It is now legal to grow Cannabis in Canada and in many of the United States. More and more states and countries throughout the world are decriminalizing possession of Cannabis. As a result of all of this liberalization, a huge commercial Cannabis industry is developing.
For the most part (setting aside exact genetic science for a simpler explanation), plants used by commercial Cannabis growers are of the two main types, Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica. The former evolved to grow in equatorial areas. These are slow growers that get very tall. The latter originated in the Indian subcontinent. These are shorter and flower just a bit earlier.
The first time I saw an Autoflowering Cannabis plant was in the late 1970s. It was my first Lowryder, the successful result of early crosses between regular Cannabis and Cannabis ruderalis. It was a dream come true for hobby growers.
The diminutive size of this new form of Cannabis was of great interest. It could be grown safely hidden in the tiniest and least likely of places to be discovered. And the speed with which the plant developed was astounding! Seven weeks from seed to harvest was simply a dream. The odds of some authority like your parents stumbling onto your crop were greatly reduced.
Add to all of this, completing the dream, no photoperiod required! This was freedom from seasonality. It almost didn’t matter that the THC content of this plant was not as high as experienced with the sativas and indicas of the day.
Illustration of the three main types of Cannabis. WINNIE CASACOP.
Fortunately, both of these photoperiod Cannabis plants can cross with a third type, Cannabis ruderalis. The word ruderalis is an adjectival form of the Latin word for rubble. These plants are found in previously disturbed poor soil. The original plants are the evolved offspring of Cannabis sativa that developed in high-altitude regions of Russia where the growing season is very short.
Cannabis ruderalis plants are day-neutral, naturally autoflowering. They are low in psychoactive chemicals but can cross with Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica. Resultant seed can have Cannabis ruderalis’s ability to flower based solely on genetic maturity and not daylength. They can also have the higher potency mix of chemicals for which the bigger plants are grown.
DEVELOPMENT OF AUTOFLOWERING CANNABIS
Add together the diminutive size of ruderalis plants plus their fast-growing characteristics, and all of a sudden you have bred a new plant variety that can be easily grown at home! It grows fast in any photoperiod, doesn’t need great soil, and is small in size when it comes to Cannabis.
Breeding efforts continued to bear fruit (actually, seeds), resulting in smaller plants, 60 cm (2 feet) or less, which could be grown from seed to harvest in only 7 to 9 weeks. They are perfect for growing at home, on a deck, or indoors.
A second type of plant was developed, known as, loosely, Super Autoflowering Cannabis. These are slightly larger plants that produce a higher (oops, better use larger) yield but can take 100 days to grow, which is still very short for Cannabis.
While their relatively larger size may discourage a few indoor home gardeners who don’t have as much room in which to grow them, Super Autoflowers are fine for outdoor garden or deck gardeners. In fact, more and more commercial growers are using them because at least they don’t have to worry about daylength and frosts.
Unlike their cousins, Autoflowering Cannabis, foreground, are small plants. However, breeding efforts have resulted in larger Super Autoflowering Cannabis plants like the taller ones here. SEBRING FREHNER.
There are advantages to growing either type of Autoflowering Cannabis. If you lack space entirely, consider the smaller kind. If you want more yield, go with the Supers.
GROWING AUTOFLOWERING CANNABIS REALLY IS A LOT LIKE GROWING TOMATOES
From my experience, growing Autoflowering Cannabis is very much like growing tomatoes. I don’t make this comparison lightly. As with tomatoes, Autoflowering Cannabis plants are really easy to germinate and grow. The plant does almost all of the work. The harvest is useable and enjoyable and one which you will probably never become tired of, unlike with zucchini or kale.
You can grow Autoflowers from germination to harvest in as little as 7 to 8 weeks. That is about the time you can get first early tomatoes. Autoflowering Cannabis plants have tomatoes beat, however, as they start to flower after only 2 or 3 weeks. This makes them easy, easy, easy to grow, while tomatoes are just easy, easy.
