DIY AUTOFLOWERING CANNABIS, An Easy Way to Grow Your Own, introduces a brand new plant to gardeners, one that is easy to grow, beautiful, and useful too: Autoflowering Cannabis. Why me and why Autoflowering Cannabis? I have been writing a newspaper garden column every single week (without fail) for nearly 45 years. If there is one thing I have learned from writing all those columns, it is that gardeners, even the most casual, are always looking for something new and different to grow.
This is why breeding new plants for the home gardener is a huge industry. Every spring, new varieties of roses, pansies, petunias, hydrangeas, and more appear in box stores, greenhouses, and nurseries. For most gardeners, the new plant introductions are the best part of the catalogs that come out each year. However, it isn’t often that a whole new category of plants becomes available to the home gardener.
Now that Cannabis prohibition is ending, you would think there would be lots of interest in growing Cannabis in home gardens, and on porches and decks. Unfortunately, there are a number of really big obstacles that prevent regular Cannabis from becoming a popular home garden plant.
First, the biggest barrier is that regular Cannabis plants are dependent on daylength to bloom. Actually, it is night length, but either way, this is known as photoperiodism. Nights must be more than 12 hours before flowering will start, and it is the flowers that are harvested.
This is not a problem in and of itself, but shortening days are accompanied by cooler weather in most places around the world. In many, frosts kill the plants before they are ready to harvest.
Not so with Autoflowering Cannabis! Autoflowers (for short, also called Day-Neutral Cannabis and, sometimes, Automatic Cannabis) do not flower based on a photoperiod. They can flower anytime, indoors or outdoors, regardless of how long (or short) nights happen to be.
This kind of Cannabis evolved in Northern climes where the growing season is extremely short. To survive, plants must grow very fast and produce viable seeds before they are killed by the chill. Over time, some evolved so that genetics trigger timely flowering, not a change in photoperiod.
As a result, home gardeners who grow Autoflowering Cannabis don’t have to worry about-immature plants being taken down prematurely. I garden in short season Alaska, so I know this firsthand.
Moreover, since Autoflowering Cannabis is not triggered into flowering by light or darkness, gardeners don’t have to worry, as do regular Cannabis growers, about street lights or someone accidently interrupting a dark period by turning on lights.
The second major problem with regular photoperiod Cannabis is that these are normally really big plants, some reaching 3 meters (10 feet) or more high (sorry) and just as wide. These are much larger than the casual gardener can handle. They certainly don’t fit on an apartment or condo deck.
Once again, Autoflowering Cannabis has it covered. These plants are much, much smaller than their cousins. Some are Lilliputian and only get 30 to 45 cm (12 to 18 inches) tall! Others can grow to about 90 cm (3 feet), still a size perfectly suited for growing in containers, outdoors on a deck, or indoors under lights.
Now, photoperiod and smaller plants would be quite enough to convince many to grow Autoflowering Cannabis, but there is one more convincing factor. Larger regular varieties of Cannabis can take several months and more to flower. Often seeds started in April don’t produce until December or January (or even later). Not only would this try the patience of a home gardener, but as earlier noted, in most cases cold weather would take them down. Growing Cannabis is limited to those that have a long enough growing season or an indoor growing area.
Ah, but Autoflowers start flowering after only 2 to 3 weeks and can often be harvested after as little as 7 to 8 weeks. There is no problem getting at least one outdoor crop each summer, and an indoor gardener can grow them anytime of the year.
To add to all of this, Autoflowering Cannabis plants have now been bred to produce the same level of chemicals for which commercially grown regular Cannabis is famous. This makes it possible for the home gardener to grow useable Cannabis instead of buying it.
These plants, minus the chemicals, are surprising similar to tomatoes. In fact, I often compare the two plants, as you will see! The point is, if you can grow tomatoes, you can quickly learn to grow Autoflowering Cannabis. (Here is where I should make a lame joke about Autoflowering Cannabis as the new stewed tomatoes.)
There are lots of other attributes to Autoflowers that will entice the hobby gardener. However, at the top of the list, Autoflowering Cannabis plants are very easy to grow once you become familiar with them. In addition, they are attractive plants that usually have a delightful smell. And, you can breed your own, just as you might develop your own heirloom tomatoes.
So, for gardeners who are looking for something new and different to grow, here it is! Autoflowering Cannabis is a brand-new category of plants that are easy for any gardener to grow, from casual to expert.
There are a myriad of Cannabis books covering the photoperiod type. Many of these are coffee-table books with fantastic pictures I call bud porn. Others are written for would-be commercial growers. Often they are kept under lock and key at book stores, for some unjustified reason.
This book, however, is a very simple guide to get gardeners started and to lead them into the hobby of growing Autoflowering Cannabis at home. The text is predicated on the notion that you are an organic gardener.
By gardener, I mean that you know how to water a plant, that it needs proper light, and what to monitor to know when things are not going right. If you have never grown plants, fine, but you might need some very basic growing instructions that I don’t provide here.
By organic, I mean you use what nature has given us via soil, not synthetic chemicals. After all, if you are going to grow Autoflowering Cannabis, you are probably going to ingest it. For this reason alone, you need to make sure yours is safe to consume. Growing organically is the best way to be sure.
If you are not already an organic gardener, I urgently point you toward a trilogy of books I have written on the subject. Dangerous chemicals have no place in a hobby situation. Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web (Timber Press, 2006) will introduce you to the science of organics and the soil food web. It is crucial to your understanding of how an organic system should work.
Teaming with Fungi: The Organic Grower’s Guide to Mycorrhizae (Timber Press, 2017) is about mycorrhizal fungi, which are all-important for feeding plants. And, speaking of feeding plants, Teaming with Nutrients: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition (Timber Press, 2013) is all about what plants need to eat, from an organic perspective, and how they use the nutrients.
All three of my books will help you be a better organic gardener. They are used by many commercial Cannabis growers all around the globe. They will also help you grow better Autoflowering Cannabis.
A word or two about pictures: I wanted to include a million pictures but could not due to page limitations. So I opted to limit bud porn here and left out pictures of obvious supplies, or accents to the history mentioned and the like, as you can easily find these elsewhere. You can and should resort to the Internet to see what is out there.
Finally, and by all means most important, I want you to realize that growing Autoflowering Cannabis plants is just like gardening with any other plant. Nothing more.
We are discussing gardening as a hobby and not as an occupation. As such, it is supposed to be fun and enjoyable, not stressful work. I can assure you that once you start gardening with Autoflowering Cannabis, you will soon see what makes them so fascinating to me and why I have come to believe that they will be the home gardener’s next tomato.