Stupid Newbie Veg Question. Hydroponic

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rebelmandziukan

Member
what if your ceiling is 9 feet and your growing indica and you have the light on ceiling chains. my plants are already 12 inches at 2 weeks veg under 400 watt hps in an ebb and flo system. should i wait longer to flower or what?my last grow was sativa this is my first experence with indicas
 
Dystopia

Dystopia

Active Member
rebelmandziukan said:
what if your ceiling is 9 feet and your growing indica and you have the light on ceiling chains. my plants are already 12 inches at 2 weeks veg under 400 watt hps in an ebb and flo system. should i wait longer to flower or what?my last grow was sativa this is my first experence with indicas
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Not a stupid question at all bongsmilie. I don't think headroom is going to be an issue in your grow...but there are other factors that can determine how long you veg for.

Basically, a 400 watt light will support a 3' X 3' wide by 12-18" deep box that you want to fill with flowers. Anything outside of this box will generally produce less desirable, smaller "popcorn" buds.

So you want to vegetate long enough to fill this box with buds. How long you vegetate will depend on how many plants you are growing. If you look at the diagram I attached you can see what I'm talking about.

For the typical bushy Indica that has a dense canopy with fat leaves your penetration with a 400 watt light is going to be low - maybe 12". So for a 3' plant, only the top 1' will have perfect lighting for buds; any vertical growth beyond that one foot for the flowers is more or less wasted, UNLESS you need to fill the horizontal canopy area.

When planning an Indica grow, I generally try to shoot for 2-3 main colas per square foot to fill the horizontal canopy area (the grid in my attachment). And how many plants you are growing determines how long you need to veg to fill that area.

For instance, if you were doing a SOG - lots of plants with one main cola each - you might grow up to 27 Indica plants in that 3'X3' (9 sq ft) area. It would require minimal veg time - hell many people go straight to 12/12 with a SOG - to fill your horizontal canopy area.

But if you were only growing one or two plants in the same area you would have to top and train - which requires more veg time - to fill that horizontal canopy area. That's the idea behind a ScrOG - using minimal plants in a screen to fill the horizontal area with bud sites.

Hope this helps..
 

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rebelmandziukan

Member
Dystopia said:
Not a stupid question at all bongsmilie. I don't think headroom is going to be an issue in your grow...but there are other factors that can determine how long you veg for.

Basically, a 400 watt light will support a 3' X 3' wide by 12-18" deep box that you want to fill with flowers. Anything outside of this box will generally produce less desirable, smaller "popcorn" buds.

So you want to vegetate long enough to fill this box with buds. How long you vegetate will depend on how many plants you are growing. If you look at the diagram I attached you can see what I'm talking about.

For the typical bushy Indica that has a dense canopy with fat leaves your penetration with a 400 watt light is going to be low - maybe 12". So for a 3' plant, only the top 1' will have perfect lighting for buds; any vertical growth beyond that one foot for the flowers is more or less wasted, UNLESS you need to fill the horizontal canopy area.

When planning an Indica grow, I generally try to shoot for 2-3 main colas per square foot to fill the horizontal canopy area (the grid in my attachment). And how many plants you are growing determines how long you need to veg to fill that area.

For instance, if you were doing a SOG - lots of plants with one main cola each - you might grow up to 27 Indica plants in that 3'X3' (9 sq ft) area. It would require minimal veg time - hell many people go straight to 12/12 with a SOG - to fill your horizontal canopy area.

But if you were only growing one or two plants in the same area you would have to top and train - which requires more veg time - to fill that horizontal canopy area. That's the idea behind a ScrOG - using minimal plants in a screen to fill the horizontal area with bud sites.

Hope this helps..
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definatly helped im growing7 plants in a 2x2 area dont know if they are all female.so if i understand correctly my best bet would be to top the plants wait a week then start flower?
 
Dystopia

Dystopia

Active Member
Well, those Indicas will probably fill up a 2X2 area pretty fast. If it were me, I would plan on 3 females; if you end up with more, keep the best 3 (I know, it's tough chopping females!) Since you're growing in a 4 sq ft area, and you might want 3 main colas per sq ft, I would shoot for 12 main colas, or 4 per plant.

So yeah, top each plant once for 4 main colas (https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/151706-uncle-bens-topping-technique-get.html) and flip to 12/12 a week later.

Of course, the plants will stretch for 2-3 weeks after you flip and you want to try to keep all of the tops as level as possible, so you'll probably have to do a little LST as well. Typical canopy maintainance.

If you train them properly to maximize the light you should get a pretty good haul, maybe 300+ grams from Indica's. Good luck!
 
jzs147

jzs147

Well-Known Member
i dnt get uncle bens topping he does not explain well enough i know how to top to get 2 main cola's how do you op to get 4?
 
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rebelmandziukan

Member
I topped the plants and they look good im going for 4 main colas per plant like you said. i labeled the tops and im going to try cloning for the first time. my strain is kc brains (brain damage). hmm i wonder what would happen if i upgraded to 1000 watt light instead of the 400?
 
RobMar

RobMar

Active Member
The only stupid questions are the ones not asked. Thats what my teachers used to tell me.
 
h8red1

h8red1

Well-Known Member
hey if you are growing in an ebb flow i need your HELP dont wann JACK your tread so can you lokk at mine and answer my ? about ebb flow system please WILL +REP ...
 
Dystopia

Dystopia

Active Member
jzs147 said:
i dnt get uncle bens topping he does not explain well enough i know how to top to get 2 main cola's how do you op to get 4?
Click to expand...

Well, basically you count the number of leaves up from the base of the plant - I do not count the little round leaves and the first leaves with one blade - and top above that.

Below is a picture from my current grow where I topped for 8 branches. I topped above the 6th set of leaves - I skipped the 1st set (the little round leaves) and the second set (the single-blade leaves) - which left me with four more sets of leaves for a total of 8 nodes to grow branches from. You can see that the lowest set of branches is coming from the 3-bladed leaf nodes:





This is what it looks like today; I trim off any side shoots that won't make it to the flower zone (perfect clone material - I could have probably got 70+ clones from trimming the two plants):





Each one of these braches is being trained into a screen. Here's a shot looking up into the canopy at one of the main branches, you can see how the side shoots are filling up the screen:





Most of this secondary growth has occured after switching to 12/12, which is why I try to limit the number of main colas to 2-3 per square foot for Indicas. The secondary growth will normally fill in the rest of the canopy. The whole idea is to shape your canopy to max out your light:





I have my light hung vertically, so I'm trying to shape my branches around the light.
 
R

rebelmandziukan

Member
hey distopia, the plants are reacting great to the topping it looks like in gonna get 4 main colas per plant, ill keep you updated from sunny central florida. thanks bro +rep to you
 
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