Autoflowering Cannabis Tips & Tricks By Narley Farmz
Narley Farmz is back with a video on their Youtube channel called PureBoys Organics, this time he discusses the early stages of autoflowering cannabis plants. The author takes a laid back approach to growing cannabis and encourages people to take his advice with a grain of salt. He likes to view differences in styles of growing as a personal choice and matter of preference, rather than one style being better than another. That said, he does have some preferences when growing autoflowering cannabis seeds! Over the course of the video he discusses what he thinks is important during the early stages of autoflowering cannabis development. In this short review, we compare these tips with our tips for cultivating autoflowering cannabis seeds.
Narley Farmz shows two very young autoflowering cannabis plants during the majority of the video. They are one week apart, the youngest being one week old and the other is on day 15 after germination. He stresses, and shows, that autoflowering varieties grow at an amazing pace! Narley Farmz offers some sage advice with the side note that everyone should grow the way they like and that nothing is wrong.
Tip #1 – Don’t Transplant Autoflowering Varieties
While it is perfectly possible to transplant autoflowering cannabis varieties, it is usually better to avoid this as much a possible. The author of the video has seen transplants go both way, with either amazing results or stunted plants. We agree that keeping your autoflowering cannabis plant in the same pot from the beginning until the end is the easiest way to avoid a lot of trouble. He recommends growing in soil because it’s practical, but does add around 30% perlite and/or coco to the mix to tweak the medium’s water retention. As for pot sizes he prefers at least a 3 gallon pot, which works out to about 11 litres, for normal autoflowering strains. Super autoflowering strains have higher yields and grow larger, so he recommends using a 6-7 gallon (=23-27 liter) for this type of strain. Our current catalogue of autoflowering cannabis seeds consists of normal autoflowering varieties, which do very well in the pot sizes he recommends.
This White Widow Automatic run is ready to be left alone! By using a large pot from the start, these girls will barely require attention until they start flowering.
Tip #2 – You Can Feed Early, But At Really Low Doses
A piece of advice that we come across quite often, and even give ourselves is that autoflowering cannabis strains in soil can go without nutrients perfectly fine for the first 3+ weeks. Narley Farmz dispells this as baloney, he says you can start feeding shortly after the two-week mark. He recommends using a root stimulator as early as the 7 day mark, but not to start feeding until about day 17. He does however insist that you keep the dosage very low and use 1/4th or 1/3rd of the recommended concentration, tops! This will help prevent any deficiencies that tend to occur around day 25, which is when substrates like light mix usually start to run out of nutrients. The main reason we don’t recommend feeding in the first three weeks is because autoflowering strains are very susceptible to overfeeding, especially in early stages. Adding a root stimulator and a diluted nutrient solution can help and is possible from early stages, but it is also very easy to overdo it!
Adding too much nutrients early on can cripple a cannabis plant, especially an autoflowering variety.
Tip #3 – Keep Autos Close To The Light
The third tip is to keep the distance between your autoflowering cannabis plant and the grow light to a mimimum. This will prevent stretching and encourage plants to get used to higher light intensities early on. He recommends not using HID lights or equally powerful LED lights before at least the third week. Cannabis plants are easily able to handle the light intensity produced by CFLs and most lower wattage LEDs, even at very close range. After about three weeks he recommends switching to a HID or strong LED light at a reasonable distance and gradually moving it closer.
One of the perks of autoflowering cannabis strains is that they remain short and compact. Keep your lights close to make sure you don’t lose this feature!
Tip #4 – Have Fun And Don’t Overthink Growing Cannabis
Narley Farmz’ final tip in this video is to keep growing cannabis fun! You can definitely have your doubts about every part of a grow, but it’ll serve you better in the long run if you go ahead and try everything. The first grow will never be optimal, so it’s better to accept that as a fact and learn from every new cycle! We definitely agree with this tip and wish everyone the best of luck growing their own autoflowering cannabis seeds!
