By Luke Sumpter


Have you ever grown cannabis and asked, "Why are my autoflowers so small?". First of all, autos are genetically wired to turn out smaller than most photoperiod varieties. However, there are several approaches you can take to prevent small autoflowers.

Growers cultivate these varieties for numerous reasons, most notably for their rapid life cycle, overall simplicity, and small stature. The latter trait in particular allows growers to achieve an element of stealth, with some even raising plants in converted cupboards and buckets. But when you're focused on yield alone, it helps to take measures to avoid letting your plants remain compact. Use the guide below to prevent small autos and score larger plants every time.

Why Cannabis Autos Stay Small (and How to Fix It)

Genetics plays a big factor when it comes to the eventual size of an autoflower, but the environment also holds significant sway. Note that autos reach an average height of 60–120cm. We’re going to show you how to control these variables to raise plants that reach the higher end of the spectrum.

Lack of Planning

Planning reigns supreme when it comes to avoiding small autolfowers. Planning your grow accordingly involves selecting the right genetics (some autos grow bigger than others) and planning out the environment.

For example, rushing into a grow with poor-quality genetics and a tiny container will result in tiny autos and a disappointing yield. You’ll also need to consider light power, your watering schedule, and the type of soil you’re going to need; all of these factors will affect the end result.

Ultimately, the more knowledge you obtain, the better you'll become at avoiding small autoflowers. At Royal Queen Seeds, we’ve spent years crafting our cannabis blog. This wealth of information contains everything you need to know about growing weed, from soil quality and lighting to nutrients. Make use of this deep and broad resource during your next grow for the best results.

Harness Genetic To Avoid Small Autoflowers

Every grow starts with strain selection. Not only will choosing the correct variety help you avoid small plants, but the decision will also dictate the core effects, smells, and flavours of your harvest. First of all, you’ll want to aim for quality. Premium seeds have better germination rates and superior results—you’ll find such seeds all throughout the RQS catalogue. Next, you should check out the specific characteristics of any strains that catch your eye. If you’re looking for size, you should steer clear of inherently small autos such as Royal Dwarf that are designed purely for stealth. Instead, consider cultivars such as Mimosa Automatic, which reaches a top height of 160cm. To find a strain that suits you perfectly, use the RQS Cannabis Seedfinder to narrow down your search.

How To Avoid Small Auto Cannabis Plants

Germination Problems Lead To Small Autoflowers

Optimal germination gives your plants the best start possible. Remember, autoflowering strains flower based on an internal genetic clock, and this clock starts ticking the moment seeds germinate. The quicker your plant emerges to the surface, the longer it will spend basking in light and creating energy to grow taller and more abundant. For this reason, we recommend the simple paper towel method when germinating autos.

This method has a high rate of success and sidesteps any early issues with the soil, such as damping off. Simply place your seeds on a damp paper towel, positioning them several centimetres apart. Place another damp paper towel over them and move to a dark place (cupboards work great). Once your seeds develop white roots 2–3cm in length, transfer them into the soil.

Too-Dense Growing Medium

Autoflowering plants favour a light, airy, and less nutrient-dense growing medium. This helps roots quickly expand throughout the soil, which is especially important during the seedling and early vegetative stage. Here, a thick, extremely dense growing medium can slow down growth, which means smaller plants come harvest time. Auto cannabis growers have success with a wide array of growing media, but we find this auto potting mix works well every time:

3 parts peat moss 3 parts compost
2 parts perlite (pre-wet) 1 part vermiculite (pre-wet)

Restrictions With Pots and Containers Limit Auto Growth

Containers play a crucial role in plant growth. The size of the pot you choose can either limit or promote growth. But size isn’t everything. The type of container can also influence the health of your plants and the state of their precious root networks.

