Because you can make so many mistakes as a beginner, you should consider starting with bagseed. They're free, and you know ahead of time what the final product should be like.
So if you are wise you will save some seed from buds which you consider to be good and learn from your experiences as you grow them to maturity.
On the other hand…
Having invested in expensive growing equipment and supplies, buying good quality proven genetics can be considered a worthy cause, when you consider the time you are about to invest growing them.
I started with store bought seeds auto flowering fems to be exact !
I also had experience in having a small vegetable garden in the yard which gave me some growing knowledge even though cannabis is not vegetable but it helps. Cracking seed and cloning experiments with vegetables and flowering is a lot cheaper the seeds lol
Autos / fems. Easy for beginners no sexting plants no flipping times
And always start with more then you plan only the strong survive always cull the week
Peace
My .02 is that you should start with cheap purchased seed. My first grow was a bag seed strain that was more Sativa than I was prepared to deal with. This is before I knew what a Sativa was. Cheap known seeds!
I haven’t grown in many years and have a new setup to get tuned in. My plan is to run maybe a few Autos first just to keep things simple and get used to everything. I agree either Autos would take some guess work out of it, just one less than to mess with. I’ve read that some ppl suggest using Photos for the first run but I do not think that is wise as it adds additional variables. Once you feel confident in your setup and your abilities then go for the photos and work your way up the gene pool.
Not to get to far off topic but these genes need to be sequenced and put in a database. There are way to many “bubba kushes” (just an example) around you really don’t know what you are getting. That’s not a huge deal for rec but for medical it can be important.
I don’t know what strain but she tasted like black pepper and had to be grown horizontally like yours. I’m pleased to say it worked out by only with constant training.
Autos have a predicted lifetime, there’s no margin for errors. If you have any problem with them that affects their development, they won’t have time to recover and it will affect the final yield. Photos are easier to manage, no worries if they have a lazy start, nutrient burn or deficiencies, you can take care of them until fully recovered before flipping them to flower stage.
Depending on the tent size you can choose their final height while choosing when to flip to flower, and use many techniques as trimming, lollipopping, low stress training or supercrop, techniques that you cannot use with autos (or at least it is not recommended). Autos are very sensible and become stressed easily, I am not judging the quality or the final result, just not recommending them for beginners …
That’s kind-of my point and running photos for the first time. While you and I may know how to handle it someone who has never grown before may not. Plus the turn around is usually a few weeks faster, incase you make a mistake. But I do see your logic though.
I started with autoflowers, and from what I’ve read LST is very much recommended. High stress training should be eyeballed, when you have a vigorously growing plant it might be a good thing.
(On my first plant I accidentally topped it while trying to LST, and that was not a good thing lol)
But a benefit of the predetermined life cycle is that you do know the approximate height, as this shouldnt be too different from what the breeder specified. Now I am new here on OG, so I dont know if the breeder is just another member, but still!
had to bend it