Wanting to purchase autos for the first time.

Stick with photoperiod pants, autos aren't all that they are made out to be. The times given by the breeders are generally very optimistic and adding 2-8 weeks on top of what they claim would be closer to the truth, and the times they give are meant to be from sprout to harvest, but in my and nearly everyone else's experience, these times are extremely fanciful. The times they give must be based on the fastest growing phenotypes, growing hydroponically, under HID lights, by expert growers and in perfect conditions it seems. This is a far cry from someone growing in a basement somewhere, using cheap soil and a blurple light. Autos don't do so well outdoors either, they really need 18/6 to perform properly. If growing indoors, photoperiod plants can be just as fast to harvest and give you a crop using a lot less electricity. Taking 14 weeks as an example - Autos = 14 weeks at 18 hours of lights on time = 1764 hours of lights on time. Photos = 6 weeks at 18 hours = 756 hours, plus 8 weeks at 12 hours = 672 hours for a total of 1428 hours of lights on time. Therefore, over a typical 14 week cycle, growing photoperiod plants will save you 336 hours of lights on time versus auto flowers. I know which electricity bill I would prefer, and whose "carbon footprint" is less! On top of this, with photoperiod plants, you can chose when to flower the plants, once they are of a reasonable size, but with autos they will just flower, whatever the size at around 3-5 weeks, which means a lot of 1-2 foot plants flowering, resulting in disappointing yields. I have been growing photoperiod plants for 35+ years and thought I too should try these modern wonder auto flowering plants , but after 30 odd plants over a couple of years, decided fairly quickly I was not missing out on anything. These days I would not even consider growing another auto apart from an experiment or curiosity, but since I gave all my auto seeds away and can not see myself ever buying any more auto seeds, I doubt this will ever happen. There is also a lot more genetic instability with autos too, it seems. I got more weird plants in those thirty odd plants that I tried, than I ever get within each ten years of growing photoperiod plants and all of the strains that I tried were from breeders of considerable experience and international market leaders, not cheap garbage seeds from a back yard start up company. Have a look through the question pages here on this forum, nearly every question is about a problem with autos. Honestly, you are not missing out on anything by staying with the easier to grow, more productive, more genetically stable and generally more potent, photoperiod plants. As you can tell, I am certainly not a fan. For me, they have absolutely no advantages over photoperiod plants. Hope this helps, Organoman.