Reasons for extended flowering period of Northern Lights?

Hi Folks

Well, we are virtually there: we started our first attempt at growing on 18 November 2007 using Northern Lights seeds.

On 1 February, we entered into the flowering stage with 2 plants. Initially we had them on a 13/11 light regime but after a few weeks we changed this 12/12.

We also had to repot the plants after about 4 weeks of flowering.

The plants are in general purpose compost with perlite. They have been fed on geenral purpose plant food augmented by organic bonemeal and for the last 5 weeks Bizzmax.

Lighting is under a 250W Son-T.

My understanding is that NL should reach maturity in 8-9 weeks but here we are 87 days later i.e. 12 weeks 3 days and they are still not quite fully mature.

Pistils are now majority amber but not yet 80%.

Trichomes are getting cloudier but no sign of any amber ones. We are aiming for a more 'body stone' so as I understand we want roughly 80% amber pistils and about 10% amber trichomes?

Can anyone suggest reasons for this extended flowering? I assume repotting them may have shocked them and could be the reason? Also, having them on a 13/11 light regime at the beginning could also have extended the period. I should add that we changed to a 14/10 regime a few weeks ago to try to speed up their maturity.

I have added a few photos below.

I would be grateful for any views on why they are taking so long to mature.

14/10 as in 14 hours' darkness, I hope. IT sounds as if you have a light leak. Also, what is the day/night temp in your room?

Hi Stinky

Thanks for the reply. Yes...14hrs darkness.

We have been very careful with the light..the plants are in a closet in a bedroom and the bedroom windows are blacked out. In addition we have a green lightbulb in case we need to use the light.

Temperatures have been pretty constant..about 65 in dark period and 75-80 in the light.

I should add, just in case its the reason for the extended flowering, that we have cut off a small number of buds to sample from about week 7 onwards...but literally only a few very small ones.

From where on the plant were those buds taken?

lower down on the plant...we haven't touched the top (colas?)..which are really big nor any of the other largish ones.