Starting the flowering cycles for my Cannabis plants

It has been a few weeks since I topped and mainlined my four plants. With their height reaching close to a foot it is time to let them stretch to their final height. These plants are wildcards when it comes to how much they will grow. That is why I am starting flowering so early, some strains can grow upwards of three times bigger during flowering. Most indicas double in height which is expected, but those sativas can really grow depending on the strain.

The sativa?

This plant I think is a sativa, with its lightly colored wide spaced fan leaves it may grow to be huge. And in the past I have indeed grown them too tall, touching the light.. Which I never want to repeat. So better to be safe than sorry and start them small. When I have some known strains then I can dial in their vegetative cycle better and not be so conservative in my timing.

So now we start the two month cycle, with a new light bulb installed and their light timings changed they will transform into flowering bushes.

With the topping this plant got now I have four spots where it has new growth. The shoots are just a little too small right now for LST clips. I tried some on but just a tad too small right now.

So far the sativa is my favorite, partly because its the underdog.. went through a tough sproutling period. And because I love sativas. It seems stunted, ever since a seedling it grows very slowly. But I am hoping it wakes up and produces some great tasty sativa buds.

By topping the plant, it promotes new growth in side shoots. Giving you a higher yield, if trained properly. Otherwise you may have a cluster of buds all closer together, which can cause mold problems.

We can see where I cut the stem two new shoots came up. So when I would otherwise just had two main big colas now I should have four. :-)

The leaves are starting to get more sticky, and a distinct smell can be noticed when touching them. Soon they will smell regardless of touch, making my basement smelling quite dank.

I think the stem is looking strong enough to support four buds, if needed I can add a hoop around it. May want to do that sooner rather than later otherwise it will be hard to fit it with big buds on it.

For my pest management I currently have gnat traps deployed, but also use BTI or known as mosquitos dunks. These two things have really helped to keep them under control and now my plants are thriving.

The two indicas or hybrids?

Really wish I knew the strains, but they are short, dark and bushy. So at the very least they seem to be indica dominant.

I am growing these differently than how I did the sativa, doing mainlining I tie down the branches and trim them below. Giving me really long horizontal shoots. This should help with the buds not being too close to each other. Also increasing the plant from one major bud site to four.

Hehe looks like they have little bowties in their hair.

Most of the topped and mainlined branches are barely big enough for LST clips. These are known as "Low stress straining" and helps you form new branches in the directions you want them.

I am also trying out some plant cord, its a soft metal wire that can be used to help hold down off shoots.

The soft wire you can wrap around the pots as they have training holes in them, and then wrap ever so softly around the new growth of the Cannabis plants.

This is the first time I have done training like this, so I am trying to be very careful not to break the plants as I do this. I had to give up on the sativa as its branches were just too small.

I was barely able to fit them on one of the indicas, maybe in another week they will all fit better once they stretch a little more. I cannot wait too long though as they form woody stems after awhile and do not bend.

Moved my co2 generator to the top of my light. I think the warmth helps to accelerate production keeping the levels higher. But if it got too hot it would kill the yeast, but so far this has not seemed to happen.

The three females:

My fourth plant is not confirmed yet, so I will only talk about the ones I know are females. The first here is the sativa I believe. I did the topping on this one.

The next two are both indicas or hybrids, and I am training them using a mainlining technique. They also have hoops supporting them.

As for the mainlining I did it twice. So I went from a single bud site, then to having two, and now I have four as it multiplies every mainline. Unfortunately the first time I did the mainlining I trimmed it too tall, so I decided to just let them go to flower as I do not want them to get too tall as well. But more worried about the sativa doing that, hopefully by topping it and mainlining the two others that wont happen. As that 1000w HPS light gets quite hot and I cannot let them get much closer than 2 feet from it.

Whats next?

I will keep training the new growth during "the stretch" peroid. I will probably not see any forming buds for a few weeks. But excited for when they do form. I have bought some more pest control products if in the case I get spider mites. I have had to battle them in the past, so keeping a close eye on my plant leaves will be crucial over the next few weeks to months. By lowering the humidity they tend to show up and can be a problem right around harvest.

