I have a femenized Norther lights growing outdoors right now. Im in month 2 of growth with 2 other plants a hash bar and a hindu kush. The northern lights had an incident early on and something took the top off of it when it only had 2 tiers of leaves. It has been growing slow but has recovered and now is very tall and lanky. The all get the same attention as far as bug extermination and nutrients. i am using the fox far tfio with distilled water. Is this a normal characteristic of the northern lights or am i doing something wrong?
First one is hindu kush second is hash bar and third is northern lights
Hi and welcome!
Where are the seeds from, if you don’t mind my asking?
It’s hard to say there’s something abnormal about the plant when there aren’t any plants from the same seed pack to compare to. True Northern Lights should be an IBL at this point, but we don’t know what practices different seedbanks use. And even then, there are the occasional black sheep. It’s just genetic variation.
Is there a reason you’re concerned, or something different that you expected?
It is a seed from graybeard privet lable. I was just expecti g more of a bushy plant like the other. I wasnt sure if that specific strain grew like that normally or if it was a type of deficiency. they were all sprouted and put in the ground at the same time. It just seems sickly compared to the other 2.
Hmmmm. So NL, to me, is one of the classic, single cola, SOG strains. If you’ve seen dead-level canopies in promotion shots, those may actually be many small clones. Or, like I mentioned, morphology can change a lot, seed to seed.
Two things:
Next time around, I would prepare a 4-5’ in diameter hole for each plant. Go 2’ deep or deeper if you can. There are also cover crops specifically suited to rooting deep and reducing soil compaction. I’d amend that tilled soil, and cover it with clover or another cover crop in the off season. Put a cage around it to keep littles from stomping through it, and/or go 1-2’ deep with fencing to keep animals out. I could be wrong, but it looks like the plant went into a 2-5 gallon hole.
Second, you can still train this plant if it isn’t flowering yet. There are plenty of guides on low/high stress training. If you’re seeing flowers, show us a current picture. We’ll let you know whether it’s still safe to stress the plant.
They were started indoors in a grow pod and put into the ground in a hole about 5 inch x 5 inch. They only grew to about 4 inches befor going in the ground. Unfortunately kids and animals have not been the problem it has been the Japanese beetles and birds. I have thought about low stress training but after being attacked by nature, i didnt want to stress it out even farther and have it hermi. I dont believe it is flowering now, i dont see many pistoletts suprisingly. I did not put much thought into the ground they were going into other than getting the grass and weeds out of the area. I could not get a tiller so i scraped the ground with a tractor and broke it up the best i could. This is my 4th outdoor grow and usually let nature take its course on the plants and have had great results. I will definitely put more effort into the ground perp and will look up some LST techniques
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I do my initial “till” with a pick-mattock. My intent is to loosen the soil without completely ruining the established soil biome. In my experience, the easier the plants can spread out and down, the faster they grow and the more resilient they are to stress.
I’ve gone the other route too, tilling with a tractor. In that case, I’d add soil amendments to the ground before the till. But you probably already know that.
I appreciate all your advice and will put it to good use next season. I got a pound out of a chemdog seed last year and i am hoping to double it with the hindu kush this year. The area of the midwest i am in has some of the most fertal soil in america.
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