Do not to skimp on seed. Spend on genetics and feminization. You get what you pay for, and in this instance, what you want to pay for is information and a lot of previous effort getting rid of susceptibility to diseases, perfecting taste and cannabinoid content, and the like.
Back in the 60s, no one imagined there would be Cannabis seed available in commercial seed packets.
Genetics
Autoflowering Cannabis seeds come from crosses made between diminutive Cannabis ruderalis plants and one or both of the larger Cannabis cousins. Some of the earliest successful crosses occurred in the 1970s, but not much came of these efforts. It was just too hard a to get consistency from generation to generation.
The first commercial strain of Autoflowering was (and still is) called Lowryder. A small plant, only 12 to 18 inches tall, it was the perfect size for a prohibition plant because it was great for growing in hidden-away spots, say a closet or a basement crawl space used to hide a grow.
The success of the Lowryder breeding is credited to the discovery of some Autoflowering males that became great genetic stock. New Autoflowering Cannabis varieties followed, and while there are lots of existing ones from which to choose, new ones are constantly being developed. Things are constantly improving.
What to look for when you buy Autoflowering Cannabis seeds? The first thing is a description of the plant. How tall will it grow? What are its habit like? This will help you to determine pot size and growing location. It will also help determine if the plant needs to be pinched or not.
The most important information, however, is the number of days it takes for the seed to go from germination to harvest. Your experience will probably be slightly different from the breeder’s, but you should get a very good approximation of what to expect. It had better be a very good seed if you buy it without this number.
Knowing parentage can help, too. Just be aware that more and more crosses come into the market every year. Some of these have wholly new (and often ridiculous) names. Others reveal their genetic lineage with familiar stock used in their naming.
A Lowryder plant, the Autoflowering variety that started it all. ERIK FENDERSON, WIKICOMMONS.
Feminized seeds
Starting out, use feminized seeds. After all, the point of growing any Cannabis (unless you want to make paper or cloth) is to produce sinsemilla, females with unpollinated flowers. These produce the wanted cannabinoids and terpenoids, as you now know. Why waste time on growing males?
Autoflowering Cannabis breeders
In order to get feminized seeds, buy from well-known, reliable breeders. There are a few who have been improving Autoflowering Cannabis genetics for years and who sell only female seeds.
There are more breeders to be sure. (I list several in the appendix.) They are producing plants that have higher THC and CBD content, resist mildews and other fungal diseases, and carry other specialized and desired traits. Use the Internet to check reputations and offerings and look for new ones in your area.
Seed handling
One big difference between Autoflowering Cannabis seeds and those of tomatoes is that Cannabis seed can be pricey, especially if you are buying those that will develop new, unique varieties or those that produce exceptional crops, either in terms of chemistry or yield.
Since they cost so much, you will want to handle seeds properly. As with any seeds, the main concern is proper storage. Ideally you should keep your Autoflowering Cannabis seeds between 4.5 and 7.2°C (40 and 45°F). And, you should store them where there is low humidity. You can use a refrigerator, but make sure you keep the seeds in a tightly sealed container.
GROWING MEDIA
After genetics comes soil. It is really best to simply buy new soil for your first few grows. Use it and then toss it onto the compost pile after you harvest your plants. Later, once you become familiar with the needs of these plants grown under your particular conditions, you can make or mix your own designer soils.
A bit of caution must be exercised. One of the great attributes of Autoflowering Cannabis is that plants don’t need much by way of supplemental feeding. This really makes things easy, but you must be careful. Tomato growers know that if you give a fast-growing plant too much nitrogen, for example, it won’t flower properly, if at all. It just produces lots of big leaves. The ability to grow without much fuss is one of the joys of tomatoes and Autoflowering Cannabis.
Soil
Only use a well-draining organic soil with a pH between 6 and 6.5. Again, to accomplish this for your first grows, it is best to just buy specially designed organic soil for growing Cannabis from a grow store or nursery. Once you work with it and grow a few plants, you will get a feel for what you might use (or not) to make your own soils for future grows.
For your first grows, buy soil from a grow store. JUDITH HOERSTING.
An organic soil that is good for tomatoes will be great for growing Autoflowering Cannabis, provided it doesn’t have too much fertilizer added as this makes them grow too fast and they become spindly. There are any number of commercial soils you can buy.
Do not use heavy wet bags of compost or soil. You want a light and fluffy soil mix. Ask grow stores what they recommend based on customer comments and experience. Just make sure to tell them you want an organic soil.
It is easy to make your own super soil mix for growing Autoflowering Cannabis. Do it right and you won’t have to fertilize your plants.
pH
Whatever you use, your mix should have a pH between 6 and 6.5 as this is the pH at which the soil food web operates best in feeding Cannabis. Home gardeners should be familiar with the chart that shows which nutrients are tied up at various soil pH levels. This chemistry really applies when it comes to Autoflowering Cannabis, as they grow so fast, you need things to be right all the time.
My soil mix starts with compost and vermicompost because they are teeming with soil food web life. The only microbial addition is mycorrhizal fungi (Rhizophagus intraradices) because compost does not support mycorrhizae.
