Personally I never top in flower, but maybe someone who’s tried it can chime in. You could try pinching the stems and bending them way over too. It’s something I’ve never had the nerve to do lol, but alot of people do it.
You are killin it Trinity! Can’t wait to see the flowering stage.
Thank you pjay
Me neither! They’ve got me chasing them about trying to keep them down, the stretch is real at the moment!
Not long now
Tx
Day 14 of flower
They’re on their way! Flowers starting to form all over the place. They’re taking feed every two days, and showing no signs of slowing down.
I’ve been gradually defoliating below the canopy. Here’s the result of about five days worth of gradual pruning:
There’s now a computer fan just out of frame on the left, keeping air moving under the canopy.
I’ve also just started to remove fan leaves up at the canopy, but being very conservative with it. Just if they’re coving bud sites, as per @beacher’s advise earlier on in the process. I’ll take a look at that daily for the next week or so, just to make sure light’s getting everywhere I want it to.
Tx
They look perfect, well done!
Looking good!!! You should be happy with what you have done. Good job.
Updates have been a bit sparse lately, sorry!
Potted up five of the clones, and chucked the sixth as it was lagging waaaay behind. The two in the middle tray got potted up a day before the others, as their roots were poking out all over the place. They were both from the same mother - the one who kinda topped herself early in veg. Think they’ll be all I keep of these. But more of those musings later…
Nice to have the wardrobe up and running
They’re happy enough and really getting going, got them on Root Juice at half strength, then went full strength when feeding the early two today. They’ll outgrow that damn box in no time. I’ve had to start rethinking strategy from here on out…
Bit of a concern with a couple of the girls in flower…
Leaves wilting slightly, but just near the top. Viewed from below they all look totally healthy.
I noticed it’s just happened to two plants who are both far from the light at the ends of the cab, and ambient temperature felt kinda low around them, so we bent the reflector up and out so it spreads light wider. Seems to have warmed up the outer edges and given better light coverage, however that was over 24 hours ago and there’s been no improvement.
They’re not due a feed until tomorrow I reckon, still kinda weighty pots, but I’m going to give straight pH adjusted water, as it’s been a while, plus I figure if there’s a nitrogen excess going on it can’t hurt to lay off the nutes just for one feed.
Thoughts?
P.S. otherwise everybody’s looking happy and beautiful, and flowers are growing all over.
Tx
Maybe give them a slight mist with plain PhD water.
Yur plants are looking great man!
18 in the room the tent is situated in, and 25 in the tent… 25 degress makes sense for a enclosed tent/cabinet with open-air reflector…
you could increase yur exhaust fan rate (get one with a higher CFM, it would create a sort of negative pressure (the door will get sucked inwards an be hard to open) and that help a little.
Do NOT exhaust yur tent directly back into the 18 degree room. Buy some flexible ducting (get the good shit thats insulated) and make the hot tent exhaust air go into another room attic, crawlspace, or outdoors (make sure to use carbon!)
The issue is that open air reflector generates a lot of heat. which lessens the effectiveness of any HVAC improvements or upgrades that you could do… a cheap air-cooled reflector would make a huge difference…
De-foliating is great (good job btw looks clean AF), but pruning is equally as important… yur only 20 days into 12/12, u can prune yur canopy if u need to… remove anything that doesnt have good flwer development on it… lower buds, etc… By this piont in 12/12, u can see where the light reaches and where it begins to wane…
yur wardrobe grow looking good man!
Thanks, I’ll give that a try. Why do you suggest that as a solution? Want to leeeaaaarrrrrn!
Tx
Thanks for dropping in Rob!
The temp issues seem pretty much under control now, think I was freaking out over the change from CFL to HPS. It’s a kinda intimidating lamp to turn on for the first time. Also, I think I was allowing radiated heat from the lamp skew the thermometer readings of the ambient temps.
Thanks for all your advice! Ventilation outside of the room isn’t really possible unfortunately. We don’t own the house so can’t cut holes anywhere, and hanging some ducting out the window might attract some unwanted attention from the neighbours/anybody passing by. The room’s really quite large, and ventilation is pretty decent. Plenty of clean air is circulating throughout.
