I understand that feminized is better than auto-flower in many ways, but then when you have AUTO-FLOWERING feminized, what is the difference, what are the pros and cons between regular feminized and auto-flowering feminized?
Thanks,
Mike
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Auto flowers do just that. They automatically flower on their own. Feminized regular seeds won’t flower until flip to 12/12.
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Welcome to the forum @JeeGrow
All seeds sold by ILGM are feminized. The only difference is in auto or photo. As @Indicanna_Jones said, auto’s will flower based only on time from sprout and photos are based on light/dark schedule.
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Autoflowering cannabis is a hybrid of Indica or Sativa with cannabis ruderalis. The ruderalis gene gives it the ability to flower based on maturity rather than light conditions.
Feminized seeds are seeds that have been genetically manipulated so it does not carry the male chromosome. Don’t ask me - How they do that
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Thank you all for replying so quickly!
However, I still don’t understand what I has asked earlier. Let me try posing it differently and hopefully it will be easier to understand.
I understand both what feminized and autoflowering mean.
However there are certain strains where both kinds are available. For example purple granddaddy.
It comes as feminized seeds or autoflowering seeds.
What I don’t understand is why would someone pick one over the other.
I’m new at this and it seems that autoflowering is easier, but both produce the same kind of plant. So why would some choose NON-autoflowering? It just seems like it is more work.
Is it somehow better to be able to control the stages of the plant if photos?
Does size of the plant, yield, or quality of the product change with photos?
Sorry for being so dense, maybe I should have asked locally the any times I have visited AMS. But it’s always easier to just smoke it rather than get into how it got to be. LOL
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auto flowers sacrifice yield, in general. photoperiod plants, in general, are able to reduce more bud.
As one of the auto growers here on ilgm that answer these sort of questions all the time ide like to dispell some myths stated above.
Autos can take full feed nutrients just fine if your growing environment and genetics are on par with nutrient needs it’s all about learning to zone in all aspects.
Autos also do not sacrifice yeild, a growers mistakes sacrifice yeild in any grow.
Here was my amnesia haze I grew last grow with two Bruce banners behind it.
Here are my last Bruce banners
Here is a ak 47 I grew 9oz and some change.
Here is a sweet n sour I grew
You want colors?
Here is a purple kush I shoved in the corner and it lacked lighting but still did alright, I upgraded my tent so more space then light right now unfortunately.
How about a blackberry kush
Autos are a bit of a learning curve but if you want to learn to grow good buds grow autos, anyone can grow a photo. An auto gives you much better feedback as to how perfect your environment is.
I find photos a hassle now, light switching, worrying about light leaks, I can’t open my tent Durring darkness hours, they eat /drink more and I find they are less efficient.
When you grow autos you produce more bud per year because your plants grow faster and flower faster so your turn around is better.
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Yep, that’s some killer autos, I had a blueberry auto same shape and size as the Bruce Banner. The autos pretty easy to get two harvest outside in the summertime. Welcome to the community @JeeGrow
You’ll find that just about everyone propping up autos is growing them in hydroponics or using equipment/methods that will provide rapid veg growth. If they grew photo plants using same methods their plants would be just as big if not bigger, and produce just as much if not more. Needing more or less of anything is going to vary from plant to plant and grow to grow. Some strains are notoriously light or heavy feeders, but that could be photo or auto. There is nothing wrong with growing autos, there is also nothing wrong with growing photos.
You want to know why one would be better than the other is pretty simple to me. If you don’t have a light tight space, autos make sense. If you are trying to grow outdoors with short growing season would also be a good idea to try autos. If neither of those apply, I would recommend new growers go with photoperiod plants. There is countless number of posts here where a new grower makes a simple mistake and stunts an auto, then most of its predetermined veg time is disposed recovering, and a very small plant starts to flower. If this happens with a photoperiod plant you simply just keep in veg a little longer to reach desired size.
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And if you have a space that is cold running autos is good because you can run your lights for 20hr a day and only off for 4.
This is a other reason I love them.
We learn more and faster from our failures and that’s why I like to push autos on new growers.
Another thing you can do is buy a mix pack of both and plant autos and photos.
The key is to Remeber its going to take most new growers multiple grows to get the basics down.
Read journals of people growing from start to finish it will really help you see all the ups and downs and how to treat them.
Some people keep really detailed journals, many do at the start and then we get lazy so we don’t put all the info in.
@ashhhh keeps very detailed journals great learning spot.
Also start your own journal and document everything tag us in the journal so we can help you through the grow fixing issues before they arise. Type your plan out a bit before you do it so people can chime in to tell you if your missing a step or something.
Happy growing.
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This. I recommend this so highly.
