First time growing solo... Need some adviceadvice

I've been around and helped a bit to take care of a bud plant here and there in the past... Always sort of had a green thumb naturally with plants in general but never had the right situation to grow by my own means, until now.

The middle and left plants are girl scout cookie... Bag seed. Measured at 12" and 21" yesterday, both germinated about 11 weeks ago and were grown mostly with relatively low wattage cfl close up on the plants, hence a few scorched leaves. The plant on the right is reggie, 8" tall, about 2-3 weeks younger than my chronic plants.

About a week ago I got my Galaxyhydro 100x3w LED panel, they are loving it in this small space reflected by mylar. Currently the face of the light is 13" above the top of my biggest plant, no signs of heat stress thus far.

My question now is when I should switch to flower for best results. I kind of want to flower the cronik plants together, since the smaller one is looking healthier than ever and attempting to catch up with the bigger plant (since I got my LED panel the small plant has grown almost 2" for every inch the big plant has grown, and the small one is in a bigger planter, making the soil level 6" above that of the bigger plant) so I think they will be about the same relative height soon. Or I could flower all three of them in 2-3 weeks, if that would be most efficient.

Thank you in advance for any advice! Pics are below...

It's totally up to you and what you want to achieve. With that being said personally I would wait till you get some side branching with more buds and more bud sites!
I couldn't help but notice the very small plants in what looks like 5gal pot to the left of the last picture?! Way too big for that size...it's best to step up around 3x...I have been using 4x4 cubes to 1.25 gal to 5 gal and have amazing root structure.

I like your idea about waiting to flower... make the whole thing more worthwhile. Also, this gives my more time to save up for/build a COB to augment for flower. Good to hear from a more experienced grower that I'm pretty much on track. Thank you much, I'll post more pics in here closer to flowering time to show the progress if you would like to follow/offer more advice/pointers.

Actually, funny thing about that small reg on the left, it is a clone of itself, at the same age of the healthy reggie on the far right. What happened was I dropped a cfl ballast on it when it was a baby and snapped the stem. Probably should have cooked it into rice or something and re-germinated another seed, but instead I buried the broken part of the stem and watered it like hell. The old root died, the new root grafted nicely, it stands up on its own now and actually is growing. I'm interested now to see how it does, against all odds.

Lookin good. You may want to look into low stress training (LST) or screen of green (SCROG). Either method will help deliver more bang for your buck.

yeah LST + FIM and/or Mainlining would bush those babies out for sure.
however if you do that to them now your looking at a further 20ish days vegging.

Buzz Buzzilla said:

It's totally up to you and what you want to achieve. With that being said personally I would wait till you get some side branching with more buds and more bud sites!
I couldn't help but notice the very small plants in what looks like 5gal pot to the left of the last picture?! Way too big for that size...it's best to step up around 3x...I have been using 4x4 cubes to 1.25 gal to 5 gal and have amazing root structure.

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I replanted the smaller/root grafted of the 2 month old reggie plants into 30 oz water cup with a few small holes in the bottom... It hadn't had time to show signs of shock in the pic below but now it's drooping slightly. Been steadily watering since. Will keep updates on plant's status either here or in my journal.In reply to Bradbury and dope leader, thanks for the input, I hadn't heard about such methods but that sounds like a pretty good idea, as long as I'm careful not to damage any limbs with too much stress. A little late to start tho, perhaps? I was planning to veg about another month maybe, so I might try implementing some form of that concept.

It's great to have some experienced input on this stuff, definitely a confidence builder for a 1st time grower like myself just testing out the waters. Thanks to all for your helpful ideas

This is my first grow too, I'm only into my second week of flower now.
I've just spent ALOT of time reading as much as I can and i've also attempted some pretty hard stuff (considering I've never grown anything before buying my setup).
I've managed to mainline 4 clones and continue LST to maximise my space, I had no idea how to mainline a clone as they sprout fucken branches everywhere so basically your only option there is to create your own manifold.
so by choosing 8 or so growth tips you can keep them and trim everything else off the plant tie everything down to the same height roughly so that your canopy is all ROUGHLY the same size.
then let it re grow, about 2 weeks and you should see it bounce back to perfect health and smashing out inches once again.

I do like the sound of new leaves and growth spurts. I have to admit I'm slightly apprehensive about trimming... dont wanna miss out on any buds, , but yea, makes sense to get rid of weak links for a better chain as a whole. I'm glad I started this n00b thread, got some good ideas now on where to go from here

one more thing that may be helpful noting is that if your plant fills out with growth tips everywhere youll be wasting light output on small little buds everywhere.
which can be controlled and pushed back into your favour, im not saying it WILL give more of a yield but it will definitely stop you from having to harvest your buds using a damn microscope and kids scissors lol.

Got the big one clipped... Seemed like it really needed it with lots of useless leaves in complete shade at the bottom. Hope I didn't over do it, left the stuff that seems like it will produce bud or wants to grow more. I'm gonna let the smaller plants go for a bit, doesn't seem like there's too much wasted space yet. I'll probably wait like a week or so. Below is my largest (now 22") plant, post clipping. How did I do?

stoned_chess said:

How did I do?

