Inside Vs Outside Autoflower growing

Growing autoflowering plants indoors or outdoors is a question many of new growers face when they are just starting their first crops and it is not an easy question to answer because every grow room is different, every outdoor climate has its own advantages and drawbacks and any grower has some limitations or advantages. Because of this much of a variation I would have to write a post for every one of you considering your growing conditions but the main point is that Autoflowers can be grown indoors and outdoors and both environments can yield amazing amounts and grow beautiful healthy plants but both can also give you jsut a couple of grams and stunted growth.

So knowing that I cannot answer this question completely I will try to give inside and outside growing advantages and disadvantages and try to compare some statistics like yield , height ,potency and so on.

Inside growing

Autoflower plant growing in indoor grow operations is the industry standard and because of the ruderalis genetics these plants usually stay small so they can be grown in small spaces and because they are very stress resistant almost anyone with no experience can manage to get a couple of grams in in their first grow.

Inside growing in the most common method of growing autoflowers because inside you are able to tweak and change all of your growing conditions and you can have full control of every aspect of your plants growth. This full control can prove crucial in producing top quality buds and high yielding plants but it can also lead to some trouble if some of the artificial environmental factors goes wrong. Because you are supplying every one of these environmental factors artificially eventually something can go wrong and then you need to act as fast as possible to salvage your crop and replace the broken part of your ecosystem.

My thoughts about inside growing are that inside I am able to grow my plants to their full potential because I am able to supply the best possible environment but no grow light can match the awesome power of the SUN so there are a lot of advantages and a few drawbacks to indoor cannabis cultivation.

Advantages

• The first and the strongest point that promotes inside growing is that you have that full control that I talked about and you can tweak your conditions so that your plants will grow to their absolute maximum potential.

• The second point where indoor cultivation is in front is the stealth as you can completely seal your actions from unwanted eyes and it is much easier to prevent anyone from finding out about your grow operation.

• Third advantage to indoor growing is the ease of monitoring your plants as usually grow rooms are created in the same house you live in so you are able to closely monitor all the vital signs of your plants and environment and in case anything goes wrong act immediately.

• Fourth advantage of indoor growing is the ability to maximize your plants potential as you can create those perfect conditions and grow amazing plants with huge buds.

These are the main advantages of indoor growing but there are more smaller ones that I will not expand on like the ability to get even yields and grow your crop all year long. I think these are just subsections from those four main points but there can be even more advantages of growing plants indoors rather than outdoors and every grower should think about his climate conditions and other related factors that could influence your garden.

Disadvantages

Indoor growing has many advantages but nothing is perfect and you will also need to face these disadvantages:

• The first and the most talked about disadvantage is the cost of growing. Because you need to get grow lights, ventilation, nutrients ,pots, soil and devices that will measure your growing conditions it can get your startup costs quite high and many newcomers feel that outdoors they can get by just buying the seeds and planting them.

• Another disadvantage of indoor growing is the time investment it takes to monitor all those involved artificial environmental factors like ventilation and odor controll, temperature, lights and so on. This all can sum up to quite a large number of hours and if you are using hydroponic growing systems and training your plants then those numbers can get even bigger.

• The third disadvantage of inside autoflower growing is the fact that you can’t completely mimic the SUN’s full spectrum and intensity with any of the grow lights that are available on the market. Of course you can get the top grow lights and place them all around your grow room but they won’t have anywhere close to the full spectrum light that SUN produces.

• And the final disadvantage in my mind is the hardness of cultivation. Indoors you have to monitor and check every aspect that could influence your plants but outdoors most of them you can’t influence so you have much less to do.

Another form of inside growing your autoflower plants is setting them on a windowsill and getting crop in that way. This is a hybrid solution and it basically reduces the stealthiness of your grow operation but you can use the power of the SUN to grow top buds. Of course if you place your plants by the window and light needs to travel through glass to get to your plants there will be some energy lost but the most important point is that you CAN grow plants in this way and if you are interested in growing plants on your windowsill then check out Andrew Pyrah’s  website where he shows how he grew autoflowering plants on a window-sill at Netherlands.

As you can see Indoor marijuana growing had some benefits and drawbacks but before we can completely answer the question which one is best we also need to examine outside growing.

Outside growing

Outdoor cannabis cultivation in general is a completely different from indoor growing and is usually associated with more organic buds and less work. Autoflower outdoor growing is no different from regular photoperiod plant growing as the ruderalis plant originated in the wild and is not just a lab experiment.

Outdoors you get the full power of sunlight and can grow huge plants with trichome ritch buds but overall you have less control over your crop and you can’t prevent rainfalls and storms from harming your plants as much as you could prevent any condition changes indoors. Of course if we talk about outdoor cultivation we need to separate completely outdoor growing like the guerilla style and the outdoor greenhouse growing which is a hybrid of indoor and outdoor mix.

Lets start out with that complete outdoor growing with no shelter and protection gear in place. This is how cannabis grows in the wild but this is not necessarily the best or the most productive method of cultivation and here are the advantages and disadvantages:

Outdoor Advantages

• You will need to put in less work in maintaining your plants so it will be easier to grow them.

• More organic style of growing –  This implies that outside you have the SUN’s light that grows your plants and they get nutrients from the surrounding soil so no chemicals and other harmful substances be in your end product.

• Outdoors SUN provides cannabis plants with more UV radiation and because plant tries to protect itself from that harmful radiation it creates more resin so outside buds can be more potent.

