1st time grower, making just about every mistake possible. Quick history:
Started intending a window grow. Knew to expect shitty yields so went with WAY more plants than I would normally ever need (16)
@Myfriendis410 talked me out of the window grow (THANKS, btw) and persuaded me to buy a 4x4 tent and a real light.
At first I planned 8 pots in the tent, but later found tall narrow pots intended for SOG that fit all 16 plants in the tent. Seemed better not to waste them.
So now I have 16 pots in my 4x4 tent. But guess what? I didn’t find out until today that 16 pots in a 4x4 tent only “makes sense” for an SOG grow where you veg the plants for only a couple of weeks and grow lots of small plants.
And I was so PROUD of myself for learning to mainline on my very first grow! So with the exception of the two small plants (see photo) which were started later than the others, all my other plants have now been topped 3 times to create at least 8 main stems per plant, and my plants are STILL IN VEG because I didn’t think it was time yet to flip them to flower yet because of the two small plants still seeming too small (to my novice eye) to start flowering.
So just today I read up and realized that when you spend 6-8 weeks in Veg and mainline your plants to 8 tops, it only takes TWO plants to FILL a 4x4! And I have SIXTEEN! Shit, what a mistake to make!!!
Good news: I already ordered a genuine Gorilla 5x5 tent from USA and it’s supposed to arrive here on March 10th. So I do have a slightly bigger tent coming. But the article I just read said 4 to 6 mainlined, 8-stem plants can fill a 5x5. I have FOURTEEN mainlined plants plus the two small ones!
Serious question: Is this a problem? As I read more about this, I’m learning that too crowded a tent can lead to bud rot and other problems. Can I just upsize to the 5x5 and let 'er rip and see what happens, or am I going to wind up with so many colas that they crowd one another out and the whole thing backfires somehow?
2nd question: The Gorilla 5x5 comes with a height extension kit to 8’ high. Is there any technique I can use to encourage the plants to grow taller to better use the vertical space? Again, I already mainlined most of them to produce 8 tops, so I’m headed toward a bushy result at the moment, probably the opposite of what I need. What if anything can/should I do to rectify this?
Crazy afterthought… If I bought one more light (and they are fucking expensive in this country) and one more exhaust fan, I suppose I could split the crop between BOTH tents (shitty knock-off brand 4x4 and genuine Gorilla 5x5). Feels to me like I have plenty enough plants to do that, but hard to justify doubling my investment when I really don’t need anywhere close to this much weed for personal consumption!
I think you can flower now / soon and get by with all of your plants in the 5x5. You can heavily defoliate after the pre flower stretch and it will shock you how bare and small they seem after that. Keep them defoliated, throw a tower fan in the corner, and watch your humidity in flower. I keep my tents pretty packed, it’s doable. As far as getting them to grow vertically, less light = more stretch. You can lower intensity or raise height from canopy. Here’s a before and after. Tent seems much more spacious after a few hair cuts.
Wow, that is quite a difference. My only fear (as a newbie) is screwing up the haircut and killing the plants, but I guess I have a least a month to read up and learn how to do it right. I managed to figure out mainlining on my first grow, so I should be able to figure this out too.
Just to be sure I understand your advice: Switch to flower now or soon, move to the 5x5 when it arrives in a little over a week, and then keep the plants AS IS through the stretch period, while keeping the lights higher than normally recommended. Then AFTER the stretch, do the haircuts on all the plants along the lines of your photos so they have more room to flower, correct?
That’s about the size of it, but the haircut is more about air circulation than room. With the added benefit of a ton more light penetration to all the lower bud sites. It’s not scary at all and very simple. If the leaf has a stem you cut it. (If you can cleanly get to the stem rather. You’ll see what I mean some leaves are buried in the emerging pistils and you can’t get to the stem, I leave those alone).
There’s more than one way to grow these babies. Some people don’t defoliate at all. Some clear the bottom 1/3rd then don’t defoliate the top. But if your packing your tent tight then I would shave them girls. Greatly reduces your mold risks and denser bigger lower buds.
Buy a greenhouse instead of another tent? If it’s too cold to put plants out in your area you can veg em as long as you want and you don’t need a tent for that.
Just saying if you don’t need the extra bud you’re still paying the light bill. Sun is free and you can grow some nice bud with it. I’m at a point in the year where I’m looking at rooted clones thinking which ones are gonna get flowered now and which ones are gonna be allowed to veg for another 8 weeks before they go outside to become MONSTERS
New tent is already bought, paid for, and on a FedEx plane somewhere over the Atlantic as I type, so the new 5x5 tent is a done deal.
I suppose a strategy could be to take a few plants out of the tent and keep them vegging (back to the window grow plan I started with) while I flower the first batch, then flower the 2nd batch.
