Are Autos Easier To Grow Than Photos?

[Death The Cultivator]

Sometimes it's just a #s game. Much better chances of finding "the one" when 100 or 500 plants are involved. Unless we're working together, the chances we'll run across that 1/500 is, well... rare.

I've only done it with F1s but I wouldn't consider them penultimate choices lol. I'd like to run 100ish or so at a time but that is a task I'm not quite ready to handle but it could be made infinitely easier with tissue culture.

 

[Blu_tri]

I always found that no matter how cruddy my autos started out, the always finished up really nicely.
One difference I can see is that temp bothers the killler glue photo more than it bothers the different autos strains in the same tent.
Also, the photos doesn’t seem to have a light preference. When I move my autos from my smaller tent with the auto cobs, into my bigger tent with the sp3000, it stresses them. The photo never stop chugging.
I also think the photo like the medium some what dryer and exhibit slower root growth when over watering. The auto roots seem to thrive better with the extra water.
As far as the 1 out of 100 or the 1 out of 1,000, to find a keeper photo, I couldn’t imagine an auto strain with that poor of an acceptance percentage.

 

[yurimodin]

its still all 100x better than anything I have gotten at a dispo

 

[OregonBlackBear]

I will say I find outdoor autos easier to grow than outdoor photos. With the autos I just plant the seeds and weed out the males when time comes. No pruning, defoliating, supporting, or worrying about bad weather in the fall.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Well.. It's taken me about 7 yrs to feel comfortable with my answer.. And it's a definite NO for me, lol.. It's crazy because the reason most of us started growing autos is because we were told how quick and easy it is.. But as I reflect on the last 5 yrs, much of my early auto grows were far from easy, lol. I mainly grow photos, so comparing the two is a constant thing for me. My photo period grows are 80% hands off.. My auto grows are the opposite. Autos require much more attention and seem to be much more sensitive or finicky than photos. Truth be told, I have YET to correct an issue with an auto. I know exactly how to correct issues, but I'm not even sure it's even possible with autos, lol. They simply switch phases of life too fast.. And once it's flowering, forget about it, lol. With photos, there hasn't been an issue that I cant resolve or correct. That's mainly because I have the time to do so.. Depending on the issue, a plant in veg can take anywhere from 1-3 weeks to recover.. With an auto, you could go from veg to full flower in 2-3 weeks.. Autos don't pause or slow down, or truly recover. Another thing I couldn't do with autos?? Grow them in small pots without issues. Like one gallon or smaller.. Without fail, no matter what medium or nutrient line or grow style, issue pop up as soon as flowering starts.. Do I know why? I do now, but didn't for years. But when you first start out people will say stuff like "growing autos in big pots is a waist because the roots will never come close to filling up the pot.. So we used small pots, lol.. But looking back, every perfect auto grow that I've had, has been in larger pots.. where I have to do less and let the plant do more.
What growing autos has done for me, is make me a better grower. All the issues, led to all the questions.. Which led to years of researching and trial and error.. The issues we have growing autos, are not common to the photo period world. Many are self inflicted, but many are due to all that we DONT yet understand about autos..
But in hindsight, I definitely feel like autos are much harder.. And if your first ever grow was an auto and your still at It, hats off to you! I think that if you can, not even master, but even get a good grasp of growing autos, that you can grow damn near anything, lol.

If you have been growing both autos and photos for a while, what's your opinion? Are photos harder to grow? Or are autos as tough as it gets when it comes to growing cannabis? What are some of the difference you've noticed?

You cannot really speak for other people when you say "we were promised...", for me what I was 'promised' was simply that they didn't need a dark cycle. Other than that it was just another cannabis plant, and could certainly produce 8 zips a plant if grown in hydro.

I started growing photoperiod hydro about 25 or more years ago before the interwebs and I found it pretty simple and surprisingly straightforward, all I had to learn from experience was how best to prune the undergrowth. When I first heard about autos, I immediately could see that it was the 'no dark period' that is the game changer, and this is the reason that makes autos so much easier to grow, because photos and autos are as easy to grow as each other if you want to make it that way, it's only the dark period that gets in the way. And it gets in the way big, especially for the home grower who cannot kit out completely separate areas to grow and flower. In the end my photos were like autos anyway as I'd plant a clone grow it for two weeks till it was about 5" tall, and then flip to 12/12.

