Flowering and soil difficulties.

So, first of all: My first grow ever. 70w CFL 6400K for vegging and 50w 2700K CFL for flowering.
I have a Wappa from Paradise Seeds. It's soon growing too big for my PC-cabinet and it haven't even flowered yet. Picture:
It is in day 44 of vegging now. Anyone know how normal this is? It is now on 18/6 cycle because my smaller AK-47 has flowered for about a week or something.

Here is the AK-47:
The problem with the AK-47 is that I did a clear mistake when I planted it. It hasn't really got much soil, as you can see. All the lower bud sites doesn´t generally get much light,

All the lower bud sites doesn´t generally get much light, due to the way things are and the pot creating some shadow. Pictures of the AK above.

I am also thinking about nutrients as she has little soil.
It is not easy to just add more soil, if so I would have to trim off all the lower bud sites and leaves and fill it with soil - and I´m not sure if that is a good idea?
Transplant may be too risky too. This is my first plant ever and now that it has flowered I think I want to ride it out if its a 50/50 risk that it might die or something.

Do you guys have any advice? Also,

Not sure what your question is. It needs a bigger pot and prolly a bigger space. Plants dont generally like to stay small especially without LST which may fix your issues with budsit s getting no light.

Questions: would you recommend a transplant? Is it irregular that the wappa has not flowered? Would it die if i trimmed the branches of half the plant and filled with soil? And any general opinions

Hi!

First of all let me say those plants look nice and healthy, good job there!

To anwser your question. No. It will not die if you trimm the lower branches and fill it with soil. It will actually grow roots out of those wounds. so you could do that.

As for general opinions... I would transplant it in to a different container (a bigger one) Dont know the size of of the space you are dealing with, but I imagine its quite small. But thats fine, I work with a small-ish place aswell. So to reduce height and still have plenty of room for roots I use custom made containers or rather bags. Volume of a container is cruical here, and you can make a simple grow bag of any shape, lets say low (so to maximize youre vertical space) but it can cover the entire floor so the volume in which the roots can spread is still big.

For this youll need a device for welding plastic bags, you can buy it prettymuch in any homeappliances store and its cheap, you can use it to package food and stuff.
And you gonna need a black plastic garbage bag. You cut this up and weld it back together in the dimensions you need. The soil will give it shape, but you will need a tray of somesort to put it in. When it is filled with soil i burn some drainage holes in the bottom with a solder iron or you can just poke them in with a pointy object. Poke a lot of them for good drainage. This is the simplest and cheapest way of constructing a custom grow bag.

For better ariation of the roots you could sew a custom grow bag from agro textile. Or just use some non standard containers like those rubbermaid and alike.

As for lights... I would position both lights on the side, no lights above (again to maximize vertical), and I would put netting on the oposite side to spread out the branches for max. light exposure. If you wanna have lights above I would at least position it horizontally and use a reflector. I see you have mylar in there. If you buy a thin (0.6mm) sheet of aluminium you can make a simple parabolic reflector. Just attach the mylar to the Al sheet with some high tem. glue. When its dry curve that sheet around the bulb, you should be able to see the reflection of the bulb on the surface, adjust the curvature so that the reflection of the bulb spreads out eavenly across the surface of the reflector, this depends on the distance of the bulb from the reflector aswell - focal point. You can do this with your bare hands, it takes some fiddling about before you get it just right. You can try it out with just a strip of the mylar coverd aluminium, so you can get the dimensions right befor doing the whole reflector.

Cheers.