Need flowering advice

Working on my first grow and am finding a lot of confusing flowering advice while searching the boards. I have 5 plants (pictures below) that are 3 1/2 weeks post planting. They're not showing any signs of sex yet, but they're getting a bit large for their living arrangements. Obviously I'm going to have to study up on LST before my next grow. :wtf:

I know they're going to grow 2-3 times their current size during flowering - and that's where the problem comes in. They're going to run out of headroom if they get much bigger before flowering.

Basically, I'm trying to decide if my best option would be to FIM now (and know that cutting them up scares the hell out of me) to try to keep the height down as much as possible. Or should I try some LST this late in the game (and bending them up scares me just about as much as cutting them up). Or, lastly, should I try to force them into flowering now?

Reading up on flowering, I find people suggesting flowering as early as 3 weeks and I see other people saying don't even think about it until about 8 weeks. Obviously, longer vegetation would give more yield, but I'm not really concerned with high yield.

My camera doesn't do well, but the picture looking into their little grow space showing the lights gives a bit of an idea of what I'm up against. For that picture I raised the lights to the ceiling, but leaving the clamps downward. With some work, the lights can go about 6 inches higher than they are in that picture - then that's it, no more room. The overall dimensions are 2'2" deep by 2'10" wide by 2'10" high. Future grows will only be 2 or maybe 3 plants, which will give me a little more lateral room, but that ain't gonna make the ceiling any higher.

Anyone have any advice for which option would be best at this point - FIM, LST, force flowering, or is there something else I can try?

Thanks.

Good looking plants man. I would lower the light some it will keep them from streching as much. you could also start training them now to keep from running out of room on this grow.

dont worry about bending the plant it will be ok just do it moderately then work up from there you can train them to do like a circle pattern and that does not require a lot of heavy bending. lol

would probably bend them over right now also, and keep bending them over for the first few weeks of flowering as per when you start to flower that is really up to you, a longer veg time will probably not increase your yield. but if you had better hid lighting and had more space to work with a longer veg time will help wich is why you will get many different views on when to flower.
would keep the lights as close as possible and switch to flowering soon.

a longer veg time will more than deffinitely increase your yeild, but if you don't care, you don't care. sometimes space can be an issue.

Thanks for the info everyone. For puddlecruzier and bejay, you mention lowering the lights. Normally they are lower, about 3 inches above the tops. I was going at about 1 inch, but I had 2 of them grow into the lightbulb during the night one night and get some minor burns before I got up the next morning to see that they were touching the bulb. [A side note for all those posters who say a CFL won't burn the leaves even if they touch it - I have 2 plants that prove otherwise.] Anyway, I raised the lights for the picture just to get a good feel for just how little room I have to work in and how short I need to keep the plants.

For Scarlet, yield (at least per plant) isn't a concern as I'm only growing for myself. In the future I won't have 5 plants growing at once, then yield will be a little more important. I did the max I had floorspace for this time because I really figured I'd have killed at least 2 or 3 of them by this point on my first grow.

If I flower before they're fully mature will it have any effect on the quality?

no it wont affect quality.
flouros have very poor light intensity and they need to be close as possible without burning and this is even more true in flowering than veg where you may want to leave a few inches so they dont actually grow into the bulb before you have time to adjust them, this is also really the determining factor on your yiled if you had the space you could veg for a few more weeks but you still wouldnt have the lighting or space to take advatage of the extra growth so it doesnt really help your yield in your case.
personaly would start lst training them and switch to 12/12 now and hopefully you will have atleast a couple of males to remove within a couple of weeks to free up some space and finish training the females through there stretch phase of flowering trying to keep the canopy at an even height.

as stated above, good lights make for good yeilds. longer veg means more nodes which means more bud sites which means higher yeild.

if you want to maximize space and yeild, i suggest looking into dwc; you could pull a half lb per plant.

and, you can find a 400w hps raw ballast assembly for about a hundred bucks. well worth it.

remember; your plants will veg, even under 12-12, until they are sexually mature. forcing early can cause stretch problems, but with flouro grows, it's pretty much standard to flower way to early.

maturity comes anywhere from 4-12 weeks

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

I've already been looking at hydro systems and have been looking at lighting - the only thing is I don't know that I can afford both. If I had to choose between hydro with CFLs or soil with better lights, which would be the best choice?

