Top Tips On Growing Automatics This Summer

Plant Many Seeds

There are some automatic strains that will grow large abundant yields of high grade buds, whilst some strains despite the final quality being top notch, they can lack a heavy harvest and make some growers feel like they should have planted more than they initially thought. When it comes to automatics, I personally like to plant 3 in one large 20 litre pot and find this way as the plants grow evenly, one plant pot can look like a normal short cannabis plant in flower.

It can be slightly demoralising after you harvest your plants and find the overall weight may not last you a month of daily smoking. The advantage to planting 3 in 1 large pot is any onlookers will only see what looks like one cannabis plant when it is really three. This point may seem irrelevant to most, however if you are working with a legal plant count or trying to work with your countries laws on growing cannabis, this little trick can turn 3 plant pots into 9 vigorous automatics, or 5 pots into 15.

Pot Size

The bigger the pot then the bigger the plant, which cannot be more true when it comes to growing out automatic plants. The automatic strains will naturally veg for 21 days before beginning to flower on their own accord, not dependant on the Meridian Cycle like phototropic plants. Selecting a great growing medium and choosing a final pot size of 20 litres is a good final pot to allow your plants to mature in. Growing in smaller pots will only ensure smaller plants with a smaller root base. Using felt pots has massive advantages over standard plastic pots, yet if you cannot afford felt pots or manage to make your own, a large pot with sufficient aeration will be just fine.

When To Water

When growing automatics outdoors, sometimes keeping on top of feeding times can be a little bit more difficult depending on how hot your temperatures get. A good rule of thumb is to weigh the plant pots and get a feel for when the grow medium is at the lightest point. Now the grow medium will be dry and air rich. Top feeding until drip through or directly bottom feeding are two simple ways to re saturate your medium once dry, whilst understanding that air to the roots is a good thing.

Growing Medium

You will want to select a medium that is well balanced in terms of all the plants needs, as well as considering aeration and water retention. A great way to ensure I personally have a happy friendly organic mix is to add perlite, coco,worm humus and powdered bat guano (8-22-4) together into a smooth fine blend. The worm humus is rich in Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium that will be slowly released over time.

The coco is an inert medium meaning it contains no nutrients and has excellent capillary action for retaining air, water and moisture. The perlite will produce air pockets as well as allow the medium to stay dry between feeds, whilst the bat guano feeds the microbial life and adds intense flavours to your flowers, while providing calcium and magnesium and many other micro elements. You should then focus on feeding primarily a carbon based mollas feed of fish emulsion and molasses, or seaweed and molasses.

Plant Height And Camouflage

Many automatic varieties will grow around one metre tall with some strong side branching. Some automatic haze strains can surpass that and grow around 1.5 metres tall so this is one of the unique selling points when growing automatics. A great way to camouflage your crop of autos is simply grow other plants between and around them.

Try and get over your fear that spiders and insects will eat your crop alive, so consider how other garden plants that most have taken zero notice of before can actually allow you to create a well camouflaged garden. I have even bought plastic plants before and placed them accordingly around my plants, to avoid helicopters or nosey neighbours seeing too much.

Grow For Months At A Time

One of my favourite things when it comes to automatics is that they can be grown for the majority of the year. In Southern Europe, automatics can be grown with good results from March until November. If you have 10 seeds, then experiment by planting 3 seeds every 2 months. So for example when April arrives plant 3 and harvest early June, plant 3 more in June until harvest early August and then plant the final 3 during August until harvest early october. By doing this method, it will make sure you have a good harvest of different strains every 70 days or less. Also you will discover what time of the year produces the best plants and have a low key garden that is easy to maintain.

Adding Size To Those Buds

Growing outdoors allows your medium to bake in the sun naturally and force those roots to grow large and in search of food. If you have followed the organic mix that I mention above, you can then feed your plants blackstrap molasses available from most health stores and supermarkets. Molasses are basically the run off when they make sugar white so that thick black tar substance is packed full of carbohydrates. Effectively this is like a candy factory for the microbes that will be present in the grow medium and firmly attached to cells of the roots. The way to get heavy thick buds is to supply the microbes with high levels of ready to absorb carbon and keep the root zone happy.

Choose Variety

If you have the luxury of consistent outdoor sunshine and are open minded enough to grow out as many varieties as possible, then you will be able to have a strong menu of flavours, in the comfort of your own home. There will be a time of the year when the days are the longest and your plants will get upto 14 hours of daylight.This can be a good time to grow haze varieties as they will enjoy the extra hours during these months to really excel and ripen to the best of their ability.

Naturally growing automatic strains during the different months will result in inconsistent yields, however finding what strain is your favourite and works best where you live is the most important. Gaining experience with automatics may not sound like a serious task, yet discovering what plants are most resistant to your environmental conditions plays a huge factor in powdery mildew, mould and general toughness of a plant's genetic. I would personally recommend growing Royal Queen Seeds Auto AK47, Auto Skunk and Northern Light XXL Auto which is a cup winner. Dinafem Moby Dick XXl and Auto Kush, which I have recently written grow reports covering these strains and highly recommend.

Plant Training

There will be a 21 day window where you can train your automatic plants to grow, however there is only so much you can do before the plants focus on growing flower sets. Pinching out automatics can be counterproductive especially if you are growing Indica automatic hybrids. What I recommend is to take the time to tie your plants down so the canopy will grow even, promoting as many main tops as possible. When this technique is done with Sativa dominant automatics, the yields can be almost doubled if not trebled. By incorporating this method to your garden, you can finish with plants that are as little as 45 cm and producing high grade buds with multiple flower sets. 

Automatic Seeds Indoors

There are many growers who will grow automatic seeds indoors and get excellent results. Some growers who have a vegging room that is on for 16-18 hours per day, will add automatic seeds in this room with their other plants vegging. In some sense half of the vegging room now becomes the automatic flowering room. If you are worried you will not have the best weather at first, you can begin to germinate and grow your automatics indoors.

If it is in the vegging room or even the flowering room receiving 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark, the automatics will continue to vegetate for the first 3 weeks then flower afterwards. This can be the perfect start for your plants and will help them on their way to success, especially if you are faced with challenging weather and insects. I hope these tips help you really get the most out of your automatic seeds and allow you to harvest high grade organic buds, nearly all year around. Peace Out! Stoney Tark