552 watts CFL 10 plants major LST. soil and hardcore pruning

Hey everyone. so this is my first grow. started with 20 seedlings, bagseed. vegged for 30-35 days. had to kill 10 males so now 10 females flowering for almost 4 weeks. sorry no pictures from the beginning, but everything seems to be going along alright. would like some opinions however. first of all i know its minimal lights for how many plants, but i am doing my very best to maximize the light by turning and fitting them together like a puzzle. i dont have many dead shady areas except when the leaves enlarge and begin to shade the bottom. i prune them about once a week. and have since the beginning. mainly because of air flow and the sheer denseness of the leaf material. i now only leave the two top sets of undeveloped leaves on each branch and cut everything else away, they have branched out nicely. topped after the 4-5 node some are at different points. severe lst with floss and wires. trichromes are comming along nicely, one hermied out on one small branch but i caught it the same day and cut the branch off. minimal yield loss expected and hopefully no more nanners will pop out. have fixed the one tiny light leek that may have caused it. soil is a mix of mg moisture control, perlite and vermiculite. drains really well. also using fox farms trio superthrive and will begin molasses very soon. the buds are starting to crawl together into what i hope is going to be massive colas covering the entire surface of the branches. heres a few pictures of my set up and some of the ladies. opinions , critisism , friendly banter all welcome.

Looks good

thanks man!

or if anyone has any questions for me on how i did anything. granted im no expert, first grow. but i have spent probably a few hundred hours on the web watching videos reading logs and researching everything i did extensively before i put it to use. but i will happily share any and all knowledge i have with you folks.

lookin real good... I've never done any lst before, probably gonna give it a go next time in hope for a bigger yield

yeah with cfls the light penetration isnt great so its the best way to maximize your light and space. i have 6-10 main branches comming off the stalks and each branch has 1-5 side branches comming off. around 20-30 top bud sites per plant. hoping for an oz plus on each plant. if i can hit a lb im gonna be super happy. the LST part with the defoliation actually was pretty time consuming but it gave me something to do so i didnt mind. probably 3-4 hours per week trimming and tying down

also probably worth mentioning that from the top of the soil they are around 10 inches tall or so.

i will be updating this from now till harvest so yield estimates are more than welcome!!

sexy! all my cfl grows have been different yields, but around .37 per watt is what i came out with on a average, but i also had my lights 1-2inch away at all times.
my last grow was CFL LST grow. i got 3.5 oz off one plant, 520watt.

yeah i hope you dont think my lights are like they are in the picture siq? lol i keep them as close as humanly possible. im also thinking about changing the lights. where now there a long strip of two fixtures, to being side by side 4 bulbs wide and 6 long. but i dont have an moving fan right now. what u think? I know ill atleast end up with 5 oz on the super low side. 1gpw would be around 20 oz. im hoping for more on the high side. but i do know its not real obtainable to get to 20 oz. but 10 would be a great success i think. but maybe changing the orientation up a bit would better use the light spilling off the sides?

so last night i found another pollen sack on the same plant. its the 2nd one so far. off of the same branch too. i cut off the 2 side branches that were shooting them out, hopefully thats the end of those. but i will keep a close eye on that plant. good news is i am going to have a pretaste of whats to come. i think its about .5g or so i cut off

Ok so update time, and alot of new pictures.DAY 32 from flip I trimmed a few of my ladies today that were getting bushy and shading the bud sites too much. took off a bowl full, which is an extremely small amount compared to my normal weekly trimming. Usually I take off about a grocery bag full. I suppose they arent growing the big fans as much now so there will be little need for it going forward. Everything is looking amazing. dried the second small branch I had to remove, and it was amazing. I can only imagine what this stuff is going to be like finished. watered yesterday with blackstrap molasses for the first time. I'm not sure if I can notice a difference from that just yet but the past week has been very productive. In a few of the pictures I tried to capture the crazy hot pink color of the pistols on one of my plants. I think you can somewhat tell but it didnt want to show up in the pictures very well. Thats about it for now, filling in nice. Tell me what you guys think please? we've had over 250 views and only a few have commented. The main reason I started this is to get opinions on how im doing from some experienced eyes and maybe any tips or things I could improve. Peace out on to the bud porn.....