The analogy to tomatoes breaks down when it comes to the goal of growing Cannabis. It is the production of flowers that contain medicinal and recreational qualities for which Cannabis is known. With tomatoes, it is the fruit formed after the flowers.
However, to get back on track with comparing both plants, a gardener can easily end up growing the proverbial 40-dollar tomato. A lot of money can be wasted growing a plant that produces poorly. There is an Autoflowering Cannabis equivalent, but that is only if you don’t know what you are doing, which is what this book is for.
And, just as the tomato can be grown for its contribution to nutritional health (in part because of the interesting chemistry of the lycopene it contains), there are medicinal values to Autoflowering Cannabis plants as a result of equally interesting chemistry. As more research is completed as a result of legalization, more health benefits are being discovered or confirmed.
Finally, home gardeners can produce homegrown Autoflowering seeds, just as we do with tomatoes (though there is a difference explained later). You can develop your own strains of Autoflowering Cannabis just as you can develop your own heritage or heirloom tomatoes. This makes growing Autoflowering Cannabis a really multifaceted horticultural hobby.
EASY TO GROW ONCE YOU KNOW THE ROPES
Once again (and it won’t be the last reminder), growing Autoflowering Cannabis, like growing tomatoes, is easy. With both, you stick a seed into damp soil, and you most probably get a plant, even if you do nothing else but water. You may not get good tomatoes or many Cannabis flowers, but you will have some harvest unless you kill the plant.
Ah, but who wants just a plant? If you are a gardener, you want the best plant you can grow. In short, as my Dad taught me (though he did not approve of Cannabis, that is for sure!), there is vast difference between growing an easy plant and growing an easy plant properly. This is where DIY AutoFlowering Cannabis: An Easy Way to Grow Your Own comes in.
If you want lots of flavorful tomatoes, you need to prune and feed properly, stake correctly, and make sure there is effective pollination. Still, there is not a lot of work involved. The same goes with successfully growing Autoflowering Cannabis plants. However, they grow so fast that it isn’t enough to just know what the plants need; you need to know when they need it as well.
They are new to you now, but Autoflowering Cannabis plants are simply plants, and like any plant, getting the cultural information you need and growing it is all it takes. Once you finish the next chapters, you will be on your way.
LEGALITY
Cannabis legalization doesn’t mean growing Cannabis, even the autoflowering kind, is free of restrictions. Your jurisdiction may limit the number of plants you can grow at one time. Or you may be limited to the amount of Cannabis in general that you are allowed to possess at any given time.
The bottom line, if you are going to grow Autoflowering Cannabis, make sure you know what the rules are in your jurisdiction. Obey them.
ROAD MAP
This book will first cover a bit of the special chemistry and botany associated with all Cannabis plants. This will be simple and broad-brushed and is included because I need to make sure we are using the same terms and you know what (and where) to look as the plant develops.
Autoflowering Cannabis produce special chemicals which are most probably the reasons you are growing the plant. Psychoactivity, medicinal qualities, flavor, and smell are as important to Autoflowering Cannabis harvests as taste is to a harvest of ripe tomatoes. These are covered.
Next is a look at the supplies needed to grow Autoflowering Cannabis at home. We
are not doing a commercial grow. Most of the stuff can be collected from things you already use, but Autoflowers may need some special things you don’t already have.
This is followed by how to specifically grow Autoflowering Cannabis plants. And, once you do, how and when to harvest, cure, and store your harvest.
After an introduction to breeding your own Autoflowering Cannabis (remember, this is a very simple guide), I cover some of the Landrace and special strains which are the basis of most seed you can purchase today. This is capped off by some predictions for the future development of this brand-new category of hobby plants.
