Loose Buds & Bananas (REVEGGING)

I have grown plants many times over the years and it was mostly vegetative when I was a teenager. I used to start and finish outdoors then in later years I switched to starting indoors and moving them outdoors during veg. I am just not setup to flower indoors, and this makes it difficult living in New England our season is just too short. I very rarely make it to flowering outdoors, there is always a reason; weather, I screw up, theft, etc.

This year is my first legal season so I am am able to be more secure and spend more time with my plants, and I made it to flowering. I am at the end of flowering and my buds never got dense, I figured I would just let them go longer since it is still the middle of summer but I am now getting bananas and very fast! I am tempted to harvest them right now.

Here are all the details of what my plants have been through starting from the beginning. They were started from seeds I got in batches of dank buds, I grew them indoors under great 6500k LED flood lights for 18 hours a day. After several weeks once they started looking healthy in veg I decided to fertilize them with just liquid fertilizers I use in my planted nature aquariums by the brand Seachem. This provides tons of micro traces and NPK, I did not pay too much attention to the analysis although I should have. This threw my plants into a vicious flowering cycle in very early vegetative I mean they were only 1.5ft tall at the time, and this was under 18 hours of light. I was spooked and went to 24 hour lighting to revert them but it never stopped the flowering every new node set had a bud on it so I decided I had to just roll with it and that it was time to move them outdoors much earlier than intended. The flowering was a very slow process outdoors but it never stopped, they were getting taller at the same time as producing buds for at least a month before they stopped getting taller.

I transplanted them into 5 gallon buckets at this point and used soil meant for "roses" because it had a higher P & K composition. This went well no shock at all, so then I topped the plants and super cropped all the branches. I drilled holes in the sides of the buckets so that I could anchor the super cropped branches down with zip ties, this worked wonderfully to spread the plant out for maximum light. I did a little lollipopping to maximize the larger colas, and they grew this way for several weeks as the buds got larger. I never fed them anything specific for fertilizers besides what was in the soil and a single second round of aquarium fertilizer.

I started getting concerned about the buds not densening up so I learned about a technique called "bud swelling" and I gave it a shot early on. I tried just one half of each plant and after 2 weeks I saw a small difference in the girth of the colas compared to the minimal loss in tip height. So I snipped the very tip of all the colas including a second time on the first branches I tried. I also started watering using cold tap water because I heard that helps trick them into getting denser. Everything seemed fine up until this point, besides the fact my smaller of the 3 plants was getting lighter in color and the bucket weighed much more than the other two. The weight difference told me it was not consuming water at nearly the rate the other two were so I stopped watering it but it never lost its soil weight then today it rained hard. I assume this explains the lighter color the foliage has, over watering.

Since I have not done any heavy fertilizing I figured it was time to help those buds out, completely lost count of weeks I have been in flowering at this point. My brother started growing as well at his house, with all high tech equipment and special fertilizers for different stages of growth. His plants suck though, he just doesn't have the green thumb in him, I am the one who has been playing with plants of all kinds my whole life. Anyway, so I asked him for some of his bloom fertilizer yesterday and he mixed me up a gallon on the very low end of the recommendation, using RO water with calmag and I put maybe 1/3 of the gallon into the 3 plants yesterday. Today I find tiny bananas all over the upper buds, too many to pull with tweezers if I continue flowering these plants out. I swear that bloom booster kicked these over the edge, it contains some nitrogen and I should have asked him for his stage 3 "ripen" solution which has 0 nitrogen. This rainstorm today helped flush them out but I think it is too late to add the stage 3 at the rate I am seeing the bananas. What do you think about flushing them again tomorrow then adding a little ripen solution? Aside from the bananas I did check the buds with a 100x microscope and the trichomes are not ambur that I can tell, they are just becoming milky I see no contrast in head color...the only ambur I can see is the possible shade coming from the incandescent DC powered light on my microscope but no difference between the heads. I have had the opportunity to look at trichomes with my scope before and I always find that the trichomes on Sativa are smaller and closer together than those found on Indica plants, while being taller with larger heads on Indica but more distanced apart. I also find Sativa to typically have a more milky white trichome and less likely to be ambur.

