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Vegitation period q

'medicine cabinet'

'medicine cabinet'

Bluelighter
Joined
Jun 14, 2006
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Location
Baltimore
Currently there are two 1 month old plants in a small closet growing under about 250 watts of CFL. They are healthy lush and green, with each branch having more blades than the previous set. Current height is about 8 inches, 5 nodes worth on one, and 6 on the other. I have noticed intially what i thought were proflowers but were actually more side stalks. The larger of the two plants has a ton of new shoots off the center stem which leads me to my question.

The fan leaves are enormous! The smaller one's first set of three are huge, so i was wondering if they are leaching all the energy from the plant and the nutes as well? If so is it safe to remove them?

Also, what causes a plant to stretch when it is first growing? Because both plants are longer than i think they should be. They had to be staked for a while but can now support themselves.

This is a first time BTW.

Thanks for any info.
 
DO NOT CUT OFF THE GIANT FAN LEAVES!

these as well as with leaves of any plant are its solar panels.
they give it energy from the wonder of photosynthesis.
do NOT remove them.
there is absolutely no reason to fuck with the plant in this way until it is nearing harvest.

plants stretch if the light is too weak or if it is too far from the plants.
if they needed to be stalked (attached to a stick beside them in the plant-pot) then this is a sure sign you had your lights way too far away.

trust me, 8 inches for 1 month old isnt too tall.
definitely not.

i highly suggest reading up as much info as possible on growing cannabis before embarking on any grow-operations.
it really isnt as easy as a lot of people make it out to be.

sure it can be as simple as throwing seeds on dirt and watering them in your backyard.
but with that kind of effort and knowledge, you most certainly will get a shit yield of a very sub-par end product.


KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.
 
'medicine cabinet' said:
Currently there are two 1 month old plants in a small closet growing under about 250 watts of CFL. They are healthy lush and green, with each branch having more blades than the previous set. Current height is about 8 inches, 5 nodes worth on one, and 6 on the other. I have noticed intially what i thought were proflowers but were actually more side stalks. The larger of the two plants has a ton of new shoots off the center stem which leads me to my question.

The fan leaves are enormous! The smaller one's first set of three are huge, so i was wondering if they are leaching all the energy from the plant and the nutes as well? If so is it safe to remove them?

Also, what causes a plant to stretch when it is first growing? Because both plants are longer than i think they should be. They had to be staked for a while but can now support themselves.

This is a first time BTW.

Thanks for any info.
Click to expand...

There are lots of theories when it comes to the question of whether you should trim or prune your plants. Personally I don't for the most part, except for leaves at the bottom to make watering easier and unhealthy yellow leaves that aren't the result of deficiencies etc. The only other leaves I remove are from when I top the plant, except that these days I FIM instead since it's more effective IMO. It's true that you do get some leaves that take more in energy from the plant than they contribute in food from photosynthesis i.e. 'suckers' but it's hard to second guess which particuar ones these are so it's best to leave them alone. I would tuck leaves blocking light to leaves or bud sites underneath out of the way instead of removing them.

It's true that lights that are too weak or far away will give tall lanky plants but also you need to take the wavelenth of the light coming from your lamp into consideration. High pressure sodium lights because of their red tinged light frequencies will give a longer internodal distance (during the vegetative stage and the start of the flowering period when the plants still bolt in height reaching as much as two to three times their height at the start of 12/12) than metal halide lights which give nice tight internodal lengths. If I were you I would invest in a decent MH light for the vegetative stage from the end of week 2 onwards if you want short, stocky plants with lush growth and a faster-growing, higher yield than CFLs which aren't really suitable for flowering anyway unless you like airbud (hence you would need to get an HID ballast anyway and you may as well get a MH/HPS combo ballast). Nobody really has given me a satisfactory answer as to exactly why different light wavelengths cause this marked response in plants.

One way of controlling the height of your plants' height to make them more stocky is to top them or FIM them. It's a bit hard to explain FIM without diagrams so I'll let you look that one up (hint, check out Youtube as well as other sources so you can see it being done in a video). As for topping however, it's just a case of cutting the top off the plant (the apical meristem) called the apex or terminal bud in order to transfer apical dominance (which is the tendency for the apex to grow more rapidly than the rest of the plant since the hormone auxin is produced) to the two shoots that grow out from the two nodes below since this main supply of auxin will be cut off. Once this has been done it can be repeated on each meristem that subsequenty grows when they become apically dominant and the process is repeated, giving you an ever more bushy plant. There is a limit of the number of times it can be done as you eventually reach a point where the quality of your buds deteriorates, so I wouldn't recommend doing it more than 3-4 times. Each time you do it the resulting shoots will be lesser than the original. It's a pretty cool thing to watch happen and I'd recommend giving it a try if you can! FIM'ing is even more cool (and less brutal as you cut off less) but needs to be done properly or it won't work properly so you need to look it up and learn how to do it well otherwise just stick to topping your plants which works.

Do you have proper ventilation in your grow room (closet)?
 
