New Generation LST

I figured it was time to give these girls their own thread. Two each clones from two moms [Nirvana AK48] in soil. Seeing how compact these are structured means I should be able to fit four 6 Gal pots in the tent without crowding. I figure I should rotate the pots a little every day so that the light evens out.

With the LST from the start I should get a more even canopy, and can bring the light closer.

Side view, about a week ago:


Top down:


This one has really caught my eye:


The remaining Mom should be ready for harvest in a couple days, and these will be re-potted and moved to the tent for 400W of MH. They're getting too crowded in the current environs.

You can read about earlier stages of these, and my general setup, HERE.

Lookin great Kroost I'll be stickin around to watch their progress.. Throw up some pictures of the flowering mom..

Some of the last pics of the last mom can be found here

In their new home; re-potted and under the 400W MH. They really needed to be re-potted, they were getting quite root bound.

I decided to lower the light, which is a royal pain since the enclosed balast make it so off-balance and hard to move, but the results should be worth it.

So, here they are:

Nice work I'm headed in the same path but I'm going to bush them out then veg longer and scrogging mine

Some shots from this morning:



The tin thing lower right is a passive intake port.

I lowered the light [which is a BITCH with the enclosed ballast!] to about thirteen inches above the canopy. I could get closer, but I still want easy access to all four (same reason I decided against a scrog).

Here is a side view:



This reminds me of when I visited Kyoto, Japan, and saw these big, spreading trees. When you stood under them, you saw that they were actually supported by an extensive bamboo scaffolding. Here, for hooks, I am using lengths of 16 Gauge wire.

I hope I can keep the canopy this even down the line. One I'm going be watching is the "funny-looking one with four branches". Three of the four branches are just regular branches, not main stems like I'd hoped. The remaining, main, stem is looking healthy, but is way behind the other three plants. I'd been doing a minimal amount of "work" on this one, while waiting to see how she was going to grow. Now I can start spreading her out.

The Latest :



Every day I try to get a chance to "groom" them; checking the hooks and strings, and adjusting as needed.

Before grooming:


After grooming :


Nothing dramatic going on, which I guess is a good thing. I'm trying to decide how mush longer I want to veg for. I keep on seeing new bud sites, and the main stems are still putting out plenty of new growth, so I might just decide to wait and go for yield.

Your progress reminds me of mine earlier man.. I couldn't help it when I saw how many bud sites kept developing, kept me wanting to veg longer and longer but eventually I gave in and began flowering.. any thoughts on how much longer??

Your girls are all lookin awesome tho.. keep it up! Hopefully you can keep that canopy even through flowering!

+Rep!

Haha, I was going to ask you what made YOU decide to do it when you did.

All four have a "bald spot"which will get filled in if I can get the main stems to keep curving around. After that, I don't know.

I learned the need for keeping the canopy even on my old [bad] grows. I had the main stem staked down, and one or two side branches "took over", while the main stem stopped growing. Putting in the necessary maintenance has really paid off. "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree," you know.

GOOD MORNING!



This morning as I was grooming them, I saw some new development on the "four-branched" one [I'll have to give them formal names soon]. I saw several little branches coming off the three that never had them before. She seems to be lagging an awful lot, but she does get there. I wonder if I'll have to flower her extra long as well.

I'm getting a little concerned about the main stems starting to get a bit over-shadowed by new growth. So, this morning I mad sure that everything else was tied down close, and let the ends "go free". I hope I can get them back to dominance and then back to training without putting any weird kinks in the stem.

Cropped detail of the previous post:

I'm trying to get some idea of when I'll be able to flip to flowering, but there's still maybe a week at least. I'm still trying to get those bald spots filled in. There's a lot of new growth on the other side of the pot, and I'm training them to grow across to the empty areas. It's really striking just after grooming; three or four parallel stems. Kind of like a comb-over.

Once I can get the bald areas filled, I want to let the comb-over stems thicken up a little.

I'm eager to see how they'll respond in flowering to having the light closer to the canopy, without that one big cola in the way. I'm so glad I got the air-cooling going, the girls seem to really dig it.

kroost said:

In their new home; re-potted and under the 400W MH. They really needed to be re-potted, they were getting quite root bound.

I decided to lower the light, which is a royal pain since the enclosed balast make it so off-balance and hard to move, but the results should be worth it.

So, here they are:

View attachment 2734357
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Click to expand...

Hey Kroost why don't you try getting the light to a workable level for you then raise the plants, stand them on boxes or books or something - it's way easier to lower the plants by slipping out a book every week rather then raise the lights every week. The girls are looking lovely. x

kroost said:

Cropped detail of the previous post:

View attachment 2756687

Click to expand...

Gorge, but pick a few of those massive fan leaves off - let the light get in and you have even more shoots. Also don't worry about the 'bald spots' - they fill in with new little buds shooting out during flowering! I was the same as you as kept Pearl in veg as I waned to keep LSTing...ended up vegging for 5 and a half weeks when really I could have flipped her at 4.

Lady Helena said:

Hey Kroost why don't you try getting the light to a workable level for you then raise the plants, stand them on boxes or books or something - it's way easier to lower the plants by slipping out a book every week rather then raise the lights every week. The girls are looking lovely. x

Click to expand...

That's what I would have preferred. Since I'm trying to get the canopy of all four to be the same height, I would need to move all four en masse and have it stable enough to not tip over. Decided it was just as easy to lower the damn light.

The 'detail' shot was taken prior to grooming, so maybe it looks a bit more "lush" than usual. I do trim some of the fan leaves, but really very few. I'm an inveterate tucker. Last step of grooming is to tuck as many fan leaves as I can down underneath everything. That's one of the things I really like about this LST system: the canopy is thin enough so that some light does get down to the tucked leaves.

looking good! subbed

While grooming them this morning, I decided I've had enough of keeping track of all the new growth. There's a couple of particular stems I want to veg for a couple more days, but then I'll do the flip.

LH, After saying I hardly trim, this morning I had to trim quite a few. You can see a lot of "tuckers" dangling underneath if you look from the side. I'll probably trim those after the growth changes to all vertical.

Help on the way to a Bald Spot:

Nice dude. Great thread. Thanks for taking the time. You have some very lovely looking girls there! Can you count the bud sites?