As above, I’m planning to sprout some fotoperiod seeds soon. I have thousands of extremely high quality seeds, and I really want to taste some of the final product from those.
They will end up in a 4 x 4 under a 450w Spider Farmer LED. This will be an organic soil grow.
So, some pointers from more experienced growers are welcome, what do I do different, except the obvious flip?
How many plants, how many different strains would you recommend? Transplant or straight into 5g pots?
Any advice really is well appreciated, as I have solely grown autos until now…
It’s just weed, just give it a good environment, feed it a bit more than autos and you’ll be fine. Good thing is you can make sure they are perfectly healthy before you flip them, where autos do their own thing. Once you grow photos and see the difference, you might not switch back.
Hey brother thanks for the holler, photos are cool, you can do a quick turn around like I do, or train, training takes time, but better yield. It is all up to you, 4 plants in a 4x4 if you are going to grow bushes, but I do not know any other way will be following along my friend @Hopalong
They like to be abused for bigger yields other than that just treat them the same. I usually let them do that on thing, they like a lot of breathing room and air circulation
I grew all Autoflowers outside last winter and already had some finish from this springs planting. I’m in my second year of outside photoperiod grow. To me, it seems that Autoflowers can be a little more genetically diverse. Photoperiod plants seem to be more consistent. Photoperiod plants can get MUCH larger than most Autoflowers. 2 schools of thought on that. Neither one is more right than the other. Grow 1 large crop due to a long veg time and get huge buds. Or, flip lights earlier and have 2 smaller full crops in the same time frame. Your choice, benefits to both. Since I only grow outside, I am dependent on the season. So, for me, mainly Photoperiods in the spring, Autoflowers in the fall. Here’s an example of my outdoor Photoperiod ILGM Gold Leaf plant that was put in the ground in roughy April 2025. 8-foot block wall, 10-foot black patio structure behind it. Just started pre-flower.
Absolutely agree with posts 1 and 2 but to add on to post 2 if you do photos and autos you don’t really miss out on any yielding. Due to you can train the photos giving them a longer veg time while still blooming autos in the 18/6 light cycle. So could do 3 photos and 3 autos, harvest autos then photos, repeat…
Photos are less likely to make you feel like you screwed up lol. Autos can be somewhat of a guessing game. I’ve had them start flower in as little as 2wks, tap out at 9" talk, but then I’ve had them get over 5ft tall outside. every now and again you see basically stems with nothing but fat calyxes at the nodes with no real flowers. They do make good filler grows for those longer photoperiod veg stages. Done right, you can crank out 2 whole auto grows right next to a photo. Rounding back to the question tho, photos are more forgiving. You can give them recovery time as opposed to just hoping there’s enough should you too or train them.
I’m all packed away for the rest of the winter here . We got snow just north and it won’t warm up til the end of September . Ahh , time to relax and cure lol . Gonna miss talking to you guys come Dec 10 . In the meantime yeah , never having done autos I cant comment . But I have had massive results with photos . Peace .
Thank you for all the encouragement my dear colleagues, I will make a mess of fotos and autos into those tents, we will see what happens!
I’ll be starting a new journal once I get going… still about 50 autos getting ready for harvest. Really humid here now, have to be on my toes checking for mold…
You can run photo on 12/12 from seed also. I am doing that right now in different stages. Smaller but same size as an auto. At maturity they flower. The good part is you can clone them in veg or flower. Problems during veg pullem out and hit them with 18/6 till healthy and stick back in. Just so much more control.
You don’t really need 2 tents for veg and flower, just reset timers or have veg timers and flower timers lol I do it all in 1 tent veg, flower, dry… Well gonna be trying drying come next harvest
will be following along my friend 
