Jogro
Well-Known Member
You're too kind. I just hope people find this helpful This line is pretty obscure; right now its an unreleased tester by a small breeder, so I'm not sure how many people are even going to see this report.
Couldn't agree more.
With the benefit of hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have grown this at all, but prospectively, there was no way to know when I started it that the summer was going to be so hot and for so long. I also told Reddog I was going to test either this line or Jedi Kush for him, and I just felt committed to doing that, come hell or high water. They guy knows what he's doing, I think he's doing good work, and I think he can use the exposure.
Depends on your perspective, I guess, but I'd say that a plant that starts flower at 20 inches and ends at 48 inches saw a 2.4x stretch during flower. IE, final height was 2.4x original height (48/20). Obviously, we're excluding container height here.
For what its worth, this one probably meets your criteria, that is, if you had flowered it at 20", it probably wouldn't have gone past 48".
My experience has been that in general, most pure indicas end up with about a 2x stretch. Indica-sativa hybrid type plants (which in practice is most commercial lines) end up with about a 2.5x stretch. Sativa dominant hybrids or "short" hazes, maybe 3x. Taller hazes or pure landrace type sativas can be even more, 4x or even 5x+, and for all the usual reasons, I generally won't take those on.
Incidentally, if you really have 48" vertical height to play with (or 48" + container height), there is really no reason you couldn't grow a plant with 3x or even 4x stretch if you really wanted to. (Whether or not you do, being a totally different issue). Its just a question of being willing to do a little bit of extra work training the plant(s) and starting early, that's all. There are a lot of ways you can do this, tying, trellis/SCROG, etc, and it really doesn't have to be complicated or even difficult.
You saw what I did. . .just topped the plant once and bent the limbs horizontally. That's about as easy as it gets. The actual bending only takes a few seconds every few days when you water the plants. The "trick" is just to repeatedly bend the stems downwards when they're still green and soft. Obviously you try not to break them, though even if you do, its not that big of a deal. . .they'll heal. To the extent possible, you actually want to bend them a little bit BELOW horizontal, because they'll naturally spring back up. But you do it several times, then as the plant matures, the stems will naturally harden off and stay in the "bent" position, with the weight of the buds helping to keep them that way. One nice extra benefit of doing this is that the sideways growth opens up the entire main colas to get light, increasing yield. By reducing the height of the top colas, you also put them at the same level as side branches, creating a more even canopy and again (hopefully) improving yield.
For me its quality, then quality again, then ease of growth. By quality, I mean potency, effect, and scent/flavor, in that order. Ease of growth is stretchiness, flowering time, and any other particular issues. Obviously, I'll take yield if I can get it, and I do try to optimize yields with (limited) training, but honestly, I'd rather have 9/10 quality and 1 ounce yield than 7/10 quality and 3 ounce yield.