To finish the base, add an equal amount of coir to increase organic matter and drainage. The latter is enhanced further by adding in an equal amount of perlite.
Now add nutrients. Humic acids and kelp, ¼ cup per 5 gallons of soil for fungal growth, bat guano (up to 1 cup) for bacterial food. Based on testing of nutrients and pH, add blood meal for nitrogen, rock phosphate for phosphorous, wood ash for potassium, and Epsom salt for magnesium. Crushed crab shell is great for calcium and magnesium. Dolomite lime will help balance pH and supply magnesium.
In fact, professional growers are so concerned about pH that if soil is out of range, they usually don’t even try and amend it back to where they want it. They replace it instead. This is the case when growing Autoflowers. Have your soil tested or test it yourself with a pH meter or test strips before you begin. Test your water as well.
Dolomite lime, with a pH of 7, is the key to raising the pH in your soil before you plant. It doesn’t really work fast enough once a plant is growing. Instead consider baking soda, calcium carbonate, hydrated lime, or potassium sulfate. Or, use an organic hydroponics solution designed to raise the pH.
If you need to lower the pH of your soil mix, add sulphur—again, well before you plant. It is perhaps easier to buy an organic solution designed to keep hydroponic systems in the right range. You could employ nitric and hydrochloric acid, but these are a bit dicey to handle. Instead, plain old lemon juice in water may be your best bet, and is the easiest to obtain.
Information is power
It always makes sense for any gardener to gather base data. This will make it possible to make corrections and adjustments if needed. Even though most gardeners don’t, you should have your soil tested or do it yourself, both for nutrients and minerals as well as for its microbiology, i.e., its fungi and bacteria. (You should do the same thing for your tomato soil as well—but you probably don’t!) Why not start this hobby out right by testing?
It is possible that, after
you grow a crop or two, you will discover a need to add something to your soil. There are any number of places to turn to for information that matches your soil’s deficiency with the proper supplement. (See, e.g., Teaming with Nutrients: The Organic Grower’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition, Timber Press, 2013.)
Coco coir and perlite
There is a trend to grow commercial Cannabis using a mix that includes coconut coir and perlite. Coir is the outer husk of the coconut, and perlite is blown-up volcanic rock.
If it is good enough for commercial growing, it surely will work at home. Coir has a lot of the properties that have made peat moss popular, but coir is more sustainable. It also has higher microbiology. It holds tremendous amounts of water, so growing in it can be sort of like growing hydroponically. Because it holds so much water, aerating it is important.
This is where the perlite comes in. It is light, airy, and porous, which makes it a perfect complement to the coir. And, it will hold nutrients. These need to be added if this mix is all you use as your growing media, since while good coir has microbiology in it, it isn’t soil and it doesn’t have all the necessary nutrients.
Good soil for Autoflowering Cannabis should be light and fluffy. Addition of coir and perlite help. M. TULLOTTES, WIKICOMMONS.
Mixing soil with perlite and coir is, to many growers, the ideal. It does make a great growing mix, even if you might end up needing to also mix in nutrients. This depends on the soil you use, so evaluate the need after your first grow.
Biochar
One thing that helps ensure sufficient nutrients in a soil mix is fully charged biochar because biochar is the perfect soil condominium for soil food web members. It consists of mostly carbon and has plenty of places to get away from the bigger predators.
Biochar has to be charged before using because the manufacturing process kills off life. Charging is accomplished by mixing it with, and storing it in, compost for a couple of weeks. Then add it to your soil mix.
Rhizophagus intraradices, the mycorrhizal fungus that forms a beneficial symbiotic relationship with Autoflowering Cannabis, is now available commercially. Note that a variety of older names are still in use because people once thought they were different fungi. The root here is the familiar tomato. JUDITH HOERSTING AND SAMSON90 (CC0), FROM WIKICOMMONS.
MYCORRHIZAL FUNGI
There is really only one species of mycorrhizal fungus that forms mycorrhizae with Autoflowering Cannabis. As of this writing it is known as Rhizophagus Intraradices, but you may still find labels using Glomus mossae, Glomus rhizophagus, and Rhizophagus irregularis. This is the same mycorrhizal fungus that infects tomatoes, by the way, and can be used on those plants as well.
There are more and more brands of the appropriate mycorrhizal mix. You can find these in most nurseries and at all grow stores. The important thing is to check the expiration date to get the freshest.
GROWING CONTAINERS
Most gardeners find growing Autoflowering Cannabis is easiest when done in containers. They don’t have to be fancy, just have drainage and be of adequate size for the life of the plant. This is because it can take a week for any plant to fully recover from transplanting. That is a long time for fast-growing Autoflowers.
The ideal size is between 10 to 20 liters (3 to 5 US gallons). Those ubiquitous hardware store buckets, with drainage holes added, are perfect. Woven cloth containers with handles are convenient, too. The exceptions to the 10 to 20 liters rule are the really diminutive varieties, which should be planted in 4 to 8 liter (1 or 2 US gallon) pots.
