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Dean
Auto flowering strains are super popular in the cannabis community. And today we’re going to be chatting about some of the common misconceptions that people have when they are looking at auto flower cannabis strains, we’re going to be chatting to Luke and we’re going to be exploring a couple of different points related to the super popular style of growing cannabis for you, Luke, what’s also handling so much grow support and dealing with so many different clients on a daily basis, you obviously know how popular auto flowers are, that told me a little bit about one of the common or maybe the biggest misconception that people have, when when dealing with or questioning about auto flies.

Luke
I think a lot of the time people ask the strength, you know, does otter flower compared to your normal feminised photoperiod, seed or, you know, growing from regular packs. And I think with where breeding and stuff is going nowadays, you know, they they’re hitting the bar very, very high, and getting it sort of, on par with with some of the strains that are doing exceptionally high test results, you know, so I think that is the most misconception is that they’re not as good as you know, your normal foodie periods. And that’s, I don’t think is the case. However, it is very important to make sure that you know, the lineage, do a little bit of research of where you’re getting your genetics from. And that always helps as well.

Dean
Yeah, I think that’s a big point there. Quality of genetics, once again, same as with the photo period, you starting with quality genetics going in, you’re going to have quality and results coming out. If you’re not using quality, you’re not going to get, you’re not going to get quality, even. But that being said, even with some quality, you can sometimes mess it up.

Luke
Yeah, 100%, as people

Dean
know, or our viewers know, you know, from a lot of the content, we’ve put out a majority of the sort of indoor growing that we like to do is clone based, sort of research based, you know, and with auto flowers, you’re getting very differentiating results. But they also obviously, with an auto flower having being able to fly out, no matter the lifecycle, and as having such an incredibly long summer period in South Africa. You know, if you start planting your auto flowers early on, you can get, you can get really, really good results outdoors, because you have super long days loads of sun, you know, and it can fly out nice and early. So I personally prefer growing auto flowers outdoors. And I do think it is something that more people should be looking at, specifically in South Africa, but also suppose globally as globally as well. And also, I suppose if you’re in some of those European regions, where you have an incredibly short summer period, once again, an auto flower makes sense growing outdoors, because say you’ve got three months of summer only, you can still complete it within those three months without going too early into flower. Say I personally say outdoors. Yes, indoors. I mean, we’ve seen some crazy stuff online, I mean, look at the stuff that some of the Otters Mr. Canucks have has done, you know, and things like that. But I personally feel outdoors is the way to go specifically in, in South Africa. So we chatted a little bit on the first point about the sort of potency Luke, quality wise on some of the sort of flour and the end results, are you getting sort of beautiful large nugs with otters? Or is it sort of are they still sort of underperforming in the sense of sort of look, feel bag appeal taste? Tell me a little bit about some of your personal experiences with with otters,

Luke
again, you know, to reiterate, I think it’s got a lot to do with your genetics and choosing that but then it also it falls a lot on on you as the grower as well, you know, auto flowers are, are finicky at times. So, you know, we’ve got to, we’ve got to monitor to that but the end results for me, I’ve had some amazing amazing results very very tasty but structure you know, sort of the exactly the same if you research the lineage of Ovid and check what the mothers were producing. You can see those characteristics pulling through so you know, the guys are hitting the nail on the head and also grain sort of five seeds at a time it’s really enjoyable to get sort of that uniformity across from it, that I that I enjoy from from the world of flowers as well. And also being able to sort of get more more plant mass per square metre call it that in faster time. So you know, you’re growing more bad in a in a quicker amount of time, which is great.

Dean
So do you have any standout autos that come to mind that you’ve grown in the past? For me personally, it would be the Girl Scout Cookies auto that I’ve smoked in the past and at the moment I’m growing I’ve been on a blaze auto which is looking like it’s going to be probably my based ever, do you have any standouts that you can, that you can mention?

Luke
I personally like the blueberry auto I also like the Charlotte’s angels CBD.

Dean
Oh nice,

Luke
really, really nice as well. Yeah, those are think of my my two standouts. I’ve also tried a couple of the Divine genetics as well, which has been really, really cool. I think one of my first first dabbles on an auto flower indoors with was was with the Divine and, you know, good, very, very, very good results on that. So I was very stoked. The younger, a new grower comes to two dice, and they asked, you know, what, what do you suggest? Do you think order flowers are good for beginner growers? Or would you say they’re more lime for the experienced grower? And then what sort of advantages would you say an experienced grower has over beginner in starting off with order flowers.

