Small auto's stressed too much with manipulation

[radrichie61]

Everyone said don’t do much to your auto flowers because your stress him out. Don’t do any LSD training and put them in the pot they’re gonna stay in from the beginning. Well I didn’t either one and now they’re a little rugs. Any ideas what might help these guys below or rather these ladies?

 

[radrichie61]

And I do not have a jewelers eyepiece, only my iPad. Opinions on harvesting even if small. Was just in this for fun to see what they were.

If I remember right from first grow last year, milky Trichomes is time to chop? I could be so wrong.

 

[PaleSun]

I've been growing Autos for a couple years. Under LED while they're small, then outside once they're bigger (4wks or so). I usually do a little LST to make the lower branches spread out. GWE is now also saying topping before flowering starts, up to about 5wks, is okay. I've never tried that. After a couple years I'm thinking that Autos need a lot more 'babying' than photoperiod plants. I still get runts sometimes, and other plants that produce 5-6oz. Cheers

 

[PaleSun]

...oh yeah, you're right about harvesting when the trichomes turn milky. A bit of amber is okay too, but too much can make your weed very sedating.

 

[radrichie61]

...oh yeah, you're right about harvesting when the trichomes turn milky. A bit of amber is okay too, but too much can make your weed very sedating.

Harvest now?

 

[Delps8]

Trichomes are described as clear, milky, and amber. Conventional wisdom is that clear trichomes will give you a short-lived, racy high while amber trichomes will give a more sedate high.

A key point is to disregard the colors of the trichs on the sugar leaves and go by the colors of the trichs on the flowers. Also, the pistils will change in color from milky white or light yellow to red and will curl as the trichomes degrade (that's why they change color).

Your photographs aren't clear enough to make out individual pistils so they of not much help estimating how mature the flowers are. I believe that it's correct to say that without a magnifying device of some kind, the colors of individual trichomes cannot be discerned. My right eye is Lasike to focus as close as 10" and I just check my flowering Chemdog and I cannot tell that there are amber trichomes on the flowers yet they are quite easy to see with just the 20x lens on a loupe.

iOS has an app called "magnifier". Launch that, zoom in until just before the image becomes unclear, and then take a screenshot. That might get a better image.

Another approach — find a lens of some kind. If know someone who wears glasses, borrow their glasses and hold one of the lenses over the lens of the iPad camera. If you don't know someone who wears glasses, make a friend of someone who wears glasses, and borrow their glasses and hold one of the lenses over the lens of the iPad camera.

My current grow is at about the same stage as yours. As much as I want it to be done (it's at day 115 above ground), within' don't make it so, unfortunately. I describe it as being like cooking a brisket - it's done when it's done.

 

[radrichie61]

Ok, I chopped. Milky trichs amber pistils curling in. Here is what I got. Very small as I put them out in march. We average 65 degrees then through mid April wih lots of 75 degree days.

 

[PaleSun]

Well I'd be interested in hearing what your yield was, after drying. Will you be planting another couple Autos now your full on summer is here?

Daytime highs of 65F might have been enough to stunt growth of your Autos. As said earlier, Autos do not tolerate much stress. I grow Autos outside because of a short growing season that gets rainy right around the time Photo flowers are finishing. Plus, I don't need a kilo of weed at harvest lol. So, smaller plants, smaller harvest. And the plants finish in August. Can you grow indoors, or not at all?

 

[Delps8]

Well I'd be interested in hearing what your yield was, after drying. Will you be planting another couple Autos now your full on summer is here?

Daytime highs of 65F might have been enough to stunt growth of your Autos. As said earlier, Autos do not tolerate much stress. I grow Autos outside because of a short growing season that gets rainy right around the time Photo flowers are finishing. Plus, I don't need a kilo of weed at harvest lol. So, smaller plants, smaller harvest. And the plants finish in August. Can you grow indoors, or not at all?

If daytime highs were 65°, I'm pretty impressed that the plant didn't die. Perhaps hardiness trait of ruderalis is carried over when breeders make auto flowers.

Cannabis ruderalis is the most suited of cannabis species to survive in harsh conditions. In its native environment, Cannabis ruderalis grows in very difficult conditions - high altitude in some cases, short grow season, low temps, low insolation, and poor soil.

I do hear lots of conventional wisdom about the shortcomings of autos and I'll admit that I don't know how well they do under poor growing conditions. One of the reasons I stopped growing autos was because they grew so large that the plants kept growing out of my tent and into the ceiling of my tent. Check any of my grow journals from 2022 or 2021 and you'll see the problems that I ran into.

One interesting thing about growing in 68° temps (20°C) - remember that, in hydro, nutrient uptake is impaired at <= 64° - is that net photosynthesis is as low at that temperature as it is at 104°F (40°C). This graphic is from the renowned Chandra paper - "Photosynthetic response of Cannabis sativa L. to variations in photosynthetic photon flux densities, temperature and CO2 conditions".

68° or 104° - both horrible conditions for a plant.

Check any VPD chart and the song remains the same — it's very hard to get VPD in range at that temp in anything but a very dry climate. I wonder how a photo period would do if it were to be subject to suffocating VPD levels?

Again, unless growers intentionally preclude the hardiness factor from being carried over during cross breeding, an autoflower should do better under adverse conditions than a photoperiod.

I've seen zero research on that topic, BTW.