  • Pot size

Growers often autumn into the trap of assuming they need just a small pot when growing autos. When done intentionally, this choice helps to keep plants small and stealthy. However, if you want to avoid small autos, you need to opt for a larger container size. Plants soon fill out their containers, and when their roots realise they’re out of room, your plants will stop growing. We recommend using an 11L pot if you want tall and bulky autoflowering plants. This provides enough room for them to surge, without being overkill.

How To Avoid Small Auto Cannabis Plants
  • Pot type

Size aside, pot type also plays a role in overall plant health and performance. While standard plastic pots do the trick, they predispose root systems to lack of aeration and waterlogging. Thankfully, innovative minds within the cannabis space have found ways to rectify these issues. Both fabric pots and smart pots encourage far more airflow through the growing medium and offer superior drainage, in turn minimising the chance of disease.

How To Avoid Small Auto Cannabis Plants

Lighting

You might not remember much from high school biology, but chances are you remember the word “photosynthesis” and how plants convert light into vital sugars. Cannabis fan leaves are essentially biological solar panels. As light hits them, the chloroplasts within convert light energy into sugars that fuel plant growth. Therefore, it makes sense that the more light your autos receive, the bigger they’ll grow.

  • Indoors

Indoor plants need supplementary lighting. Placing your autos on a south-facing window sill will help you save money, but your plants won’t even come close to their full potential. Instead, you’ll need to rig up some powerful LED or HID lights in your growing tent. Whatever type you go for, aim for a model capable of emitting at least 400W.

Mars Hydro FC4800 – 480W LED Grow Light
112_Effect_Spectrum 660-665nm, 2800-3000K, 4800-5000K
114_Effect_Product Size 84x84x8 cm
115_Effect_Power Draw 480W±5%
116_Effect_PPE 2.85μmol/j
117_Effect_ppf 1368μmol/S
119_Effect_Chip Samsung LM301H EVO
120_Effect_Cultivation Coverage 120x120 cm
121_Effect_Yield 3.5g/watt

Buy Mars Hydro FC4800 – 480W LED Grow Light


Once you’ve selected your light, you need to choose how long to leave them on for; autos can handle light 24 hours a day as light doesn’t affect their ability to flower. However, you’ll also achieve great results with a schedule of 18 hours on and 6 hours off throughout the entire growing cycle.

How To Avoid Small Auto Cannabis Plants
  • Outdoors

Of course, you have much less control over the light cycle outdoors. Whereas photoperiod strains are better suited to warm and sunny climates, autos make growing outdoors possible even in the shorter and cooler growing seasons of northern latitudes. However, if you’re lucky enough to live in the warmer climes of southern Europe, your plants will grow much faster and taller by the end of the season.

Regardless of where you grow outdoors, there are a few things you should consider to prevent short autoflowers. Most autos are ready to harvest 8–10 weeks after germination. Therefore, you should aim to sow seeds during early June to time your plant's growth spurts with the longest days of the year. When it’s time to transplant, try to position them in a south-facing area that gets plenty of sun, with some protection from the wind.

How To Avoid Small Auto Cannabis Plants

Use Watering Schedule To Prevent Short Autos

Watering cannabis plants might seem like the simplest task when it comes to growing. However, watering incorrectly does a lot more harm than you might think, and derails many grows before they get started. Just like us, cannabis plants perish pretty quickly without water. They need it for photosynthesis, to transport nutrients, and remain turgid. Because it’s so important, many beginners tend to overwater their beloved plants, a mistake that never ends well.

Excess water pools in tiny pockets of air within the growing medium. At best, this causes roots to temporarily suffocate. At worst, long periods of excess water can lead to the proliferation of bad anaerobic bacteria (microbes that grow without the presence of oxygen) that can harm the roots and even kill plants. Periods of water pooling can interfere with root function, which can slow down the growth of your plants and impact the end result.

When watering, you should aim to water the medium to 25–33% capacity. Of course, you can’t judge this with your eyes alone. Just aim to water your containers to the point where they hold water, without too much draining out of the bottom. You can weigh your plants before and after watering to know when to water again, or simply wait until the top five centimetres of soil becomes totally dry.

