Verticle growth during flowering question

Over the years I've seen about 15 plants go through the complete growth cycle. With all those plants the most verticle growth I've seen during flowering was about 200-250% of the original height. But now I'm witnessing an unknown strain that has grown 400% of it's original height in the 17 days since it was switched to 12/12. It's up to a little over 5 feet at this point.


In some ways this is a somewhat good thing but in other ways it could be disaster. Space is running out, the lights can only go up another 10 inches and I fear it collapsing under it's own weight since it's definitley not the strongest or most sturdy plant I've seen...nodes are spaced out to much in some areas. I'm dismayed by the node spacing because the plant has never had to "reach" for light. There's always been plenty of light as close to the top as possible.
It was vegged with flouros(4 foot shop and a several other supplementals on the side) and switched to 400W HPS for 12/12. It's in a natural soil/peat/perlite mix with no ferts. Also, the growth is much more stretched out than I would expect under an HPS. The light has never been very far from the top of the plant, in fact it's been just far enough to keep the tops from burning.

Is this growth unusual? Know of any strains with this characteristic? Will the verticle growth stop in the near future? Any other advice, other than the fact that using an unknown seed is a bad plan?

Sounds like you got your hands on a pure Sativa, ma man. :dance: I've heard of them getting 9' tall (3meters) when grown outside. They tend to be very leggy and have widely spaced nodes. It could be an original Haze, or something like that.

If you get to where you can't raise the light any more and it looks like it's going to grow into it then you can LST it, and that'll probably help. As for it not being strong enough to hold it's own weight, you can use cane poles. Like they do with tomatoes to keep them from falling over. If you're worried about the top tipping over because it gets over ballanced due to the height then you can wedge stuff against it to keep that from happening.

Just a few ideas, babe.:thumbsup:

Oh, one more thing. If it is a pure Sativa then you're looking at around 10 weeks of flowering time rather than 8.:D

That is what I would do.
Like TG said I would put my money on a sativa strain...By the way...got an males with pollen??????;)
I would start LSTing right away. I'm sure you already figured that out if you have 15 grows under your belt.
I am a believer in letting the plant put it's full effort toward producing fruit so my philosophy is to support every branch and I mean every branch to get the production that your strain is capable of.
I have reusable plastic supports but if you need to go cheap then you can get bamboo poles that will last you a couple of grows.
Shoot us some pics so we can watch this thing grow out your windows and under your doors like a runaway vine.

Peace brother -Jay

the leaves are very narrow like sativa so I think you're 100% correct. I expected a very small plant(2.5feetx2feet at most) but luckily it was the only female so it's got the entire flowering area to itself. Another stroke of luck is the fact that it's being grown within a shelf frame. There's a pic of the shelf rack attached

The only shelf on the rack is the top shelf which the light hangs from. The rack allows me a very easy way of attaching supports to the plant. The plant has 4 tops that are the same height(approx 5 Feet), and another 2 that are slightly shorter and then some other riffraff below. Because of the node spacing I'm not expecting dense buds, but the overall weight should be pretty good.

Another benefit of this extreme verticle growth is that I have absolutely no guilt about taking the young flowers from the bottom of the plant because at this point they get almost zero direct light. I wouldn't want to smoke it all the time, but every once in awhile I do enjoy the spacey high of the very young flowers.