Need flowering advice

[jull7]

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.

jull7 Reviewed by jull7 on 04-27-2007. 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 Rating: 5

[puddlecruzier]

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

[bejay]

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.

[Scarlet Sky]

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.

[jull7]

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?

[bejay]

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.

[Scarlet Sky]

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

[jull7]

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.

[madeline]

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.

[bejay]

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.