Autoflower Seeds

You have heard about autoflower cannabis seeds sold at weed seed shops and now you’re wondering if autoflowers are worth growing. A home grow room setup can begin with one of three styles of cannabis seeds: Regular seeds, feminized photoperiod seeds or autoflower seeds. Each of these three styles has relative advantages and disadvantages that make it more or less suitable for a particular farmer, so every freshman breeder should be familiar with all three.

Principally, growing cannabis from autoflower seeds is in line with your typical growing process of growing regular photoperiod cannabis seeds, but there’s one main difference between the two styles that lies in the length of the growing cycle.

What are Autoflower Cannabis Seeds?

Autoflower seeds are seeds produced from breeding normal photoperiod strains with the dominant genetics of Ruderalis cannabis – the most common cannabis strain in nature after Sativa and Indica. Ruderalis cannabis has unique genetics that changes and determine its life cycle. These genetics are a result of having to grow in harsh climates, over time they developed the ability to flower without relying on a change in the light cycle. This auto-flowering characteristic evolved for reasons of survival in harsh natural conditions. For this reason, autoflowering seeds are the fastest and safest way to grow cannabis and reach a rapid-fire crop.

Growing Autoflowers

“ Autoflower ” cannabis plants grow and bloom over a precise and predetermined period of time. It doesn’t change its growing stage if the length of daylight is changed. That is, auto seeds aren’t light exposure periodic and don’t change their growth and flowering cycle according to the number of light hours to which they’re exposed. These plants typically yield an average lower than a regular cannabis photoperiod strain, but the crop yields quicker than it takes for regular cannabis plants. While a growing cycle of a “ normal ” cannabis plant can extend to 5 months, autoflower seeds will yield a crop within a maximum period of two and a half months and occasionally in lower than 80 days from seed to full flowering and ready for consumption.

Are Autoflowering seeds worth it?

Growing cannabis from autoflower seeds has relative advantages that separate it for good compared to growing cannabis from regular seeds. These are the benefits of automatic cannabis seeds that you should be aware of before choosing the way to start your home grow setup.

1. Short Growth Cycle
   The quick growing process of autoflower cannabis seeds and their transition to flowering independent of changing the lighting cycle, make the growing cycle of automatic cannabis strains significantly shorter than that of non-Ruderalis cannabis seeds. This time saving can reach up to 50 percent of the total growing time, in the case of long-flowering photoperiod strains with similar traits.
2. Consistent and even Crop Canopy. Autoflower cannabis seeds will typically have only one pheno no matter how many seeds from the pack you germinate. They will yield at the end of their growth a nearly identical crop in terms of volume and quality of buds. Although the end result of the crop isn’t large relative to regular cannabis seeds, its quality will nearly always be high. In general, the sun exposure rate of the bud sites in autoflowering plants is better because there is nearly no section of the weed plant that isn’t exposed to the light source, so all parts of the developing plant develop optimally throughout the flowering stage.
3. Advanced flower/ weight rate
   Cannabis autoflowers grown from seeds grow less in height and spread out less compared to regular cannabis photoperiod plants and thus take up less space in the growing area. While the final harvest of buds from each plant is lower on average compared to regular cannabis photoperiod plants, the total harvest of buds in a growing space filled with autoflowering cannabis plants will generally be larger compared to the full space of regular photoperiod cannabis plants. In addition, each automatic plant will have a better rate of flowers compared to the overall plant weight compared to regular cannabis photoperiods.

4. Different terpenoid profile
   Cannabis plants in which the dominant genetics are Ruderalis will deliver a final terpenoid profile different from most cannabis strains. In these strains, there will be terpenes( flavours and aromas in cannabis) that don’t live in Indica or Sativa kinds and come directly from the genetics of Ruderalis, which enriches not only the taste and smell of cannabis.