I just harvested several outdoor plants that were about a foot away from your average type white Christmas lights plugged in outdoors on a deck.
The harvest created mostly airy and non-dense buds with Strawberry Cough, Super Silver Haze, Green Crack autoflowers, and Red Headed Stranger, all Sativas, (except for the top few inches of the colas) on all of the plants except for my short autoflowering Green Crack Sativas.
If it was a light issue, the autoflowers would have been fine anyway, and since all of the plants had the same substrate, 5 gallon fabric pots and nutrients, maybe it was the interrupted light cycle?
I’ve read that a full moon is 1 lumen which barely does not affect the light cycle of flowering, but how far away would a string of lights need to be away to not affect the cycle and would that create a density issue with the final flowers?
I don’t want to repeat this problem next summer.
Genetics play a huge role always, even I have had thin buds like recently my amnesia haze was not as sence as most.
However the best genetics won’t help if the environment isn’t dialed in.
Silica if growing in soil less medium is also key and of course light intensity.
Also @Not2SureYet and @Capt.Cola and @Arrow amongst others have all grown countless autos with great success and solid bugs.
You want a solid nug strain? Monster genetics Bruce banner auto.
Rock hard big nugs, if anyone’s growing that strain and not getting good results it’s not the genetic.
Thanks for the tag Nicky. I have had a couple come out not as dense as others but for the most part they are all dense. Genetics, environment, nutrition all play a roll. I grew a couple Bruce banners not monster genetics but had rock hard buds. Sour diesel, gelato, gsc, gdp all great dense buds.
Some are and some are super solid. My Bubble gum are a 50/50 sativa, indica and come out pretty light.
And I thought it was B day cake lol I didn’t click to see. Congrats on sticking with use here for a year
I had very similar results with my bubble gum. It was a big plant but the buds were not super dense. Not light and airy but not dense like a bb or my blue dream.
I am very sorry if this comment was directed to me. I will be more careful in the future responding to tags. I was able to delete two of my posts but have to wait to remove the other one.