Royal Cookies Automatic: Indoor Grow Report

Are you looking for a next-gen autoflower strain that can produce dank, delicious dessert cannabis? If so, this is the grow report for you. Top Shelf Grower shares his firsthand account of cultivating Royal Cookies Automatic from seed to smoke in a wardrobe grow-op—in 75 days total.

SETUP & TOOLS: CONVERTING THE WARDROBE INTO A COOKIES FACTORY

My indoor grow space was confined to a bedroom wardrobe. Just enough space to squeeze two bushy cannabis plants. Fortunately, it was a rather cold spring in Girona with plenty of rainy days. Dreary, but it helped to keep conditions in my wardrobe grow-op optimal.

I dialled my ballast down to the lowest 250W setting, hung up my HPS lamp and reflector with a pair of rope ratchets, set my timer to 20-4, and started growing. Maintaining airflow with a cheap 20W oscillating fan and cracking a window to let in fresh air, supermarket air fresheners, candles, and positive vibrations were my only cannabis odour countermeasures. 11.7 inches-long wooden sticks for LST, soft plant ties, dehumidifiers, and various little extras that don’t come to mind were all sourced exclusively from the local discount Chinese store.

This is no-frills microgrowing—indoor cultivation stripped down to the bare essentials for maximum marijuana return in minimal time, all at the lowest possible investment and running cost. My goal was to grow great ganja in 80 days or less. The following is the journey of two Royal Cookies Automatic plants from seed to harvest in just 75.

GERMINATION: THE PAPER TOWEL METHOD

Place a couple of beans on a damp paper towel in a lunchbox. Cover them with another paper towel; give that a spray with water to moisten it. Now, your seeds are wrapped in a wet blanket. Finally, put the lunchbox in a dark place standing upright vertically. Like always with the paper towel method, my beans cracked in 48 hours and so will yours. Gravity had drawn two tiny taproots from splitting shells.

Carefully, I sowed both beans, root first, 2 inches deep into 11l containers filled with BioBizz light mix soil. I like to pre-soak the soil with 1l of pure water per pot. After two more days in the wardrobe grow-op under the 20-4 light schedule, two sprouts burst forth from the soil.

SEEDLINGS: DAY 1–11

Royal Cookies Automatic got off to a slow and steady start. By no means was it an explosive beginning. Both seedlings were healthy and always strong enough to support themselves unassisted. My grow lamp outputting 250W of yellow/orange HPS light was hanging 19.5 inches above the sprouts. Temperatures were holding steady around 24°C. However, RH was a little low, hovering above 40%, but not close enough to 60% for my liking at this early stage.

It wasn’t until day 11 that the first sets of true leaves developed on the tiny, 3.9 inches-tall infant plants. Daily misting with my trusty spray bottle and one additional watering with 1ml/l of Sensizym dosed 1l per pot (and applied by hand) was the only plant feeding required.

VEGETATIVE GROWTH: DAY 12–32

Adding a couple of bowls of water brought RH to 50%+ and kept it there for the next 3 weeks of vegetative growth proper. Nutrients were applied most sparingly—a simple feed-water-feed-water schedule. At no point did either plant receive doses greater than 1ml/l of the three-part Grow, Micro, and Bloom pH-Perfect range by Advanced Nutrients. Sensizym to promote root growth and Rhino Skin liquid silica, the 4th essential nutrient, were the only supplements added during veg—also dosed 1ml/l. Watering 1l every 2–3 days became the norm. Thus, an effective wet-dry cycle was devised and maintained.

PRUNING AND TRAINING: TOPPING AND FIMMING

Day 18, I unsheathed my pruning scissors, topping the more indica-looking of the two plants and fimming the more sativa phenotype. Timing is everything if you want to prune and train with autoflowering plants. Do it early and do it right. There is time to bush out a plant, so long as you are prepared to get hands-on every day from weeks 3–6. I decided to push it to the limit and apply as many pruning and training techniques as possible, clipping my plants as soon as they reached 12 inches in height.

NONSTOP LST, SUPERCROPPING, AND DEFOLIATION

Pheno 1 reminded me of OG Kush; she had all the hallmarks of a high-calibre hybrid, while pheno 2 was something of an oddity with her sativa looks. She seemed like a worthwhile experiment. Post-topping, pheno 1 began to sprawl and enter a period of vigorous growth.

