Plants stretching during flowering - Is this normal?

My plants have been on 12/12 for 23 days now. They've undergone an incredible growth spurt, more than doubling in height. However, most of the growth has be vertical. Not much new leaf mass has been added (although the buds seem to be coming in nicely).

Originally I had 6 plants under 6 36w daylight CFL's. When I switched to flowering, I changed to 42w cool white CFL's. I also ended up getting rid of three of the plants - 2 males and one because it wasn't performing. So effectively, I've more than doubled the amount of light per plant.

The strain I'm growing is a 70/30 indica/sativa mix. It's a custom strain from amsterdammarijuanaseeds.com. A more experienced grow that I talked to believes that it's a haze/blueberry cross of some sort.

The first two pics are from day 15 of 12/12. The last one is from two days ago (Day 21). Is this stretching normal?

sudden growth at flower stage is normal ....they should be done growing now...and will start flowering.

Dive:stoned:

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Originally Posted by Divestoned

sudden growth at flower stage is normal

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I expected the sudden growth part. But I'm concerned that the growth doesn't seem to include any new leaf mass.

But you think they're looking ok, then?

yea looks fine nothin to worry about in there.

Dive:stoned:

whats the fertillizer your using & your NPK values, did you switch to flowering ferts when you started the flowering cycle?

although the growth spurt is normal, I too think the stretch is excessive between grow nodes, if your too high in nitrogen, this can inhibit flowering and exaggerate the growth sprut from flowering .

additionally 3 weeks in and very little budding .....at 3 weeks most of my strains are almost half way completed.

you may just have a slow strain?

uh are you feeding right before they go to bed? if you feed right before dark they will stretch

keep lights as close as you can, maybe add one or two


prolly normal though, but becareful... and i have a bunch of sativa mixed strains and at 3 weeks they aren't anything serious

You don't want cool white cfl's now. You want warm white. (In the vicinity of 3,000k)

PC :smokin:

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Originally Posted by Ganja Guerrilla

whats the fertillizer your using & your NPK values, did you switch to flowering ferts when you started the flowering cycle?

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These are growing in a hydro set up and I'm using the Lucas Formula on them. For flowering it means I'm using a ration of 0-8-16 in ml/gallon of water of GH FloraGrow, FloraMicro, and FloraBloom, respectively.

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additionally 3 weeks in and very little budding .....at 3 weeks most of my strains are almost half way completed.

you may just have a slow strain?

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Unfortunately I don't know much about the strain. Like I said, it's a custom strain from a not very well known breeder. I *do* know that these ladies took almost 10 days of 12/12 lighting before they even showed preflower though, so maybe it is a slow strain.

Also, the difference in the amount of flowers between the pic I've posted from two days ago and what they look like last night is pretty significant. So it's picking up speed.

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Originally Posted by HighTillIDie

uh are you feeding right before they go to bed? if you feed right before dark they will stretch

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It's a drip-feed DWC hydro system, so they get nutes 24/7.

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keep lights as close as you can, maybe add one or two

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I just put in a bunch of mylar around the grow area to increase the amount of light getting to them, and I'm planning to add a couple more bulbs to the mix tonight.

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Originally Posted by PharmaCan

You don't want cool white cfl's now. You want warm white

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I don't know if this is unique to this brand, but the "cool white" ones are actually much warmer than the daylight ones. I double checked the package before I bought them. Not sure on the exact temp, but they're as warm as standard CFL's get.