But I have not spotted any yet, so thats good. But I know they could be around the corner, or under the next leaf in this case just waiting for their chance.



0
0
0.000
13 comments
avatar

Awesome man. You have so much cool stuff going on with this grow and I can’t wait to see how they flower. I am excited to grow a sativa strain next. I’ve mainly been growing indicas.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Thanks bud, well honestly it was hearing about how you grow and others in the community that made me try it. Without seeing yall do it I may have gone with a more classic shape.

Yeah those sativas are funky, I love how the leaves space out.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Amazing Mate. All this efforts you Put into this work really Going to be worth it hopefully. My first time knowing about Sativa and this whole process is so fascinating.

Well, Happy new Year mate. Wish you many blessings and Good health, wealth and Joy this year!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Much appreciated, yeah lots of work now will hopefully pay off later.. Hehe yeah indicas and sativas are the main two types of cannabis.

Hope you have a good year too.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Cool to see you got yourself some of those clips. They are a must have! @futuremind actually 3d printed me a handful. So if you ever need more, I’m sure a Hove transaction can be arranged;)

Happy growing bro!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Yeah its all new to me but glad I got them.. I noticed the fans blow them off sometimes though. But I put them back on.

Just took some off that were on for a week, the stem was getting quite big inside the clip.. hope they will hold that way now.

Nice man thanks, but luckily I got a big ol bag of them.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Looking really good man! I love how you're not afraid to experiment around and try different methods with your grow, you'll go far with cannabis growing by trying different things.

I've never tried the mainlining personally but I've been gaining interest lately, especially after seeing what you're doing here.

Sativas and Indicas definitely have some distinguishing characteristics, which you seem to know quite well, showing that you've been doing your homework! It's usually hard to know for sure when it comes to unknown seed strains, because there's so many mixes with Sativa and Indicas now that it's hard to find any "true" genetics of one or the other. Almost all of the known strains are muddied up by breeding, but I don't think that's a bad thing either because now people are starting to produce some really wild strains with all of the breeding that's occurred.

I 3D print those clips varying in size, from mini to monster size. I should start printing some new batches, and might even scale down to a super micro sized LST clip since there seems to be some interest in it :)

Keep up the great work @solominer! 💪

0
0
0.000
avatar

Thanks man, well with your help and others in the community I feel safe trying these other techniques.. So really glad to have support by yall. :-D

Hehe well if you mainline make sure you properly count the nodes (unlike me) haha.. I did mine too tall.

So true, these hand me down seeds I have no idea what I am dealing with. And as you say even with strains sold it may be crossed with something that changes its stretch or whatever. Looking forward to getting a mother plant of something I like and then sticking to one strain for awhile.

Nice, that is a good use for your 3d printer.

Will do :-)

0
0
0.000
avatar

It is true that sativas never know how far they grow. Once an Amnesia Lemon kept growing and I didn't know where to fold it to fit in the box :).

Your indica plants have a really thick trunk, I think when they start pumping in a few weeks they will grow into huge bushes!

Happy New Year friend, may it be full of satisfaction in everything!

0
0
0.000
avatar

So true, thats why I started flowering early. Seeing a sativa makes me a little nervous about my little grow tent.

Yeah they sure do. I have fans blowing on all my plants, I think that helps get the stems bigger. And yeah they are quite vigorous growers, even with their 2nd mainlining they are growing faster than my sativa that only got topped once.

Thanks bud, hope you do too..

0
0
0.000
avatar

Sorry for the delay, but I was full. I hope your girlfriend hasn't outgrown in the meantime, but better to have problems that she outgrows than she stays small ;). I have to catch up with the posts, in the meantime I wish you a happy 420.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Solominer

Nomnomnom Spam is fun you fucking retard

Make hive a better place with curation and bully new users by @solominer. Every investor in hive should downvote all your shit and counter vote the downvotes on new users.

I am happy you waste your downvote mana on me, you idiot!!!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Solominer

Nomnomnom Spam is fun you fucking retard

Make hive a better place with curation and bully new users by @solominer. Every investor in hive should downvote all your shit and counter vote the downvotes on new users.

I am happy you waste your downvote mana on me, you idiot!!!

0
0
0.000