a photo just because you veg it longer.. But longer veg doesn't = more weight over multiple grows.
Don’t get me wrong, that wasn’t a blanket statement across the board for all autos, just the ones I’ve grown. NL, lemon haze, wedding cake just to name a few didn’t have as high of potency in comparison to the photos I’ve grown. And weight is a no brainer. If size restriction is a factor, than weight don’t matter. But that’s the advantage of photos vs autos, you can veg longer and obviously outweigh an auto by a landslide. I’m not against autos, I just prefer to get the weight for the time invested.
If you had a small grow tent, like 2x2. I think it would be possible to harvest more on average per month from it with autos than photos. The thing is that you could run 4 autos in perpetual grow in there. This would make it so that even tho it has 4 plants in it, it has maxed out space all the time. If you were to grow a photo in that, most likely just one photo, you would need to first veg it and waste grow space and it would only fill up the whole space when its full sized. Autos can run full tent nearly all the time.
Most people would also prefer having steady flow of bud rather than having some every 5 months. Doing this you could also get variety of different strains, new strain finishing up every month if you so wish.
Some auto strains are just as good as good photos, but those are rare and you would need to know what you grow if you wanted steady results with autos. Was it the youtube growpotcheaply or something like that who had his girlfriend test out gorilla glue auto from fastbuds the guy grew. His gf is used to smoking concentrates and has very high tolerances and usually is not effected much even by strongest buds. But this gg auto was too much for her to handle.
Most of the time photos are stronger tho, but thats partly because most who breed autos dont do a good job at it at all. I have grown some low ryder #1 crossed with photos by amateurs over 10 years ago. They were better or equal to much of modern commercial autos, which tells you something about the general quality of autos, average is not much better than low ryder #1 pollen tossed around. but then there are exceptions that are really good.
Compare best autos to average autos and you will see that most auto breeders should be ashamed of what they do lol. But because its mostly new guys buying them, its easy to say that they just did not how to grow and its easy to others just label autos as crap because of this. The fact that many autos are not that good is because of most being crappy auto breeders, not because there would be something in autoflowering itself that would inhibit good buds from developing. All breeders hype their auto strains pretty much the same, but in reality only some of them are well bred.
Seed breeders have improved Autos so the performance has evolved and opinions reflect old and new facts. Bottom line is autos are grown from seed since cloning veg time is insufficient. They grow fast so need growing conditions dialed in where they can be seen as more costly to grow but yield is possibly better than photos.
...conditions dialed in... slow growing photos aren't for everyone.Fortunately I speak from my own experience in growing autos, not from some thread I read or researched. Like I said, they aren’t for everyone, and I’m not knocking anyone that decides to grow them. I shared my comparison from 1 to the other, take it with a grain of salt. Maybe I just suck at growing autos, or have had nothing but bad luck with the strains I’ve chosen. Point is, autos aren’t for me. Maybe some time down the road I’ll give it another shot, but for now, 3 months invested for 4oz of ok smoke ain’t worth it to me, but that may be worth it to someone else and their time.
...conditions dialed in... slow growing photos aren't for everyone.
Autos done right use less nutes and have less time to get out of balance in the rootzone. I think it's easier for a new grower who's head is not all over the place to get into autos since they make optimal use of the grow environment.
Good valid points. I would like to know what those well bred strains are, because as of now, I’m not entirely convinced.
check out diaries at Growdiaries.com no bullshit there full of information
Information there is to the point and much more precise where growers include what makes their grow as in lights, environment and nutrients as well as pics so a lot less pipe dreams or bullshit being passed along. And usually can find multiple grows with similar elements to compare and find differences, great way to learn.Yea just keep in mind that a lot of growers there are beginners, so it could skew some opinions and results, especially if some strain only has few finished diaries, you dont know if all of them are newbies or good growers, so you dont know if their review is relevant or not. Also some might think that a relatively crappy weed is pretty good if they dont smoke a lot of (good)weed.
I also recommend looking at grow diaries, but keeping those things in mind.