auto flowering

just about to set up my garden and was sent a auto flower from royal queen seeds. fig id start this in soil cause my aero sites will spoken for when my equipment arrives! so my question is what type soil and how big of a pot?

thanks

This is the accepted wisdom for typical autoflowers. I have found it to be quite accurate for the strains I have grown.

Soil should be loose and airy.
Autoflowers need to grow roots fast.
Best not to transplant. Start in the final pot.
Best to do as little trimming and pruning as possible. Some LST is ok.
You cant control the veg phase so you cant control the size.
3-5ga is recommended if you dont want it to get pot bound.
The seedlings are very fragile.
They stay very small until the stretch and then grow explosively.

zvuv said:

This is the accepted wisdom for typical autoflowers. I have found it to be quite accurate for the strains I have grown.

Soil should be loose and airy.
Autoflowers need to grow roots fast.
Best not to transplant. Start in the final pot.
Best to do as little trimming and pruning as possible. Some LST is ok.
You cant control the veg phase so you cant control the size.
3-5ga is recommended if you dont want it to get pot bound.
The seedlings are very fragile.
They stay very small until the stretch and then grow explosively.

Click to expand...

ok do you have any reccomendations for soil for auto flowering and when should i start flushing and with what?

dickkhead said:

ok do you have any reccomendations for soil for auto flowering and when should i start flushing and with what?

Click to expand...

what is LST

I exclusively grow autos. I don't light stress train (LST - look it up there are good guides on how to on this board). I've used 3 gallon pots, if you're going for maximum yield use 5 gallon as some of my larger pheno autos were root bound in the last couple weeks of flowering using 3 gallon. I use Fox Farms Ocean Forest soil, it drains very well and is light and airy. Zvuv is right, never transplant an auto the roots are super fragile. Make sure they get plenty of water especially in the first two weeks to encourage rapid root development. I have found side lighting to be especially effective with autos to encourage better branching development.
Do it right and you can achieve upwards of 60g per plant, although this is somewhat phenotype dependent. Sometimes autos just fuck up and you'll wind up with a plant only yielding 16g. I've been at the autos for a while and it still seems for every six plants I grow I get one that really lives up to its dwarf heritage. A good goal to shoot for is to average an oz and a half off each. That's about as hard as you can expect to rock them.

In the way of strains, never used royal queen but will highly rec anything from Short Stuff, Sweet Seeds, or Sagmantha, I've been pretty happy with all their autos. Personal favs are Sweet Caramel from Sweet seeds, Smurfberry from Sagmantha, and MI-5 and Auto Assassin from Short Stuff. Any of those will give you some solid smoke that is comparable to most photo period strains.

ok great thanks for the detailed response

@hoss: Informative posts. Thank you.

LST: Low Stress Training is a way of shaping the canopy of the plant by pulling on the branches with strings. The idea is to keep the training within the plants natural ability to move and bend and avoid stressing it.

Do a search on this forum. There's miles of articles on it with pix.

Strains:

I would pay particular attention to stability and whether it flowers reliably without 12/12. I have one auto Oil in my closet that wouldnt set buds until I switched to 12/12. Don't buy Autofem.

I was very happy with the Greenhouse Green o matic that I grew. Going to grow that one again

i have done many a diesel ryder in 2 1/2 gal pots

what kind of yield were you pulling D?

growin 4 years never weighed just smoke

fair enough, I guess I'm the opposite. I like to track progress, especially when I keep upgrading my lighting, nutes ect.

should i drill holels in the bottom of my buckets for indoor grow? and when should i start flushing my auto strains? and what should i flush with?