If you are a grower of autoflowering marijuana, or a marijuana grower in general, you are very well aware of how these plants are sensitive to growing conditions. These plants need to be exposed to the right growing conditions in order to achieve your desired yields in the end. These conditions we’re talking about include temperature, pH , humidity, light and many more. And the amount of nutrients you feed them is not an exemption to these factors. So here we are going to talk about how to properly feed your autoflowering weed so that you get nice and desirable results come harvest time.
The Seedling Phase
For autoflowering weed, the first two weeks of growth are the most important. If you do not know it yet, autoflowering weed is almost always grown from seeds as it is impossible to clone them due to the speed at which they grow. When they are in the seedling phase, you must make sure to watch the amount of nutrients you are feeding them as overfeeding or underfeeding can be perilous for your young plants.
During the seedling phase, you can start the little autoflowering seedlings with at least one eighth of the required nutrients. Let them adapt to this amount of nutrients at first. And when you see that they have already adapted quite well, you could start increasing the nutrient dosage to say one fourth or two times the initial nutrients that you fed them with.
The Pre-Flowering Phase
Autoflowering weed is different from regular weed in that they virtually have no vegetative phase. From the seedling phase, you could say that autoflowering weed go straight to the flowering stage. So when the little seedlings grow at an even faster rate then it is time to judge that they are already in the flowering stage. Therefore at this point you need to feed them with even more nutrients. At this point you could give your autoflowering weed at least one half of the required dosage of nutrients. Also make sure that you give fertilizers that have high Nitrogen content as these plants consume much more Nitrogen during these phase. The advisable kinds of fertilizer to use during the pre-flowering stage are 10-5-5 or even 20-10-10.
The Flowering Phase
After the pre-flowering stage comes the flowering stage which can be as quick as well. When you see the first flowers on your autoflowering weed plants you can then change up the fertilizers that you are using. At this point, your plants need more Phosphorus and Potassium than they need Nitrogen. So switch to fertilizers that have higher values for the last 2 numbers on the NPK labels. A good mix to use could be 5-10-10 and 10-20-20.
Overfeeding and Underfeeding
Overfeeding is a very common mistake since many people think that the more you feed your plants, the better. But this is not the case with any kind of plant, especially with autoflowering weed. The most dangerous part is that you could go on overfeeding your weed for quite a while and not even notice that you are doing so until you see signs of overfeeding on them. The same goes for nutrient underfeeding as well.
The best way to avoid overfeeding your autoflowering weed is to follow the right nutrient schedule and follow the advised amounts for nutrient feeding in their respective growth stages.