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A BIT OF BOTANY AND CHEMISTRY TO GET YOU STARTED
YOU ARE A GARDENER, so you already know quite a bit about growing Autoflowering Cannabis. This is because all of the botanical principles that apply to growing other plants apply to Autoflowering Cannabis as well. The process and methods for growing a tomato are the same for growing Autoflowering Cannabis.
However, there is some special information that applies to growing Autoflowering Cannabis in particular, just as there is with growing any plant. For example, tomatoes are especially susceptible to tobacco mosaic disease. What are the equivalent, unique things you should know about growing Autoflowering Cannabis plants?
This requires a brief discussion of some botanical facts, specific to Autoflowering Cannabis, which will help you to understand how best to grow them. It is also necessary to learn something about the chemicals Autoflowering Cannabis produces.
LEAVES
Cannabis has a very distinctive, no doubt familiar, leaf. Each consists of a number of serrated leaflets. The first leaf pair has single, fingered leaflets. Successive leaves add leaflets with up to as many as 13 making up one leaf. Notably, as Cannabis plants mature, the number of leaflets on leaves at the top of the plant diminishes until the very top displays leaves of a single leaflet again.
Leaves can tell you a lot about an Autoflowering Cannabis plant. They can be used as a general indicator of the health of your plants, just as do the leaves of tomatoes. They should be a healthy green, though it is normal for Autoflowering Cannabis plants to be just a tad on the dull side, as they use everything produced in their leaves so quickly.
If leaves exhibit colors that are not green, there are many gardening books on nutrient deficiencies. While there are actually a hundred possible reason why a plant leaf displays a particular symptom, visual leaf symptoms, though far from perfect, are still useful in helping to determine nutrient deficiencies. Of course, tomato growers are big followers of leaf symptoms, and books that cover those should also be useful to the Autoflowering Cannabis gardener.
Autoflowering Cannabis leaves are naturally susceptible to problems associated with humidity. There is a thin envelope of air that surrounds all plant leaves called the boundary layer. If thick enough, this layer becomes an impediment to the release from leaves of water molecules produced during photosynthesis. In addition, CO2 headed into the plant via stomata has problems.
As a result, the plant does not take up as much water as normal, resulting in a reduction of nutrients going into the plant. Photosynthesis may not be as efficient as it should be, because of CO2 delivery problems. The plant is weakened. It is bad enough to have this happen to a regular plant, but Autoflowering Cannabis plants grow so fast, they cannot afford to miss a day recovering.
Then, there is the disease problem caused by higher humidity around leaves. The boundary layer makes a mini environment, perfect for powdery mildew spores to take hold and germinate and then dig into the leaves. And spread.
The take-home points here: when growing Autoflowering Cannabis, air movement is critical; in addition, it is critical to make sure your soil has all the nutrients your plants will need, so they don’t develop problems.
Autoflowering Cannabis roots grow extremely fast. Plants can become rootbound very quickly. Don’t let it happen. FREHNER SEBRING
ROOTS
As all gardeners know, roots not only support the plant, they are the entry way for nutrients. Autoflowering Cannabis plants have a primary root with many secondary roots splaying off it. These secondary roots, in turn, branch several more times, and their growing tips are covered in root hairs.
Autoflowering Cannabis roots grow extremely fast, and plants can quickly become root-bound. A tomato can recover from being root-bound, but the superfast-growing Autoflowering Cannabis plant suffers too big a loss. It can take a week for a newly transplanted plant of any kind to return to normal growth. Due to the Autoflower’s short life span, the missed time recovering can’t be made up.
The takeaway from this is that Autoflowering Cannabis plants need ample room to grow. Their roots should not be disturbed at all. Ever. This means you should not attempt to transplant Autoflowering Cannabis seedlings, at least until after you grow a few crops to learn just how quickly they develop their root system.
The mycorrhizal fungus which partners with Autoflowering Cannabis has undergone a number of name changes as a result of reclassification. It is properly called Rhizophagus intraradices. However, you may still find older nomenclature in use on labels. Glomus intraradices, G. mossae, G. gregator, and G. etunicatum are all the same fungus.
