Day 70 and slow growing

Hi, this is my first grow. My plant look okay, I guess. The leaves are green and not withered or dying, but it's day 70 and I'm beginning to think I'm doing something wrong. I'm using two 68W cfl lights and they are in 5 gallon clay pots. I've just now found a place near me that sells Fox Farm fertilizer and I'm going to start using it next week. I've used Miracle Grow a couple of times, but it seems like when I started using Miracle Grow, they stopped growing. Does anyone have any suggestions? A pic is posted. Thanks!

You need to provide more info. What is your light schedule? What spectrum are those cfl's? 5500 or 2700? I ask because 5500 is for veg. and 2700 is for flower. Also, if your lights are at 18/6 or 24/0, you will be vegging forever and ever without budding. You need to switch to 12/12. 12 hours light and 12 COMPLETE darkness.

Does any of that help?

Also, your plants are very spindly. We call that "stretched". You may want to consider training the plants down. Look in the forum search here for a technique called LST or feel free to read my grow. I LST like mad to keep height down. This will allow you to keep the plant lower and expose more bud sites to the bulbs. Of course, you'll need to get the light closer to the plants once you've done that. Maybe 4" or so.

They DO look healthy, though.

The lights are 2700 and I've had them on a 18 hours on and 6 hours off schedule. Should I go ahead and switch to 12/12 or see if they will grow taller?

You don't want those plants taller or they will not stand up on their own. Switch to 12/12 any time after you've read this. Some say give 36 hours dark, etc., but that causes stretch, which your plants can't handle any more of. You may want to consider a technique called 'supercropping' to get that height down. See.. you should only have a couple inches between nodes. It looks from the pics like you have 6-8" between nodes. That's not good. Personally, I'd hogtie that sucker down with some twine and get it LOOOOW to expose more budsites to the lights. This will give you a nice even bud canopy rising up off it. If you want to see supercropping, I always direct people to youtube, since there's a gread video on it. If you don't want to do that, check my grow. My last set of pictures clearly shows a supercropped clone. You twist or pinch the stalk a little to loosen the matter inside and flop the top over. Then, you tie the top to the lip of the planter, since the plant will right itself in about 2 days and start reaching up for the light again. Serious, though.. those plants are very stretched. Get the height down.

Aside from that, GREAT job.. and happy flowering. You should notice white hairs (females) or little clusters of green footballs (males) within a few days to a few weeks of making the lighting change, depending on genetics.

if you switch to 12/12 you will flower them.. so no... dont use that light cycle yet unless you want to bud them...


my 2 cent is this...

get more cfls to increase light, leave them on a 24/0 light schedule, and keep the bulbs as close to your plant as they can be without burning the leafs... your plants arent growing because they are light starved... they need light for photosynthesis to grow... not enough light means slow slow slow growth.... more light = more photosynthesis = more growth....

Oh.. and in that last set of my pics, you can't miss the LST. LST is Low Stress Training. It's, essentially, bonsai, when you combine with pruning, which I do, also. Anything you can do to expose your bud sites to the CFLs will help you, since CFLs have really poor canopy penetration.

and get "cool" CFLs, not "warm" ones... as was stated you need 5000K (around that) light spectrum to grow... thats the "cool" i was talking about... the 2700K, or "warm" bulbs you have are good for flowering...

you should grow them out some, or try to at least, before you flower them... the bigger the plant = the bigger the yield.. you will get some buds off your plants, but not much...

Another thing that could help is to get some cardboard and make a makeshift enclosure with mylar on it or white paint to up your reflectivity. You lose light by having your light just fly off into the darkness. Reflecting it back onto the plant VERY close is great for it. Mylar is the best for this.

Of course, you have differing opinions, now. Your initial post said it was slow growing. From that, I took it you meant you want some bud NOW. If that's the case, follow my advice. From first sign of flower, you still have a couple to a few months to go of flowering. If you want monstrous trees that can't hold themselves up, veg. longer and stake the shit out of them. In either case, get that light up by adding lights or adding reflectors on the side or both.

Thanks for the help, the LST thing kinda scares me right now since this is my first plants. I may just go ahead and make the light change and try to get them to bud. The yield isn't all that important, I'm just growing these for my own stash. Next time I may try LST if they shoot up again like that.

Hey.. my avatar is my first plant. It's heavily LST'd, pruned, about 8" tall and is looking like it's gonna yield a quarter to half an oz. I have 2 growing right behind it that are a little bigger.. also LST'd. No reason to fear.. it's a very pliable plant.

