Buds not dense enough

So i just finished my second grow and am now smoking it.

My buds are light and fluffy. Not hard and heavy

400watt HPS/ cool tube (light very close to plants w/out burn)
Soil Mega home made mixture First one was pretty plain. Second one when all out with total organic EVERYTHING. And i used a large wide variety of ferts and styles, without burning.

Question: Is it my light? Would 1000 fatten those bitches up? What if i use both my 400hps and 400MH at the same time.?

how many plants and sq feet are you trying to light? the light close to the plants might not cause bleaching but you have to mind the tempature. to much heat will dry out the buds while growing and leave you with a finnished product that will be very light and the bowl will burn in one or two hits. look up the recomended height for your light. it should be listed on the manafucture site for the lights. if not search on here for the right height. I am not sure but i think that for a 400w light, you need to keep the light like 2' from the plants. with my 1000w I keep the light atleast 2', 3' if I have the room. air cooled lights and fans in the room to controll the temp also allows you to bring your lights closer to the plants. look out for yellowing in the center of the plants, that indicates light bleaching.

durbine is spot on but also the amount of light makes a huge difference in the density of your buds... i have heard advanced nutes bigbud carbo load and overdrive can help fatten and stiffen up the buds but while i am in the process of using them have never finished a crop with them... on the other hand a 1k watter will make dense buds fosho...

long story short if you want dense buds increase light intensity.. get the 1k if you can control temps

Yeah, im running a cool tube right now. So i have NO problems with heat.

do you have a thermometer in you room? if not you might want to get one just to be safe

Yea mine are four weeks in 1000 wts I am using Dr Hornbys Bloom and some seaweed extract any suggestions on how to fatten them up!! Also does molasses do anything for them!

usually heat and low rh affect the denseness of your buds. you may also need to change your bulb. how old is it? i read up in your thread where there was a suggestion to keep your light 2 feet away from your plants. MISTAKE!! a 400 watter can be very close and not cause heat issues. i keep a 1000 watter 18" from my tops. i have a 6" vented hood that keeps things very cool.

Don't believe the hype.

What strain are you growing?
That would be my first question.

Some strains grow light and airy.
Next I would ask for complete specs.

I have no problems with 400w hps,
no cool tube, and I have it no more
thank 14" away from the tops of my
plants. Also, how did you cure your
harvest? So many things can factor
how your end product will be, but in
this case having too little info...

I would blame the strain before I
blame the light, but there are totally a
slew of other scenarios, and potential
habits, that could cause this problem.

Need more input.

asdfva said:

Don't believe the hype.

What strain are you growing?
That would be my first question.

Some strains grow light and airy.
Next I would ask for complete specs.

I would blame the strain before I
blame the light, but there are totally a
slew of other scenarios, and potential
habits, that could cause this problem.

Need more input.

Click to expand...

Was exactly what I was going to say, but I got down to the bottom and it was said for me. Even if your growing all of the same strain...if it's from seed, females could easily differ by bud formation or potency, among the other MANY things.

Get some quality seeds or cuttings known for dense buds and i'm sure you will be fine.

My first grow was Skunk#1....not even from a quality seed company....they came from my roomates outdoor grow....with my new 400w (at the time about 2 years ago) I flowered 3 plants I had and left the best one (5th) up in my closet in my room for a mom. I ended up with 2 females (plus the mom in the closet so 3 total). The mom I ended up wasting....it was 5+ feet when I took it outof my closet LOLOL. So what I did was cut every branch and use them for clones and gave most to my buddies. I got some nice top buds from the 400. However it coulda been much better cuz one was 3+ feet and the other was like 2feet cuz it was stunted. All in all 400w was fine.


Here are some pics i found from back then....vegging...early flowering....mid flower....late flower 2 pics.... my 5 foot mom (Pepe)....clones.....harvest

I tend to agree on the strain factor.. I give your setup the benefit of the doubt since you were slick enough to go cool-tube.. A second note on the strain question though - How long did you flower them for? Alot of plants have a beefy surge at the end.. The buds may not appear to be growing, simply filling in the space between the calyxes.. Do you have a magnifier to look at your trichromes?

molasses and humboldt countys own "Gravity" work well to add density for me.

Okay More info it is.

Two strains. Kush and Juicy Fruit

Flowered in 11 liter pots.
My soil mix is Organic Composted material with peat moss (1.5 part)
COCO fiber (1.5 Part)
Worm Castings (1 Part)
Humic Acid
Peralite (1 part)
Bat Guano veg
Bat Guano Bloom
Greens Sand
Dolomite Lime
Blood meal
Bone meal
Rock Phosphate
Pot Ash (from fire place, washed)
During Veg and bloom i made compost tea from my worm bin and air raided with molasses for 48 hours and fed to plants. Growing tempeture was 75 degrees and RH was between 35% and 45% throughout the grow.
Also did a second pot ash tea.

Plants were fed Molasses once or twice a week.

They were tall, five feet. But i trimmed all the lower branches off, Fimmed the top. By the end of the eight weeks the buds were heavy and dense. Fattened up a lot. I checked the tricomes with my mag, and harvested one most were milky. I Manicured and hung for a week and a half in 40% RH. They got light and airy, they are now curing in jars.

