Could appreciate some advice on Autoflowers

Our next project is autoflowers ... we've heard alot of noise about these recently ... mixed feelings and experiences ... In particular what are peoples views on topping/cropping/cloning/Lst on autoflowers??? We need as much view points as possible on this to enable us to make up our mind on how we proceed.

One Love ... Peace

i've tried cloning, it does't work very well. you can clone one, but its on the parents timer, so you're going to get a little runty plant that may or may not have time to mature before it dies.
super cropping is an option, but again, the plant is on its own timer and you may or may not have time for it to finish twice as many buds as it was bred to produce.
topping seems to be a bad idea, again for the same reason, the plant will probably flower before the side branches have a chance to get well established.
lst? dunno, couldn't hurt to try, but i wouldn't get too extreme with it.if you have more than one seed for that pheno, i'd grow one without doing anything to it to get an idea of how long it vegs, then you will have a better idea what you have time to do on the rest of the seeds?\
also, they seem to like to throw a few nanners, but it seems to be a one time thing. if you watch them and catch the few they throw, they should settle down after that

Thank you Roger A. Shrubber. Nicely detailed and iformative.

I've done a few different autos, I usually run one or two when I do a from seed run while my photos veg, I've done some lst on them but was always advised against topping, but I've watched a few journals from guys who do it and very successfully so it seems it's pretty much strain dependant. Not the cloning aspect though that's never worked anywhere I've seen. I know @Resinhound runs all autos nowadays and isn't afraid to play with the rules of autos

Autos are on a short timer. The best results will come from as little stress as possible, don't even transplant. I germ my seeds in water then plant into the pot I plan to harvest out of.
Fast Buds green Crack & west coast og have both been good grows. Each show pistols by day 20 and harvested by day 80. Have a new order already coming!

I've tried all kinds of training methods with autos,lst is definately a safe bet, all the way through. I've fimmed and topped them with success as well but it really depends on the plant. A strain that's stable and you know well to be extra vigorous in veg or has a propensity to be a slow flowering pheno are the best canadates for that kind of training. If you do decide to top or FIM it needs to be done early.Once you start seeing pistils, it's pretty much over for pruning type training, unless your aim is a heavily stunted plant. Which has its place as well ofc.

They Can be transplanted in veg fine without stunting as long as it's done right, fabric pots make this easy . but transplanting autos is really unessesary.

Learning to use light cycles to your advantage with autos is the real trick with them. Don't treat them like a photosensitive plant.Dark cycles need to be used carefully and only to your advantage.

I had a great experience with white widow autos from Attitude. If the seeds werent so expensive I would only grow autos. From my experience they dont respond well to LST training. Since they are on a timer the energy investment they put into recovery from LSTing depletes from their flowering bulk.

ChemPro said:

I had a great experience with white widow autos from Attitude. If the seeds werent so expensive I would only grow autos. From my experience they dont respond well to LST training. Since they are on a timer the energy investment they put into recovery from LSTing depletes from their flowering bulk.

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Thanks much appreciated.

Resinhound said:

Learning to use light cycles to your advantage with autos is the real trick with them. Don't treat them like a photosensitive plant.Dark cycles need to be used carefully and only to your advantage.

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I don't mean to hijack - but can you elaborate. Is there a way to utilize dark periods that'll benefit plant health/yield? I remember reading about "stretching" with a dark period but I didn't see why you'd do that - now I don't think that's what you're talking about. But if a dark period, would help my girl's health & save some money, I'll try it today!

i think technically autos will flower with no dark at all, but that has to stress a plant. i like giving them 4 hours of dark every other day so they can respire and repair roots and all that good stuff

They will. Mine show pistols between 3-4 weeks from coming up. A green crack seed showed at her first pistol in 18 days! Got another that's just coming up & really like to slow her down. Just looking for some ideas!