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.

 

I did think about that, it seemed quite a lot of effort though compared with two simple ties. In any case I guess its just a waiting game now. Anyway I've got a mushroom grow on the go right now (while i'm new to growing weed, i've been growing mushrooms for about a year now) so that should keep me busy

 

The screens a way of growing just a few plants yet still gettin a big yield and pretty handy for keepin the height down.
Yeah the old mushrooms should keep ya out of trouble. Do ya harvest your spores or buy a kit? Coz we cant buy spores or kits hear yet they grow wildly.

 

I started with a kit and a spore syringe and I've been cloning from mycelium into jars since then. In truth I do it mostly for the fun of growing since I tend to yield far more than I can use up in the time it takes to do another harvest

You say you're in the Uk and you can't buy spores? I've never had any trouble buying syringes/prints here?

 

You must be buying on line coz sure tony blair banned them we've got 2 smoke shops here one used to stock spores but not no more, kinda like the idea of collecting my own and doing it all.
Actually last time i brought mj seeds owner was saying something them going the same way. Lol think he was frightening me into buyin more seed? They had just gone up in price too.

 

yeh I bought them online, mainly cos its just cheaper than going to the smoke shops. Didn't realize the shops arent allowed to sell them anymore though!

 

But i like supporting my local shop been there a long time, but yep not cheap mj seeds have just over double in last 3 yrs as for fem seeds if you need to ask then ya cant afford it.

 

yeah they are really expensive. partly why I just used some bag seeds for this grow, i wasnt keen on spending £30 on 10 seeds, particularly when I didnt really know one strain from another (growing wise). Then again i suppose they can charge what they like.

Plant's doing fine, doesnt look like height should be a problem (although it's early days). Definitely a load more green around the white hairs, didn't expect that much change in 4 days.

 

I always buy my seeds the trouble with bag seeds is they can have been fert'ed with a hemi or a late flowing male but on plus side you may even get just fems and as a first grow kinda seed you really cant beat free.
Good good lookin promising think with ya plant grow it longer (the bud will taste better as well) get it nice and mature with a few more heads then try again.

 

hey, its been a while

today is the plant's 7th week of flowering! growth is good, flowers are small but many of them, and there are a fair few crystals emerging all over (photos don't show them too well).

One thing i'm wondering though: although growth is good the plant does not look like it will be ready to harvest in a week (at week 8 flowering). Should I just leave it for longer and wait until the buds fill out a bit, the pistils and crystals turn orange etc?

Pictures:
http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/585/dsc00266.jpg
http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/2779/dsc00263.jpg
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/3103/dsc00262tbo.jpg

 

They look a bit stressed to tell ya the truth with them one bladded leafs. What ya feeding them on? Should of moved onto a strong pk and low n mix by now.
Your looking for 70 percent of the hairs to of turned an orange to brown colour before harvesting you will also notice towards the end the buds will get a bit extend on top like there reshooting also ya notice the buds splill there load of resin and shrink back a little. one more thing and its a judgment thing but you dont wanna feed them for last two weeks before harvesting normally around the 50-60 percent brown mark. Thanks for getting back and let us no the out come.