Also this. I’m doing both methods now as a brand new grower (also with a photo and an auto because killing two plants isn’t masochistic enough, I’ve gotta have 4 victims minimum). I’m not sure if it’s as simple as hydro vs soil with autos, but hopefully I’ll be able to shed some light in that respect some day. I know other more experienced growers have done it before, but somehow it’s easier to learn a fact about something if you witness it yourself.
I highly recommend picking one grow method and just sticking with that for your first grow, whether you side-by-side autos and photos or what. Just either go with soil or go with hydro but don’t do both, it’s a lot of PH and TDS/EC benchmarks to try and memorize.
Let me answer these ones directly because I wondered the same thing.
My photoperiods (2) are bigger than my autos at the point that I would switched them to flower. This is noteworthy because one of my photoperiods was started AFTER all of my autos. It was also grown in hydro. I just flipped it to 12/12 yesterday, but I am expecting it to stretch quite a bit between now and when the buds are ready. My soil photoperiod stood about 22” tall before switching her to flower - but her age is unknown so I can’t say whether she grew more or less than an auto would have in the same timeframe. My two autos ended up around 12” tall (minus one male auto I had to trash) and will maybe give me an ounce or two if I’m lucky. Granted, I had a lot of problems getting used to hydroponic growing - if they had been photoperiod plants I could have given them some time after resolving my problems to allow them to recover and veg a bit. Because they’re autos, they just flipped when they wanted to and that means they’re stunted from the stress.
I will continue to choose both, because I want autoflowers in my tent to force me to flip my photos into flower when the autos start showing me sex - otherwise I’ll let my photos veg forever and I’ll end up 1: out of weed and 2: with monster plants that I can’t contain in my tent.
Quality comes from the genetics, which IMO has nothing to do with the auto vs photo debate. It also comes from lights (Best lights = best bud) and general growing environment/technique. But it doesn’t come from whether it’s a Super Skunk autoflower from ILGM or a Super Skunk photo from ILGM. They’re very likely quite similar genetics, except the autoflower will have some ruderalis to promulgate the “auto” nature of the plant. Bet the buds from both strains side by side grown identically would be pretty dang comparable in terms of quality. (I might be wrong, but I don’t think so)
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Stick with coco, soil is a waste of time in terms of cannabis.
Highly recommended coco regardless of what beans you drop.
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I agree with most.
I think genetics is important, but worth noting difference in auto genetics. Autos are breed with ruderalis in order to give them that trait. Ruderalis is typically a low thc cultivar that could offset thc content from other parent. This doesn’t automatically mean autos will produce lower thc content, and of course thc content can mean very little to some. But the modern movement seems to have gone in direction that thc content rules all. When everyone’s definition of quality varies is kinda difficult to say there is no difference. Especially when you consider differences in potential breeding generation. If low thc cultivar is introduced it’s possible to have that as dominant gene in future offspring. Just like the potential to still be short day plants exists.
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Thanks Brother, was my traveling buddy building projects up and down the east coast.
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I hear you, my first dog was like that. She went EVERYWHERE with me. Folks would be like “you know your truck’s still running???” and i’m like yeah, my dog’s in there with the AC on, lol. She was THE BEST dog i’ve ever known though. Most loyal friend i’ve ever had in this world and as much as she HATED water, would put herself in peril if i went out for a swim, thinking i was in trouble and come to “rescue me” 
I miss that lil gal so dang much and she’s been gone since '09 but there’s not a single day that goes by that SOMEthing doesn’t trigger a memory with her 
My two now are awesome dogs too, both rescues, and the female is SO close to being Eve’s twin it’s uncanny but is SO vastly different in personality and traits (Both Staffordshire Bull Terrier though is why nearly identical twins, 9 years apart )
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Know what you mean about putting themselves in jeopardy for us. I lost her Christmas 2015 and still look over in the passenger seat for her. We Spent more nights in motels and rest stops to last a life time🤟
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You are directly contradicting the ilgm sales pitch that convinced me and probably most of the newbies you mentioned that made just one little mistake with autos. 20 GSCXtrm autos are on the way to me now. I was trying to make the first attempt as easy as possible but the overload of often contradictory advice in the forums is really starting to take the wind out of my sails. I’m going to attempt a 3 gal soil grow (FFOF with FF happy frog top/center layer) in a 2x3x5 tent. Plan to start 1or 2 at a time at most until I get the basics down with some actual hands on experience. Not expecting magic the first try but putting a lot of faith in ilgm to help with good accurate advice. Any strain specific tips that can help prevent me from killing 20 plants 1 grow at a time would be manna from heaven.
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You’re going to do just fine. Although there are varying opinions on this forum, the WEALTH of knowledge is unmatchable anywhere else online (in one spot). LOTS of people have different ideas to achieve the same end result but i’m sure you will find a journal, or a particular grower on here, who’s style mimics that which you are most looking for or feel comfortable with, and you will find your manna so to speak
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