A customer has a question and I hope we can get some opinions on it, thanks.
"I’m at a point in my grow cycle where the plants will not enter flowering and I’m very confused why and what to do next…
Let me explain…
Very small (experimental) indoor grow, 440 CFM fresh air flow through 8" flex ducting, 6.0 Ph, 1140 PPM (at the moment) using General Hydro Tri Series, LED light. (See picture)
Plants are about 10 weeks old.
Had on a 18/6 cycle for about 6 weeks
Changed to 12/12 cycle
Change nutes every 10 days with fresh water top off from secondary reservior
One plant was a boy and got him out right away - dingle balls and all.
Remaining two plants, out of 9, look healthy but will not enter flowering
Currently on a 100% zero light schedule for 1 week now. Nothing new.
According to @Ray4x you have another week to go before you’ll see any flowering. They’re looking pretty leggy. I’m no expert but looks to me like some pruning should have been done prior to flower.
Hi Ray4x.
Yeah, the plants have been in transition for over 4 weeks. Not sure what’s going on.
I was wondering about lighting and nutrients…
I just changed over to “flowering” nutes.
Lighting is LED from Home Depot. Thought it was sufficient and it seems so while in veg stage.
Any other ideas??
Light spectrum for veg should be close as you can get to 6500K (blue). For flower it should go to around 2700K (red) @Ray4x@MJWizard The extra lumens should help for flower but the majority of the light should be closer to the red end of the spectrum.
@MJWizard
I put the pic you post on My 70" 4000k TV and looked at it as close as I could. My first question would be how many inches above your plants has your light been for their whole life?
I ask because your plants are long spaced between their nodes.
The main causes for that is a lack of light reaching the plants. Also 4000k light waves are less important to plants than light in the 6500k area wave length for vegetative growth.
For budding 2500k area wave lengths are more useful.
What is your water/nutrients Ph going in and run
through?
Any chance you can post a photo or more of plants closeup.
@hillbilly103 Thanks for doing all that work but this isn’t my posting. I think either @MJWizard or @Ray4x started this post. I’m trying to help out too.
Not that this would affect flowering, but your reservoir should be opaque and block all light from getting into it, it shouldn’t be clear at all. This is not good for the roots or the nutrients in the reservoir.
4000K should be fine for flowering, real sunlight is about 5500K all year long, it really isn’t needed to do 6500k for veg and 2700K for flower.
However only 149 watts is probably not enough for your area. You want around 25 to 35 watts per square foot with LEDs. You can tell by the way the plants are a bit stretched out, really long leaf stems or petioles. This could be part of the problem.
You can also try increasing the darkness to 11/13, I’d never put the plants in the dark for a week.