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Hi, I need advice on how to keep nodes compact during flowering.
My plants were very compact in veg. However, when I switched to 12/12, they went from 12 inches to about 30 inches in a week! I kept the lights super close to try and prevent stretch, but they kept hitting the lights and I had to move it up every day. I have a 400w HPS growing in DWC.
I have a couple in soil and those hardly stretched at all.
My goal is to produce massive colas.
I experienced the same stretch on my first grow and decided to put 1/4" wooden dowels around the perimeter of their pot and tied to them, kinda like LST except late. Grew spiral looking plants that each had 3-5 nice colas.
Hey there bobhead,
Most mj plants will stretch or grow 2-3 times thier vegged height during flowering.
You can keep them shorter during flowering using far red (730nm) light supplemation. A good economical source of far red are incandescent halogen bulbs.
In my personal grow, the far red comes on 1/2 hr before my main lights kick in and stay on another 1/2 hr. At the end of the photoperiod they come on again 1/2 hr before lights out and stay on 1/2hr after the main lights go off.
I recently came across a scientific paper that basicly said that just 15 minutes of far red at lights out works. I have not experimented with that, yet.
OM
How can I encourage compact flowering nodes.
My plants stretched so much, there would be long spindly branches with a dinky ass flower up top and a couple half ways down the branch.
I'm thinking about LST, but would I be able to achieve a giant cola. Or does it cause a bunch of medium sized tops.
You can get multiple colas with LST. Not HUGE, but 4 main colas usually outweigh one giant one.
Try reading my post.Quote:
Originally Posted by bobhead
You have seen noticeable differences with that method?
Nah, he's just an experienced grower trying to get you to experiment for him. :wtf:Quote:
Originally Posted by bobhead
There are seed selection techniques, trimming techniques, chemical growth restrictors, twist-tie training techniques, etherial "moon" techniques, prayer, numerology...just to name a few. :thumbsup:
Different strains have different growth habits.
Usually:
Sativa dominate hybrids will have a more radical PMS cycle early after the switch to 12/12. (Pre Motherhood Stretch) After the initial vertical stretch, they'll slow down to a crawl and start filling-in. Slow but steady.
Indica dominate hybrids will have a more compact PMS cycle, and will fill-in rather quickly.
Damn you Rusty, I thought I had hooked another one, was about to reel him into an experiment and now you spooked him! ;)
Love the "PMS" btw, you need to get that copyrighted!
Hey Bobhead,
Yes it does work, but it is a very difficult to explain why. I'm almost sorry I mentioned it, since it is kinda cutting edge stuff. In thinking about it there may be other ways to achieve tighter nodes, that can be explained easier.
The main reason plants seem to stretch more under HPS, is the lack of blue light in there output spectrum. Simply adding some CFLs or floro tubes to your HPS can cut that stretch down.
Recently, during a UVb experiment I oversaw (there's a thread in Advance Techniques) the main light source was 150w HPS in the grow chambers. Since the UVb we were using was in the form of a 20w CFL, the total watage used was 170w. To keep the non-UVb chambers on equal footing we used a 23w 6500k CFL with the 150 HPS. These chambers went from beginning of veg thru flower. Even tho we grew these plants larger then I normally grow, I was impressed how compact the plants staid. The strech during flower was at or slighly less then 2x plant's vegged hgt, for 5 various strains.
I grow single cola, SOG size (finished hgt less then 18") in all kind's of grows; aero/fog, rockwool and even dirt (well Pro-mix). Here's a pic of a plant in pro-mix in a oversized 6" dia pot, abt 4 weeks into a 8 week flower that was abt 10" tall at pic time that finished around 12". It's a NL cross that oudoors goes abt 6-8' tall, does about 4' normally indoors, but was grown small using floro supplemental lighting.
Ah, I see. Not really. But very interesting.
So basically add 6500K spectrum and far red.
What if you started flowering under veg lights and then switched to the HPS later on.