I’ve decided to see this grow through as we are, and once harvest comes and the cab can be emptied, I’m gonna look at some improvements. I’ll be sure to hit you up for your input when I start ripping it apart! I like the idea of air-cooling the HPS…!
When you say prune the canopy, are you talking about taking down those little bud sites that are struggling for light? I’m often met with the choice - take a fan leaf from what will be a main cola to make space for smaller, lower bud sites, or sack off the lower bud sites and leave the fan leaf to help the cola develop… Is it OK to cut off smaller lower flowers? I don’t want to strip too many leaves from the main bud sites, do I?
Either way, at least nobody’s told me I’ve gone too far with the snips!
Tx
Air cooled hoods are the way to go, HPS bulbs get real hot and some have a tendency to blow up now an again like they say not to get water on them mine used to crackle daily while I misted my room but if they pop it can be devastating so cool hoods come with glass so the shards land on the glass not on plants or the floor.
And honestly they come standard with a big phat 6” hole some are 8” but basically any 6” fan will keep the temps low compared to what you’re used to now.
As they are wilting they are obviously thirsty even though the soil may seem wet to you. Misting the leafs Is a quicker way to get the moisture into them. It’s also good if you have a calmag problem to spray the solution onto the leafs.
Thanks for explaining mate. That’s interesting, I hadn’t considered them needing more than their roots could give them, but when I rationalise how much height they’ve gained in the last two-three weeks it kinda makes sense that they might struggle to drag water/nutrients all that way up with all that flowering growth underway. I’ll give it a go in a bit.
I reckon they’ll get a watering tonight, they’re light at the mo, but could be lighter and will be by then I reckon.
Tx
I’m doing my homework on air cooled hoods now. Always thought they were more appropriate for large-scale growing, and since I plan on shrinking things down from here on, rather than expanding my operation, they never seemed worth bothering with.
Reckon my 5" fan is doing the business, no need to go bigger I don’t think. I could just step the holes down to 5" on a larger hood. The question is where does the carbon filter fit into this set up…? I’m working it out as we speak.
Thing is, I’ve also got this Solstrip build floating around in my head. Thinking maybe two or three individual rigs so I can adjust height for different areas of the cab. I think I want to start running two plants at a time, but with like a 4 week gap between, so the flowering cab could have up to three pairs of flowering ladies at different stages of growth. Nice idea in theory, reckon I could pull it off. I’ve got time to work it out though, we shouldn’t be short of some delicious smoke for a while, all things going to plan.
Tx
They can be a little bit of a pain in terms of ducting but only in a small space. I’ve got both variants of cooling hoods I have this one: 6" Air Cooled Reflector Hood Light Cool Shade Tube Hydroponic Grow Tent HPS MH | eBay
And I have this one as an 8”: Hydroponics Cool Tube Shade 5" 6" 8" 600w 400w 250w HPS Grow Light Reflector | eBay
They’re both quite long but if you’ve got a cab you could always cut holes out whichever side you want to extract air to. And the filter I had mine setup inside the tent attached to the cool hood then the fan and ducted out. But @Esrgood4u can vouch that you can blow air out into a carbon filter and it’ll work just fine.
You don’t necessarily NEED a cooling tube but it will help loads to keep the heat at bay as it’s constantly being sucked out and the bonus is if a bulb ever popped you’d have possibly a fan to replace not a house
Yep I have my filter sat outside on the top of my tent with the fan sucking from inside the tent and blowing through the filter. I’ve been growing a lot if stinky stuff lately such as skunk 91, gg4 and glueberry og. You can’t smell a thing unless I open the tent. Having it outside the tent allows me more than an extra foot of height for plant stretch/growth
Solstrips are the best. I run a 600w 12 strip rig.
I’ve found my perfect setup with solstrips, coco, autopots and megacrop nutrients. I’m seeing the results I was searching for. I’m hitting 4 oz per plant on average.
Ah yeh I saw your external filter in a different thread. Got me thinking for sure, but I think I got the height to keep everything indoors. These girls have definitely stretched over 100% in height, and we’re doing OK.
4oz yields! Sounds ideal Not sure I’d want to run 600W though, to my mind going LED would be a choice motivated by power saving over anything else. I’ve had a chat with Baudelaire about build design, so I think I have it straight in my head.
Tx