Should I flower now (pics)?

Strain is Hawaiian Snow from Greenhouse Seeds - supposed a Sativa dominant. The finished plants they grew were very spindly and open with not a huge amount of leaf cover. Those wire loops are to keep them upright - at first, they were all over the place, they all fell over horizontally they were stretching so quickly. Notice that the stems are quite a bit thicker towards the top than the base? Might bury them a little deeper when I repot (don't want them toppling or snapping)

I've had these under a 50w halogen for the last few weeks while I've been dealing with some issues over a HPS. The HPS may be about to turn up, so I'm wondering what to do.

I'm going to repot into 15l washed / nutrient soak / pH balanced coir with drip irrigation.

I've been recording the height of the plants every day since they were seeds, so I have a cool graph appearing of their growth rates - it's real straight and it hasn't changed since seeding, so these pots aren't restricting growth atm. They're about 30cm with 3 nodes (4th starting).

These pics are from a few days ago, so the tops have developed a little more;

Can If You Like There real Stretched tho.!

I think the stretching is a big part of the Sativa dominance. I didn't want to deal with massively tall plants (which these can be) but didn't want the couch lock of Indica, so figured I'd put up with it and went all Sativa

Supposedly a brutal THC content in the resin - we'll wait and see. I'll be UV'ing them as well

Hi,
These plants are streched like hell.
My suggestion is to use your HPS as soon as possible and for the entire life cycle next time.
Halogen light is NOT good at all to grow plants.
Give a look at some grow diary and compare your plants to plants grow under MH or HPS.

Good Luck and Peace

put under HPS those stems dont look like they will hold shit, your plant should have that many leaves after 3 days sorry man they look like shit

before you flower you are gonna have to put them in some bigger pots...

I'd definately be aggressively trying to find that HPS cuz halogen just aint doing it. I am growing sativa's at the moment and although they grew tall and had a bit of stretch, they wernt as stretched as yours.

Are you restricted on height? If not, get the HPS, transplant into bigger pots, veg for another week then switch to 12/12

well a few different suggestions... get rid of the halogen asap... they are junk and not used for growing... if your having problems coming up with an hps, go and get some cfls, 2ft fluoros or 4 ft fluoros or a mh security light... and keep the lights close... sativa's are going to stretch but not like that... also depending on how your grow room is setup and your lighting is when you wanna kick your bitches into 12/12 (flowering) if you have a good amount of light and height is not a problem then let them grow to their potential when you start to see alternating nodes is when you wanna kick them into 12/12... if you dont have a good amount of light (an hid) or your height of your growbox isn't the greatest take into consideration that when you do switch it over to flower sativas expect 4 times the growth so ifyour plants are a foot now expect to get 4-5 feet in height by the time she's done... on an indica 1/3 so if' it's a foot expect 3-4 foot ... but it clearly looks sativa dom... so change your light, keep a fan on those babies , repot soon burry them down to the first set of leaves and keep those lights close

Shit.... I'm really grateful for the replies but I'm so pissed off right now. Why? Because I actually have a bad ass setup (2m high tent, 1000W lamp, hydro).

The fucking dicks I bought it from have been messing around all month (literally just got the last of the order today, a month later). They sent me a dead bulb. Instead of claiming a refund and sending me out a new one, they said I needed to send it back. As soon as it gets back (middle of next week - late as usual) 'its in bits' - my problem. Yea... fucking right...

I'd decided to start the seedlings under the halogen expecting the whole lot to be here weeks ago - so the seedlings would be rolling by then.

Man, cutting the cigarettes out, having no green to smoke - I'm not happy right now. Not only is that a pricey assed bulb to replace (I don't have a job and didn't steal it), it's stretching out my already stretchy and expensive strain and wasted a month of my time. AHHHHHHHH!

