Help with slowing down the flowering stretch! Urgent! Gorrilla Zkittles DWC 600WHPS

Hi All,

DWC
Gorilla zkittles
600W HPS
GH flora series 3 part

So about a week BEFORE i flipped to 12/12 my girls shot up and started hiting vertical boost! i quickly flipped to 12/12, and they havent stopped, its 3 weeks in now, got buds everywhere, but ive got 1 foot of room left for them to grow, any higher than that and they'll start getting way too close to the 600W HPS, at that point ill have no room to raise the light, so some questions:

1. Should i cut back on the "Grow" part of the nutes? im already not adding much because im well and truely into flower, but if it will slow the vertical growth ill cut it back further.

2. Should i raise the light as much as i can so they get less intense light and therefore less "energy" to stretch? or will that make it worse and i should put the light as close as i can?

Any other tips you can provide other than LST as the amount of work id need to do would be immense.

Anything you do to stunt the growth of your plants will harm your overall harvest in the end. You would need to deprive (a.k.a) starve the plants of something, like nutes or lights to slow growth, I don't personally recommend taking anything away. That's like saying my kids are to healthy so I need to start feeding them junk food. I don't see pictures but it sounds like your plants are healthy and kicking ass, I wouldn't stop them. And any kind of cutting 3 weeks into flowering is diffidently not recommended. My honest opinion is you have to take the long road here and institute some LST. Just remember this for your next grow and you will be able to plan better. But Im sorry my advise is not the one you wanted to hear.

Don't raise the light, that will encourage them to stretch more. Keep your night temps the same as day temps and it will slow it down some. But stopping this mid stretch isn't near as effective as going into to be prepared. I would start pinching and bending, supercrop them girls.

Bend those bastards ! A net is your friend

nutcase said:

Hi All,

DWC
Gorilla zkittles
600W HPS
GH flora series 3 part

So about a week BEFORE i flipped to 12/12 my girls shot up and started hiting vertical boost! i quickly flipped to 12/12, and they havent stopped, its 3 weeks in now, got buds everywhere, but ive got 1 foot of room left for them to grow, any higher than that and they'll start getting way too close to the 600W HPS, at that point ill have no room to raise the light, so some questions:

1. Should i cut back on the "Grow" part of the nutes? im already not adding much because im well and truely into flower, but if it will slow the vertical growth ill cut it back further.

2. Should i raise the light as much as i can so they get less intense light and therefore less "energy" to stretch? or will that make it worse and i should put the light as close as i can?

Any other tips you can provide other than LST as the amount of work id need to do would be immense.

Click to expand...

If they are actually budding you can cut way back on the Grow and be good. There’s enough nitrogen in your bloom, micros and the cal mag you should be feeding right about now.

Stretch during transition to flower is baked into DNA through evolution and the power of almighty god. Nutrients have nothing to do with stretch. Problem is if a plant is stretching its already kinda too late to prevent it. Lemme splain....
So with indoor you want to maximize the limited space you have. That being said the goal is tight nodal stacking; you want as little a space in between branches as possible to produce nice fat spires of solid cola bud. To get this shape outdoors growers do nothing because the sun doesn't go right from 18/6 to 12/12 the day after the summer solstice. The suns natural light cycle is gradual. Hours of darkness are increased slowly through the summer and into the fall.
To reduce stretch in any strain just reduce the hours of light more gradually which will also make for bigger bud than if you just flip to 12/12. It also adds weeks to grow time; patience is rewarded.
Just reduce the light by 1 hour per week from say 18/6 to 17/7. Then go to 16/8 then 15/9 and so on. When plants get to 14/10 they might begin to throw pistils while continuing to veg at the same time. Then you can flip to 12/12 and stretching will be nominal. The bud forms nice fat tightly stacked spires as in outdoor grows. Just takes an exceptional amount of patience.

Pictures? But my guess is raising the light and putting a net down will help you out.

I had the same issue with a PPP. Went from 16" to 65". I used super cropping to try to control it. Still ended up having to bend the main cola over a little. Good luck.

pinch pinch and pinch some more

Thanks for all the advice guys, im guessing supercropping is ok to do when there are already buds growing, as everyone has reccommended it?
Heres a pic, note, the largest ones have already been LSTed down to where all the other tops are sitting.

nutcase said:

Thanks for all the advice guys, im guessing supercropping is ok to do when there are already buds growing, as everyone has reccommended it?
Heres a pic, note, the largest ones have already been LSTed down to where all the other tops are sitting.

Click to expand...

Supercroping is go to for a lot in your situation to control stretch. You might want to pull some leaves in there, that looks like it's crowded enough to cause mold issues.

Wow, that looks like a cluster bomb. That's going to be hard to control.

A light with with more blue spectrum like MH will help keep node spacing tight. So staying with MH for 3 weeks after flip. As was said day/temps plays a role in node spacing. Flip the temps so it's about 5f cooler during lights on than lights out will make a big difference in node spacing.

To late this time but info for future. Agree with other super cropping and some defoliation is needed