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Thanks for the replies,

AF- Thank you, that was very informative. It is just about two months now and they are showing sex, and im happy to say they are both female. I am just starting to see little dual white hairs popping out around the top of the plants. Interestingly, the one that i thought would be the bigger of the two is starting to get dwarfed by the once smaller one.

And to answer, i do not have what i would think is proper ventilation, just a small fan ti get a little airflow. I have just started 12/12 and have a 24hr timer. The seeds came from some comercial bud....nothing too awesome, but def not shabby. Very skunky smell too.

I think i am going to have to repot them in something larger because when i water them they are dry again a day later. not just top layer but almost all the way through. I can see the tips of the roots starting to show through the holes in the bottom of the pot so i think its time.

Any tips for just going into the 12/12 flowering stage?
 
tips for flowering. dont disrupt the dark cycle. they will need 12 hours of real darkness. make sure theres no like seeping through cracks or anything. obviously you'll need diff nutes for flowering than veg. and enjoy, your plant will start smelling beautiful before you know it. i love the smell of a plant growing, smells do much stronger and sweeter than cured bud.
 
Heat stress can make plants stretch as well, but since your using CFL's I doubt your temps are too high. Alot has to do w/ what particular strain your using, some strains tend to be more lanky then others..mostly the Sativa's or Sativa hybrids can get lanky or stretch considerably more than the Indica's.

My sour's and snow white's actually tend to stretch and get a bit lanky, instead of topping or fimming, I bend em, tie em or super crop em. It is much less stressful to the plant, once you cut the top off, it can set the plant back, up to 2 weeks, before it starts really taking off again. Sure you will get multiple tops that way and it works well for some people, especially those that have the extra time to veg. When you super crop, or bend em and tie em, all the side shoots become tops. Using this method, I have had nice plants with multiple tops without stressing them or losing any valuable veg days, the sooner you get to 12/12...THE BETTER.. :) Let the count down begin! Just my 2 cents.
 
'medicine cabinet' said:
Any tips for just going into the 12/12 flowering stage?
Click to expand...

Yes, get your ventilation sorted. You haven't given the dimensions of your 'small closet' so it's difficult to say what sized (inline) fan(s) you'll need. Also try and get a carbon filter otherwise everyone on your street will quickly become aware that you are growing cannabis at some point during flower.

Without ventilation you cannot remove stale gasses and are severely setting back the progress of your plants. It's a shame, but you can't grow plants indoors very well at all without proper ventilation like plants would have outside with the wind. Unfortunately an oscillating fan won't cut it as it simply moves air inside your cabinet around. You need to extract air out from your cabinet and pull it outside using ducting. Unless you have a really small cabinet, in which case you could use PC fans, but again, it's hard to say without dimensions!
 
This past weekend i re-potted it large pots and got some really nice dark rich soil to use to fill. They have been 12/12 for a few days and i am seeing tear shaped green nubs with two fine white hairs coming out so im pretty much sure they are female. I was expecting them to be hermies since they came from bagseed, but so far i dont see any "balls". In addition to repotting i fashioned a sort of reflective light catcher out of tinfoil oven trays. its pretty much like 3 looseleaf paper sized metal sheets woven together making like a semi-circle around the plants since a wall is on the other side. I was thinking this might be more effective than mylar on the walls.

Now i just have to get some type of air circulation going on and i think i will be set. The closet is a typical walk in closet. The area i am using is a shelf in the back that is about 3.5 feet tall, 2 feet deep, and like 3 feet wide. It is a good amount of space and i am only using like a 1/3 of that space. Ill post a pic later on tonight. Thanks for everyones input.
 
Some people stipulate that aluminum foil cause 'hot spots'. Not sure if this is true or not, but its worth noting. If you aren't growing in an enclosure inside this closet an occelating fan is fine for circulation and airflow, but you are definitely going to want some sort of odor control. Carbon filter or ozone generator, something. Check out a growing forum and read allot...

Good on ya for repotting, roots out the bottom is a good sign of matting and possibly root bound plants. 1ft per gallon of soil is a decent benchmark, but it is more effective to read your plants and act accordingly.

To answer the original question... The camp seems to be split on the issue of defoliation. Personally I only practice defoliation when either space limitations demand it or fan leaves are suffering a sever deficiency (K def, for instance, causes necrosis of the leaf margins rendering them pretty much useless). Tucking them behind or below budsites is preferable. If you prefer bushy plants and don't want to top/fim, LST is a great way to transfer growth hormones to lower branches. I don't have two plants right now, but if I did I think I would have LSTed one and fimmed the other.
 
so its been a little over a month, and my plants are getting ready to harvest. I have a question about the buds though....I plan on taking the tops off the plants first and then letting the smaller buds on the branches go for a few more days to try and get them a little bigger. Are there any tricks to getting some more trich coverage on the buds? I have heard letting them go for 24 hours in the dark and also not watering them so it will help speed up the drying process.
 
Has anyone here ever grown a sativa in a greenhouse in uk, When should they finish flowering? I know it can vary from strain unfortunatly got it as a random seed. thanks
 
No, for fucks sake do not cut them off. That would be like sewing up your mouth because you use energy when you chew.

I didn't read past that question, but it seems to me I'm not the one who should be reading...
 
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