Plants won't flower!

[Opie Yutts]

it shouldn't take a month two show flowers, you should definitely see signs in the first week or two at the latest.

That's correct, under normal circumstances. 2 or 3 weeks of questionable light leaks as soon as flowering is started will do... what exactly? His circumstances were abbynormal.

He flowered for a little over two weeks and somewhere during that time the plants may have decided to go back to veg due to light leaks. Even if the light leaks are now fixed, it could take two weeks to finish reverting, then another two weeks or more to go back to flowering mode, once it decides it's in flowering mode, then a plant can take two weeks or more to show signs of bud. There's a whole bunch of variables in this case, and who the heck knows what's going to happen. It might just decide to take a couple weeks off for some well deserved rest, and do absolutely nothing. We might see a plant that's all male on the top half and all female on the bottom half, with 2 or 3 rose buds popping up.

Just keep proper light on it and don't change the circumstances of the grow much. Anything you change, do it gradually while you watch for signs of stress.

[wisco61]

i checked out my lights and they are all 2700k color rating. I'm just gonna hope for the best I guess. If nothing has happened by Nov 1st I'll update this, but if something happens before then I'll let you guys know too. Thanks again for the help/advice/info! :thumbsup:

[twoguysupnorth]

i guess i missread something, i thought somewhere he said it had been 2 months and no flowers. good luck anyway now that you have it fixed hopefully.

[psteve]

trynagethigh is kind of right about the kind of cfl needed for flowering. Though it's mostly in the correct color range, many people are saying what we want is warm white, or better yet very warm white.

Ultimately we want to look for a more specific color than what people are calling all manner of white. This is subjective and can lead to hibernating plants if you're not careful.

The numbers we are looking for are the Kelvin temperature scale, for measuring color of light, and you should not buy any bulb without checking this first. It's usually on the package. The color of light we want corresponds to peak chlorophyll activity of plants, therefore the most efficient colors for veg and bloom lights are 5500 or 6000 (not between) for vegetative growth, preferably 5500, and 2200 or 2700 (not between) for blooming, preferably 2200. The soft white are usually somewhere above 3000, which are not too good for our purposes. Whether youâ??re buying CFL or HID make sure you look for those numbers.

Technically this is all correct.
However, the color spectrums of CFL's are not that narrow. Almost any CFL will have enough of the correct spectrum to grow good cannabis.
I have seen the greatest success with 'daylight' (5000 - 6500K) bulbs. They have a broader spectrum than other CFL's, and can actually be used in both veg and flower with good results.

[Opie Yutts]

Yes, you should have both. But if you are only buying one, the reddish wavelengths will work best for all around yield, with more concentration on big buds. You really need blue for vegging and red for blooming, but a mixture is even better. Roughly 75% blue and 25% red for vegging, and the opposite for blooming. Since the proper K bulbs exist, why not just get the correct ones?

[TryptamineScape]

my very first grow must have been some very resilient weed. I didn't have a timer for the lights, so I was just trying to remind myself everyday. I went days wher eI forgot the lights, I went days where I didn't cut them off. I was just doin git in a closet and sometimes I'd forget to even shut or open the door. Between work and college the poor plant was abused severely. It still grew to about 3 feet, flowered, budded, and got me very high. Ever since that I haven't been entirely too particular about growing habits. I use regular soil (not the red clay that alabama has everywhere), I get it from the woods where it's not clay. I put in horse manure, and cow manure. I put in decaying leaves, twigs, and fungus. I put the seed in, water it, give it light, and I neve rhave had any problems at all growing nice weed. Maybe It's climate. Even outdoors I seem to have no problem at all. I don't stress, I've never had problems.

[Opie Yutts]

So you're saying, No problems, mate.

You are very lucky to never have had problems with a grow. Maybe you should buy a lottery ticket.

[TryptamineScape]

I actually only tried lottery once, I don't think that would ever work quite as well as growing cannabis for me haha. I do know that certain strains are alot more touchy, but from the bagseed I've grown, they tend to grow almost in spite of you. some people actually just try too hard and end up killing a fairly tough plant. I didn't mean for that to come off conceited, I was just saying that maybe some people try too hard or take on too much without first learning what they're doing. Nowadays I take alot more of my babies. I actually call them babies and talk to them, haha. I had one entire grow to die. I had 4 plants coming up all about the same size in a shed somewhere. The roof decided to leak and drown my babies. Sometime's I think people just try too hard, or get too upset when it's not going just like the book or just like other people's went. It's a resilient plant, sometimes it's better to let it do it's own thing within reason. That's just my opinion, and it's worked so far.

[Mrs. Greenjeans]

I have had great success with a closet that is about 97% light proof, so I'm going to have to disagree that it has to be 100%. Also different varieties may act differently (duh). I agree with the others that say your light leaks could have turned your plants back to the veg stage, but perhaps that's not what's happening. Maybe your plants will start budding tomorrow or the next day. Some varieties take awhile. If you need to do some work in your grow room at night, it won't hurt at all to have the lights on for 2 or 3 hours, just don't do it all the time. You can have 2 or 3 days of the wrong schedule without it reverting either way. Of course it is best to try and avoid this; 3 days just might be too much as well. If it does go back to veg at this point, it may be another month or so until you start seeing signs of buds. Also while it is doing all this reverting back and forth, they may appear to be dormant. Don't worry that will change if you just keep taking care of them.

And again you and I have similar experiences. My first grow I was anal about lightproofing. Every grow since then, not so much. The latch on my flower room was broken, and the cat kept getting in and the hall light was leaking in. Then I moved them to my attic, and the big ass attic exhaust fan let all kinds of daylight in. So, three grows with less than optimal lightproofing, and nothing but good fat buds to show for it.

Not that I recommend it. I have just been fortunate.

[Opie Yutts]

Almost any CFL will have enough of the correct spectrum to grow good cannabis.
I have seen the greatest success with 'daylight' (5000 - 6500K) bulbs. They have a broader spectrum than other CFL's, and can actually be used in both veg and flower with good results.

Well, take a look at this chart and notice how more than 1/4 of the light from a daylight bulb is the green area, which of course is useless for plants, but makes them look nice-n-green to humans. On the other hand the grow bulb has only 14% of it's light wasted on the green spectrum.

While daylight bulbs are great for the vegetative stage, they have much less of the desired red spectrum needed to produce big, dank buds. Notice how the daylight and grow bulbs have virtually identical amounts of nice blue vegging light, but the grow bulbs have six times more of the red spectrum that is sought after by serious growers for budding their plants.

So the deal is, both daylight and grow bulbs will produce almost identical vegetative growth, but a grow bulb or any bulb that has most if it's spectrum concentrated in the red wavelengths will completely annihilate a daylight bulb when it comes to how the flowering stage turns out. Most anything will veg, but the flower stage is what's important. It's all about yield. So for the people that skip the veg stage, the outdoor bulb would be completely the wrong choice.