For most of my hobby growing experience, I’ve grown photos, but I’ve been experimenting more with autoflowers while helping first time growers.
Autos ease the learning curve, as many aspects of the grow progress automatically, without guidance or cues from the grower. Plus, they go from seed to harvest faster than photos.
Autos’ expedited timeline also comes at a cost: less time to recover from training techniques that cause stress, impacting yields and quality.
With photos, if your plant is stressed, you can keep it in a vegetative state indefinitely until it recovers its health and momentum. With autos, any lost time is a potential hit to your harvest.
Topping — removing the tip of a plant — is a common technique to increase yields with photos, but controversial with autos.
Top too late and you’ll stunt your plants, drastically lowering your yields. On the other hand, if your space is limited, stunting an auto may be exactly your intent, encouraging more horizontal than vertical growth.
If you’re going to top an auto, do it during Week 3.
If you are going to top an auto, you do so before it starts flowers (indicated by developing pistils, the “white hairs” you see). Topping early enough in the plant’s life allows it as much time to recover as possible, and avoids impacting the blooming stage of the auto’s life.
Personally, I’ve never topped my autos.
I considered it for the GrowHort, but my little lady is already finishing Week 4.
Do you top your autos? When and why?