• Free of charge – Outside growers often don’t have any additional costs and just get some seeds and plant them in the ground and get their harvest a couple of months later.

Outdoor Disadvantages

• First disadvantage of outdoor growing is that you can’t influence the weather and growing conditions and you are dependent on the mother nature to give you good weather, sunny days and some rainfalls so your plants can grow to their full potential. I also need to mention other factors in this disadvantage of not being able to influence conditions and they are: not being able to grow plants all year long and supplying optimal nutrients and I bet there are more but I can’t think of any other.

• Second thing that can be considered a disadvantage is that you can’t grow your autoflowers to their full potential all year long. Of course autos don’t need light cycle changes and can grow in almost any altitude and any season but you will get the best growth in the summer and in autumn or spring or even winter you won’t get nowhere near the growth and yield you would have in the summer.

• Another outdoor disadvantage is the safeness of your garden as outside many more eyes can spot your plants no matter if they grow by your house or in the woods and this leads to a more riskier grow operations.

• Outside you can also get some roge pollen ruining your seedless crop as cannabis male plant pollen can travel for miles in windy days and can land on your females from a far off male plants.

These are some of the aspects that you need to think about when growing your autos outdoors but there is that greenhouse method with its own set of advantages but the only thing I can think of why greenhouse cultivation won’t be better than complete outdoor growing is the cost of building that greenhouse.

Greenhouse growing Advantages

• You can influence the growing conditions more than in complete outside grow. You Are able to seal off the greenhouse at night to retain heat and you can also increase or decrease the humidity and the only thing you can’t influence is the lightsource.

• And even if you can’t influence the Sun you can decrease the suns energy if the light gets too bright in the middle of summer with some partial reflective plastic sheets that are covered around your greenhouse.

• Greenhouse growing is also again more safer than complete outdoor grow as there are many materials that won’t show outside viewers what is inside your greenhouse.

• The final advantage is the ability to grow your plants all year as some greenhouses are heated and can have additional light sources and basically act as an indoor environment with the additional benefit of getting direct sunlight that helps to grow your weed.

These are some of the main point what any grower face when trying to decide indoor or outdoor and as you can see there are also some hybrid versions of both these methods so there are some possibilities to choose from and you need to evaluate all the benefits and drawbacks of all these environments and choose the best one that suits your needs.

Inside vs outside comparison

Here I will try to make the final point by giving some comparison metrics of indoor and outdoor growing.

Pests and other harmful living things:

• Outdoors: There are many danger that your plant can get eaten by wild animals, it can get some spider mites, and other parasitic organisms and you will have much harder time getting rid of them because you can’t attend your plants 24/7 like you can growing indoors.

• Indoors: Inside there are less potential risks of getting any of the insects that can harm your garden but if you get them they are more likely to spread rapidly because they have perfect conditions and all plants are similar.

Yield

• Outdoors: the total yield is completely reliant of the weather conditions but if you get great summer then you can get far more than any indoor grow operation can produce.

• Indoors: Inside you can only get as big yields as good is your lightsource and you can’t certainly get as big of a yield from one plant than outdoors but you can grow multiple plants and maximize your gram output in that way.

Potency

• Outdoors: Outdoors you get the complete spectrum of light including the UV radiation and because cannabis is trying to protect itself from that harmful UV radiation it produces more trichomes so you can get more potent plants.

• Indoors: Indoor grow weed can get as strong as outside grown but then you need perfect conditions and you also need to supply your plants with UVB radiation bulbs or install Metal Halide light sources as they produce more UV radiation.

Tip: many think that indoor cultivated plants are more potent than outdoor ones but in my experience it is not the case and I think people usually get buds from stronger plants grown indoors than from outdoor crops and If one strain is grown indoors or outdoors you won’t feel the difference in the strenght but what would the lab say about the actual THC content I don’t know!

Time involvement

• Outdoors: Outside growing require less work and you can grow outdoor crops more easily.

• Indoors: Inside growing is more time consuming and you will need a lot more time investment than an outdoor crop would need.

Expenses

• Outdoors: As you can imagine outdoors there are far less expenses and you basically need seeds and maybe some fertilizer but that fertilizer is not critically necessary and in most cases you can get by without it..

• Indoors: Indoors you need lights, ventilation, humidity control, pots, fertilizer, soil and so on and it all equates to a lot of initial investment and also upkeep costs.

Ease of growing

• Outdoors: Just like with the time investment outdoor you just plant your seed and attend it maybe few times a month or once a week.

• Indoors: Inside however you need to consistently check all the environmental factors and water your plants regularly.

Super Autoflowers:

• Outdoors: Super autoflowers are the new breed of autoflowers that grow bigger and stronger and because of these conditions they can be effectively grown outside. These plants will take longer to mature and any weather stresses won’t impact them as much because they will have more time to recover

• Indoors:  Inside however Super autos are often too big for small grow operations but if you have large growing area then you can get amazing yields but you will need a lot more plants than you would need outside to get the same total bud weight.

Conclusion

At the end it all comes down to each individual growers needs and you should choose which one of these growing environments will be the one for you and here are my final thoughts:

Indoor –  more controlled but more expensive.

Greenhouse – Controlled, safe and cheaper than indoor growing.

Outdoor –  easier ,cheaper but you have almost no control.

Window-sill – low yields and lower safety but cheaper.

After this final thought I would advise to grow autoflowers into greenhouses but if you can’t get a hold of one then stick to the inside growing!