What do I do with this thing...

So I've got sort of a strange problem to deal with right now... sort of a long story but basically I am growing my first Sativa and since I'm not used to the rapid vertical growth I kinda got behind on it and now it has gotten to be too tall. I delayed putting it into flower because I was working on a new flowering room which took me longer than I thought, and during that time she conveniently decided to take off growing upwards at a ridiculous rate. I put it into flower and its been in flower for about 1.5 weeks or so now but its starting to grow in strange directions, bending to the light and what not because it needed to be positioned differently so it wouldn't get burned on top.

I can post some pics of it this afternoon... but for now you get the main idea. I guess I'm just wondering what you would do in this situation. It is still very flexable and could be bent to fit better but I only know of doing that during veg for LSTing and what not, I wasn't sure what sort of negative effects bending it would have during early flower stages. Any recommendations would be appreciated. Feel free to ask any other questions about it that you can think of.

You probably have 2.5 weeks of stretching left at a minimum.. My try at LST with a tall (6.5') Tangerine Dream, it snapped at mid-plant taking over 2' off the top. I chose to kill it. You'll find sativas tend to get pretty big and spread out like a christmas tree. If you want to grow them, best to clone a mature female, don't veg too long and depending on your head room make sure you have enough room under your lights for it to triple in height during flower without getting burned. Also, don't over achieve on container size (assuming you're in soilless mix or similar); the more room you give the roots the bigger the plant will grow.

Admittedly, I'm not the best source for LST advice. I can tell you, vertical or horizontal, it will reach for the light in a big way.. How long are you estimating it's going to take this girl to finish? My G13 Haze was taking 12-13 weeks.

Farmer Rich

Damn it I just typed out a post with photos and then somehow erased it all. SO here I go again... Basically I was just wondering what you guys would do if you randomly ended up having a plant like this... I'm leaning towards either killing it completely, or perhaps chopping the top half of it off because the node spacing up there is just terrible. A little better towards the bottom but its 5.5ish feet tall so everything down lower will have a tough time getting enough light.

Some other issues are that it hasn't been getting perfect lighting since I haven't completely set up the lights in the new room, so I think some of the leaves have heat damage towards the top as they are feeling kinda dry, and curling down and under. I wish I would have paid attention to this thing more, but it was injured as a youngin' which stalled it out for a while, then before I knew it she was 5ft tall.

So yeah lemme know what you might do if you stumbled upon something like this...
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Looking at it now, I should have just axed it before I posted these embarrassing photos lol. If only I had more time to finish the new flower room faster. When I dismantled the other setup I had I didn't really expect that it would take me this long to build a new one. But once you get to building a grow room.. there are infinite things to tinker with and optimize, I don't know if a grow room is ever finished. At least not for me.

BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM, as long as you dont break anything, LST can be done when flowering, i've done it also because of limited space, better to stress her a little and give the lower part light and solve your height problem, do it just before lights out to minimize stress.

I've never done any LSTing, at least not to the extreme like most people do. I bend and adjust some branches for balance and what not at times but thats about it. I don't even know how I would bend it to make it workable, if I just bend the mid area 90 degrees over it'll be ridiculously wide and space consuming that way. I don't even know if that would be possible, it seems pretty fragile, I just staked it up last night because it sags and leans all over the place when I'm moving it, and it stays that way somewhat until it has a reason to change. Maybe if I tried to soak the stem down and soften it if that is possible... either way I would need to bend it over and then start curling it up in a circle to be somewhat reasonable.

Another thing I was thinking is if I just tilt the pot as far as I can on its side, then tie off all the branches and start bending them all to point upwards. That way it would take up a lot of space, but be much more efficient since it would just take up a long/narrow chunk of my room, and I should be able to bend all of the branches up so the tops are all nearly the same height to make lighting easier. Not sure what kind of problems I might run into if I try that out.. I think my patience will expire for this lanky girl if I have any more random issues with it lol.

Oh another problem I have with this thing is that I cannot get clones to root, I took a few of them before I started flowering and didn't expect at all that I would have zero success. Its just ridiculous, so this big bitch is my only chance to do it better than a friend of mine, and see what I can get from it. I don't know why but the clones I took just stalled out with no roots for a long time, then started flowering, and it isn't an autoflower sativa. A lot of my issues are just from me not taking care of it in time since I'm not used to sativas, but some of the random problems are just simply annoying haha, never have this sort of trouble with anything else.

Hey Minnesnowta,

If the clones are slow to root or don't produce many roots, that plant would be on my endangered species list. When you get a keeper, the roots should pop in a big way from the clones assuring you'll have a strong plant. I've seen the problems rooting on older plants that have been cloned over a number of years. Actually had one that looked similar to what you have and the bud was killer. Hated to see it go.

For this one, I'd go with trying to LST it and make the best of the situation. Keep in mind, if it's a long flowering strain it can still get pretty big; albeit sideways. BTW - How long does this one take to finish?

Peace,

Farmer Rich

That would likely be a pretty sparse producer as well... Got anything else to put into flower? :jointsmile: Just sayin..