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How would we know? Cant make anything out in these pictures. From what i can see here, all I can see for sure is, yep, its a pot plant!
Helps if you shut off yr led light, and use just your cfls when taking pics if you want ppl to see whats going on.

Buzz Buzzilla said:

It's totally up to you and what you want to achieve. With that being said personally I would wait till you get some side branching with more buds and more bud sites!
I couldn't help but notice the very small plants in what looks like 5gal pot to the left of the last picture?! Way too big for that size...it's best to step up around 3x...I have been using 4x4 cubes to 1.25 gal to 5 gal and have amazing root structure.

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Big Steve on RIU convinced me to try graduated container use a few years ago. I thought he was full of crap. Far from it! Great root development and resulting bigger plant sooner. Transplant shock is BS unless you're a real klutz. Breeders such as Mandala and RQ seeds advocate using gradually larger containers for indoor growing.

hotrodharley said:

Big Steve on RIU convinced me to try graduated container use a few years ago. I thought he was full of crap. Far from it! Great root development and resulting bigger plant sooner. Transplant shock is BS unless you're a real klutz. Breeders such as Mandala and RQ seeds advocate using gradually larger containers for indoor growing.

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I've been preaching this for awhile good to hear someone else who knows whats up! All the big nurseries use 3x with potting up because it is the most efficient!

stoned_chess said:

Got the big one clipped... Seemed like it really needed it with lots of useless leaves in complete shade at the bottom. Hope I didn't over do it, left the stuff that seems like it will produce bud or wants to grow more. I'm gonna let the smaller plants go for a bit, doesn't seem like there's too much wasted space yet. I'll probably wait like a week or so. Below is my largest (now 22") plant, post clipping. How did I do?View attachment 3539734

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Honestly it looks like you lollipops it? Best advise I can give you is to focus on leaves that are blocking bud sites especially towards the top middle...

GreenThumbsMcgee said:

How would we know? Cant make anything out in these pictures. From what i can see here, all I can see for sure is, yep, its a pot plant!
Helps if you shut off yr led light, and use just your cfls when taking pics if you want ppl to see whats going on.

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Lol, that's tru x) shut of the LED and turned on my flash for this one, hopefully y'all can tell what's going on now 

And to hotrodharley, I read something about the benefits of transplanting several times in an old illustrated book about growing, one of my neighbor's many weed books. They were growing with high powered CFL way up above the plants, and transplanting frequently. The end result was a bunch of short, bushy, leafy green indicas. Not bad considering the limited lighting technology of the 70's or whenever it was. Good tips aboit transplanting in there too.

Here are mine after 5 days mind you I'm on 24/0 atm....I didn't have one fan leaf that was more than 35% formed at the time and it looked like I murdered them.

stoned_chess said:

Lol, that's tru x) shut of the LED and turned on my flash for this one, hopefully y'all can tell what's going on now 

And to hotrodharley, I read something about the benefits of transplanting several times in an old illustrated book about growing, one of my neighbor's many weed books. They were growing with high powered CFL way up above the plants, and transplanting frequently. The end result was a bunch of short, bushy, leafy green indicas. Not bad considering the limited lighting technology of the 70's or whenever it was. Good tips aboit transplanting in there too.View attachment 3539797

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Yeah that pic is a lot better id say you did well!

Sweet, good to know! I was thinking she looked a little mangled, but I'm sure she'll bounce back in no time

Also with the transplanting thing, the book I read suggested using plastic potters so you can dislodge the root clod more easily. I'm wanting to implememt disposable planters (such as that circle k cup I'm using now) so that I can let the soil dry a bit then simply cut off and discard the old container. But maybe styro foam isnt such a good idea, the chemicals could break down into the soil and fuck up the PH? Idk.

stoned_chess said:

Sweet, good to know! I was thinking she looked a little mangled, but I'm sure she'll bounce back in no time

Also with the transplanting thing, the book I read suggested using plastic potters so you can dislodge the root clod more easily. I'm wanting to implememt disposable planters (such as that circle k cup I'm using now) so that I can let the soil dry a bit then simply cut off and discard the old container. But maybe styro foam isnt such a good idea, the chemicals could break down into the soil and fuck up the PH? Idk.

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Nahh I used to use styrofoam in a raft system outside which is basically puffed pvc won't break down after hundreds of years! Personally I like the soil a lil wet when I go to transplant, say day after water day and I also moisten the top just to keep it all together. Seems to come out easier and I believe the roots are stronger when wet.
Now the soil your going into shouldn't be wet but some what moist. This allows moisture from with in to travel out and gives you the oxygen you need to grow roots. Just like hot rod said no shock for me ever! I think the worst thing you can do is drench the new soil as I hear a lot of people nubs and so called experienced growers do a all the time?! Setting in the roots they say...sounds like long shock and a waste of upper pot space!

Buzz Buzzilla, just out of curiosity, those are clones in your picture, correct? Looks like they're regenerating branches and budsites asymmetrically/sporatically. Jw