Dean
So I January personally, once again, I’ll just come back to sort of experience and also, you know, consulting with a lot of people, I’d say that auto flowers are more for an intermediate to advanced grower. Now, a lot of intermediate advanced growers may may watch this and laugh at that at that point. But you know, there’s certain complexities to an auto flower to getting the most out of it, it’s a completely different growth style you’re facing. So you know, it does, you do need to know the plant in order to get the maximum out of it. That being said, you know, some people may have grown an auto for the first time ever, and had amazing results. But after, you know, really trying hard on them for the past sort of five years, I still find my staff staff making mistakes on the autos, and I still personally feel they are difficult to grow. So that’s, that’s also why once again, you know, for me, I found that outdoor environment has has been sort of better for the auto for the autos, I also think what I’m going to do this winter is, I’m going to do with quite a bit of autos in my little tunnel that I have and, and see how what kind of results we can get in the winter period, you know, and really test them quite hard with some of the ones that did well in the in the summer. But there are complexities to an auto, you’re dealing with a limited lifespan, you know, you have three months, let’s say exactly, maybe three months, one week or something like that. So if you have issues, you know, there’s minimal time to fix the issues. Whereas if you’re dealing with a photo period, and you’ve got issues, you know, you you have time to fix those issues, you’ve got a five, six month veg period, you know, outdoors or indoors, you can just stretch it online however long you want. So, you know, that aspect of being able to identify identify pests. IPM if you don’t understand these, these specific points of growing you, you could really lose out hard. And I mean, when you look at the sort of the value of genetics, you know, it’s it’s pretty much similar across the board. So you you can have massive losses, if you if you if something does go wrong. And you can I think you can be disappointed quite easily if you if you do go into an auto flower grow. And then you don’t get the results you want. Because I think it’s the name auto flower that gives you the perception that that auto flowers are easy, you know, it’s going to flower, it’s going to flower the first time I heard auto flower, a friend of mine actually he told me about it. And I’m like, Yo dude, this is the we should have had these years ago, you know, this seems like a lot formula. And we gave them a go and got like terrible results, you know. So once again, auto flower doesn’t mean easy. I think there are some varietals that are obviously more beginner friendly than others. But I would also just say, you know, if you’ve got the time and you’ve got the space outdoors, or even if you don’t have much space out balcony or something like that, you can still do one decent photo period and have a little bit more leeway then. Then maybe an auto flower and maybe try and auto flower a couple a couple attempts down the line and bet on that. Look, what our autos for me I’ve been super susceptible to my main issue has been has been stunting, you know, the first two weeks? Is everything in an auto flower grow. What What tips would you give to someone who’s growing and auto specifically to that maybe their first month period of of time, if they’re trying to get good results?

Luke
Yeah, I think the first you know, their ceiling, the initial ceiling phase is super, super important for the flowers. I think a lot of the stunting that does happen to a lot of us as growers happens there. So making sure that you’ve got a humidity dome over it, you keeping your humidity level in and around the leaf mass of the plant, you know quite high over watering and under watering. Once again, you know with any plant, you’re going to stand by doing that. So, sort of having a look at your soil moisture content and monitoring in that and making sure you know that that is stable and maintains that stability is is very important and then also you know planting your seeds directly into their forever home with auto flowers I recommend this you know they there are some strains as you said that are a lot more forgiving and friendly with transplanting orders as well but it’s a gamble so that is one thing that I would say as well as just watch your humidity levels how much you will watering so your soil moisture content and then I wouldn’t recommend transplanting unless you’ve worked with that genetic before and you know that it’s not going to stunt

Dean
amazing I would I couldn’t have said it better myself so guys, I think you’ve you’ve gauged you know auto flowers are our opinion on auto flowers is that they definitely do have a place over the last couple years. You know, I only discovered auto flowers maybe five years ago but you know over the last couple of years we’ve seen them coming in leaps and bounds and I definitely do think they will have more of a place in the industry in the future. But right now that stall I’d say the the sort of mid experimental phase on auto flowers you’re getting differentiating results. Also you can’t keep a mama of an auto so the breeding also has certain complexities which we’ll touch on later and have touched on in the past. But we hope you guys enjoyed our content today on the auto flowers thanks again for watching to those of you who made it to the end we really appreciate you guys watching it all the way here for those of you who aren’t Remember to like and subscribe and till next time guys peace