Newbie to Autoflowers .. needing some guidance please

[Newbutoldgrower]

Good tune.

One of the mistakes that I made on my GG autos grow was not culling at least one plant. I had 4 autos in a 2' x 4' and it was a jungle. One reason to have more plants than fewer is that you have some plants left if you manage to kill one of them. OTOH, having 4 plants in 8 sq ft made it hard to get to the plants in the second row and it made pruning and LST a total PITA.

The other issue to watch out for is that, if you've got a jungle in there, like I did for my GG autos, you're screwed if you get an infestation. One plant was looking a little off so I checked the leaf surfaces and saw nothing. I didn't have the knowledge (nor did I get the advice!) to check the undersides of the leaves with a magnifier. Sure enough, I got thrips and/or aphids in late flower. Due to there being so many leaves under the canopy, I couldn't apply an insecticide properly (I was using Spinosad). I sprayed the leaves as best I could, so much so that Spinosad was dropping on the top of the res, but that didn't stop the infestation because I couldn't get to the underside of the (hundreds) of leaves. It sucked. Looking at pictures of the grow, it looks like the two plants that were in the tent actually lost a few inches in height. The net net for me is to have a few plants in the grow area as are needed to fill the canopy.

You'll notice that seed vendors give yield data in gm per square meter and that's because the number of plants is not the driving factor. The big driver for yield is PPFD hitting the canopy so the issue is not how many plants are in the grow area rather than having enough canopy so that no light is hitting the floor of the grow area.

I'm starting a Gelato auto grow real soon now and I'm going to germ 3 seeds. I'll put all three in the res and toss one the weak one when things get crowded.

Great tune.

I started with 9 Auto's in a 4' x 4' as I wasn't planning on doing any LST or topping for my first grow with Auto's, and didn't think they would grow so big. Plus I thought I would have lose some due to inexperience with Auto's, lost one due to an accident in the tent. But after doing some research and advice from this site, I decided to top some. The strains I got were all I could get a hold of at the time domestically(Australia), and had to grab them without doing much research on them as good strains/genetics go within the hour here. Didn't realize the Skywalker Kush would grow 2-3 times bigger than the others, my fault completely for not researching properly. And have to agree that pruning, feeding and trying to do any LST is definitely a PITA haha.

I went through the whole thrip/aphids infestation in my first indoor Photoperiod grow in 15 years last year, on my third Photo grow now. And like you was in late flower, around 6 weeks I think it was. Learnt a lot from that grow like to check under the leaves with a magnifier, and not to leave the window in the room your tent is in when you are mowing your lawn just near the window lol. It was crazy, had yellow sticky things everywhere, did flushes in the coco, Spinosad Soap etc .. and a lot of bud washing at harvest time.

Unfortunately the local Seedbanks don't have much information on their sites about the products they are selling. And by the time you do some research and go back to buy them they are gone. You are lucky if the seeds are still there after an hour of being put up on the site, which mostly happens late at night when Im sleeping haha. Got some seeds coming from overseas, fingers crossed, and plan on starting with 8 and reducing it to 6 or less this time, big yielding strains.

Thanks for your advice/help and for taking the time to write your comment, really appreciated mate. Cheers