Even Temperature and Humidity Can Cause Small Autos

Sure, water, light, and soil are all critical components of growing good cannabis. But temperature and humidity are also worth knowing about, especially when you want to grow avoid small autos. Cannabis grows best within specific temperature and humidity ranges. Although these are difficult to control outdoors, you’ll have a much greater influence over these parameters indoors by implementing fans, heaters, humidifiers, and dehumidifiers. Check out the optimal figures for each stage of the growing cycle:

SEEDLING STAGE VEGETATIVE STAGE
Temperature: 20–25°C Temperature: 22–28°C
Humidity: 65–70% Humidity: 40–70%
FLOWERING STAGE LATE FLOWERING STAGE
(1–2 weeks before harvest)
Temperature: 20–26°C Temperature: 18–24°C
Humidity: 40–50% Humidity: 30–40%

Nutrients Are Key In Preventing Short Autoflowers

Just as cannabis plants need light and water, they depend upon an array of macronutrients and micronutrients to fulfil key physiological functions. They need nitrogen to develop healthy green leaves, plenty of potassium to drive flowering, calcium for root health, and magnesium to form the chlorophyll molecule.

Autos definitely need nutrients to survive and thrive, but they tend to get along with less nutrition than their photoperiod cousins. We recommend starting with a high-quality potting mix amended with homemade compost or worm castings to feed your soil life. If you decide to use packaged nutrients, aim to apply 50–75% of the dose recommended on the instructions.

Plants quickly take a turn for the worse when starved of key nutrients or overfed. Luckily, their leaves do a pretty good job at signalling what’s missing. Our guide on leaf reading will help you identify any issues if they pop up.

Still Growing Small Autos? Consider pH

We’ve already covered basic principles you would have learned in biology class. Now, we need to rehash some essential chemistry. Potential hydrogen, or pH, describes the amount of hydrogen ions within a solution. The pH scale ranges from 0–14. Acidic solutions that contain more hydrogen ions rank from 0–6; alkaline solutions with fewer hydrogen ions rank from 8–14; 7 represents a neutral solution.

Why does this matter when it comes to growing tall autos? Well, cannabis roots uptake nutrients much more effectively when the growing medium features a specific pH. In fact, if the pH strays too far in either direction, it can stop roots from taking up nutrients altogether.

Your soil growing medium should feature a pH of 6.0–7.0. You can measure pH using a pH tester and adjust it by applying pH up and down products. In a hydroponic grow, the ideal pH window is between 5.5–6.5.

How To Avoid Small Auto Cannabis Plants

Master the Basics to Avoid Small Auto Plants

There you have it; you’re ready to grow the tallest and most productive autoflowering cannabis plants possible. Having taken in the tips above, you’re more than ready to set out and push your genetics to the limit. But try not to overcomplicate things and get too experimental. Remember, this isn’t about turning into a mad scientist! Simply start with good genetics and tweak the environment to unlock the potential within each seed and avoid short autos. Before we say goodbye, here’s a summary of how to prevent small autos, and some additional tips:

  • Start your seeds in their final pots
  • Use bigger containers
  • Use an airy growing medium
  • Add beneficial microbes
  • Start seedlings indoors
  • Opt for at least 18 hours of light
  • Use lights that put out at least 400W
  • Avoid overwatering
  • Dial in temperate and humidity for each phase indoors
  • Keep an eye out for nutrient deficiencies
  • Measure pH and adjust when needed

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Privacy Policy - Royal Queen Seeds

To ensure a safe online environment and guarantee adequate data protection, we strictly comply with all legal requirements. In this privacy statement, we provide information about how and for what purpose data is collected, safety measures, storage periods and contact details.