Similarly, pheno 2 responded well to the fimming, and within days, nubs of new shoot growth provided evidence that the FIM worked. Raising my reflector after every growth spurt, the optimal 11.7 inches distance between canopy and lamp was preserved.

Making use of the 11.7 inches-long, thin wooden sticks and soft gardening wire, I began to manipulate branches—bending and tying, bending and tying a set of branches almost daily throughout weeks 3 and 4. By day 23, shading fan leaves needed to be removed and strategic defoliation began, soon becoming a weekly practice. By day 32, I had a nice flat canopy 11.7 inches-tall, with two bushy female plants showing their first pistils.

FLOWERING: DAY 33–75

Pheno 1 became a big fat Cookies monster quicker than I expected. Unfortunately, pheno 2 headed down a ruderalis road, and despite my best efforts, was a shadow of pheno 1. In hindsight, I definitely should have thinned her from the grow-op. But hey, now you know how to spot the weed from the chaff. If you see the dark shade of Kush in broad leaves and tree trunk-like stems, that’s the sign of a keeper. Trust me, you definitely want pheno 1 in the jar.

Flowering was fast and furious. Further LST and a little experimentation with supercropping turned both plants into compact, multi-cola cannabis bushes. A little Sellotape helped support and save one branch from pheno 1 that I snapped by accident, recovering less than a week later.

By day 45, both plants were approximately 42 inches-tall, filling out lateral grow space with a canopy of bud. It was only then, when resin production accelerated with pheno 1, that the first alluring aromas delighted my nostrils. The zesty scent of lime and melon was wafting from my wardrobe grow-op. Pheno 1 was the culprit. Just when I thought I had gone nose-blind, the sweet smell of homegrown was in the air again.

ADVANCED NUTRIENTS AND BOTTLED WATER ALL THE WAY

Feeding was consistent with light doses of fertiliser followed by pure water, increasing in volume from 1l to a maximum of 2l per pot as the Cookies matured. Big Bud and Bud Candy were added to the supplement mix for the bloom phase. Base nutes remained at 1ml/l. Supplements peaked at 2ml/l. At 10c per litre, bottled water was an affordable option for the whole plant life cycle.

DIVERGENT PHENOTYPES

By day 60, the canopy had reached its peak height of about 23.4 inches. The difference between the two plants was vast. Pheno 1 was a THC-encrusted reefer rockstar, oozing the most delicious-smelling perfume. In contrast, pheno 2 was a sinsemilla salvage operation at this point.

Summer was coming and temps were heating up in the wardrobe grow-op. Dehumidifier blocks were dissolving weekly in the high humidity. Although temps never exceeded 28°C, I decided to adopt an 18-6 schedule from day 65 and double-down on dehumidifiers as a precaution.

THE DANK SMELL OF SUCCESS: HARVEST DAY 75

After a thorough 10 days of flushing with pure bottled water, pheno 1 was a perfect specimen. Inspecting the run-off until it was clear, then zooming in on trichomes to confirm mostly milky resin heads told me it was time to harvest. The complete complex aroma of dessert cannabis had developed. The smell of rich dark chocolate now dominated the fruity lime and melon cocktail wafting from the wardrobe. My Cookies were ready to come out of the oven.

THE LAST TOKE ON GROWING FROM SEED TO HARVEST IN 75 DAYS

Royal Cookies Automatic is dank dessert cannabis fit for a connoisseur—ideally suited to smaller grow-ops, a natural for a SOG, and friendly to beginner growers too. Although pheno 2 was a disappointment, I only germinated 2 seeds. Shit can and will happen when you grow cannabis from seed.

Pheno 1 was, without question, the best representation of the strain, and quite possibly the most impressive auto I’ve ever grown. To make sure you find a few winners like her, germinate the whole 5-pack of seeds and select for Cookies monsters.

At time of writing, my manicured marijuana is drying. As soon as my Royal Cookies Automatic buds have dried and cured just right, I’ll be back with a comprehensive post-harvest smoke report on this sticky green cannabis confectionery. Until then, enjoy my YouTube series Cookies In A Hurry.

Royal Cookies Automatic gives “easy bake” a whole new meaning. By combining the gourmet Royal Cookies with ruderalis genetics, a unique new hybrid was created.

Buy Royal Cookies Automatic

Royal Cookies Automatic gives “easy bake” a whole new meaning. By combining the gourmet Royal Cookies with ruderalis genetics, a unique new hybrid was created.

Buy Royal Cookies Automatic