Slow down in flowering around week 5 and 6

[bigAl25]

Has anyone experienced this before. I know it might be strain related, but I swear that they all (7 plants) started out gang busters in the first 4 weeks of flower. Now at the end of week 5 going into week 6 they seem to have slowed down at the top of all the plants. The buds below seem to be filling out better and getting frosty. The top buds appear to be growing up with more leaves and not getting fatter. The strains are snow white, blue mystic, strawberry bubba kush and alien dawg. The alien dawg is doing this the worst of all the strains. I may be getting impatient with them, but they appear to slow down. Thanks for any input and thoughts on the matter. Nothing has changed for their envirnoment, but I have added grow big and beastie bloomz to their weekly feeding per the fox farm schedule.

 

[187020]

at that point i water less, keep the roots searching for aqua, and the buds swelling

peace homes

 

[Hank Hemp]

Sounds like they are doing fine. They stop stretching and start filling out like you said.

 

[trichrider]

patience my good man.
what is the projected finishing times for those strains? ...what do those leaves look like?
single, or palmate?

 

[bigAl25]

I poped them with tiger bloom, big bloom and cha ching today. The leaves were droping and they needed water and some feed. We will see if they pick up and bud out some. Those alien dawg flowers are so small compared to the snow white, blue mystic and strawberry bubba kush. I will be a patient man though, nothing taken until 10 weeks and longer if needed. Thanks for the advice gentlemen.

 

[bigAl25]

I believe I have found the answer. One half hour notch on the timer in the middle of the 12 hour dark period had become pushed down, thus turning on the lights again for 30 minutes in the middle of the dark 12 hour period. I do not know how in the hell this happened, the dial is covered by plastic to prevent such a thing, but it did. I am glad I finally checked the timer for correctness. Man this pisses me off, I bet I lost a week to 2 weeks of good flowering on the top because of this. Plants are very healthy, but the tops are spindly and not big colas like we want. The feed schedule had nothing to do with this slow down, it was the damn timer. This also caused my HPS bulb to burn out, I did have a replacement handy. The sun is much more reliable than humans and timers. Will update when I see an improvement in all the tops of the plants, we want big top colas for our mason jars to cure. Lesson: When something looks out of sorts, check every factor, there is a reason. Peace and respect

 

[Noobian]

Good find bigAl! Sorry you had your lights coming on but at least you corrected the problem! If I were you I'd be on banana hunt hardcore now, better to be safe than sorry.

 

[bigAl25]

dear Noobian, Thanks for the tip, I will be on the bananna hunt and ripping every one I find off when they appear. I have been checking and can not find any yet, but the leaves surrounding the buds are so thick on top of the snow whites,strawbubbakush,and blue mystic do make it hard to see all the way into the stems. The alien dawg on the other had has much more space between bud sites. It will be like checking kids for head lice(bad joke). Peace and respect to all farmers.

 

[bigAl25]

Since I have lost 1 to 2 weeks of flowering because of the timer error, should I reset to 11 hours light and 13 hours darkness to speed the remaining flowering time of the plants? Will this help, or should I leave it at 12/12 as normal?

 

[Hank Hemp]

Keep a eye out for hermies ok. It can happen when the light cycle gets screwed up.

 

[bigAl25]

Thanks for the hermie heads up Hank. Has this error caused me to start over on my total flower time? I am now interested in shortning the light time less than 12 hours and increasing dark time to 13 to see if this will speed up the flowering process. Since this has never happened to me before, I am unsure how to handle the recovery process for my plants. Do I just add another 2 weeks to the flower time for these 2 weeks I lost? Or can I shorten the light cycle some and make up for this pause in the middle of flowering. I was going 10 weeks of flower with all plants, do I now need to go 12 weeks? Any help from others who have experienced this problem would be appreciated.

Thanks, Peace and respect, but I'm still pissed it took me 1 to 2 weeks to figure this slow down out. To top it off my damn Toro 14HP rider broke down right after I got it back from its winter service. How much bad shit does an honest grower have to go through in one week?

 

[smilley]

Hi bigAl25, I tracked down your thread about your timer problem. Good thing you caught it. My experience with f/u's like this and like mine is that they end up costing 3 things. Time, yield and quality. I hope it all worked out ok for you.

 

[bigAl25]

smilley, It did work out, I had to take the plants out to 14 or 15 weeks of flowering. But, this 2011 crop was not as good as my 2010 crop. Potency was sacraficied.