Maximizing Yields in Autos

Lst early is best for autos. I grow a lot of autos. I use only lst on them. My larry lemon auto is a day by day of lst after training each day. Any other training takes too much from plant and stresses it. I have not had a hermi in almost 2 years growing autos. Only time I did was when I used colloidal silver to make it hermi. So I would go with lst on all autos. They will all take it, just some handle it better then others. Feel free to check out my diaries, and select my answer if you need more assistance it's ok to direct message me. Happy growing and good luck 🤤🤤🤤

I too am growing an auto strain, and it seems like technique in autos is very strain dependent. @ORGANOMAN is 100% correct, in that it all comes down to knowing your autos veg duration. My Critical Purp only has 3 solid weeks of Veg from what I see (some outliers at 5), so no main-lining or HST for me sadly (it'll have to wait for my Obama Kush). I would stick with LST if the veg period is under 4 weeks, as the plant may not recover before flower (meaning lower yields). That said, I don't think autos are useless, as I've read they take well to bonsai style treatments; so if some portion of your growing is toward wanting an aesthetically pleasing plant, autos aren't completely useless, lol.

Stick with LST, autos can really suffer in the yield department if topped and/or chopped/HST. This is due to the recovery time eating into the veg grow cycle, which can be as short as three weeks with some strains, by which time flower formation is initiated. So, if you only have a 3 week veg cycle, any technique that causes any type of setback, such as topping, whereby the recovery time is 7-10 days, this leaves very little time for veg growth. If this is your first time growing autos, stick with the basics and learn what is required to grow them properly, before setting yourself and your plants any challenges. 18/6 is best, from seed to harvest. Whatever you do, do not try growing 24/0, your plants will hate you for torturing them with a totally unnatural sleep deprivation cycle of exhaustion! Hopefully you will realise soon enough that real cannabis aficianados grow photoperiod plants and leave the autos to people who like "pretend" cannabis plants. Autos also require a ship load more electricity to grow and unless you have mega lights and have A Grade growing experience, don't expect any astounding yields. As you can tell, I am not a fan, having experimented with 30 odd plants over the last few years and with 35+ years of growing experience to back up my growing methods, I found many had totally unreliable genetics with many mutants and generally poor yields. In the same time frame I would expect to harvest 5-50 times as much from photoperiod plants compared to what those autos yielded and have sworn off growing them ever again. Potency was also generally lacking, with only about 1 in 5 being anything exciting. They may have come a long way recently, but I just don't see the point in growing something that is going to flower, no matter what, when it is only inches tall. Have I put you off yet? I hope so! Stick with photoperiod plants - much more stable genetics, better potency and yields to impress you and all while being less fussy to grow too. Look at the questions page on this forum, there are 99 questions about weird autos to 1 question about photoperiod plants. Does this not tell you something? It is hard to escape all the advertising hype surrounding autos at the moment, the seem to be the latest craze, but don't think you are missing out on anything special, it is hopefully a passing fad and will go the way of yo-yos soon enough. There is no need to venture over to the "dark side", photos will always be better! Long live photoperiod plants!! Sorry for the rant, just trying to warn you that autos are not special in any way and you are not missing out on anything by growing photoperiod plants. All autos are derived from photoperiod plants anyhow, so you can always find the same genetics, but they are more stable and with better potency because they don't suffer from the genetic hiccup that introducing auto genes bring. I wish you luck on your new adventure, but yeah, LST is the way to go and definitely no topping for autos. Hope this helps in some way,......... Organoman. (and sworn enemy of autos!)

Hi Yukon_Pico, it depends on the autoflowering strains that you are growing. If it has a relatively long vegetative period (such as 4-5 weeks) you can try the HST methods like main lining or classic topping. Some strains respond nicely to the light-to-medium stress training, and a few actually yield much better with a properly grown manifold. If you have powerful lights and the perfect growing environment that you are sure it will not bring any stress to the plant, then I say go for it. If you're not sure about these, then I would strongly suggest that you stick with LST, it will still yield more than an untrained plant. Have a nice grow :)