pls help before next round

Some of my plants aren't developing large thick colas as they have the past.
Instead I get a bunch of upward growing branches with tons of flowerettes on each.Quality doesn't suffer but quantity does and trimming is a real bitch.
I was wondering if temps are an issue but not all plants closest to the bulbs are the ones doing this.
I was thinking in the last type of plants I had,that it was the strain but I'm now growing Chronic by serious seed and its doing the same.

I grow under 3 1000 watt bulbs in a nft style set up.
I maintain my ph at 5.7 - 6.0. I grow using DFN (a 2 part formula that I 've had success in the past with)

The plants that this happens with also seems to be the biggest growing plants.

Any ideas how to prevent this, on this go around

guest2222999 said:

Some of my plants aren't developing large thick colas as they have the past.
Instead I get a bunch of upward growing branches with tons of flowerettes on each.Quality doesn't suffer but quantity does and trimming is a real bitch.
I was wondering if temps are an issue but not all plants closest to the bulbs are the ones doing this.
I was thinking in the last type of plants I had,that it was the strain but I'm now growing Chronic by serious seed and its doing the same.

I grow under 3 1000 watt bulbs in a nft style set up.
I maintain my ph at 5.7 - 6.0. I grow using DFN (a 2 part formula that I 've had success in the past with)

The plants that this happens with also seems to be the biggest growing plants.

Any ideas how to prevent this, on this go around

Click to expand...

I'm thinking it's heat related in part and maybe strain related as well. Not all plants grow the same way. I'm just quessing really though as my experience is that the closer the buds are to the light (without being too close) the bigger the buds are. Another thing I've noticed is that plants that are heavily trained and/or topped/FiMmed are more likely to produce a bunch of smaller buds then just a few large ones.

What are your temps like in the room and at the canopy?

From what you've said The only thing I can think of to avoid this next time is to pick strains known for producing big colas like Romp19 for example is known to produce very impressive colas in excess of one foot. The other thing would be to avoid alot of training so as to not create too many bud sites. Improving your yields thru training is more for people in limited situations that can't add more lights or more plants and so need to squeeze as much out of their limits as they can. You on the other hand have a 3 x 1000W set up and so you can manage quite a few plants I imagine and so training would make a crowded situation even more so making it harder for each bud to get what it needs to be as big as you would like.

If you're looking to squeeze the most out of your space and you really just want big colas and not so much work trimming then the way to go in my opion is SOG. Now when I say SOG I mean a real hardcore SOG where you end up with what is essentially a cola on a stick. Lately I see people talk about SOG in terms of one plant per square foot. I would say that is SOG like but not a true SOG. True SOGs get as dense as 9 plants per square foot although that's pushing it in my opinion, I thin 4-6 per square foot is good. It's a bit more work in tending them and getting started and you need to be good at keeping clone moms and being able to start large numbers of clones so that you can restock your SOG with plants all the same size and in the same stage of developement since uniformity is critical to the SOG method.

It's really the most efficient way to go for many situations and provides the quickest turnaround and easiest trim.

Chronic is a strain known for it's big colas.And its not supposed to be topped as it doesn't respond well, so I didn't.Temps probably got 85-90 near the light under the parabolic shade.So i'm thinking this is probably what it is however other plants got tall but didn't do this.So I was fishing for other opinions.
Tks Hempkat

guest2222999 said:

Chronic is a strain known for it's big colas.And its not supposed to be topped as it doesn't respond well, so I didn't.Temps probably got 85-90 near the light under the parabolic shade.So i'm thinking this is probably what it is however other plants got tall but didn't do this.So I was fishing for other opinions.
Tks Hempkat

Click to expand...

Well the heat could have been the issue and the reason other that got tall might have benaved differently is that often the temps in a room aren't as evenly distributed as we like to think. Especially with multiple lights/heat sources. Let's say the height where it reached 90 was 5 feet. Now if that area was between two lights then a plant on the edge of the grow only really feeling one light might only hit 85 at 5 feet, see what I mean? Is it possible that the plants that were effected the worst were feeling two lights? Or conversely the ones un affected were they in areas influence more by just one light rather then two? Another thing is the ventilation chances are the plants closer to the intake of cool air will be cooler then plants close to the exhaust.

The only other thing I can think of is their diet was off? I know you said you've used it what you used before with good success but is it possible something about what the plant actually got was different in some way? Stronger dose, weaker dose, higher ph, lower ph? I'm just brain storming here, throwing out ideas. Something had to be different if you did this before with all the same ingredients and yet it turned out differently then something has to be different. Be careful not to take things for granted either.

I had a small ph issue in a previous grow because I didn't bother to check. I had done a grow just before and every thing was the same. Same strain, same water, same soil, pots, light, room, ventilation, ferts, same dosages of nutrients, same watering cycle, etc. In that grow I did test regularly and everything was always fine and that's why I stopped checking in the next grow. I could have avoided or stopped the problem sooner if I had considered ph could be an issue but I took it for granted that since all the elements were the same that the results would be the same. When I did start checking again that one of the items (a bloom fert I was using and had sitting around for a while because I bought a large container of it) had raised it's ph considerably and also the water had gone from being 6.5 ph to 7.2 ph. So between the fert, the water and dolomite lime I had in the soil the plant was seeing something like a 7.9 ph.

I'm not saying ph is your issue, that was just to illustrate why you shouldn't take things for granted. Anyway good luck on solving it, I'm sure you'll get to the bottom of it.

Could root bound cause this situation??

guest2222999 said:

Could root bound cause this situation??

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I would say yes, although it would have to be pretty badly root bound to have a noticeable difference. Also I would say it would have to have been fairly root bound before going into flower to effect bud developement. I say this because root developement in flower is virtually non existent. So usually when a plant becomes root bound during the stretch phase (the only part of flower where root developement is still active) the only real result is you have to water more frequently then normal.

This is all hard to judge without pics though.

when is the last time you changed your bulbs...if they are fresh make sure you have no light leak...in my humble opinion it is one of the two...peace

bulb quality wouldn't explain why some had hard colas and some had this big bushy head(top) but all finger branches with lots of flowers,proximity to the bulbs didn't show anything but the taller ones (most not all) were the ones showing this characteristic. The only thing that's changes is the height and the lack of fans therefore I'm thinking heat related

well rite on sounds like you got it sorted