I smoked the Juicy Fruit tonight and it was fucking amazing. Which is good news. I weighed the plants and got six oz. off of four plants.....thats medium i think.

Well those strains should be able to produce nice buds, espically kush if its the real deal. Well I'd say to be honest that it could be because you grew the plants so big. You could try doing them a bit smaller so they finish like around 2 or 3 feet maybe. Then you could proly put 6-8 under the 400. you should still be able to get at least a OZ a plant. Those pics I put up...the taller one only main bud was nice and dense the rest was a lil fluffy, but almost hard. The lil one finished under 2 ft and it still got me an ounce

Simon - its definitely the light! I started with a 400 also - and got the same light fluffy bud, that LOOKS huge... and smokes good. It breaks your heart when you weigh out a quarter and its a whole sandwhich bag! anyways, if you got 6 zones from a 400 you are doing ok... a little less than 1/2 a gram/watt... if you bumped it up to 1K... and you got the same yeild ratio you would get over 16 zones... but those buds would all be nice and tight... i went from 400 to 1400, to 2K, which is where I am now... and supplementing with some UVB thats about twice as strong as it ever appears naturally on earth from my experience 400 watters just make some airy bud, but its about the best light to start with - anything less and you dont have enough to make it to the next harvest. hope that helps!

I have a Vented Hood with a thousand wts, It stays around 78 to 82 in the Hut, I have Four Strains the S.S.H. Some GDP, N.L. and A Cyber Crystal Indica. The N.L. and S.S.H. were from clone and the Other two from seed..I was wondering, Is it true they start doing more filling out in the last 3 to 4 weeks? This is my first go around with indoor 1000 Wts!! Kinda wondering what to expect..

born2killspam said:

I tend to agree on the strain factor.. I give your setup the benefit of the doubt since you were slick enough to go cool-tube.. A second note on the strain question though - How long did you flower them for? Alot of plants have a beefy surge at the end.. The buds may not appear to be growing, simply filling in the space between the calyxes.. Do you have a magnifier to look at your trichromes?

Click to expand...

I gotta agree with these statements and questions posed.

If some strains can grow light and fluffy outdoor, then I gotta believe that it can happen indoor with a good setup.

My expieiance has been that the density of the buds just depends on the strain. All grown under 1000mh/hps some strain consistently grew hard nuggets while others were airy and others the middle of the road.omo Showgirl

I really have to disagree that a 400W HPS can't produce great buds over atleast 3x3.. My very best buds were grown like that.. I found it tough to keep superbity up as I expanded simply due to plant access on a larger table.. I had an airy crop like this once because I had some issues during clone vegging, and had to delay flowering until they were much bigger than I planned.. Its hard to say what the actual culprit was between light penetration, and air penetration, but now that I think about it, everything up top was decent density even in badly lit areas to the rear of the sockets etc.. But the table was a freaking jungle!! Everything lower was way fluffier than normal, even stuff that had decent light holes hitting it.. It was just nearly impossible to push air sufficiently through the entire mass without the nearest plants receiving hurricane force..
Any possibility your internal ventilation could be lacking? I could see how a cool tube could make you think you need less than you really do..

born2killspam said:

I really have to disagree that a 400W HPS can't produce great buds over atleast 3x3.. My very best buds were grown like that.. I found it tough to keep superbity up as I expanded simply due to plant access on a larger table.. I had an airy crop like this once because I had some issues during clone vegging, and had to delay flowering until they were much bigger than I planned.. Its hard to say what the actual culprit was between light penetration, and air penetration, but now that I think about it, everything up top was decent density even in badly lit areas to the rear of the sockets etc.. But the table was a freaking jungle!! Everything lower was way fluffier than normal, even stuff that had decent light holes hitting it.. It was just nearly impossible to push air sufficiently through the entire mass without the nearest plants receiving hurricane force..
Any possibility your internal ventilation could be lacking? I could see how a cool tube could make you think you need less than you really do..

Click to expand...

I agree with you. Any plant I grow over 2.5' gets a little fluffy. I still got over 9oz with my 400 on my last harvest. That was off of 8 plants. Air circulation as well as light penetration play a big role in bud density I think (based only on observation). However, I think that genetics is the big factor. I had only one plant that had rock hard buds. I finally have some good genetics to start on after the move... cant wait!

Yea, my yeild was great.. About 50Oz total from....hmm, I started with 32, and culled it down to either 30, or 28 IIRC.. Only about 3/4 pound was at all impressive in anyway compared to previous crops, and the rest was REALLY grueling to harvest as well..
That was on a 7x5 drip table using 5" pots, hydroton, and DNF nutes.. The plants were about 3.5' NL#5 clones from 2 VERY different plants that came from Marc Emery's seeds.. I don't know what to think about those seeds actually.. Of the 10, I got 6 females, 3 males and an instant herm.. No two plants had much in common at all, but on the otherhand, I did get 3 very decent mothers for flavor, potency, and yeild in 2 of them..
The third I swear was a pure sativa.. It grew so tall/lanky, and had the longest skinny buds.. The calyx's were quite loosely distributed, but they themselves were giant and dense.. Stank a ton, which NL#5 isn't exactly famous for, spicy taste, and cerebral high.. I smoked that stuff when I knew I had 20 hours of wave equations to churn through.. Come to think of it, I had one of that girl on the table too..