"Honestly i dont believe that a little stuntedness at this point matters in quantity of yield, but it will just take a bit longer for the plant to be ready. I may be wrong about this, but it is my view that autos do not have some watch they look at for their clock for when to die."
Dude, it's an auto. There is no more "adding time". They literally do have a timer on them. It's called ruderalis
And how do you think this clock works? Is it a mechanical clock, like the plant is wearing a rolex that tells it the time for how long its been alive and how old it is accurately, or is it a biological clock that can be slowed down in some situation?
Lets assume that its a biological clock, that can be slowed down with for example cold. Why does this happen? It happens because the clock is hormonal and cold slows down the biological processes and thus slows down the hormonal activity, at what point the plant starts to produce which hormones etc.
Now if we look at the whole hormonal mechanism of flowering:
"When the plants are triggered to begin flowering they wind down auxin production and start to increase the production of not only gibberellin (responsible for the stretching at the onset of bloom) but also of cytokinin, which has the effect of promoting new shoots and flowering tips."
In this blog post, we take a look at the complex world of plant hormones, talking about the wide range of effects they have, and how they control and regulate almost every aspect of our plants' lives.
www.alchimiaweb.com
Then a bit later the plant starts to make ethylene, which will start to promote ripening of the buds.
Now forget your clocks, thats just a metaphor, that itsn even all that accurate when you start to think about it a bit further. There is a chain of hormanal processes that go on from one "step" to another as the plant grows.
When the plant is stunted, my understanding is that it will only slow down that "step" of the process.
HOWEVER if you disturb some wrong step, a step where the buds have already developed, it can fuck up the whole path. Not only is the hormones not evenly on the plant itself, but the buds have certain timeframe during which they should develop, because for one reason, the buds if stunted, will continue to mature, but not grow properly.
Now if you stunt the plants at this point, its obvious that it will lead to less/smaller buds or if you push the flowering longer buds that might be ready inside, but still try to push new pistils(and clear trichomes that should develop) = poor potency and weird cannabinoid balance/crappy high.
Now on the other hand, what if you just disturb some "step" of development that is before there are buds have developed a bit at least?
Here i think it is different, at least if you dont stunt it too much for too long.
The thing with these hormonal stages, what i called steps is that they move from one step to another after the plant has went through certain development phases inside of it.
The thing with stunting is that it slows down the particular stage of development, so the plant wont move from one stage to another if its not developed enough yet. The different parts are at different stages and the plant behaving this way proves that there are stages of developement instead of some clock.
You can test this with autoflowers to prove my point:
Take a plant that is just starting to flower. Now top it. Top it one set of leafs lower than normal. Dont put it under too much light and now wait until it starts flowering again. I have done this a multiple times for one plant. You can stop and put a delay to the whole flowering surprisingly long.
This happens because only parts of the plant are hormonally ready to start to flower at that point and when you cut those parts out, it will wait until other parts are ready, until it starts to flower again. This wont affect how long the budding phase will last, it only prolongs the veg phase.
So yea, there is no clock, just stages of hormonal activity.
To bottom in 2 layers, pushed it to sides a bit and spread some on top before watering.
