What Are Auto-Flowering Seeds?

Growing hemp or cannabis isn’t difficult if you’re planting the right choice of seeds. With the use of advancing technology and knowledge about plant genetics, auto-flowering seeds are produced.

Cannabis plants grown from auto-flowering cannabis seeds offer many benefits. If you’re having a hard time deciding what cannabis seeds to buy and plant, below is a discussion as to why auto-flowering seeds are popular nowadays to help you choose.

What Is Auto-Flowering?

Auto-flowering is an automatic switch from the vegetative phase to the flowering stage of plants. The process of auto-flowering in most plants is quick and efficient as the plants can be readily harvested for not more than ten weeks. It is also a recognized characteristic that makes cannabis plants start and complete their flowering phases due to the plant’s age without reducing their daylight hours.

Auto-Flowering Seeds

Auto-flowering seeds are cannabis seeds, and there are many types of them in an auto-flowering seeds inventory. These seeds start to flower when the cannabis plant reaches a specific development phase. Beginners in growing cannabis usually prefer auto-flowering strains because they flower automatically.

Growth of Auto-Flowering Seeds

These seeds produce plants and then flowers by themselves after 2 to 4 weeks of growth, needing less time to grow. These kinds of seeds grow and flower without the maintenance of a light schedule to support a plant’s flowering phase, making them great for indoor settings.

Furthermore, wherever the seed is growing, there would be no need to supplement it with high-level nutrients because an auto-flowering seed is independent and works on its own. Plants from auto-flower seeds also tend to grow up to 3 feet only, but there are cases that they can grow up to 4 feet tall.

Auto-Flowering Seeds vs. Feminized Seeds

The term “feminized” is commonly associated with cannabis seeds and often compared to auto-flowering seeds. How are auto-flowering seeds and feminized seeds different from each other? It’s important to know that an auto-flowering strain can be feminized, thus producing the feminized seeds. The main difference is that feminized seeds are all female and produce many buds, while auto-flowering seeds have the chance of growing into a male plant. 

For a more precise comparison between the two, here is a table where their characteristics are compared:

Growing Auto-Flowering Seeds

Auto-flowering seeds are favored by many growers because they don’t need much to grow. Below are essential parts of growing and planting with auto-flowering seeds:

1. Setting Up the Environment

Since auto-flowering seeds can grow in any type of environment, decide which you prefer between indoor and outdoor environments.  An indoor environment is suitable for cultivating seeds at any time of the year as long as the seeds have access to not less than 18 hours of light each day. If you want to cultivate in an outdoor environment, plant at the start of spring because it is when there’s plenty of natural light available.

2. Adding Nutrients

Since these seeds and plants wouldn’t need high-level nutrients, provide them with only half the typical dosage of nutrients indicated in the product’s packaging.

3. Checking the Humidity

Humidity can affect some of the growth phases of the plant so remember to check and put them in a place with appropriate humidity.

4. Sustaining Maintenance

Make sure that the plant is out of reach of intruders like molds. Also, defoliate when needed to help the plant absorb more light and to limit the chances of attack from intruders at the same time. The plant may also exceed its typical height and dimension, so make sure to provide enough space as it grows.

Potential Yield from an Autoflower Plant

Since auto-flower seeds are used to cultivate cannabis with ease, the yield of the produced plant is one of the aspects you’d possibly be expecting. Harvesting time depends on the plant’s size and classification, and so does the amount of cannabis yield.

For regular cannabis plants, potential yield can vary between 10 and 50 grams for each plant. While for the super auto, the plants can yield 100 to 200 grams each.

Pros and Cons

Auto-flowering cannabis offers many benefits, like the chances of having a high potential yield in a short period of time. For better knowledge, below are the advantages and disadvantages of growing auto-flowering seeds.

Pros

• Its cycle of growth is fast and could take only seven to weeks ten weeks before harvesting.
• They produce low-key plants that don’t grow too short or too small, enabling a faster setup and dismantling operations.
• It doesn’t demand much light. Auto-flowering seeds and plants only require 18 hours of light, allowing a 6-hour off-light schedule.
• Plants produced from this kind of seed are resilient and independent. They can fend for themselves.
• It doesn’t need a lot of high-level nutrients when growing. Their fast growth shows how much they don’t require many amounts of nutrients.
• Autoflower plants can offer a higher CBD percentage than THC and are suitable for people who value CBD more than THC.

Cons

• Since the plants grown from auto-flowering seeds are more compact, they will produce a lower and smaller yield compared to a photoperiod plant.
• Lower THC content is available since they have a higher CBD percentage.
• They can’t produce high-quality clones since their growth cycle is fast and can result in underdeveloped plants.

Takeaway

If you prefer cannabis plants that are faster and easier to grow, purchasing and planting auto-flowering seeds will be a good decision. Auto-flowering seeds offer great deals of advantages when compared to other strains of cannabis seeds. It doesn’t need and will not require much expertise and attention upon cultivation. Although there are some disadvantages, they aren’t that relevant and are overpowered by the advantages the seeds offer.