what height do my clones need to be before i switch them to flower?!

they are 3 weeks old from yesterday, i have them under a 400 watt light and there about 6-7 inch so im not sure how big they have to be to get maximum yield?

8 - 12 inch to start, usually veg for 1 month then flip to 12/12

so ive only got another week to go lol not to bad , wasnt sure if they was kinda smal for 3 weeks under the light ?

At that age, it's not so much how tall they are but how much foliage there is. If they are bushy and healthy looking, you could go to 12/12 right now. If not, let them veg some more.

i could take a picture but itl b abit blurry because the light is on them at the moment lol

also im not sure when to top them, fim or just leave them to it?

How tall do you want them to be at the end of flower? That is how you determine when to switch light cycles. Just remember that as they get taller they get wider. Normall a plant will grow between 2 and 3 times it's size when you switch it to flower.

Jlee1990 said:

they are 3 weeks old from yesterday, i have them under a 400 watt light and there about 6-7 inch so im not sure how big they have to be to get maximum yield?

Click to expand...

How much vertical space do you have to grow them in?

If you want maximum yield per clone, you'd want the plants to be as big as possible before trying to flower them. The issue, of course, is that typically plants will increase in size about 2-3x after flowering, so the limiting factor is space. You could literally veg your clones for months before flowering, creating 5-6 foot high flowering "trees" with pounds of bud on there if you had the space to do so.

Note that you may be looking at this wrong. Do you want maximum yield PER CLONE, or maximum yield PER UNIT TIME? There is a signficant difference between the two.

If you just want maximum absolute yield (which I think is what most people are after) then probably the best way to do that is with a large number of small clones creating a "carpet" of tops. This is called the "sea of green" technique, and although each top is relatively small, the total number of tops and high turn-over of clones together create large quick harvests. If you can fill your growing area with small clones, then its probably perfectly fine to flower them at only 7 inches tall, assuming they're well rooted and healthy.

One big issue going this way is that it requires lots of plants, and depending on where you are growing, that could pose legal issues.

i flower wonder haze at 6-10 inches and it finishes at 35-40
do the same with mr nice at it'll finish at 14 inches
most plants the first time around if they're bushy, i flower at about 12-15 inches with no training - you have to idntify a plant's growth patterns BEFORE you can train it to take advantage of said tendencies - yes?
if a plant is not bushy, let it get 15-18 inches, make a candy cane out of it, then flower and it will quickly become a 12-15 inch bush lol
gl hf

All depends on how big you can let them become once the veging is over and the stretch of the first few wks of flowerintg will give u, which will usually be between 25-50% of the end of veg time... I have enough space that I let mine veg for three months, and cull my males when preflowers show up, and then I switch them to 12/12, and I only haveta run two crops per year to keep myself stocked up year-round... It is all relative to the space u have prepared for them to finish in...

And IF u get a hermie, and can isolate it totally, and it is a good strain, then u can grow it until the self-pollenated seeds r mature, and have your own fem'd seeds... But, even thru central air in the same house or bldg, the pollen will travel and at least partially pollenate your females... So, itz up to u if u want to let a hermie live in a separate area, just for the seeds... But, with fem'd seeds, u will likely haveta always look for hermie traits that may and may not pop up unexpectantly...