I am on my fourth inside grow and for some reason which I can’t figure out, every time I start my seedlings they always seem to stretch. I have started seedlings in little pots meadium pots and big pots and no matter it always continues to happen. I have used soil with perlight And I have used soil with Cocoa and perlight. I have used regular daylight. I have used light bulbs and I have used my big lights in my tent which totals 600 W. Any suggestions to change this trend would be very helpful. Thank you
2 Likes
Generally moving your light closer to your plant will keep your girl from stretching so much. It is stretching to the light beacause she wants more of it. If you have some that are stretching you can always add soil up to the first set of leaves. This will give more support and keep her from falling over. Pictures always help the most. Happy growing!
6 Likes
Leggy, or stretched seedlings is always due to low lighting.
TO keep them from stretching you can give strong light and leave it on 24hrs.
I think we tend to think of them as too delicate for intense light so we go easy on it but they can stretch out in just a few hours trying to get more light. Its a genetic quality that the plant uses to get above obstacles in nature and get its leaves into the open sunlight.
5 Likes
Also keep the red spectrum down. No warm or flowering lights. Cools and bluer spectrum lights are what’s recommended. You might see reference to it when old schoolers talk about metal halide in veg and high pressure sodium and flower.
Oh, and those blurple lights too… same idea.
3 Likes
I have a different take. If you have a light with veg/bloom switches that claims to be 600 watts, then the actual wattage is most likely only 100 to 150 watts. I would run with both switches on, particularly if the plant is stretching. Your plant is going to need all of the wattage you can give it regardless of what spectrum is delivered.
7 Likes
I agree when the grow is under way, but for a seedling?
1 Like
For any plant that is stretching. If it is stretching is isn’t getting enough light.
Better lighting is the most effective solution.
3 Likes
Well, if there isn’t enough light, then of course.
But without pics, and under the assumption that there is adequate intensity, a blue spectrum is still advised for less stretch.
1 Like
It is both color and amount. I am sure this an oversimplification.
If the seedlings don’t get sufficient blue light. It takes this as a signal that it is in the shade of others plants. So it stretches in order to gain a height advantage over the other plants.
2 Likes
Yep. It’s just a well know fact. It looks like the OP has tried numerous methods, including 600 watts of “adequate” lighting.
A strictly bluer, veg spectrum might help tweak it a little if nothing else is working is all I suggested.
The OP never mentioned anything about his lights being blurple. Not sure why it was even brought up. I only mentioned “a” blurple, to demonstrate the concept of blue=veg red=flower, just like MH and HPS. I’m not sure why this is even being debated.
2 Likes
You’re right that it may not be a burple. I went down that road (perhaps mistakenly) because I read 600w (a common burple wattage) and someone mentioned veg/bloom switches, so I went with down that road. My comments may not be applicable. My bad if that is the case.
2 Likes
Ah, well it happens. I get jumbled up in all the pages and posts here too. Sorry if my examples through a wrench in the works. I tend to ramble on sometimes…
2 Likes
I’m just on my 2nd indoor grow but switching both sets of veg/bloom lights on cured my stretching problems with seedlings. Upgrade lights will be my next investment, but what I have is doing pretty good. Running 2 Giixer 1000w lights in 2x4 tent. Also have added supplemental light bars around the sides and back.
It can be tricky. My first LED was a small 4k color in a 2x3 tent. During veg it would grow a very compact plant with a very short distance between nodes. After the flip some plants would stretch, and ended up looking like a dense bush with leggy branches come out of the top.
Nowadays I just try and adjust the light output during veg to get about 1/2 to 3/4 inch of stretching between nodes.
1 Like
Very good way to calibrate your lighting intensity. I grow dense plants on purpose and run ~1,100 PPFD at my canopy running 3 HLG 135 Rspec panels above each plant. I trim as necessary to maintain good airflow within the canopy and leave it at that. I get results like this doing it. This is a blue mystic I grew in 2021.
2 Likes
I am somewhat too lazy to kept up with trimming those really dense plants. I like some stretch.
1 Like
Nothing wrong with that. We all do what we are comfortable with.
It will be fine for seedlings, but it is no where close to being effective beyond the seedling stage. Do you intend to put your plants outside?