I have only grown one autoflower strain that I got from seed for free from my dispensary... the package note said it was a 60 day strain, but it was more like 75 days. And yea, I only got about 26 grams.
So I looked up your strain Vanilla Kush.. turns out its an Indica dominant strain, so you need to be extra careful as indicas are not meant for high heat situations..
Imagine how it is for us down here in SoCal!! Its hot as hell.. Ive just been telling all the local growers that I know down here to keep a look out for the signs of heat stress.
If you have a strain you have never grown before, you want to look at the node spacing and flowering sites. You want to see how vigorous of a grower it is.
How far are you into flowering? Lower leaves start dying as a natural part of the plants life cycle, but if its too many, you could have an N deficiency or some other problem. As was said already, pics would help.
Are they in pots or in the ground? Signs of heat stress to look for are your leaves pointing straight up individually or folding up like a taco.. If that starts to happen you should place in partial shade and give it a swig on H2O.
I have ran into this problem before. About half of the buds (which im guessing were newer) before the re veg stayed stunted, but alive. The other half kinda dried up and died I guess, but the plant kept budding.
Hey yea its funny you said that, im cool with the owners at the Goodlife. When they do have clones, they have some fuckin great ones for cheap as hell, but that is rare. Last time I went they didnt have any and they said they probably wudnt get anymore for a while, but ill call and see if they...
One thing you could have done was LST them down so that parts of the stems would be submerged under the soil. I have seen ppl shave the stems and dip em in root gel, it makes a huge root mass and a fuckin monster subterranean plant lol.