New Hempy Girls

..........thanks for the visuals crying2grow......!! as of today, the girls are 9 days into 12/12 and they have have all stretched from 3" to 5" give or take, with another week left in the stretch phase means i might end up with flowering plants at around 20" not quite the the height i wanted for my first SOG .......and the growth between the tops of the plants and bottom have filled up and are beginning to stretch out themselves......i took the liberty to slowly remove/defoliate the bottom fan leaves and branches that would of become lower bud sites with little light coverage. removing the lower growth slowly and gradually all the way till about day 14 of 12/12 should get me the desired lollipop effect and focus most growth to the tops and secondary top buds......so i hope.

.......any tips and/or suggestions as to how much more i would need to trim these girls to get the perfect pop would be greatly appreciated......and oh yeah, if you can see , i had to top several of my girls due to height limitations ...... this will def put a wrinkle in my SOG grow as things progress.....

........their on CNS17 and CalMag for a total ppm of about 900-950 on RO water.......will be slowly adding in KoolBloom or Ripe within the next couple days...

Hello again, HowHigh?.

I think I'd defoliate a bit more. Personally, I think SoG is perfect for defoliation because we're trying to cram as many plants as possible together. The key is allowing light to penetrate the bottom of the plant without being shaded by the big fan leaves. This also slows vertical growth while the pistils and bud leaves form. I'm not saying to remove all the fan leaves but just the ones that are shading the internodes or have good secondary growth nearby.

Fan leaves are very important during veg for lush, abundant foliage. It's a different story all together in flower because here we're not trying to grow leaves. Keep in mind that as the buds develop so will its leaves. But they'll be nice and small so the bottom of plant will still get ample light.

About the stretching:

1.Try moving the light closer to the plants. The plants get more lumens and less likely to stretch. Just do the ol' hand trick.
2.Try inceasing the fan speed blowing on the plant as much as possible without causing the plants to bend and break. This will encourage the plants to concentrate on toughening the stems to survive and also will stop stretching.
3.Try your best keeping your lights off/lights on temperatures as close to the same as possible. Drastic changes in temperatures will cause a plant to stretch, especially autoflowers.
4.Try removing some more fan leaves. This will add more space between plants. Densely packed plants can cause stretching as plants will stretch in crowded conditions to get more light than its competitors. So making the plants like skeletons will trick them into thinking they have more space.

I notice some of your fan leaves touching other fan leaves. I'm all into a li'l hot lesbo action but this is not the time to allow females to touch each other.

I'm not sure what your light schedule was in veg but I'm a hard believer in 18/6, especially with autoflowers in a SoG. My theory is that changing from 24/0 to 12/12 is too drastic of a change all at once as autoflowers are far more sensitive to light change than regular plants. I mean, plants stretch mainly from lack of light and a 12 hour light difference all of a sudden will definitely cause shock and stretch.

Anyway, just do what you feel is right for you and I'm sure you'll be in for a treat come harvest time.

Take care,

2grow

PS- Holy cow, I didn't realize I was writing a novel.

thanks for the good tips crying, but several weeks since my last post , i had a sudden family incident which i had to leave home for about 9 days and had to leave the daily growing and caring of my girls to a buddy of mine.........after getting back yesterday, i went into my room and found my girls had really stretched beyond what i wanted them to be at in height.......their all about 22" to 26" tall........they were also very bushy and leaves upon leaves like you mentioned.......my buddy did a fine enough job at keeping them well watered and fed but all last night i was trying my best to get this grow back in order! plucking, picking and defoliating what i could without putting the plants thru too much shock.......i will continue this for the next day or two just so i can get the desired lighting to all of my plants, next time i will throw them right into 12/12 after transplant from my cloner rather than wait the 2 weeks i did for the "adjustment and filling in period" i thought the plants roots needed......and realize this is day 17 of flower

i know that i wont be able to do a full SOG grow this time around as their all pretty much small trees now and i will just take it as it is and grow it out......but i know i will be having issues with crowding and size of plants/colas forcing me to tie up most of my tops and supporting them in one way or another, if i was able to be around during the stretch i would have SCROG them early on to better support the coming colas......i will update with pics and you will see what i mean.......

......Ok so here's the current pics to where i'm at soo far with a day since defoliating the bottom 1/3 of my plants and a slim trim thru out the whole plant......as you can see crying2grow, they're all 22' to 26" monster SOGs i have also started to defoliate any fan leaves and branches/nodes that i think are too shaded or wont produce good bud sites......i know it still looks like a jungle in there with leaves and branches all over the place and overlapping each other but i didnt want to defoliate too much 17 days into flower, or can i still safely pluck on and cut of ALL fan leaves and lower nodes/branches from the bottom 2/3 of the plants leaving me with only the top/main stem with 2 to 4 secondary branches from the plant top...??....trust me i had enough defoliated plant matter to fill a 20 gallon bag........ i'm just really confused as to my next step of action to try and bring this grow back to a semi-SOG grow Oh Yeah, i cant raise my lights any higher or lower my tables either so will prob end up with some light bleaching on some of my taller girls.....

.......any help would be greatly appreciated to try and get this grow back in track......thanks guys!!



here's some defoliating shots i did of the bottom 1/3 of my plants, there's two plants in the background that are on the ground that seems like lower leaves in the row of plants, but they are truly all trimmed from the bottom third of the plant...mind you this was all done on day 17 of flower, can i keep defoliating this late into 12/12.....?

My, my. Them girls got legs! Quite the hardy lasses they are. From what I can see, they appear to be prime candidates for low stress training (LST) but I understand space issues might be a problem. Another option would be to go ahead and clip your plants to the desired height and continue defoliation.

Below are a couple of shots showing plants that have been clipped because of height issues and then defoliated...

1. 2.

I think you'll be okay just that you may have to increase flower time a bit. A shame that you couldn't incorporate some LST as I think the yield would be tremendous and this would eliminate clipping your plants.

Anyway, it's all good when it comes to growing and I still believe you'll be in for a fine harvest.

Take care.

yeah, i think it might be a bit late to start LST these girls as it is day 18 of flower.........the idea and pics of topping them all and then defoliating, then vegging again for another 2-3 weeks is not going to work for my time frame.........need to get me meds on time and i think topping now is a a bit late in the game dont you think.....?? anywayz , thanks for the helping hand crying2grow


P.s......this is the second time i've grown these two strains (hindu kush & chemDog) and they did not stretch this much last time in 5 gallon hempies

Bump!



Just checking to see how things are growing.

hey crying2grow, thanks for hanging in there and helping me will this grow thru fruition.......

.......as of today, the girls are at day 27 of flower.......and as you can see from the pics, my chemdogs have over stretched quite a bit from my plans of a proper SOG grow......i usually would do tons of LST to my RDWC grows , but this hempy grow has got a bit out of control due to my leave of absence early in flower, Oh well , what is a guy going to do but work with what you got and grow em out the best i can. luckily my hoods run cool, with some of the girls touching and growing around them , they arent affected by any heat issues, yet.......just gotta deal with some light bleaching......i have placed all the Hindu-Kushs' in the middle of the trays since their all lower in height than the chemdogs. my next hempy, SOG will be grown with 100% indica strains that will grow low and stout to avoid my stretch/height issues.....

.......they seem to be doing fine and i'm feeding em at about 1200ppms with CNS-17 Bloom, Ripe, hydroplex & Cal-Mag on RO water.......not the best of hempy SOG grows, but if i can keep things steady , i'm hoping for an Oz a plant dry at harvest

.............the fan was on when i was taking these pics, sorry for the blurry shots..........