Autoflowering strains are not known as the big hitters in the cannabis world, but what about if you were a master grower, had the best genetics and the best equipment at your disposal….How much can an autoflower yield under these circumstances?
Let’s take a closer look at the true potential of these fast-flowering strains and how much you could push autoflower yields to if you did everything right.
What is meant by cannabis yield?
Cannabis yield refers to the amount of bud you are able to harvest from your cannabis plants. It’s used as a way for growers to keep score of how successful the growing season has been and also to decide which strains to grow in the future. If a particular cannabis plant is known as a ‘high yielding strain’ this means it consistently produces good yields. Seed banks normally explain the yield of a plant with the grams per square meters measurement, as this gives home growers an idea of how much they might be able to harvest if grown in different sized tents. For larger scale or commercial growers, the yield of a harvest will be measured in pounds as an overall yield rather than per plant.
How much does an average autoflower plant yield?
The average autoflower yield is between 1 to 4 ounces (30 to 113 grams) of dry flower, although for a highly experienced grower this could be as much as 7 ounces (200 grams). Autoflowers can grow from seed to harvest in 8-10 weeks, so they have a lot less time to pack on size hence why their yields are never normally as big as photoperiod cannabis strains. However, their advantage lies in their ability to grow harvests in a year, so when you add up each and every cycle of that year it would be much closer to that of a photoperiod.
What is the most that you can yield from a large autoflowering plant?
With a high yielding autoflowering strain such as Auto Pounder, a highly experienced grower could push the yield up to 200 grams (about 7 ounces) per plant, providing the conditions were right. Although growing plants this size also depends upon lots of factors such as genetics, lighting, nutrient management, and is also reliant on you avoiding any type of stress throughout the grow.
What can you do to increase autoflower yield?
Autoflowers don’t naturally grow that big, however, under the right conditions with good equipment and in the right hands anyone can achieve bigger harvests. Let’s take a look at whats required to grow those big yields.
Use Good Grow Lights
The key to how much any cannabis plant yields is how much energy the plant is given. For outdoor growers it’s simple, the sun does all the work for you. However, for indoor growers you need to make sure you have good quality, powerful grow lights. Autoflowers can be grown from start to finish under the same light schedule of 18-24 hours daily, and for this to work best you should use full-spectrum LEDs or HPS grow lights. Quality lighting mimics the sun’s natural spectrum, providing the necessary wavelengths for all growth stages allowing your cannabis plants to photosynthesize as efficiently as possible.
Grow in Bigger Pots and Tents
When you grow cannabis plants, the size of pots and space you have directly influences their size. The larger the pots are, the more your plant’s roots can grow. The more your plants’ roots grow, the more water and nutrients they can absorb, resulting in bigger plants. If your pots are too small, your plants can also become root bound. This is where your roots want to grow more but they are restricted by the pot itself resulting in stunted growth. Ideally a minimum of 5-gallon pots should be used, but if you want to produce the biggest yields possible from your autoflowers then you would want 10–15 gallon pots. Similarly, growing in spacious tents ensures plants aren’t cramped, having more space gives them better air circulation and allows you more room to implement training methods to encourage light distribution to all parts of the plant.
Use Low Stress Training (LST)
Low Stress Training (LST) is a technique that allows you to gently manipulate the structure of your autoflowers to expose more bud sites to light, while causing minimal stress to the plant. By bending and tying branches down, you can create a wider and more even canopy, similar to a bonsai tree. This creates better light penetration; better air flow and opens up the plant to grow more bud sites, significantly increasing the yield. It is best to avoid high stress training methods with autoflowers because their short growth cycles do not allow much recover time and any stress can actually result in reduced yields. However, you can safely use methods such as defoliation on autoflowers as a technique to increase yield, however, do it with caution and never take off more than 10% of the leaves in one go.
Grow High Yielding Genetics
Not all strains are created equal; some are bred specifically for bigger yields, so if you want to produce more bud, grow autoflower cannabis seeds that are known to be high yielding. By choosing strains known to produce big yields, you will have a solid foundation to work with and providing you do everything else right your plants should produce good harvests.
Get Your Nutrients Right
Autoflowers have a shorter lifespan, which means that it is even more important to get the nutrients right. Cannabis plants require 3 main macro nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, normally abbreviated to NPK. Give your plants a balanced nutrient schedule with an NPK ratio tailored to each stage of growth and remember, autoflowering plants are much smaller than normal cannabis varieties so you should give them between a third and a half of the amount of nutrients that you would feed a photoperiod. Overfeeding autoflowers can cause nutrient burn or nutrient lockout, resulting in stressed plants and stunted growth.
What is the difference between wet and dry yields?
Wet Yield: The wet yield is the weight of your buds immediately after harvesting. At this stage, the buds are full of moisture and therefore weigh more. Wet yields are full of water and so you should expect to lose around 75-80% of this water weight during the drying and curing phase.
Dry Yield: A dry yield is the weight of the buds after they have been dried and cured. At this stage most of the water has evaporated from the buds, and this gives you a true measure of your yield.
Conclusion
As we’ve explained autoflowers come in different sizes, but with the right approach and the right genetics, you can tip the scales in your favor. Choosing high-yielding strains, big pots and having a decent sized grow tent will help you to produce bigger autoflower yields. And then it’s just down to perfecting your low stress training techniques and fine tuning your nutrients. Apply what you have learned here to your next autoflower grow, and you should see a substantial difference in your harvest. If you found value in these tips, don’t forget to like and share this article!