Autoflower hasn't flowered and outgrown its pot. Okay to transplant after 12/12 switch?

I'm 9 weeks in to my first grow - Auto AK. It has shown pre-flowers but hasn't really started flowering yet - I ended changing the lights to 12/12 a week ago. Her reluctance to flower on her own has actually worked out well for me because had the thing flowered around 4 weeks or so as I expected, my final yield would likely have been not so great as the plant was pretty tiny then and I had some deficiency issues early on that stunted things.

So, she's had plenty of time to recover and has grown nice and bushy. I only have her in a 2 gallon pot as I was expecting a short seed to harvest time and a small plant, but now she's getting pretty big.

My question is, being 1 week into 12/12, is it too late to transplant to a larger pot? Would the roots even extend beyond the current root ball to make it worth it?

Things are mostly going very well and I might actually end up with a decent yield - don't want her potential to be limited by a small pot, but also don't want to put her through unnecessary stress if it's too late for the roots to take advantage of the extra space.

Some issue with the site isn't allowing me to upload an image of the plant as she is now. I'll try to add a picture later.

Not sure why your growing an auto and switched to 12/12, or started in a small pot as each defeats the purpose of an autoflower grow.

autoflower doesnt care what the light cycle is.

autoflower doesnt like getting stunted by repotting.

So yes it will be stressed, and you probably wont get maximum yield. In that pot or a bigger one.

Autoflowers dont need a change in light cycle and repotting them stunts growth.

sorry

I changed to 12/12 because I was at 8 weeks and no flowering. Had to call it at some point - 8 weeks was plenty of time, and from what I've read the light change will trigger flowering if needed. I gave it time to do things on it's own.

As far as the pot size, I've read that 2 gallons is plenty for an auto as they tend to not grow that big.

I have seen some big auto's. All are different. Some veg longer some shorter.

Just keep it in its pot, or if you can repot it without disturbing the roots do it gently and you should be fine. More light will increase your yield in flower. 12/12 will be less

Thanks for the suggestion. I'd rather have it in longer light. I was expecting to be harvesting around 8 weeks, so once 8 weeks came and still no flowers, switching to 12/12 felt like the logical thing to do. And I worried that maybe something was up with the genetics and this wasn't actually an auto.

Now that I've been in 12/12 for a week can I even change the lighting without confusing and stressing her out?

And still wondering, if I transplant will the roots even be able to use the increased soil volume at this point?

The extra water capacity would be more helpful to you and the plant. As for changing the light cycle back, i have know idea. Never tried it..... maybe someone else here could chime in.

Auto's vary as much as photo's. Some long veg, some short. Some yield big some not so much. The ideal thing is to let them do their thing.

Yes you can repot it. Let the soil get on the dry side so.it comes out the pot easy.

Some autos get very big. The tap root, size of pot and type of nutes will effect how big it gets.

At eight weeks and not flowering I doubt it was an auto and will need to stay on 12/12.

If it is an auto the light cycle doesn't matter and 12/12 will hurt yield.

whitebb2727 said:

Yes you can repot it. Let the soil get on the dry side so.it comes out the pot easy.

Some autos get very big. The tap root, size of pot and type of nutes will effect how big it gets.

At eight weeks and not flowering I doubt it was an auto and will need to stay on 12/12.

If it is an auto the light cycle doesn't matter and 12/12 will hurt yield.

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^^^^ best advice so far

Transplanted today with no problems. Came right out of the old pot very smoothly with all the soil and roots intact. Got a picture of what it looked like but still can't upload.

CallMeSteam said:

I changed to 12/12 because I was at 8 weeks and no flowering. Had to call it at some point - 8 weeks was plenty of time, and from what I've read the light change will trigger flowering if needed. I gave it time to do things on it's own.

As far as the pot size, I've read that 2 gallons is plenty for an auto as they tend to not grow that big.

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I agree, comes a point when you got to say it's not behaving as an auto, and 8 weeks is more than I would wait

I'm currently in the same situation when one of my auto's just won't flower (6 weeks old), so into the 12/12 room it went.

I have had several Crop King auto's that would just not flower until they are treated like a photo (12/12)

BTW: typically you start auto's in their final pot....best to avoid transplanting them, but not saying you can't

ISK said:

BTW: typically you start auto's in their final pot....best to avoid transplanting them, but not saying you can't

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Yeah, I realized that after I started. I read about how you should progressively up the pot size as you go, but realized later that didn't pertain to autos. The 2 gallon pot wasn't even the first one I used.

Reminds me of another question regarding autos and transplanting. Is it discouraged because it slows the growth a few days, which you can't afford with a short auto's timeline? Or is there some other reason they dislike transplants more than photos? I ask because since this has been going for over two months without even starting flowering, I'm not so concerned about losing a few days of growth to stress. Should I just treat her like a photo at this point?

Also, how long is typical for flowers to form after the switch to 12/12? I had some white pistils showing before the switch and now I'm finding more of them on another branches, but certainly not at all the bud sites. Switched to 12/12 just over a week ago.