But honestly, that sounds like a lot of extra work and confusing. I much prefer the idea of just growing all the plants in the new 5x5 tent. I’m just starting to worry it will be too much and I’ll have a bud rot problem.
I don’t think I could bring myself to throw a healthy weed plant away, even if I didn’t need it. Just feels like some sort of crime against humanity to trash perfectly good weed in the making!
I forgot about this part before. I don’t recommend you do that with the light. If you wanted to fill the vertical space you could do that. I would just light them properly and get a normal amount of stretch (per strain / per pheno) long branches with sparse buds won’t benefit you. This will allow your light to be closer to your lower buds. Always something I aim for when possible because I don’t like ripping potential bud sites off my plants.
I don’t understand why you would prefer to run mainline over sog. Both should target similar end results if done properly, it just takes longer to do it with less plants and training into multiple colas. Would be one thing if you had a tight plant count to adhere to, but you already have the plants. Time is money, if you can get similar results faster that is usually preferred.
I think @dbrn32 has a point. Which means flipping soon.
You could also buy a cheap light for vegging and run two tents. You can exhaust 2 tent with one fan! Put the fan and filter in the vegg tent. From the flower tent you run a tube to the veg tent. Fan has to be big enough!
I don’t understand why you would prefer to run mainline over sog.
The answer is simply that I’m a whole lot stupider than you’re giving me credit for!
When I put 16 plants in a single 4x4 tent, I had no idea that you only put that many in for SOG. The reason I’m mainlining my plants is because I found a YouTube vid about it and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn’t realize that you only do that when you’re trying to fill a larger space with a smaller number of plants.
In short, I have no clue what I’m doing and haven’t had an accurate understanding of the trade-offs as I’ve been going thru the process.
You’re doing great! You have a whole tent full of healthy plants.
Most valuable thing I learned on my first grow was to post about whatever I read online or saw on you tube over here. These fine people will give you a good idea of wether you should continue on or re think your plan.
Don’t beat yourself up you are in great shape to get a very adequate personal stash. Soon as they are mature (develope calyxes and shoot pistils) I’d get on the flowering. Do you know what to look for and where to look for signs of sex?
You look to be doing pretty good so far. It doesn’t matter what you do or how you do it really. Just try to have a clear understanding of whatever it is you decide to go with.
Do you know what to look for and where to look for signs of sex?
I think so, but maybe I’m missing something regarding urgency.
I certainly understand conceptually why it’s important to get rid of any males or hermies, and I know about looking for white pistils (females) vs. pollen sacks (males). I haven’t seen any white hairs yet, but also haven’t seen any clear signs of male orientation. Growing from feminized seeds, so in theory males would be a longshot.
The way I’ve been thinking about this is wait until I’m a few weeks into flower, then go over everything plant by plant and make SURE there are clear female indications on every plant. If there is a reason I need to be worrying about this sooner than 2nd or 3rd week of flower, I guess I’ve missed that (?)
No reason for concern or urgency. Just a matter of they won’t flower until they are sexually mature. could signify to you when it would be beneficial to switch to 12/12. If they aren’t ready to flower 1212 will just cause stretch and deprive light hours.
A good check for balls and nanners a good idea along the road weekly or whatever happens organically when watering and such.
Ok, this is the part I didn’t understand previously. In fact I still don’t. The whole idea behind SOG seems to be just flip 'em to flower after two weeks and accept that you’ll get small plants as a result. So my mental model has been that flipping to 12/12 is what causes them to mature sexually and transition to flower.
You seem to be saying nothing to be gained from switching to 12/12 UNTIL there are clear signs of sexual maturity. I never heard that before and it seems at odds with the common SOG practice of flipping 2-week-old plants.
I’ll do a full inspection this afternoon and try and take some pics of what I see.
I don’t know much about sog and scrog and whatever other acronyms but I know one of them is supposed to be run from clones cut from a mature mother, making mature clones. I imagine that is what you are thinking about.
They will become sexually mature on their own time…but they can be nudged. They will flower because you provide adequate, regular dark periods.
You can tell that your plants are mature and ready to flower by looking at how the nodes are branching off the stem. An immature Plant The left and right side nodes will stick out of the stem at the same level as each other. When the plant is mature you will start seeing alternating notes. This means that you’ll see one node pop out of the main stem on the right side but it won’t have a matching one on the left side right next to it. The left side will come a little higher up the stem and then the next one on the right will be a little higher up from that.
Once you start seeing growth with alternating notes you’re ready to flip the lights.
Clones that are taken from a mature plant will instantly also be mature - Think about it like they are the same age as the mother plant they came off of so if the mother is mature so are the clowns. In SOG you would grow a mother plan to maturity and large enough that you can take a whole shit load of clones off of it and then root all of those mature clones and there is your sea of green.
You can scrog anything whether it’s from seed or clone.