MYCORRHIZAE
Almost all plants send out signals from their roots to attract specific mycorrhizal fungal types. These fungi share phosphorous, nitrogen, zinc, copper, iron, calcium, magnesium, and manganese with the plant in return for carbon-laced exudates. They are much smaller than root hairs and can mine areas of the soil that are not otherwise readily accessible to the plants’ roots.
There is one particular species of mycorrhizal fungus, Rhizophagus intraradices, which forms this symbiotic relationship with any kind of Cannabis, and Autoflowering Cannabis is no exception. It is best to have this fungus, or at least its spores, in the soil.
In addition to the potential for bigger plants as a result of better nutrient uptake, Rhizophagus intraradices has the potential to help your plants fight disease, because well-fed plants remain healthy. And its presence even helps roots ward off damaging nematodes because (as with all fungi) its walls contain chitin, which root nematodes do not like.
The takeaway? Rhizophagus intraradices mycorrhizal fungus inoculants are now available commercially. The very same products can and should be used on tomatoes, so more and more nurseries carry it. Grow stores have many different offerings.
It is important to note that all mycorrhizal fungi do best in an organic system. In fact, ensuring that you have mycorrhizal fungi associate with your plants is a primary reason to grow organically.
Nodes along an Autoflowering Cannabis stem. It’s a girl! Note the thin white thread, a stigma. JUDITH HOERSTING.
Pinching just above nodes results in the development of new branches, each of which will, in turn, develop flowers. Note the tiny hairs, actually stigma, indicating the plant is a female. JUDITH HOERSTING.
Male flowers about to open and release pollen. BY THAYNE TUASON, WIKICOMMONS.
NODES
Along the stems of Autoflowering Cannabis are nodes, areas where new branches develop. The area along the stem between these nodes is, unsurprisingly, called the inter-nodal zone. Tomato plants form stem nodes, too. It is from these nodes that tomato suckers and flower branches start to grow.
Stem nodes are the sites of undifferentiated cells, called meristem. The meristem at the growing (apical or top) tip of the plant produces the plant hormone auxin, and the presence of enough auxin at lower lateral node tips inhibits branching. Pinch a growing tip of a young Autoflowering Cannabis plant and you cut off the auxin supply that was keeping things in check. The meristem then develops not one but two new tips. If these, in turn, are pinched, the supply of auxins is again diminished, and two more tips grow below each new pinch.
At some point, plants lose the ability to produce new branches. Instead, a chemical is produced that converts the meristem into flower cells. Then flower buds form instead of growing ti
ps. If you pinch at this point, you lose the flower. Unlike before, you don’t get two new ones.
Whether to pinch an Autoflowering Cannabis is directly related to the plant’s genetics. Some have been bred to produce the largest possible amount of branches and flowers. These types of Autoflowering Cannabis plants lose too much valuable time when they are pinched and then they don’t produce as well.
Why are nodes important, then? The home gardener is usually limited, either by space and time or by governmental fiat, in the number of plants that can be grown. Each new growing tip produced represents a potential flower source, so it is important to know if you can pinch your plant back.
Female flowers developing at the tips of branches. JUDITH HOERSTING.
AUTOFLOWERING CANNABIS FLOWERS
Autoflowering Cannabis has male and female flowers on respective plants. This is a big difference between tomatoes and Autoflowers. It is the female flowers that are prized (unless you are into breeding your own seed) because these produce the wanted chemicals. Male flowers do not. Unless a gardener wants to breed Autoflowering Cannabis, male plants are discarded.
Cannabis flowers, known as buds in the trade, are, botanically speaking, inflorescences of florets. A floret is just a small flower—think of what broccoli or cauliflower heads are made up of. Autoflowering Cannabis inflorescences are florets closely lined up on a stem or in a tight bunch.
DIY Autoflowering Cannabis Page 2