COMPANY NAME: SNORKEL SPAIN, SL (hereinafter ROYAL QUEEN SEEDS)

C/ Vilar d'Abdelà, 5 (nave 1) CP: 08170 de Montornès del Vallès

+34 937 379 846

support@royalqueenseeds.com


The present Privacy Policy sets out the terms on which we will treat personal data at ROYAL QUEEN SEEDS; this includes any personal data collected through our website https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/ as well as any other data we process in the course of our business activities.

ROYAL QUEEN SEEDS collects the following personal data for the purposes listed below:

SECTION 1 – PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

1.1 Account purchases

Account purchases can only be made if you are in possession of a personal account. When you create an account or purchase something from our shop, as part of the buying and selling process we collect the following personal information that you provide to us:

This information is required for delivery. In addition, when you browse our shop, we automatically receive the Internet Protocol (IP) address of your computer. Based on this information, we can optimise your online experience and at the same time protect our online environment.

Purpose of data collection

We collect and store account-related data for the following purposes:

(a) to carry out obligations arising from any contracts between you and us, and to provide you with information, products and services that you may request from us;

(b) to set up, manage and communicate with you about your account and your orders;

(c) to conduct market research and analysis;

(d) to confirm your age and identity, and to detect and prevent fraud.

1.2 Newsletters

With your explicit permission, we may send you newsletters about our shop, new products and other updates. We send newsletters based on your explicit consent. In the event that you purchase a product, and in accordance with current regulations, we may send you commercial communications in accordance with the legitimate interest of our company, always about products or services similar to those you have purchased or contracted. In any case, you may exercise your right of opposition through the channels announced in this Privacy Policy. The following information is collected in relation to the newsletter:

We do not need to know the sex of the person in order to send the newsletter (data minimisation: by law we must ask for data that is strictly necessary to provide the service, and in this case knowing the sex is not necessary to send the newsletter).

Purpose of data collection

The data collected is used to:

(a) personalise our emails, including your name and gender;

(b) provide gender-specific content.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by using the link provided in the newsletter or the contact information provided in section 2.

1.3 Customer service and contact form

In order to provide appropriate support, our customer service employees have access to information related to the account. Consequently, their support will be highly effective and friendly. The data provided in our contact form is used by our CRM provider, SuperOffice. We will only use your details to respond to your message.

SECTION 2 – LEGITIMATE INTEREST

If you have purchased any of our products, please note that we may process your personal data for promotional purposes, based on Royal Queen Seeds' legitimate interest only to offer you products or services from our company and about products or services similar to those you have purchased. You may exercise your right to opt out of future messages by the means set out in this Privacy Policy or through any notification you receive.

2.1 How do you withdraw consent?

If you change your mind, you can withdraw your consent for us to contact you for the purpose of collecting, using, or disclosing your data at any time by reaching out to us at: support@royalqueenseeds.com.

SECTION 3 – DISCLOSURE

We may disclose your personal information if we are required to do so by law or if you breach our Terms of Service.

SECTION 4 – HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR DATA?

At Royal Queen Seeds, we will not retain your data for longer than is necessary for the purposes described in this Policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of data; however, the longest period we will normally hold any personal data is 10 years.

4.1 Account information

Data relating to the account remains relevant for as long as the consumer is in possession of an account. Therefore, the data remains documented for as long as the account exists. When our customers delete an account, the associated data will be deleted within a reasonable period of time. Requests regarding the inspection or correction of stored personal data or the deletion of an account can be sent to support@royalqueenseeds.com.

4.2 Newsletters

In the event that you give us your consent to inform you about our products or services, we will keep your data until you express your wish not to receive any further communications from us. However, we regularly (every month) carry out a relevance check. Registered customers (and their personal information) will be deleted whenever customers do not reply to our request. In addition, our newsletter mailing has an opt-out feature. Consumers can withdraw their consent by using this opt-out feature.

