Short answer first
If you grow in one tent, pick autoflowers. If you have a second space for a veg light and you want the same plant for years, keep a mother plant and run clones.
That is the whole decision in two lines. Everything under it is the why, plus what each route costs you in time, money, and floor space.
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The pick: autoflowers for a single-tent grow
An autoflower flips itself. You run the light 18/6 or 20/4 from the day the seed cracks until chop, usually 70 to 90 days later. No dark period to trigger flower, no timer gymnastics, no light leaks to chase at week four. One tent, one schedule, and three runs a year if you stagger your starts.
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What I look for in an auto run is a strain that finishes under 80 days and stays short. Compact plants under a 2x2 or 3x3 footprint are the whole point. You give up some yield per plant and some control over when harvest lands. You get simplicity back.
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When a mother plant wins
A mother is a photoperiod plant you keep in veg on purpose. You never flip her, you keep her trimmed and fed, and every few weeks you cut clones. Root those cuttings, flower them at 12/12, and you get a room of identical plants.
This route pays off when consistency matters: same height, same stretch, same finish date, same smell. It also means you buy one seed and never buy that genetics again. Find a pheno you love and this is the only way to keep it in your garden.
The trade-offs are real. A mother needs her own light running 18 hours a day, every day. She needs repotting and root pruning every few months or she stalls out. Pests and mildew love a plant that lives for a year, and anything she catches rides along to every clone you cut. Cuttings also need 10 to 14 days to root before flower, so your first harvest from the mother route lands later than your first auto harvest.
Head to head
- Lighting schedules to manage: autoflowers, one. Mothers plus clones, two or more.
- Time from seed to first jar: autoflowers. Cuttings root before they even start to flower.
- Cost per plant after the first run: mothers win. Every clone is free.
- Consistency plant to plant: mothers, by a wide margin.
- Can you clone it: autoflowers, no, not in any useful way. A cutting from an auto is the same age as the plant it came from, so it flowers right away and stays tiny.
- Yield per square foot in a small tent: close, and autos often edge it out because you skip the veg room.
- Plant count: a mother eats one slot and every clone eats another.
What a year of each costs
A 100 watt veg light running 18 hours a day pulls about 1.8 kilowatt hours daily, which is roughly 650 kilowatt hours over a year. At 15 cents a kilowatt hour that is close to $100 just to keep a mother alive, before you count the clone light or the flower tent. Autoflowers skip that bill because the plant and the flower room are the same room.
Run the numbers the other way and the mother route comes back. Ten clones from one seed is ten plants for the price of one pack, plus a few dollars of rooting plugs. If you grow more than a couple of plants per cycle, the math flips in a hurry.
Plant limits and the legal side
Most legal states cap how many plants a household can grow. A mother counts as one, and every clone in the tray counts too, even the four inch ones. If your cap is six, a mother plus five clones fills the whole allowance and none of them are in flower. Autoflowers under the same rule are one plant each, seed to harvest, with nothing extra sitting in veg. Read your state cultivation rules before you build a second tent.
How I would start
Buy three auto seeds, run them in one tent, and see how the schedule feels. If you finish that run and immediately wish you could grow the same plant again, that is your signal to pick up a small veg light and start a mother. Until then the extra room and the extra bill buy you nothing.