I'm a n00b, too. I'm just very well read and have a lot of seasoned grower friends.

smokinscott said:

Thanks for the help, the LST thing kinda scares me right now since this is my first plants. I may just go ahead and make the light change and try to get them to bud. The yield isn't all that important, I'm just growing these for my own stash. Next time I may try LST if they shoot up again like that.

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If they shoot up like that next time, just get the lights closer and up the reflectivity. Cardboard covered with mylar (or white paint) "walls" would do wonders for you. Stretching is a sign of being very light deprived. At a minimum, if you don't want to LST, get bamboo stakes and tie those babies on. The buds will get heavy.

The avatar pic looks great.. If I can just get a little bud off these I'll be happy. It's amazing how much I've learned about this since I started these, so next time should be a lot better. In the meantime, I'm just need some smoke...

HAH! I know EXACTLY what you mean. I've been stretching my last 1/4 oz.

Depending on your genetics, it should be 2-4 months. Just enough time to keep readin on RIU to figure out how to tell when to chop 'em down. That is a VERY important question to find the answer to, as well. There's some preference involved in that decision, too.

Peace, and if you ever need advice, feel free to ping me.

Those plants need a LOT more light. If you're sticking with CFLs, get as many as you can rig up/afford and mount them so that the *side* of the bulb faces the plant. CFLs put out the most light to the sides. Put a reflector over them or make individual reflectors from 12-ounce aluminum cans. As others have suggested, make an enclosure with reflective walls (flat white paint, mylar, panda film... NOT aluminum foil).

The reason those plants are so stretched and have to be held up with a stake already is due to light starvation. They are putting all their energy into stem height in a desperate attempt to get into sunlight. I doubt you could get anything at all off the plants with one CFL over each. If they did flower I would imagine the buds would be incredibly airy. You MIGHT get a quarter ounce of fluffy smoke off both plants combined. Also, that is not a 68-watt bulb; it is "equivalent" to that wattage of incandescent bulb, meaning it's like 13 watts or so. You need 26w CFLs minimum, and you really do best with 42w minimum. Cool white for veg, warm white for flower.

WAY more light is what you need, friend.

thanks Mose, I have two 68 watt cfl's (300 watt equivalent) directly over the plants, and three 28 watts (100 watt eq.) on the sides. From what everyone has told me, I do need some kind of box around them to redirect the light back into the plants. I think next time I grow, I'm going to try some different lights. I really appreciate all the advice I've gotten on here. I was clueless since this is the first, and I was almost to the point of scrapping those plants and trying again. But now, maybe I can still manage to get a little bud out of those. Even if it's only a little, they are still fun to grow.

I think it's the MG soil and the lighting. If you're going to use CFLs, try to surround the plant as best as you can, and frequently rotate to get even lighting. Fox Farm will definitely do you some justice. Also, try some seaweed extract. It works wonders, and I am a firm believer. You can use a cap full per gallon throughout your entire grow. It is natural and organic so it is hard to overdose. It acts as a steroid to your plant. Good stuff.

Cheers.

Oh yeah, and you can find it at your local nursery or garden section of your grocery store (amazingly I seen it at the HEB in my area, it's called MaxiCrop -- goes for about $10). Research it and you will be asking yourself, "why wouldn't ANYONE in their right mind use this stuff?" It helps your plants avoid any stress, while encouraging new growth.

Be sure to check your run off pH with like pool strips or something (approx. $4). If your pH is messed up, it can cause a lot of issues. It's cheap and easy to check, and easy enough to fix. Don't give up! Good luck.

Thanks Rollwithyou22, I'll look for some seaweed. If I use fluorescent lighting, is it better to use the regular long tubes, like a shop lights or the twisted cfl's? I've seen a lot of pics on here that people have used regular shop lights and their plants look great (from what I can tell).

smokinscott said:

Thanks Rollwithyou22, I'll look for some seaweed. If I use fluorescent lighting, is it better to use the regular long tubes, like a shop lights or the twisted cfl's? I've seen a lot of pics on here that people have used regular shop lights and their plants look great (from what I can tell).

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Honestly, I wouldn't know.

I have done a lot of research and reading on using fluorescents, but seems like 90% of the material that pops up are CFL grows, which all seem to be very successful. I would think CFLs would be better in the fact that you can spot target certain areas of your plant. With the tubes or shop lights you would have to have almost a rainbow of lights to surround the plant, which would be harder to adjust as they grow. They need to surround the plant, as fluorescents do not penetrate the plant enough to make it to all bud sites if the light is only elevated from above. Sooo, I would say if you are going to do either... CFLs would be the way to go, but that is all a matter of my personal opinion and again, I'm no expert.