Early flowering autoflowers

A question from a fellow grower:

I received 10 white widow auto flower about 5 weeks ago and germinated 5 about 3 weeks ago. All struck & have been growing well but the 3 most robust seem to be starting to flower at 7 inches tall. Is there something I can do to grow them through to achieve the veg. growth desired before flowering?
They were propagated under CFL and are put in the sun every day, then back under CFL at sundown and have a 18/6 day. The plan is to SCROG them in a greenhouse once final pruning is done.
I’m in southern Australia where we are about a month away from summer. The plants look super healthy but I’m just disappointed about the premature flowering. Is there a solution to this? I can supply photos if needed.

Most will start flowering around 21 days, give or take, sounds like they’re doing their thing and you can’t change it -just enjoy!

You don’t really want to prune those autoflowers man… Gonna kill your yeild

I didn’t notice that ! “final pruning” ??

…I’m voting with Oak, leave them alone

I’m with you there,first time time I’ve brought auto’s to,I like my plants to be a lot bigger before flowering,but do not take any leaves off as I had found in my auto that leaves grow out of the old fan leaves ,never had a plant that I’m only going to get grams from.

Yeah my wording was wrong, I haven’t pruned at all but was gonna just tip them at about 10 inches but I’ll let em go now. I thought I had about 7-8 weeks of veg. growth with autos but I must be mistaken. Thanks for the advice everyone. I haven’t grown in pots or with autos before as I’m from a warmer area so this is a learning curve for me. So should I just feed bud food from here on?

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autos only veg for about three weeks…preflower for a week then full on flowering right about four weeks from sprout… they spend all of their time budding,…usually 4-6 weeks…then they die.

Well I topped my Autos about the same height, a little taller maybe, and they were very productive but most people don’t, some do some don’t, you might want to look into it more but the pruning statement was a bit more concerning

  • good luck

Awesome. Thanks for the info, much appreciated.