As you probably know, most cannabis plants are sensitive to light hours fluctuations. The decrease in light hours activates the flowering of the cannabis plants until harvest. It is because of this characteristic that in outdoor cultivation only one harvest per season is possible.
But there is one exception that we expose in this category, the auto-flowering or automatic marijuana plants. These are plants that start to flower with any photoperiod (amount of light exposure), and this offers the opportunity to have several harvests during the outdoor season.
What is the origin of the auto-flowering plants?
This interesting characteristic comes from a cannabis strain called Ruderalis originally from some Russian and Canadian regions. These native plants have developed the ability to flower a few weeks after germination at any time of the year as an adaptation to the environmental conditions. These automatic landrace strains are generally not very productive and have a cannabinoids low concentration and in particular THC.
Over the last ten years or so, some breeders have understood the interest in crossing powerful and productive classic strains that are sensitive to the photoperiod with Ruderalis plants. This work has led to the release of auto-flowering hybrid plants with very interesting cannabinoid concentrations and a powerful psychoactive effect, as well as offering abundant production of top quality resinous buds.
Automatic cannabis plant cultivation
The main advantage of auto-flowering genetics is that they can be cultivated outdoors at any time of the year, provided that the temperature is right for the plant. It is recommended to sow them from late March to late August in order to obtain a maximum yield with the automatic plants, by having more light hours. The complete cycle of the auto-flowering plants, depending on the varieties and hybrids, can vary from 60 to 90 days. This enables between 3-4 harvests per year depending on the latitude.
Although the interest may be mainly in outdoor cultivation, it should be noted that they can also be cultivated in indoor facilities. For optimum cultivation, a 20 hour photoperiod is applied during the entire plant's life cycle, using 11L or 18L pots. It is important to specify that cuttings cannot be obtained from auto-flowering plants. To do so it is necessary to preserve mother plants. The auto-flowering plants go into flowering stage whatever the circumstances.