I personally find soil a bigger cause of work, rather than the auto/photo angle, even taking everything into consideration, others may disagree. However I will say this, if it's "easy" that you require, then anyone can make it very easy by setting up a super simple hydro. And the simplest is a large 16L pot filled with clay pellets, this sits directly on the lid of the reservoir there's a few holes in the lid under the pot to let the pot drain back in, when the roots start to come out of the pot after a few weeks, just cut them off, so it's just a pot sitting on a tub, no DWC, no SWC, then you just have a tiny 8W pump that comes out of the tub and top feeds.

Now you may say that you don't want to do hydro even simple hydro and that's fine, but you can't then go and blame the plant. I get it that a lot of people like to grow in soil, for real or imagined benefits, it doesn't matter, everyone should do whatever makes them happy, but these plants have basically been bred for hydro, whether on purpose or not.

TL ; DR The only meaningful difference between autos and photo is the lack of dark cycle and for the small grower, this makes life with autos significantly easier as well as more fun.

 

[The Iconoclast]

I am currently following a grow on a website that has diaries, which I can't link to so I'll post some photos, because quite frankly it has completely rewired my brain as to what might be possible. It looked normal on day 12 , but apparently it got a strange leaf or something and it ended up getting pretty mutilated by day 15, now by day 15 I'd normally be topping at the fourth node, but this one is just left as a stub. However looking at it two weeks later, I think it's fair to say that auto plants can indeed recover from mutilation even at the wrong time.

 

[armanidog]

After viewing some of the photoperiods being grown on YouTube, I am going to try growing some. I'm interested in some of the newer photos being bred these days.
I like the idea of clones, re-vegging, and the ability to do some extreme training. And from what I have seen, the time to harvest is almost the same as autos these days.

 

[Cookiemonster69]

I say autos are better than photo period. For my circumstances and busy schedule.

Because with autos you don't have to suffer with the stretch. With PP as soon as you flip to flower, the increased amount of darkness causes it to stretch more along with flowering stretch. The midbottom bud sites won't be very mature.

And with PP you can't also caress it with more light because anything over 12 hours and itl re-veg. Making lanky looking plants. I use a Spider farmer sf4000, 400 and something watts.

I like my plants stocky, dense and trichome rich. I can blast it with 22 hours light schedule and it will utilise it without going into veg. There's no such thing as lower bud sites with Autos, just mid sites and colas. My mid sites end up being colas too!
Frosty and beautifully hard.

With Autos (what I do) I use bloom nutes start to finish. Making my grow super simple. Producing beauts like this:

I only LST my autos on week 3, I'm going to experiment with topping on my next auto grow!

I know with PP you can do way more LST and recover with all the time in the world.

 

[WildBill]

Never done a photo, but so far I haven't managed to kill an auto either. Tried hard though...

Outdoors where I live, autos are the only game available, IMO. By the time 12/12 daylight arrives here, the chance of finishing a photo crop before weather gets too cold and wet are next to zero.

Indoors, different story. After my last grow lasting as many weeks as it did, photos may be on my agenda after all. In my limited experience, not all auto grows are quick enough to justify the extra effort and risk of mischief...

The jury on my next grow will be out until about November.

I think you can do quite well with a good quick bunch of auto girls with what you're planning to do............either way you choose to go in nutes and media.

 

[WildBill]

I grow both Autos and Photos. Autos are like the Ferrari of Cannabis. It is just balls to the wall! Ms MOG is constantly impressed by the speed they grow and mature. She maintains most of the plants and flowers in the landscape of our home. You put the wrong fuel in the tank and the Ferrari will spitter and sputter across the finish line. Same with Autos. If your nutrients are not maintained just right they will show it when it is really too late to do anything about it even in hydro. In that regard autos requires a more intense input from the Farmer. My Autos always look small to me after growing Photos and I always get tired of waiting for Photos to finish.

If my back would let me I think an EarthBox is the way to go for TLS. and I think if you do the soil preparation properly (80% of the work part) this would make the best approach to Autos.

For physical reasons I am married to Hydro. I just need to perfect the nutrients input. So All in All level of difficulty is a little higher in Autos for me.

!
And EarthBox brings its own little requirements and idiosyncrasies