Slow Flower Growth - Should I be Worried?

Hi,

I've had a bagseed plant on 12/12 for just under 3 weeks now in my flowering cupboard. This will be the first time I've successfully flowered and harvested a plant

My one concern is that the flowers are growing very slowly (based on photos I've seen of '3 week flowers'). There are several nodes with a decent number of white hairs growing from them and the ones at the very top are almost starting to look bushy. The only problem is that they are nowhere near forming the large, messy tangle of white hairs I've seen in photos of other plants.

Two things which could be stunting the growth:
1. I didn't anticipate how much height the plant would gain when I put it into my flowering cupboard and as a result I had to very gently tie it down (since the cupboard has more horizontal space than vertical.)
2. On two or three occasions I've come home to find that the plant had gotten loose of the ties, popped up, and hit the lights. Since I'm using a huge bank of CFLs rather than one HPS (to avoid overheating the cupboard), damage was minimal with no bud sites touching the lights and only the tips of a few large fan leaves damaged (the worst of which I pruned to avoid infections or whatever).

Should I be worried about this slow growth? Or do you think it's just a trait of this particular phenotype?

I've included a photo of the plant's larger clusters of white hairs so you can make a judgement on how big/small they are (since I don't have much to compare with other than photos on the internet)

Cheers,
Josh

Well I'm gonna stick my neck out here a bit and say how olds your plant? your plants dont look old enough for blooming to me judging by pics.
Firstly your rite very slow, what you've got looks more like pre sex flowers or a 16 week sativa at 2 weeks.
Secondly note your branches they've not moved apart that far meaning its still a little immature for blooming.

Well I started it on 12/12 at about 7 weeks. Which makes it around 10-11 weeks old. I did think it might've been slightly too early but the advice I was given was to start it flowering as soon as it reached a certain height (2-3 feet as I recall)

What effect will this have on the plant/yield?

Thanks by the way,
Josh

7 weeks is in the ball park but there only just mature at the age. Your getting tight for head room?? so if you wanna risk it i'd clone the females get as many as you can under 18 hours of light another 4-6 weeks later bloom.
Its tricky coz we dont know the strain could be as simple as that. but under 12 i'd say any plant will bloom in the end but the yield would be well down, because your gettin tight for room u cant afford to grow too fully mature.

Well having tied her down i've got another foot of vertical space. I could also tie her down again once she gets too tall. So effectively I might be able to get another 2 feet of grow space in there.

Also, my apologies but I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. Are you suggesting I revert the plant back to 18/6? Or take clones and revert both those, AND the plant to 18/6?

Cheers

Yes thats what i was getting at if they were too tall clone but my mistake if you can get a few more foot you could grow on see what happens although i think yield looks down or re veg on 18 for another 4-5 weeks if your sure you can handle it and then bloom.

I'm quite tempted to switch her back to 18/6 since yield is more important than time for me at the moment. So you reckon 4 - 5 weeks of 18/6 then switch back to 12/12 should do the trick?

Well your just gonna bend till ya get that extra 2 foot so i'd say yield would be poor all that stress from bending, it could even delayed blooming for 2-4+ weeks anyway. If you can get them down that much and under 18 lights then bend and grow a few more heads and train them to grow low your gonna get more bud even if there a low yield plant due to more heads. Just remember bending = stress the more you stress the more time u need to leave before you can bloom around 2 weeks.

Well like I said, the cabinet has a great deal of horizontal space so I should only have to bend the stem and tie it down once or twice so stress should be pretty minimal. I've set the clock back to 18/6 and, assuming all goes to plan, I will start 12/12 again after 5 weeks. What will happen to the "flowers" that are already growing on the plant? Will they drop off or something?

Not much on ya plants so it will carry on growing but start to grow green again veg growth or your get new heads appear and grow on from the old bud sites, like i said some just looks like pre sexing buds. Maybe you should look into doing a screen of green.