SECTION 5 – COOKIES

Cookies are small information files that notify your computer of previous interactions with our website. These cookies are stored on your hard drive, not on our website. Essentially, when you use our website, your computer displays its cookies to us, informing our site that you have visited before. This allows our website to function more quickly and remember aspects related to your previous visits (such as your username), making your experience more convenient. At Royal Queen Seeds, we use two types of cookies: functional and analytical.

5.1 Functional Cookies

Functional cookies are used to enhance your online experience. Among other things, these cookies track what is added to your shopping cart. The use of these cookies does not require prior authorization.

5.2 Analytical Cookies

Analytical cookies are used for research and market analysis. The data collected with these analytical cookies is anonymous, making it unusable for third parties. The use of these cookies does not require prior authorization.

SECTION 5 – THIRD-PARTY SERVICES

Third-party services are required to conduct transactions and provide our services. In general, the third-party providers we use will only collect, use and disclose your information to the extent necessary to enable them to perform the services they provide to us.

However, certain third-party service providers, such as payment gateways and other payment transaction processors, have their own privacy policies regarding the information we must provide to them for your transactions.

We encourage you to read the privacy policies of these providers so that you can understand how these providers will handle your personal information.

In particular, certain suppliers may be located or have facilities located in a different jurisdiction than yours or ours. Therefore, if you choose to proceed with a transaction involving the services of a third party, your information may be subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which that service provider or its facilities are located.

Once you leave our website or are redirected to a third-party website or application, you are no longer governed by this Privacy Policy or the Terms of Service of our website.

Web analytics service (anonymous data)

On this website we have integrated an element of a web analytics service (with anonymisation functionality). Web analytics can be defined as the gathering, processing and analysis of data about the behaviour of visitors to websites. An analytics service collects, among other things, data about which website a person came from (the so-called referrer), which sub-pages they visited or how often and for how long they visited a sub-page. Web analytics is mainly used for website optimisation and for a cost–benefit analysis of internet advertising.

Courier service

To complete deliveries we use a courier service. This courier service carries out the delivery between our company and the consumer's home. To complete these logistics, the company requires access to the consumer's name and address information.

Mailing service

Royal Queen Seeds uses a third-party mail service provider to send its newsletter. This provider has access to limited account information related to opt-in consent (e.g. email address).

Marketing services

Royal Queen Seeds has the support of a company that specialises in marketing and communication activities. Their access to personal information is very limited and mostly anonymous.

Payment services

At Royal Queen Seeds we use external payment services to handle our transactions (e.g. credit card payments).

SECTION 6 – SECURITY

To protect your personal information, we take reasonable precautions and follow industry standard best practices to ensure that it is not inappropriately lost, misused, accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed.

If you provide us with your credit card information, the information is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL) and stored using AES-256 encryption. Although no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, we follow all PCI-DSS requirements and implement additional industry standards that are commonly accepted. Information related to the account is protected with a hashing method. This method transforms the information into a generated hash. As a result, confidential information is protected and invisible, even to us. In addition, our databases are exceptionally protected against unauthorised access. For example, access to the database is only possible and permitted via approved IP addresses (e.g. from Royal Queen Seeds headquarters). Other attempts and addresses are rejected at all times.

Furthermore, data is anonymised as much as possible, so it cannot be directly linked to a specific consumer. With this data, however, we may be able to carry out market research and analysis. In addition, the third parties concerned (e.g. mailing service) are examined prior to our collaboration, comply with the GDPR from the EU and receive a processing agreement. Within Royal Queen Seeds, employees are assigned different access permissions. Specific permission provides access only to information that is strictly required to perform a task. Digital security measures are subject to change and must meet high requirements to ensure the safety of online customers. That is why, at Royal Queen Seeds, we appoint a security officer. Regular verification and improvement of security measures (where necessary) are part of the role.

SECTION 7 – CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, so please check back regularly. Changes and clarifications will be effective immediately upon being published on the Website. If we make substantial changes to this policy, we will notify you here that it has been updated so you will know what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances, if any, we use and/or disclose it.

SECTION 8 – YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO: