im having some difficulty getting my top 44 plants to start buding. i tried 48 hr dark period and still no sex. been like 3 weeks of 12-12. anyone know y this is happening?
What color spectrum lighting are you using,also what type lighting & how much lighting.
The wrong spectrum will make the onset of budding much slower as well as very weak lighting.
Also forcing sex in plants then directly into bud is not allways quick,alot depends on how close the plants were to being sexually mature when they entered the flowering phase,ive had top 44 plants that were sexually mature before i put them on 12/12 be covered with tons of pistils all over them after 3 weeks of 12/12,ive never finished in 44 days though,allways right around 8 weeks.
Sounds very much to me that you have the wrong spectrum lighting & the plants were not mature enough before going into 12/12.
For your other questions yes top 44 is good smoke,its a very good tasting skunky weed with a pretty heavy stone,i think the name is holding it back very much,if it had a more catchy name more people would grow it,names of weed play a huge role it seems now days.
How long it takes from seed to bud is a question that cant be answered with any degree of accuracy because each grow op has a different set of variables.
Lets say it takes a week to germinate then 5 to 6 weeks for the plants to become sexually mature & show sex on their own without the grower forcing sex (this is how you should start them out for best results btw),so were at 6 weeks now & its time for budding,this has allways taken me right around 8 weeks to get the buds where we like them,which is with about 60% amber trichomes for a very heavy buzz.
To have extremely heavy yeilding plants that match the given yeild weight numbers from the breeders your looking at right around 14 weeks total from seed to harvest,the earlier you force sex & the farther the plants are away from being sexually mature the more the yeild will suffer,the top 44 strain can yeild some massive ass buds if its allowed to become mature before starting the flowering phase.