Scarlet, I see that you mention HPS, which is of course cheaper than MH - and I've pretty much only been looking at MH. It seems most things I read say it's ok to veg with CFL or HPS, but flowering should have MH instead of HPS, or as a last resort lots of CFLs. If HPS works well for veg and flowering, I might could manage both. But that also brings me to heat issues. What would an HPS or MH light do in that little room heat wise? I've read a couple how-to's for moving the ballast to a remote location, but I don't know how realistic that would be for my situation.

If I buy a commercial aero system, I'm looking at either a General Hydroponics Rainforest-36 or an American Agritech Aero 4 Hydrogarden. And of course I'm reading the posts and pricing out all the pieces for the do-it-youself bucket system.

Either way, I have to get through this grow first so I've got some time on that. But if it does come to making a choice between hydro with CFLs or soil with HPS, any advice?

Thanks again, puddle, bejay and Scarlet.

Hydro is an entirely different ballgame and I strongly urge you to know exactly what you'll need to do and with what equipment before leaving the safe world of soil growing...either way you'll be needing HID's to bring in a high quality crop with a decent yield.

you really need a bigger grow space or atleast one with a taller ceiling im sure a 250 hps could work well in a 2'2" by 2'10" by 4 ft tall space.
but you would have a hard time using one in the space you have now.
would definatly get better lighting and stick with soil, rather than go hydro with flouros
some hydro like dwc will have a little advantage over soil as the plants will grow faster but when it comes to yield you will probably not notice much of a difference between soil and hydro in a properly set up room with good lighting.

in that space. I would top'em. I don't generally recommend this, but in your case I would top, and flower in 2 weeks. Peace

Don't worry about all the stuff you don't have. get a finished grow in...with what you do have.
FYI MH for Veg, HPS for flower Or;
cfl for veg and any HID for flower.
I ahve flowered with both MYH and HPS, and I actuall vegged and started flowering under MH which seemed to elongate the buds...after 4 weeks I switched to the hortilux, and I never had seen before the giant Kolas I was able to produce on those plants. anyway...rambling. Peace

First of all, thanks again to everyone for all the advice.

Now, moving on and asking for more advice :)

I got out the toolbox today and started ripping out what could be ripped out of the little cubicle my plants are trying to grow in. I was able to get some small cabinets and a tiny little safe out which gives me a total height of 4' on the right side of the cabinet. Can't do anything with the left side, but provided future grows are only 2 plants, they'll both fit on the right side and will have a little more headroom. That gives me measurements on the right side of 2'2" deep by 1'4" wide by 4' high. 2 plants, one in front of the other, fit nicely there now, and they have the increased headroom. And once they clear the ledge to their left, they still have the full width of the cabinet to spread out.

Beyond that, the only HPS option currently available for me was only 70 watts. I went ahead and got it and am wiring it so it will be ready tomorrow. Probably a complete waste of money being so weak, but it was going to be that or nothing. Hopefully I can add to it before my next grow and get a few more watts in there. And of course that fixture is going to take up a bit of my new headroom, which brings me to my first question for tonight. Obviously I can't go with just the HPS at 70 watts, so with the combination of the HPS and the CFLs, how should I position the lights? My first thought would be to position the HPS as close as is reasonable considering it's a big fixture and won't be easy to move up on a daily basis and then ring the CFLs around it. But if I do that, will I be taking away the only good they're getting by having the CFLs too far away? I also considered putting the CFLs to the upper sides of the plants to try to illuminate the interior a bit better, but with the weak HPS, would that just pull the plants towards (and eventually into) the CFLs, meaning they would do better to just stay directly above them? Currently my prevailing idea is to remove the reflectors from the CFLs and keep a CFL directly above each plant and just put the HPS at ceiling height (which is not a whole lot further away than it would need to be anyway considering all the plants don't have that new 4' headroom), but I'm a bit hesitant to remove the reflectors because I'm not convinced that wimpy little HPS can make up for the loss by not having the reflectors, but of course I could be completely wrong about that. Any suggestions?

