Lemon Pie Auto Grow: My Biggest Autoflower so Far

Hello, everybody! Let me share with you my recent Lemon Pie Auto grow which was my most rewarding run with an autoflower so far.

Lemon Pie Auto grow is something that any autoflower enthusiast needs to experience first hand because this strain is vigorous, healthy, fast, and produces generous amounts of top-shelf bud without any hassle. Sativa dominant phenotypes seem to be especially high-yielding due to a great number of side branches and bud sites.

Lemon Pie Auto Grow: The Biggest of 8 Plants in My Tent

I won’t describe the process of germination because with FastBuds seeds any method makes the beans pop quickly and produces healthy seedlings right out of the gate.

When they sprouted, I first put Lemon Pie Auto (Fast Buds) and her 7 girlfriends into small plastic containers filled with a coco/perlite mix. For the first few days, they got nothing but distilled water. Which never prevented them from growing big and strong.

Around the end of the second week, they were transplanted into their final 5 gallon (19.93 l) plastic containers filled with the same coco/perlite mix. I watered them manually.

In my opinion, coco and perlite make the ideal medium because the former retains moisture and the latter provides roots with lots of oxygen. Combine this with frequent fertigation, and the growth of your weed becomes unstoppable. The only thing to keep in mind is that in coco you have to use extra amounts of calcium and magnesium.

My 3’x4’ grow tent has more than enough room for 8 autoflowers. I don’t even have to grow them SOG-style. I can train them, directing the growth sidewise, and they still don’t overcrowd each other. At least until this cycle—when I saw my Lemon Pie Auto grow bigger and bigger until she claimed most of the free space.

I should say that the Lemon Pie Auto grow patterns were the most promising from the start: in weeks 2 and 3, this young plant already had very strong side branches at every node. And so I started to train her. Nothing fancy, just bending the main stem and the longest of the side branches and tying them down with pieces of copper wire.

Soon I had to move Lemon Pie Auto to the edge of my garden because some of her branches were standing tall above the canopy, too close to my Mars Hydro LED boards.

A Rich but Simple Diet and No Major Stresses

Throughout the grow, I would use the General Hydroponics line of nutrients at approximately 2 teaspoons per gallon. The plants seemed to like their diet and grew without any issues. The trick is to go easy on the nutrients and not forget about a calmag supplement, the rest goes on cruise control.

I never even measured EC (PPM) and kept pH in the 6.2-6.5 range. By the way, the whole cycle was done under 18/6. As for the rest of the conditions, I tried to keep them steady for the whole of the grow cycle:

• Relative Humidity: 55%,
• Day Temperature: 21°C (70°F),
• Night Temperature: 18°C (65°F).

When I had started the LST (in the pre-flowering stage), I decided to not subject my girls to any unnecessary stress. So, whenever a fan leaf was shading a bud site, I would simply tuck it, not pluck it off.

Only in week 7 from seed—when the flowering was well underway and the plant looked like nothing could stop her growth—I started with the defoliation. You may even call it lollipopping because I stripped every node in the bottom third of the bush. I also pruned some minor branches that stood no chance to make the canopy. This way the plant wouldn’t spend any precious energy on those branches that had no potential.

The Flowering Came Early and Strong

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when the first pre-flowers appeared at the nodes, but in week 4 from seed, there were ultra-thin threadlike leaves on every top with some white hairs mixed in. By week 5, every top was budding, and a week later my Lemon Pie Auto strain started to noticeably smell like lemons.

The buds were definitely sativa-like in appearance—drawn out and initially not too bulky, with many prominent sugar leaves that looked disproportionately thin and long.

Over the course of weeks 8 and 9, the colas fattened up considerably and got quite dense and heavy. The sugar leaves sticking out of them didn’t seem so long now. One could see that trimming these buds would be very easy.

I let my Lemon Pie Auto fade nicely by harvest time. Although, judging by many spots and some twisted leaf tips here and there, she would have probably benefited from more calcium.

This Lemon Pie Auto Grow Was a Breathe

I chopped her after only 9 weeks from seed (and after a 2-week long flush) and got 1.4 kg wet or 390 g (13.76 oz) dry. This was by far my best result from a single autoflower. No wonder considering how tall she was and how insanely branchy. Just one bush looked like a whole SOG garden!

There was no issue of the main cola trying to break away from the rest. The canopy was reasonably flat, and the texture of buds on all branches was very uniform. They had a top-notch bag appeal: all silvery from crystals, streaked with bright orange pistils, and with subtle purplish hues throughout. The smell was that of berries and lemons and provided a well-rounded type of high—relaxing and uplifting at the same time.

In short, this Lemon Pie Auto grow was the kind of experience that any grower would wish for.

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