Auto flowering schedules

donpaul.p;1954536 said:

@jaga, no its good my friend, use what ever schedule you want to use, autos will grow and flower under any schedule,
my findings with all autos ive grown and now my own auto strains leads me to think the following is going on.

let say the breeder says its 56 days auto, so if you want to hit the 56 day timing then use 24-0 from seed to harvest, but from my own experience yields will be small, i was always told 24-0 is the best for autos as it gives them the most light, so i was fed up of getting between 3.5g and 14g max per auto from any strain i tried,

but the same autos grown under other schedules produced much bigger yields, so i grew the same strains under 18-6 and my yields shot up from 14g max to over 1oz and upwards under 18-6, the same happened for 17-6, 16-8 etc etc, then i tried the same autos under 12-12 from seed to harvest and again i was hitting easily 1oz per auto dry and 2oz was the average i was getting,

so my findings suggest autos dont flower according to age in days, if they did then they would never flower under 24-0 as they would not know what 1 day is, yet they still mature and flower as normal.
but when you give them a proper day with a dark period then this changes how the grow, for example lets say auto strain A grown under 24-0 from seed to harvets took 60 days and yield was 10gdry per auto,
the same strain under 18-6 took 75 days to reach harvest and yields was around 1oz,
the same strain under 12-12 took 90 days to reach harvest and yields was around 2oz per plant dry.

im not saying 12-12 is the best schedule to use but its much better than 24-0, no matter how many times i grow under 24-0 i always get poor results, but then when i grow them same strains including my own under 18-6, 17-6, 16-8 produced easily twice as much bud at harvest,

so if your doing a sog style grow and growing 100 autos then 24-0 would be the best to use as it is harvested at 56 days from sprouting but the yields are small, so 100autos x 10g dry =1000g of dry bud every 56 to 60 days, if you check the breeders info they do state yields based on sog style grow, so breeders produced these autos to finish very fast so you can then have more harvest per year, well thats ok if your growing 100autos per grow but most of us are not growing lots of autos so we end up with small yields.

but give autos a dark period each day and it will improve things,
another couple of examples, i had some auto strains show sex at week 2 from seed and start flowering at week 3 onwards under 24-0, now these same strains grown under 18-6 didnt show sex until week 4 and didnt start flowering till week 6, so it takes longer to grow but if it gives you double the yield or even tripple then its worth waitig the extra few weeks

so with the autos ive grown and my own auto strain ive found its better to give them a dark period each day, im not saying `12-12 is the best for autos but for the autos ive grown 12-12 seems to perform much better but you can nearly double the grow time as the auto is getting 12 hours less of light per day,

now we all know these plants continue to grow and stretch in the dark, so lets say autos flower and reach harvest due to how many lights hours they receiver, so lets say auto A needs 1000 light hours to reach harvest which works out as
1000 light hours devided by 24, this gives us a grow time of 41.6 days from seedling to harvest,
now as this plant is getting constant light then it dont benefit from the night tieme growing.

at night plants do many things but 3 important tasks are
1, repair damaged caused during the lights on period
2, it sends nutrients and energy down to the roots so this produces more roots, more roots means faster growth and more fruit
3, during the dark period the plant stretches, it does this as its trying to find the light, plants do the same thing if their in the shade so with none autos when you flip to 12-12 from flower the plant then stretches during lights out as its trying to find the light again, when the light comes back on stops stretching and continues to grow and start flowering,

so auto A grown under 24-0 from seed to harvest needs 1000 light hours to reach harvest, this takes nearly 42 days.
auto A grown under 18-6 from seed to harvest needs 1000 light hours to reach harvest but under 18-6 it takes 56days to reach harvest.

so under 18-6 it still needs 1000 hours of light to reach harvest but as its getting less ligher per day then its going to take longer to reach harvest, plus during the lights out period each day the plant continues go grow and stretch, it gives the roots an nice boost which has been proven, clones grown in identical condition but grown under different lighting schedules clearly showed that 24-0 had the lowest root mass, 20-4 had more root mass than 24-0
18-6 clearly showed it had nearly double the root mass of 24-0, so more roots means the plant can take in more and can grow much quicker.

so both plants still need 1000light hours to reach harvest but under 18-6 it takes a couple of weeks longer so this gives you this extra grow time which happens during the dark period,

now ive not grown all auto strains but all the ones i have grown do much much better when given a dark period, my results suggest that 18-6 and below produce much better results and bigger yields, so i wont grow autos under 24-0 anymore as i never got anywher near the harvest weight i get using other schedule.

so im pretty sure autos dont mature and reach harvest due to age in days, if they did then under 24-0 they would stay in veg and never flower, so we can rule the days theory, so that really only leaves us with the light hours being the key factor, im still doing more testing for i can safely say 24-0 is not the best light schedule for autos

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