FarmerRich: Yeah I agree about the sparse production, believe me I am in no way proud or attached to this thing. The only reason I kinda want to finish it out is that if the bud still ends up being good I'll have a heavy sativa around to smoke and the other strains I have are indica dom. I suppose I could also just get careless with it and not focus time and energy trying to rescue that ratty plant, grow the thing out and chop it up for hash or something. And yeah I've got some test strains in flower/ready to go into flower, planning to use them to document more detailed information to help me plan out a small scale SOG to go along with things.

Being that the node spacing is at least twice as close together down on the lower half of the plant... do you think I'd have any serious problems if I end up snapping/cutting the top half off and tying the branches up to make the best sort of canopy I can? I mean other than the obvious stress and slowed growth for a little while, it just concerns me a little bit because I don't think I can honestly say that I've ever considered cutting the top half of a flowering female off and throwing it away. If thats not a possibility and the LST attempt goes bad I'll just kill it. Don't care about yield or timeliness or any of that, and the flower time is supposed to be around 11-12 weeks if I remember correctly, and even if the bud doesn't turn out that great because of stress I just want to see if it has potential to be something I'd like to try again. So far doesn't have a whole lot for a smell either, just a soft piney smell.

The Tangerine Dream I tried to LST looked good at first and then I went out the next day and found it snapped.. I ended up killing the plant because the part that broke off would have been where most of the bud came from.. Regarding this one, from the pictures it didn't seem that far along. Myself, I'd get rid of it and start something else in it's place at this point. Always consider the what's best for the overall garden vs. one or two plants. Think of it this way, if you put an 8 week strain in it's place you'd have finished bud before you would from the lanky, too tall sativa. Don't think of this as being anti-sativa, because I'm definitely not. You just have to be prepared to grow them.. The first time I did, I put 2 Super Lemon Haze and 2 Amnesia Haze in my flower room at the same time and soon realized I had 4 Christmas trees.. They get big! Ended up killing a 7'+ Super Lemon Haze, and the to Amnesia ended up being hermi's so I killed them too.. All for the better good of the garden.

probbly if your fine with not getting anything just yet i wouuld hack it and make clones out of all the branchs the onecee you see roots from clones throw em into bloom and you should get little thick buds and it will give each one a fair chage and be able to keep up with the higher up tops

Hey Minnesnowta,

Gotta disagree with the last post. 1. You've already told us that the clones didn't root. 2. Cutting long branches off of a sativa and trying to root them will get you nowhere. What was mentioned would work on clones from a indica dominant plant, but you'd be growing several vs. 1 plant. :wtf:

I'm personally a big fan of sativas and I'm still in search of one to keep. I have beans for: G13 Haze, Hawaiian Snow, Amnesia Haze, Utopia Haze, Super Lemon Haze and S.A.G.E. all VERY sativa dom. So far I've grown the Super Lemon Haze and G13 Haze, both always finish over 6' when flipped at 2'. I've actually discontinued both for now, the SLH due to low yield (awesome bud though!!) and the G13 Haze was prone to powdery mildew and the buds being too airy (excellent bud, and 12-14 oz per plant in about 12-13 weeks). I'm currently working on a SLH x Amnesia Haze cross that resulted from a hermi Amnesia (both I grew were.. killed them off during flower) that violated the SLH on my first grow of it.

Here's a little sativa perspective for you in pictures:

Baby Super Lemon Haze - the small plant in the photo went into the flower room at 20" tall. It finished at 6'. Some sativas will more than triple in size height alone during flower as well as get wide. LST if you want, but the plant still would take a shit load of room. It's either going to be up or sideways..

Gangly SLH and More SLH - as you can see on sparse plants (such as yours) the yield is not huge. These plants ended up giving me between 3-4 oz, which is pretty poor considering length of grow (70 days on this one), and they take up so much of your room.

SLH Stalk - that plant was grown from a clone, it was the size of pencil when I flipped it to 12/12; it was over 2.5" in diameter when it finished..


So - I'm sticking with my original recommendation. Kill the gangly ass plant and get something else in it's place. Go back to sativa dominant plants when you're able to flip them when they're still short and can control them better. I'm just not a fan of spending the effort on a marginal plant..

Peace,

Farmer Rich

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Yeah I think I agree with you on all that FarmerRich, I am prepared to deal with a 6' tall plant, as long as that is all the bigger it gets. I have 8ft of vertical space. The big reason I'm not too eager to keep this thing is because the transition to flower was too... makeshift for lack of a better word so I don't think these first two weeks have been productive at all, and I'm sure that will effect the final products quality even beyond it just taking longer than expected. I think I will try to manipulate it through chopping it to see if I can get a manageable sized plant just because I have extra space in the flower room right now. If that doesn't work I'll kill it and then take a break from heavily sativa dom strains until I'm better prepared for it. Also until I decide to purchase something that better suites my needs. It'll have to make some pretty good progress in order for me to keep it since I have a variety of new indica doms that will be going into the flower room soon so I can assess them and figure out what I want to use for a separate SOG room which is my top priority. Once that room is established and running well I will use my larger flower room to test out experimental strains including sativas. Thanks for the advice and photos.

Oh by the way, I like the little bush you have in the first two pictures on the right side. What do you have going on there, that is real interesting looking haha.

That was Vanilla Kush.. really good at night. From a growing standpoint, the one I had grew way to thick and as a result everything under the primary buds on the canopy was popcorn. I think that only produced about 5 oz tops and should have been much more. Killed it for now, but kept beans in reserve. :jointsmile: