Stems not Growing

I have about 5 plants started under a 400watt MH lamp. The first started on Valentine's Day so it's been about 1 week now. They seem to be getting good size on the leaves, but the stems aren't really growing. They look more like bushes than plants.

I had the light about 20 inches above the plants, but today I raised the light to about 40 inches above the plants.

I'm new at this so I'm just looking for any advice. Is it normal for plants to sit so close to the dirt when they are starting?

Yes and you want a nice full canopy on them, they will shoot up soon enough.

leave the light low if you can, it will stretch plenty once you start flowering

That is perfect... The more leaves you get before it startes to gain height the better! Goos job! It means they are getting a perfect amount of light!

No man, its a good thing you just need to prune maybe. Usually you dont want the stem to lengthen because that means you do not get as dense of nugs. Thats why the FIM(fuck i missed) method is used because it help to make the node distance apart very close which is a good thing. Indicas grow like that while sativas like to stretch out a lot.

weedaweedaweed said:

leave the light low if you can, it will stretch plenty once you start flowering

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Absolutely right ….. raising your light will cause your plants to stretch and that is not something better than short bushy plants.


I may have missed it but what strain/hybrid are the plants?

put the light back!!!

Thanks for the input. To be honest this is a first grow and I'm kind of experimenting while I wait on my seeds to arrive. I have 10 WW feminized on the way. The seeds I'm growing presently are in soil. I'm not really sure they were just some bag seed. Decent stuff but really just to kind of test and get my feet wet a little. I've built a Bubbleponic system that intend to use with my new seeds as opposed to soil.

Thanks for your help the light is back and we'll see what happens.

I sure missed something, How do you start plants on Valentine's day and have them be bushy 6 days later???

No, they actually started a little more than a week before Valentine's Day. At least that's when they were put in the dirt. I had my first two sprout on Valentine's Day. I also wouldn't necessarily say they are bushy. They have the original two sprout leaves. A large first set of leaves, a decent second set and they are just starting their third or at least it kind of looks that way.