Stressing the Autos out!

Two questions for the Autonauts..

1. Would starting an auto out in hydro and then switching to dirt be to stressful for an auto to handle (considering that you want to transplant as little as possible or not at all)?

2. How detrimental would super cropping be to an auto?

-~WW~-

Hi, i have never grown in hydro so can't really say about your first question, although i'm not sure that transplanting from one medium to another is a good idea.

As for supercropping, i definitely wouldn't. Any form of cropping takes some recovery time, and with af's you only have a specific window to get as much growth in as possible. They usually start to self-flower around 30-40 days from germination, so you want as much veg growth as possible to get all the possible flowering sites. Although with normal plants you can double this with supercropping, with the time limitation you may end up with a squat plant, as there is not enough veg time to recover from multiple cuts. You may get away with one bout of cropping, but that would be when the plant is so young (a few weeks after germination, to allow another 2 weeks to recover) that it wouldn't really be worth it.

You can get much better results by training it, not necessarily a full LST approach, but just tying it "open" to let all the light in. Always keep the time limit in mind.

1) Never tried, it would depend at what stage you were planning to do this and why exactly? If you let them a couple of weeks into flower you should have a very nice root system, but if you've gone that far you may aswell see it through?

I really could not predict the out come of that.

2) Depending on what AF strain you're growing, you could let it reach 5 or 6 nodes and bend the main stem over once, I don't think you'd need to do any more than that, you could just tie it over though and leave it for several days and avoid crushing the stem.

Topping can have good results, It just depends on how many you have to work with.

The above advice is good, but 30-40 days is a lot longer window for training than i've ever had to work with for an AF 'veg' stage, so bare that in mind.

Whoa

Whoa

stinkhairs said:

You can get much better results by training it, not necessarily a full LST approach, but just tying it "open" to let all the light in. Always keep the time limit in mind.

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Stinky, I have LST'd autos in the past (Green-o-matic) and out of the two I grew in my cab, the one that I didn't LST grew better, weird huh?

I only have a 150 watt HPS and some cfls, so I was thinking if I bent the main cola via super cropping I could get a more even canopy so the lower branches would get more light. Also, I have limited room and when i rotate the plants I often have to deal with plants getting snagged up in the wire, pipe cleaners, rubber bands & bent paper clips I use. I might just do as you say and bend only the main cola via LST.

mitch_connor said:

1)it would depend at what stage you were planning to do this and why exactly?

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Good question, man with a puppet on his hand.

Well, I was hoping that the plant(s) would grow quicker and have a more robust root system starting in hydro and then transferring into soil. I have read in the past that when doing so with non-autos that you need to water heavily after transitioning the plant. I have done this a few times successfully in the past with non-autos. Also, I travel for work and if I need to leave for some time I can set up a drip system on a timer in dirt, water less, and not have to worry / deal with PH, PPM and bacteria in the reservoir compared to a hydro system. So in essence, start the plant in sumtin' similar to a hempy bucket for maybe a week or two and then transfer to dirt for the finish.



On a side note, Green-o-matic is a vigorous plant and on my last run I chopped the top parts first for harvest and then waited a week or two for the bottom, where then those parts got nice and chunky. A two tiered harvest if you will.


-~WW~-

1- I know nothing about Hydro.. sorry

2-I pratice supercropping normally, expecially when the pheno tends to sativa:
I've made it on Easy Ryder (AK47), often on White Dwarfs, but depends always on the space avaible.

Everytimes i haven't had any stress, but a solid fruiting in every branch...

Good Luck!

MicroSpy said:

2-I pratice supercropping normally, expecially when the pheno tends to sativa:
I've made it on Easy Ryder (AK47), often on White Dwarfs, but depends always on the space avaible.

Everytimes i haven't had any stress, but a solid fruiting in every branch...

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Hmmm interesting, thank you for your feedback.

I am going to do this on my next run of auto's. I am going to go on the less damaging side of supercropping. In the past I have over squished the branch after bending it on regular plants, thus resulting in killing that branch.

-~WW~-

-~Wind Walker~- said:

Stinky, I have LST'd autos in the past (Green-o-matic) and out of the two I grew in my cab, the one that I didn't LST grew better, weird huh?

I only have a 150 watt HPS and some cfls, so I was thinking if I bent the main cola via super cropping I could get a more even canopy so the lower branches would get more light. Also, I have limited room and when i rotate the plants I often have to deal with plants getting snagged up in the wire, pipe cleaners, rubber bands & bent paper clips I use. I might just do as you say and bend only the main cola via LST.

Click to expand...

Interesting ww. Maybe they were a bit wimpy, found it too stressful? The side-effect of lst is that the majority of the growth hormones are then redirected to the highest bud site, so tying the main cola down should result in the next-highest bud site becoming the main cola, which is why you need to keep them all at a near equal level.

I'm just at the last few weeks of an af grow and am thinking about topping the cola and leaving the lower branches for another week or two. Alternatively, i hear a lot of non-af growers remove all the lower growth (where all the popcorn buds are i suppose) so that the growth is focused on the light-focused bud sites. Have you ever removed lower growth? And if so, to what extent?