I bet the fucking prick sends my address in but fuck it - I'm not being stolen from

take some more pics i wanna check out your setup.........gotta transplant them i did this when i first started growing, check out my link for pics not as tall as your but they were streached..........just get your bigger pot and put the root ball on the bottom you want as much as the stem as possible under the new soil to make it stonger and smaller ..........i transfered my plant into a water farm hollly shit roots went like crazy and the plant is strong and healty

Right - I've been ultra busy finding a replacement and have one in the post right now - finally. They'll be under it the hour it gets here.

I'll get some more pictures up once the bulb turns up (hopefully tomorrow).

I figure I should probably give them another week under 24h cycle with the 1kw to make sure their roots get into the new pots and they have some mass.

I'm sure they'll be good once they're repotted and under the 1kw - the pots are big 15l's and they'll have mycorrhizal fungi in there too

Damn... this has been enough that it's made me wonder if I could be bothered, but now I'm using some legal brain relaxer (beer) it's getting more bearable.

New grower here too so this isn't gospel. I started my grow about 3 weeks ago with the same idea...I wanted all sativa for that up and away head high. (I have a grow journal going on these). Western Winds is what I planted with a Power Skunk for variety.

My plants are way shorter even though they are sativas. I am growing under 400W MH for veg.

Bummer about your bulb situation. You might pick up some cheaper CFLs as a backup to the HPS problems. I used a CFL to get my plants started.

Good luck.

peach said:

I think the stretching is a big part of the Sativa dominance. I didn't want to deal with massively tall plants (which these can be) but didn't want the couch lock of Indica, so figured I'd put up with it and went all Sativa

Supposedly a brutal THC content in the resin - we'll wait and see. I'll be UV'ing them as well

Click to expand...

stretching could have been avoided with about 14$ worth of 6500 cfls hung about 4" above the tops.
what your plants are doing is not related to gentics, just poor lighting.
i have seen worse tho !

also if your gonna flower those soon ... get a fan in there to built up that bean stalk and plan on staking them up move

7:30 am interlink arrives with my 1000w bulb. I did ask for a sunmaster HPS, and was grateful the place posted it next day, but they've sent me a MH (and a coolspectrum :/ ). I thought for a few minutes about whether I'd send it back for the HPS, but time is getting on and it's taking the piss to start messing around with ANOTHER refund when the first guy is still playing games with me, I could have bought another bulb with the postage I'd have spent by then.

So they're now sitting under the 1000w with some hydro feed since they need to get some energy into them.

I'll continue measuring them and post the graph up to show you what happens with the light change.

I've read some suggestions doing the flowering cycle under MH helps produce tighter buds (maybe less of them, but tighter).

Still annoying, the bulb wasn't what I ordered and a bit of the white insulation on the supports (inside the bulb, alongside the central mercury part) was already split

I'm waiting for some mycorrhizal fungi to arrive so I can infect their 15l pots before repotting - they'll be going deep in the soil as suggested. Pics to come at the repot.

Hi peach,
i m sorry to read about your troubles.
Imo MH is not the right light for flower period but it's still better than halogen anyway. Try to replace the bulb with a HPS as soon as possible if you want flower them in the proper way.

Good luck

in my experience, those plants will produce nothing smokeable. Its waaayyyy too stretched, and if you flower it, at the most, it will have a few pistils. I would start over now, and save yourself more time and dissapointment. good luck

For Hulk Nugs... here they are where they were supposed to be a month ago! The lamp is 1kw, the coir is actually rammed with perlite (below the surface) and the roots are infected with mycorrhizal fungi. There are hydroponic drippers in the pots that will be leaking Ionic Coir Grow / Bloom solution once the coir starts to dry. The duct is pullinh fresh air in from a window and the fan helps make sure it doesn't go straight out through the cooltube.

I found that blocking the air vents of the tent from the outside with cling wrap dramatically improved the air coming in from the window, dropped my tent temperature by about 5 C to 23 / 24C, perfect....

They should pick up now.