White Widow

Hi everyone. I have a white widow that I finally got big enough to put into flower about 2 weeks ago. I have a couple of concerns. About 1 week after being 12/12 I noticed that several of the lower leaves were turning soft and falling off. They are not changing color, just getting limp and falling off. The entire plant looks good still, just dozens of these lower leaves keep falling off. Also up till I started flowering it was a very nice tight plant. Node lenght was very close. Once I started flowering I've noticed that instead of growing new leaves it seems to be stretching. I keep it about 1/2" from my over driven floresent tubes and each day it grows up to touch them. So I move it up another 1/2", and again the next day it's up to them again. Is this normal, or am i doing something wrong? Thanks for your help!

I the pro's on the site will be better able to help you if you would post some pics, trust me, i know what they ask for!!! lol

It is typical for a plant to stretch, infact its the first sign of full steam flowering. Expect it to double in height before its done.

As for the leaves falling off, how is your watering schedule? are you allowing a day of dry out for the roots? this isnt as important during flowering as it is during veg though, but I still let soil dry out before watering. Leaves will typicaly fall from both over watering and underwatering.

Stretching happens with all [mj] plants when put into flowering. They will stretch for about 4-5 weeks into flower and will get to be at least twice, up to 4 times bigger than when you put it under 12/12 (yes, sativas can get that big). Also CFL's need to be placed around the plant in flowering, as opposed to putting them on top, supposedly. That is because CFLs don't penetrate the leaves and have a lower light spread, I guess. So that induces more stretching. Made the very same mistake with my first ones, before I found out about the CFL placement.

Posting a picture would help, showing the fallen leaves and the whole plant.

the only way to flower using cfls is to keep your plant as short and compact as possible using LST or scrog

I have been using LST to pull down the really long branches, but it seems to have the same result as raising the light. It just stretches up a day later to touch the lights again. As for the pictures, I can't post any ATM but the plant looks totally healthy in respect to color of the leaves and such. The leaves look like a leaf would look if you were cut it off the plant and lay it on a flat surface. It just sort of withers and then if left even longer it drys out and eventually falls off. I think that I read in one of these posts that lose of lower Older leaves during flowering was normal, but I wanted to check since not everything you read is true. As for flowering with CFL's, what is it going to do if I continue to try to flower it with just CFL's overhead? Will it never flower? It already has pistols out, and it's only been like 3 weeks. I will be adding CFL's to the sides of the plant in the next week or 2's time, just have not had time to get them set up yet. Thanks!

it will flower, just not very effectively. WW stretch a lot and for a long time (but at 3 weeks you're already at the end, they should stop very soon) and take long to start flowering (about when they stop stretching). the more bulbs you have, and the closer you can keep them to all parts of your plant (besides the bottom), the better and more flowers you will get.

Ya this plant has a BUNCH of tops as you can see from the picture below. This was from about 3 weeks ago right before I put it into flower. I've just been keeping it back from the lights as best I can,while still keeping it with in like 1/2" of them. Just the upper most nodes have stretched like 3" from the rest of the plant. Between that and the lower leaves just sort of dying off as if I had cut them off the plant. I'm guessing Lack of light? Thanks again for all the help!

nice work there

you'll get some very nice buds and a handsome yield as well i believe