Outdoor with limited sunlight...

You're doing a hell of a job. But it looks like your plant is going to outgrow that mini greenhouse. Plan for that and keep the inner scraggly branches trimmed. Like calico said those wont even see light anyways. It will help to get the air flowing through there and help prevent mold.

bud nugbong said:

You're doing a hell of a job. But it looks like your plant is going to outgrow that mini greenhouse. Plan for that and keep the inner scraggly branches trimmed. Like calico said those wont even see light anyways. It will help to get the air flowing through there and help prevent mold.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the encouragement.

So far I've done a double layer of scrog to try and keep them short and wide and away from the roof. It's not a true greenhouse (although some day it could be), its not sealed up. Mostly at this stage its just there to keep the fall wind and rain off of them. Next year I'm going to plant about 6 weeks later, and scrog even more aggressively, I'd really like them to be about half the size they are.

My logic might be all wrong, but I've been intentionally letting them overgrow in terms of having lots of foliage. My understanding is that one reason to trim that stuff out as you go is so that the plant doesn't "waste energy" on the lower stuff that won't produce much. Well, for now I want this plant to waste energy there, as much as possible. If I take all that stuff off now and the plant "focuses" on its upper parts, I'm afraid it will grow even taller. My plan is to do a heavy trim early fall -- just as the buds really get going -- but for the most part just let them be for now. If the plant spreading out and getting thicker slows down the vertical growth, it works for me.

Of course, I completely understand that my "logic" is something I am entirely making up, and I have no idea if that's how it actually works. Or, I could call this an experiment.

As I do my various bug and fungus sprays, I decided to change course and go ahead and trim them up properly... or at least what I understand to be properly. Their density of foliage just doesn't seem to be serving anyone. I suppose if I trim too much I could hurt the plant, but I doubt I'll go that far, and from my point of view at this point the less plant is there the better. My little experiment in growing in limited sunlight proved to be too successful, there's just too much plant here -- even after losing one four foot tall plant to maleness, and another I gave away. So I thinned the remaining four out extensively, in two passes.

This is the remains of the first pass


And this is the second


I tried to keep things nice and open, give lots of space for light and air.


Here's a blurry shot (sorry) of the Alien OG, my earliest bloomer


And here's where the next one in line is, the WiFi OG


And I know this has come up before in other threads but I don't remember the answer -- what's the deal with three part leaves? Is it a bad thing? My Alien has a lot of them...

Humanrob said:

And I know this has come up before in other threads but I don't remember the answer -- what's the deal with three part leaves? Is it a bad thing? My Alien has a lot of them...
View attachment 3484992

Click to expand...

Flip the leaf over and look with a magnifier. Your leaf looks like mine and I've got spider mites, but not too overwhelming yet. I've treated with Neem Oil several times, and now I'm using Spinosad.

Dan Drews said:

Flip the leaf over and look with a magnifier. Your leaf looks like mine and I've got spider mites, but not too overwhelming yet. I've treated with Neem Oil several times, and now I'm using Spinosad.

Click to expand...

Gave that a try, didn't see any bugs with 30x magnification -- is that the only cause of partial leaf growth?

They're starting to flower.

calicocalyx said:

They're starting to flower.

Click to expand...

Yes, they are.

depending where you live bi-mart has bt, for a little while.

Humanrob said:

Gave that a try, didn't see any bugs with 30x magnification -- is that the only cause of partial leaf growth?

Click to expand...

My apologies, I was referring to the spots on the leaf and not the 3 leaves. I'm guessing the leaf count is most likely genetic, I doubt it's a problem for you but you do want to keep a close eye out for spider mites.

Dan Drews said:

My apologies, I was referring to the spots on the leaf and not the 3 leaves. I'm guessing the leaf count is most likely genetic, I doubt it's a problem for you but you do want to keep a close eye out for spider mites.

Click to expand...

Good eye... but I think the spots you are seeing are from not applying Neem Oil correctly. The first time I did it just mixed it with cold water, and it sprayed unevenly leaving behind dull spots on the leaves, and eventually clogged the sprayer. The second time I mixed in a little ProTekt (per the Neem's instructions), and a tiny bit if dish soap, and I used warm water and shook it frequently -- applied much more evenly and no clogging.

often, plants will start putting out fewer blades on the leaves as they start flowering, especially when it's throwing out a bunch of new growth on all the branches at the same time.

innerG said:

often, plants will start putting out fewer blades on the leaves as they start flowering, especially when it's throwing out a bunch of new growth on all the branches at the same time.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. The plant looks really healthy, so I was hoping there was a simple explanation.

As my first season gets closer to its end, the answer to my question is in the yard. Early in the season the plants grew slowly. As the summer progressed and the sun got higher they got more hours per day of nice strong sun, and they grew fast and full. As fall is here and the sun is dipping down in the southern sky again, in addition to shorter days in general, trees are blocking more light each day and the effects are showing.

The ones that are getting more light are maturing nicely and producing decent buds. The ones closer to the edge of the property that are more effected by the angle of the sun and perimeter trees blocking light, are turning into huge (relatively, about 6' x 6') bushes of popcorn buds. They are maturing more slowly and have fewer and smaller buds than the ones getting more light late in the season.

Since they are all different strains its possible that these are strain specific characteristics, but since I have clones of them growing indoors and they are maturing consistently to each other, that points to the light differences. So that's one lesson learned from my first outdoor grow.

my plants get about 3-5 hours/day of direct sunlight that only covers half the plant and they are doing fine. they get a lot of reflective sunlight tho from neighbors house that has white siding on it.

jacbpdxpdx said:

my plants get about 3-5 hours/day of direct sunlight that only covers half the plant and they are doing fine. they get a lot of reflective sunlight tho from neighbors house that has white siding on it.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing that, good to know. I'm not sure what else to attribute the difference in my bud development to -- it seems pretty clear cut in my situation. But, that said, there definitely could be other factors I'm not aware of that could be holding back two of them.

Beautiful looking plants, btw.

Here are some pics. The first is the sky my plants see (looking south, trees to the east & west), as the sun gets lower as fall progresses, the light is cut down dramatically as it descends into the narrower parts of the "V" of the opening in the trees.

The next shot is the WhiteFire OG closer to the property line (getting less light), the other shot is the Alien OG, which gets more light. Seems like a huge difference to me. I've been using Happy Frog time release nutes, but I'm thinking of boosting with some other stuff I have next time I water. The leaves are for the most part consistent and green... I suppose you can't make up for less light with more nutes, but there isn't much else I have control over.

As a newb outdoor grower, who only had two plants to begin with, but have a lot of experience with other home crops; I am always amazed at how quickly and dramatically the sun changes its arc in the fall. My 2 plants are in two different beds, a neighbor's tree now shades one bed for a goodly portion of the day, a month ago - it wasn't. Next years plants are all going in bed #2. That being said, plant #1 finished nice & early and is happily curing in the Man Cave! Ugh! Mongo like Bud!

How did it turn out - this was a great thread

SF2LA said:

How did it turn out - this was a great thread

Click to expand...

Look closely... this thread was from 2015. But I suppose it's still relevant...

It turned out OK, the two that got more light finished well, the two that got less light molded up before they finished and were not harvested. The other lesson I learned was not to try to grow Sativas (or sativa dominant hybrids) when you have a short grow season. That was a loooong time ago. Cut down some trees to open up more sky after that summer, and then switched to autos and never looked back.

good luck to you ---

haha yeah still v relevant - haven't been able to find much info on forced flowering and how long to continue for. that's awesome you were able to clear more space for light. do autos yield well outside (and are you in pots or in the ground)? i wish i had a yard!