Next on the list of new questions is about my soil for flowering. I started 12/12 last night. I picked up one of the cheapo soil test kits and probes today and get the following readings. Ph on the probe is giving me a bit above 7, using the chemical test, it's showing about midcolor between 6 and 7, so somewhere around 6.5. The Nitrogen shows "high", the Phosphorus shows "very low" and the Potassium shows "medium". In hopeful anticipation of flowering I picked up some Green Light brand water soluble Super Bloom. Never heard of it, but it's the only high phosphorus product they had. It's 12-55-6 with 0.1 of chelated iron. All the faqs I find all say to increase the phosphorus, but they never say exactly when to increase it. Any advice on what point I need to start adding it - before flowering (now), immediately upon flowering or at some time interval after flowering starts? Also, 55 seems very high from other things I've read, so do I need to do some extra dilution for the entire time or should I go ahead and go all the way up to the recommended mix ratios (I'm thinking something like 1/4 strength, 1/2 strength then full strength if I go all the way up).

Wow, sorry to be so long with all that. I really do appreciate any advice anyone has to offer.

Thanks.

couldn't address whole thing but phosphates when you 1st induce flower, to induce stronger flower sets. Potassium is the biggie after that in flower.

As far as 70 watt hps. cool. get another. lol No proper lighting is a waste...

too true, as latewood said. good light is good light.

you have been misinformed. i know that greg green's bible has that as a typo...

hps is good for all stages, but has been said to increase male count if used in veg. hps is great for flower.

mh is excellent for veg. good for flower, you get less stretch, and denser buds, but the yeild is considerably less than with hps.

a combination produces the greatest overall effect, iml. ie, i was using a 400w mh with a solarmax gold bulb (more red than standard mh) and a 1000w hps. no fluffy buds, all dense, and a very good yeild.

sorry for missing you...;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scarlet Sky

too true, as latewood said. good light is good light.

you have been misinformed. i know that greg green's bible has that as a typo...

hps is good for all stages, but has been said to increase male count if used in veg. hps is great for flower.

mh is excellent for veg. good for flower, you get less stretch, and denser buds, but the yeild is considerably less than with hps.

a combination produces the greatest overall effect, iml. ie, i was using a 400w mh with a solarmax gold bulb (more red than standard mh) and a 1000w hps. no fluffy buds, all dense, and a very good yeild.

sorry for missing you...;)

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EURIKA!
I never knew that about vegg:thumbsup: ing under hps. I had a bunch of clones go hermie because of this and never knew why the mom didn't. Thanks for the info.

- Slow -

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scarlet Sky

too true, as latewood said. good light is good light.

you have been misinformed. i know that greg green's bible has that as a typo...

hps is good for all stages, but has been said to increase male count if used in veg. hps is great for flower.

mh is excellent for veg. good for flower, you get less stretch, and denser buds, but the yeild is considerably less than with hps.

a combination produces the greatest overall effect, iml. ie, i was using a 400w mh with a solarmax gold bulb (more red than standard mh) and a 1000w hps. no fluffy buds, all dense, and a very good yeild.

sorry for missing you...;)

---

EURIKA!
I never knew that about vegging under hps. I had a bunch of clones go hermie because of this and never knew why the mom didn't. Thanks for the info.
:thumbsup:

- Slow -

I use in this order. cfl>MH>hps. But I have use a MH all the way to 4th week of flower, and got one of the biggest yields I ever saw.

I also believe that the light doesn't really decide the sex. I think it is light period, (no more then 16 hrs) and low stress maintenance. Vit B and hormones. "superthrive". i have started seedlings under each type of light I mentioned and have the same high % of fems. Read up on "henks" take on feminization techniques. (Dutch Passion Seeds) The potential of female is in each seed. It is all how you treat the seed. sometimes you lose, and get a male, but "henk" has proven that even with the best "feminized" seeds...you had to create an environment condusive to "creating" female plants. Hope this helps...Peace