Lookin good compadre!

OP:

• minimal yield loss expected and hopefully no more nanners will pop out​
  
  
  
  

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You have ten plants kill the Hermie... you are playing with fire... you will get burned...
Kill the herm...kill the herm... you have 9 other plants...

u think it will continue to herm out? the branch in question is one that was accidently broken in half. I had to tape it back together and it never really healed correctly. I dont want to kill it so early and prevent it from finishing because its one of the best looking plants I have. only 2 side branches off that one broken branch have done it.

DAY 33.Ok guys sad day. spent the morning killing the hermie. found a pollen sack comming out at another point and figured better safe then sorry. Wish It could've finished but it's whatever i guess. probably a quarter or so on the plant. It had a good 4 or 5 weeks left imo. got some pics of that drying and a few of the ladies. On the up side, now one of the other plants has better access to the lights so that one should begin to get more productive. Another thing happened today that sucked. I went to check in the morning when the lights went on and found a full on infestation of gnats on the soil of one plant. found larvae in a few other pots. So, I poured boiling water on the top to soak the first few inches and kill everything. havent seen any since but I went ahead and ordered traps. crossing fingers

Day 35 I have been battling these damn fungus gnats for a little while now and i am not enjoying it atall. I did the boiling water about 2 cups per plant. killed them off instantly. However, one plant which otherwise is looking great, has been getting infested every day. in the morning i poured boiling water on it to soak the top inch or so, worked. in the evening there were more, so i did it again. worked. or so it seemed. untill this morning I went in and saw the infestation beginning again, so I did it a bit more drastically. Poured about a half gallon of boiling water on the top then placed the bottom in a few inches of hot water. if this doesnt do it I give up. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated at this point. Have not seen any negative effects on the plants from the boiling water treatment, except for where i accidentally hit a few lower leaves with the water and they wilted up in a hurry. Heres some pics along with the update. One odd thing is happening, 2 or 3 of my plants seem to be about 3 weeks behind the rest. pictures included, barely budding and have just started this past few weeks. may finish a few weeks later? just let them go till they're ready? One more note, took a pic of my beta who hangs out in my closet since its so cold in the rest of my apartment.

i have to ask are you still planning on getting ten oz from these?? you maybe will get 5-7 wet impo
they look great dont get me wrong just very very small thats all
you must not of vegged very long they are pretty small but all in all they look healthy and love the beta btw

just a quick pic of my 525 watt cfl + t5 4ft 8bulb 28 days into the flip they have a long way to go still but they should produce fairly decent first time trying cfls

oh and i think that impo trimming the solar panels is really that good of an idea but i have seen it work but those are the plants BEST way of collecting the light it needs

well theyve been topped and lsted down alot. without these they would easily be 2.5-3 foot. vegged about 35-40 days or so. and im figuring they each have about 10-20 top buds on them all at the same level so if i can hit 2 grams per bud which i dont figure being a problem, some will surely be over that, then yes i could still pull off 10 oz.. not wet dry. but only time will tell, the most developed one at the moment already appears to have over a half oz on it, taking into consideration the shrinkage with drying. if i dont hit over 5 oz i will consider this a complete bust imo. and yes i suppose the large fans are the "best" area of solar collection, however, every part of the plant is capable of photosynthesis and the buds clearly benefit from access to unshaded light. especially since theyre cfls. if i hadn't cut off the fans, i would be completely overrun with dense foliage at this point and probably having a larger gnat problem and fighting mold/rot. honestly i did figure the intense pruning was a bit of a gamble but I feel it is paying off. thanks for popping by man!

just one ? themjkid22... so you said 5-7 oz wet, are you saying it looks like ill get 1-2 oz dry from all 9 remaining plants?????