If you do plan on transplanting for some reason, then it is absolutely imperative you do so with the least amount of disturbance to the roots. The plant needs to reestablish its connection to the soil so it can mine for nutrients.
Remember (how could you forget!), Autoflowering Cannabis plants grow so fast that disturbing them really messes them up.
I repeat, for your first few grows, it is a much better idea to simply plant where your Autoflowering Cannabis will finish up life. Later, you can transplant to your heart’s content, but in the beginning, make it a no fuss, no muss, and no disturbance grow.
The one caveat to the no-transplant rule is that you have to be careful not to overwater a large container before it is filled with roots. Too much water can drown a plant by making the soil anaerobic. Ensure very adequate drainage, which you should have anyway.
LIGHTS (AND MAYBE REFLECTORS)
Just because Autoflowing Cannabis doesn’t respond to a photoperiod, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t grow it under the very best lighting conditions possible. Genetics, soil, and (finally) the third leg on the stool is proper light. Sure, you can grow at a windowsill, without extra light, but under lights your Autoflowering Cannabis plants will thrive. Use the best lights you can afford.
Depending on where you live, it may be easiest to grow outdoors at least for your first crop. Sunlight provides all the light your plants will need, and it is free, so it is perfect to see if you really want to get into this hobby.
Indoors, however, you really should provide your plants with the best supplemental light you can. Frankly, in large part thanks to growing larger Cannabis, there have been many advances in plant grow lights, and better and better systems are always being developed.
This is not a book on lighting. You already grow plants and understand the principles. I strongly suggest a trip to a grow store or even a lighting store. The options offered there will include all manner of fluorescent lights, LEDs, metal halides, plasma lights, and more. There will be the latest and greatest, sure, but also the cheapest and most efficient.
Seek sales advice and match up a system with what you can afford and need. Just realize that if you can grow tomatoes under a particular set of lights you already own, then you can grow Autoflowering Cannabis under them as well. Use these until you decide if you want to make an investment in something else.
I will keep it very simple. First, Autoflowering Cannabis plants go through two basic growing phases: vegetative and flowering. Blue light waves during the vegetative stage help keep plants short, with less distance between nodes. As a result, Autoflowering Cannabis plants grown with lots of blue light waves in the spectrum usually produce better.
Fluorescent lights like T5s contain lots of blue wavelength and can be placed close to plants. Metal halide lights are heavy in blue wavelength light, but they also produce lots of heat, so be very careful. They are also much more expensive. Wait until you see if you want to continue to grow Autoflowering Cannabis. (You will.)
Flowering requires red wavelength light. You can find bulbs for this too, but really, switching lights? That’s too much work. In general, a full-spectrum bulb will work great for your beginning needs.
Incandescent bulbs—Incandescent light does not have the proper bandwidth for growing Cannabis. There is too much far red and infrared light, and growth concentrates in stems. The results are spindly and weak plants that don’t really produce.
There are special incandescent bulbs that have had their spectrums tweaked to grow plants. However, these have to be kept close to the plants to provide enough light, and unfortunately, they are very hot and can easily burn the plants.
To be clear, I do not recommend that you use incandescent bulbs. They are not efficient. They are not effective.
Fluorescent tubes—Back in the day, you could tell someone was growing because fluorescent grow lights gave off a distinctive purple hue. It was the only fluorescent tube you could use for indoor grows until someone figured out you could take a 2-bulb shop fixture and outfit it with one blue and one red wave-emitting tube.
Today there are all manner of fluorescent lights under which you can grow Autoflowering Cannabis. Look for the old-fashioned tubes or the newer, thinner T5 bulbs. (T stands for tube and 5 for 5/8 of an inch diameter. The older styles were T8s and T12s, which were 1 and 1 ½ inches in diameter.)
Fluorescents are cheap, and they are easy to set up in a small space. There i
s little heat emitted so they won’t burn plants. This is good because they need to be close to plants to be effective. Remember to make it easy on yourself and have an adjustable system that adapts as plants grow. With small Autoflowers, that does not take much.
A good combination for lighting, and probably the least expensive, is a cool white tube mixed with a regular warm tube. A cool white tube with a grow tube combination works well, too. There are lots of different spectrums offered in fluorescents. This is why I suggest you get help from a professional at a grow or a lighting store.
For starters, give fluorescents a go and see if you enjoy these plants. At the very least, fluorescents are great lights for starting seeds as they won’t burn them.
CFLS—Do consider Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs, CFLs. These fluorescents will screw into a regular incandescent bulb socket. They are very inexpensive and easy to find.
T5S—If you want a better light, but still want something that will enable you to grow in a small space, consider T5 fluorescents. These are finger-thick tubes that can be used horizontally over plants, as you would expect, but vertically as well. They are super-efficient and just right for growing Autoflowers.
LEDS—Arrays of light-emitting diodes, LEDs, are all the rage for growing these days. They are extremely efficient. For example, an LED bulb rated as 60W equivalent will actually use only about 12W. They generate very little heat. They are easy to handle, being very lightweight. They also last practically forever.
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