LST Questions

What’s up everyone! A few questions; I’ve had to do quite a bit of bending and shaping, how much longer should I keep the girls in veg? Another month? (Been vegging since late May) I was thinking to keep em going until they fill the pot then flip to flower but (new grower) should I wait until all the bud sites grow to a certain height? The pics will make sense the girls were a rescue mission and I feel like they look healthy. Any advice helps thanks!

The first pic is late June, the other 4 was this morning.

I'm a new grower too, so don't take my advice as though it is the best ever. This is what I learned since completing my first grow. I started my plants under blurple lights February 1st and vegged them till May 3rd. During that time, I topped them once and did a lot of LST. By the time I was ready to flip to flower, the plants were pretty big, and some of the branches were flopping over on themselves. I thought that using tomato cage was good enough for support, but there was too much of a canopy and I had a bunch of weak branches due to not having enough lights.

So given my situation, if I could have turned back time, I would have switched them to flower when they were younger. That way, my lights would have been more effective and I would have had a better quality yield. Because my plants ended up being too big, and the lighting wasn't good enough to support proper bud development, my end result was not as desired. I should also mention that during that time, one of my plants started to stress out and became a hermie so once the pollen sack exploded, it caused all my plants to start focusing on developing seeds and halt THC production.

If I could do it all over again, I would have flipped to flower around week 5 or 6 of veg (I consider veg to be about 2-3 weeks after you pop the seeds into your grow medium, the first 2-3 weeks I consider as seedling phase). I learned alot from my mistakes and how I could do things differently. I think your plants look pretty good, and if it were me, I would consider flipping to flower soon, maybe like August 1st so its easier to remember and track how long since you've flipped to 12/12.

Hope this helps, and good luck with your grow!

You know, I am not one of those people that likes to push my growing style on anyone, and really I don't think anyone should do that and that's even more important when one see ones photos, and simply through those photos one can see how they took what looked like a "Skinny Bean Stock" and flattened her out to have a real nice even canopy tells me to shut my mouth cause you have got the fundamentals down on what you need to do in order to get your plant to produce a lot of even keeled tops! Really, you have done a nice job!!! But as for when to flower, that too is really up to you, but when you should flower should be based on how much space you have and how much more time you want to work her. For me, it goes like so, if from seed... 5 nodes up, then I top her, then I remove both node 1(s) side branches for give-away clones, then I keep stretching the upper nodes horizontally outward until the lower nodes catch up to the upper nodes, then I kick them over to flower, and that usually takes 6 - 7 weeks from seed, but while I am doing that I up pot 3 times along the way.

piratebug said:

You know, I am not one of those people that likes to push my growing style on anyone, and really I don't think anyone should do that and that's even more important when one see ones photos, and simply through those photos one can see how they took what looked like a "Skinny Bean Stock" and flattened her out to have a real nice even canopy tells me to shut my mouth cause you have got the fundamentals down on what you need to do in order to get your plant to produce a lot of even keeled tops! Really, you have done a nice job!!! But as for when to flower, that too is really up to you, but when you should flower should be based on how much space you have and how much more time you want to work her. For me, it goes like so, if from seed... 5 nodes up, then I top her, then I remove both node 1(s) side branches for give-away clones, then I keep stretching the upper nodes horizontally outward until the lower nodes catch up to the upper nodes, then I kick them over to flower, and that usually takes 6 - 7 weeks from seed, but while I am doing that I up pot 3 times along the way.

Click to expand...

I like your method, it seems like a nice way to get some consistent yields, I will try this out next time. Can you elaborate on the pot sizes that you use and when you decide to move up in size? Do you start in a solo cup and pot up 3 times from there? When following this method, how big are the plants by the end of the flower stretch? How much do you end up yielding? Are your nugs basically all dense top colas or is there some airy popcorn buds below the canopy?

piratebug said:

You know, I am not one of those people that likes to push my growing style on anyone, and really I don't think anyone should do that and that's even more important when one see ones photos, and simply through those photos one can see how they took what looked like a "Skinny Bean Stock" and flattened her out to have a real nice even canopy tells me to shut my mouth cause you have got the fundamentals down on what you need to do in order to get your plant to produce a lot of even keeled tops! Really, you have done a nice job!!! But as for when to flower, that too is really up to you, but when you should flower should be based on how much space you have and how much more time you want to work her. For me, it goes like so, if from seed... 5 nodes up, then I top her, then I remove both node 1(s) side branches for give-away clones, then I keep stretching the upper nodes horizontally outward until the lower nodes catch up to the upper nodes, then I kick them over to flower, and that usually takes 6 - 7 weeks from seed, but while I am doing that I up pot 3 times along the way.

Click to expand...

I appreciate that brother! I'm really trying and I'm falling in love with this hobby and I've yet to harvest. I just want to make sure I maximize my total yield while keeping the girls healthy. Would you say let them finish wrapping around the bucket then flip to flower? Or let them fill and grow vertical more for a short time?