Three weeks to harvest and no/few significant buds visible :(

My plants have three weeks left to harvest and still only one has significant buds, even though they're of a respectable height of about two feet. I'm expecting another bad harvest. Last good harvest I had they had some 1.5oz each. Too bad really.

In that case something must be off in your growing schedule.


Give some specifics about your growing environment, plant training, nutrient regime etc.




J

What do you want to know?
3*3 tent, 400w HPS with a brand-new bulb. The plants are in 1-gallon pots (granted, a little small) and I feed them BB Grow and Bloom at 4ml/l.

What strain are you growing, some strains flower for 10+ weeks (my last batch was White Widow, which took just past 10 weeks). Do you have any light leaks in your 12 hr dark period? What are your temps and humidity like? Can you supply any pics?

-spek

Curing 1 and 1/2 oz./per from 2-footers is a good yield. Note: let the plant tell you when to harvest. Not a book or package "instructions". When most of the pistils, the white hairs, have turned a darker color you will have small, frosty or clear liquid drops mostly under the leaves. When those glands turn milky then coppery - it's time to harvest. Works 4 me, BigSteve.

I tried with pics, but couldn't get any decent ones.
My current strain is Critical HOG.
Light pollution was the first thing I've investigated and keep an eye on, and there appears to be none. Very little light sips out when the light is on.
Temps are "a little" high, in the vincinity of 95 degrees, but it's the summer that makes it that way and I can't do anything to it. Could it be it?

100% its the temp u have to get that down to at least 80° unless ur running c02

JustCurious79 said:

I tried with pics, but couldn't get any decent ones.
My current strain is Critical HOG.
Light pollution was the first thing I've investigated and keep an eye on, and there appears to be none. Very little light sips out when the light is on.
Temps are "a little" high, in the vincinity of 95 degrees, but it's the summer that makes it that way and I can't do anything to it. Could it be it?

Click to expand...

Unless your pumping CO2 in there you should never be hotter than ~80 degrees.... I would venture a guess that those temps are contributing to the low yield/poor product...

A cool tube and an inline fan would reduce your temps a great deal...

Temps are pretty outrageous.

I use a 400w within a 3x3 footprint. However my room is 3.5x7x8. So plenty of extra room to dissipate heat. I generally average anything from 350-500g each harvest from 4 plants.

How many 1gallon pots are you using?

Firstly lets look at how you are exhausting your 3x3 tent.

Give us the low down on your ventilation system.

Fan size?
CFM of fan?
Filter?
Cooltube?
Etc.


Where does your exhausted air go to?
Are you dumping it into the room with your tent in it?



J

Six 1-gallon pots that is.
CFM for the fan would be 240 (and that's cubic meters per hour, not feet). It's the smallest can fan the shop had in store. I figured it would suffice, and it performed quite well during the winter and spring months.
Filter would be the one that came with the kit. It says 130 M3 here, but since the fan and filter were bundled I figured its just fine.
I don't have CFL's to grow with. I bought the HPS lamps second-hand and got them pretty cheap. For next summer I'll make sure to have a few LED or ESL/CFL-systems available. And of course proper air conditioning.

In my room I use a 480m3/h in order to keep my room below 29C during summer running.

In winter I use the same fan with a thermo controller.


240m3/h is pretty poor for a 400w during summer running.


Where does your exhaust dump all of its air?
Are you just exhausting into the room where your tent is?



J

Exactly, I dump into the room and keep a window open. The fan keeps the temp inside the tents some five degrees warmer then in the room.
I intended to purchase a new, far larger acoustic fan shortly so that I can have a single fan for both the tents. Still, I'm under the impression that the fan should be measured to exchange the air three times every minute. Any more then that, I'm told, and the ladies will get stressed.

Yes that's correct but you are dumping every bit of warm air back into the room whuch is increasing the ambient temp within the room.

Then getting circulated back into your tent.

The math for your tent is this.
1x1x2= 2m3/h
2x60=120m3/h to exchange your air once a minute but allowances have to made for carbon filters. Duct runs. Duct bends.

You could be using an 8" fan but while you're dumping it all back into the room even that wouldn't keep you cool.


My honest answer for now is duct your exhaust to the window and allow the tent to draw in the rooms air.

This throws all your hot air out the window and should see you with a considerable temp drop.


My best advice answer is if you don't want to run AC next time (which uses as much electricity as a 1000w light) then get yourself a decent 6" fan with at least 400m3/h. Mount your exhaust ducting to go out of the room not just out of the tent.

I vent mine into my attic space and allow my grow to passively draw air in from another area.



J

I'll take that into concideration. Thanks a lot.
During the hottest summer months I'll have to use air conditioning no matter what. Anyway, the weather is cooling down so I'll have to wait until next summer to see how it eventually would work.
Also ESL's are on the shopping list by now.
But about the acoustic fan... how noisy is is? Noise is the #1 problem I have with my current one, and I don't want to spend good money on a bigger one that doesn't run much more silent.

How can you know you're 3 weeks from harvest when there are no buds on the plants?

JustCurious79 said:

I tried with pics, but couldn't get any decent ones.
My current strain is Critical HOG.
Light pollution was the first thing I've investigated and keep an eye on, and there appears to be none. Very little light sips out when the light is on.
Temps are "a little" high, in the vincinity of 95 degrees, but it's the summer that makes it that way and I can't do anything to it. Could it be it?

Click to expand...

thats not a little high bro thats 20 degrees too high

Why would you think you are three weeks from harvest when you don't have buds

LordRalh3 said:

Why would you think you are three weeks from harvest when you don't have buds

Click to expand...

Time. Some 65 days total flowering, and that time is up during the last week of August.

JustCurious79 said:

Time. Some 65 days total flowering, and that time is up during the last week of August.

Click to expand...

Time means very little these days. Thanks to environmental issues, phenotype variations, nutrient imbalances, veg time,

Can all have an impact on flowering time.


Don't listen to the breeders that say flowering times are 75 days etc. you can generally add about 2 weeks on to most breeders times.

They give flowering times based on earliest possible harvest date, quick finishing phenotypes they've found, perfect environmental control And nutrient control.




J

When the white hairs start to turn brown I stop giving nutrients, and about a week later I harvest.