I was wondering if someone could give me advice on my current grow.
Here are some facts about the setup
Seed: RQS Quick One
Substrate: Gold Label Special Mix
Nutrients: Gold Label A, B, Roots, MG, PK & Enzyme
Age: 6 weeks and 2 days
Height: 27” or 70cm
Light: Mars Hydro TS 600 LED
Schedule: 18/6
The problem is that the plants keeps getting higher & higher by the day, soon they will outgrow the tent. I have tried increasing the distance to the light but that only seemed to make them grow faster.
The buds at the top look more mature than the lower ones.
Should I be concerned about the height and would it be possible to harvest the top ones first and the lower ones later?
Is this the way the plant is supposed to grow, or could I have done anything to avoid this at an earlier stage?
I have attached a couple of pictures from one of the plants.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions FixerPower.
I’m a bit concerned that I won’t be able to increase the distance between the lamp and plants much further. One of the plants are about 1” from the LED panel right now. In total I have 3 plants so its pretty crowded and not much space to work with.
Is there anything I could do to the plants to keep them from the light right now? I was thinking something like LST?
Autos can be particularly sensitive to training, particularly in flowering. I wouldn’t suggest topping or FIMing at this point, but supercropping may help. You could also put a SCROG up and train the tops to weave through the SCROG. A SCROG is probably the safest option at this point. Too much stress at this point, particularly on an auto, can create a hermie.
Every time I move my light up mine stretch, if you keep your temp right, you can keep your light kinda close, mine are only 10-12 inches away and it’s a 600w HPS, but I run cold air through it so the glass isn’t to hot. Seems light my plants just stop growing once they get close enough.
I do mine like that a lot. I train them along the top of a big circular grow bag in a circle. I stake the first bend to support it as I send the top in another direction as it grows. It will usually go around the pot almost in a total circle in a five gallon bag. Side shoots can be trained too. It ends up looking like a bud filled menorah as several buds flesh out side by side reaching upwards along that sideways main stem. I get a paper hole punch and put a few holes along the top of the bags for tie points.
The temperature doesn’t seem to be an issue in my tent, found all three plants licking the LED panel when I got home today. The leaves show no signs of light burn right now, air circulation is doing a great job keeping the temperature steady. So, I’ll leave the height of the light as is for now and hope mine will stop growing upwards.
According to the RQS schedule I should start flushing next week but I wanted to ask you guys about that.
How do you tell when its time to start flushing?
I was thinking about harvesting the buds in two sessions with one week apart, but I’m not sure on how to do it without hurting the plant.
So, I would be very thankful if someone could tell me the steps in detail.
Things like what and how to cut, how much should be cut in the first session.
You can take the top buds off and give the smaller buds that don’t get as much light and are behind some extra time to catch up. I like to do mine plant by plant. I’ll take out the plant that is the furthest along first, and then just work my way through my room slowly, then I don’t have all the work all at once. But a lot of people like to give 24-48 hours of dark before they harvest. It’s really what works best for you. But you won’t kill the plant by taking some of the buds that are further along off. You need to zoom in onthem to see if they are done though.
I hope you had a great new years eve.
Today I took some close up photos of the top bud for each of the three plants.
Would really appreciate if @MidwestGuy, @Northerngreenthumb, @Coen3440, @chijo or anybody else could have a look.
Are they getting close to harvest or what do you think?
Now that your hairs are turning brownish-orange, get some sort of magnification tool and examine the trichomes on the bud itself, not the sugar leaves. Look for mostly cloudy heads. You harvest the plant for your needs.
This floats around a lot. Maybe you already have it?
I have a loupe but not my regular mobile today and the loupe does not fit properly.
But I managed to find an old iPhone, hard to get a good shoot with this setup though.
I hope you can read something out of the photo.
