New Grower behaviour of the AF timer

[waveguide]

everyone knows autos have an internal timer and photos respond to environmental conditions. there's a lot of information on maintaining the flowering phase in photos. what i don't see a lot of discussion on is the nature of the timer in autos.

what i have learned from my first two auto grows is that they take longer than advertised lol, strains were closer to three months than two. does a sativa auto take longer than an indica auto? does breeding in indica shorten the auto lifespan as well as flower period?

it's going to take observing a lot of plants for me to start to form my own general ideas about what this timer is.. is it a straight deadline with degrees of variance between strains, phenos and individuals.. do certain factors modulate the timer.. can you get an extra week by changing something.

i find i am often fretting about optimising before "the timer runs out". if you screw up a photo in veg, you can grow through and move flowering back a bit, but with autos i get that ~razor blade corridor effect.

perhaps the lack of anything more specific indicates that the one generalisation that "autos will expire based on temporal progress" is the only thing pertinent and the thought should be left as such. ??

 

[namvet25]

:booya:I don't worry about all that little stuff .As long as my girls give me some good weed,and they have I just light up and wonder how many stars are in the universe and hope I live one more day to enjoy my harvest.

 

[mattinuk3]

http://www.quora.com/What-biological-signals-tell-flowers-to-open-and-close

 

[waveguide]

:booya:I don't worry about all that little stuff .As long as my girls give me some good weed,and they have I just light up and wonder how many stars are in the universe and hope I live one more day to enjoy my harvest.

atm no harvest, so i'm perched over my plants shivering and drooling.

i am wondering if there are generalisations, eg. auto lifespan = photo flowering period plus 4 weeks, or a correlation between that and anything.

you can tell when i'm high because i'm not online

 

[demsone]

Yeah i would like to know as i am confused. My first two autos i grew harvest was in the 60-65 day frame. The last two i grew it was 55 days and they started flowering by day 16.

Currently my auto ak48 is still at the early stages of flowering and unlike the other 4 which showed bud swelling within the first two weeks. Not with the ak48.

Its frustrating because the breeders state that they are 60 days from seed. IF they told the truth and said 90 days my patience would adjust to that time frame. As it is i keep checking them every couple of hours which is making the process longer and bloody frustrating!

 

[bgrt]

Yeah i would like to know as i am confused. My first two autos i grew harvest was in the 60-65 day frame. The last two i grew it was 55 days and they started flowering by day 16.

Currently my auto ak48 is still at the early stages of flowering and unlike the other 4 which showed bud swelling within the first two weeks. Not with the ak48.

Its frustrating because the breeders state that they are 60 days from seed. IF they told the truth and said 90 days my patience would adjust to that time frame. As it is i keep checking them every couple of hours which is making the process longer and bloody frustrating!

im not sure on the science of autos flowering but in any unstable auto strain there are different phenotypes, basically every seed wont be the exact same, some will have more qualities of one of the parents used in breeding so one might be more like the mother/father plant etc. some of these will take longer if they more resemble a longer flowering parent etc.
i agree the breeder dates are not accurate most of the time but they are basically a perfect grow imo, without any problems or variation and probably the best possible time they could grow in. theyre there just for an estimate basically, as an easy way to plan add a week onto it for a more realistic date.

best and most trustworthy way to tell is to look for other peoples grows of that strain, especially in similar circumstances and judge off that, find a few and figure out the average time it took.

also if stunted early enough sometimes autos seem to be delayed and not follow the timed lifecycle. they just get put on pause then continue, still stunted maybe but if they were stunted for 3 weeks it would not be a smaller but similarly developed plant compared to one that didnt get stunted. it could be behind in developement.

i would say there is a certain point where they hit flower and from then on it matters. probably when showing preflowers

 

[Muddy]

My understanding is that flowering is triggered by a buildup of a certain hormone in the plant. It's not something we growers can control.

Autos can be finished in 60 days if you switch them to flowering nutes as soon as they show pre flowers. However if this is done you will lose out on a lot of vertical growth and your yields will suffer. It's best to wait till vertical growth slows and stops, usually around week 6, to switch nutrients. Then another 5-6 weeks flowering, so 11-12 weeks to maximize most dwarf strains. Super autos, being mostly sativa, do take longer, some up to 16 or 18 weeks. They can veg longer, up to 8 weeks, so get bigger and usually produce more.

More information on the auto life cycle here: https://www.autoflower.org/f44/life-cycle-auto-flowering-cannabis-5113.html

 

[waveguide]

also if stunted early enough sometimes autos seem to be delayed and not follow the timed lifecycle. they just get put on pause then continue, still stunted maybe but if they were stunted for 3 weeks it would not be a smaller but similarly developed plant compared to one that didnt get stunted. it could be behind in developement.

i would say there is a certain point where they hit flower and from then on it matters. probably when showing preflowers

that's something i wouldn't have determined without having gone through a significant number of plants. and sounds like my last grow. interesting.

i've noticed longer grows on the sativa auto grow reports, so there's a correlation there and to the veg time. never had much success trying to flower landrace sats with too short a veg time.