I am curious about the maximum flowering cycle time now, I know some strains "take longer" than others but once the clock starts at week 1 of flowering it kind of seems like a race. The clock starts ticking at week 1 of flowering and you can not compensate weak lighting or nutrients with extended time. I thought I was ahead of the game this year being early and I would just let them flower extra long, and the signs tell me I am not over-ripe so that can not be the reason for bananas...so it must be stress? I move them every day, they start off in the same place every morning to catch direct morning sunlight from 10am-noon. Then I have to move them at noon to another spot which gets direct sunlight until 6pm for a total of 8 hours a day of direct sunlight including random rotation between the movements. This leaves me with ambient/non-direct daylight outside this 10am-6pm, so that would be 6am-10am and 6pm-9pm for a total of 7 hours....7+8=15 hours of total light per day give or take an hour. This may be the problem?













Here are some close ups of the colas, I basically only have 1 Sativa and the rest are hybrids but the more dominant Sativa has seemed to naturally grow more dense buds...can you tell which picture is of the Sativa? It has also started to bananna out on me so it has nothing to do with strain. Here are some close ups of the bananas in red circles, some actually seem to be seeds developing with purple tips...I did try opening one and found a seed. I live in an area that is completely legal at the state level to grow and consume marijuana for recreational use even though this is for medical reasons, so some idiot could have pollinated me in the neighborhood but the bananas instantly pollinate the plant themself. No amber trichomes say pound through this phase and see what happens, I am already on the fence of hash plants so I can only produce more THC from here on out and if I don't get too many seeds or bananas it may be smokable buds. I just have to stop messing with the plants, because super cropping was stress and so was bud swelling the tips...and the zip ties may be constant stress for all I know since it is always held against them and I do not mean pressure points of contact I mean just in general the scrog method.

 

My leaves are not slick, they are wet I had just brought them inside from a heavy rainstorm.

I do not think the plants are revegging, it is all 3 I have. The effect you are seeing is from budswelling, I pinched the tips of my colas off.

I think I will let them go at the cost of seeds and flowers, but I will leave them in the spot where they get sun from noon-6pm with low light until 9pm. This spot stays very shady in the early morning and may help me shave a few hours off my lighting cycle.

 

I moved them outside 3+ months ago and they were flowering before I moved them out, they were in a steady flowering period outdoors for 2-3 months. This is crappy news but I appreciate it, they are getting a maximum of 14 hours of daylight right now but why would I want 14+ for flowering outdoors??

I did an experiment and took away their morning daylight today by putting them indoors in my dark basement, besides for some dim window light. This gave them about 5 extra hours of darkness, and they threw off tons of new growth I can tell because it is all light green and there are tons of new clusters of white hairs just from overnight but the most mature hairs are dark orange and somewhat falling off so your posts are lining up.







This is another shot of a banana, and there are quite a few swollen balls that I keep picking off with tons of bananas inside them. I am not sure what to do but I need to do something FAST! I need the communities help immediately on possible lighting schedules should I move them inside early each day, direct sun, non-direct, can I add them together in my schedule, I am starting to panic! I have read you can go as low as 8 hours during flowering, 8-12 hours so will 8 be okay or is that too much of a shock? 10-12 maybe?

 

Thank you for the advice, I think I am going to just keep flowering them and if it becomes very seedy I will hash the plants. I do not have enough time to start a new crop because I am moving in the fall, I have 2 other plants that are just starting to flower that I can try again with.

I built a light containment box today for the plants in my basement, since it is still producing lots of new buds daily...probably 20 buds for every male flower so the ratio is good. I will light them for 6 hours artificially in the box then move them outdoors for the second 6 hours, then back inside for 12 hours of darkness. This way the first 6 hours of light is not as intense as the second 6 hours which will be direct sunlight, the plants will have a chance to wake up first before being blasted. My indoor lighting is only 6500k LED flood lights so the spectrum is kind of high for flowering but we will see what it does.

Would 14 hours of darkness instead of 12 help reverse the vegging any better??

 

Okay here is an update of the situation, I enclosed to bottom of a work bench with that semi-reflective home wrap it seems waterproof. I then went around it again on the outside with tar paper to block any light. I am lighting it from 8am-8pm but I usually put them outside between 12-6 for natural sunlight. I have 2 female plants to the right in preflower, hopefully they do not get pollinated being with these other 3 plants. I am hoping to harvest the other 3 before the newer 2 have a chance to start really flowering. Even if a preflower does get pollinated will it screw with the rest of the flowering cycle even if no pollen is present later during the flowering stage??



Here is where I am so tempted to keep growing them, all these clusters of white hairs developed overnight in 12 hours! So a few weeks at this rate these plants will really fill out!



I am starting to understand the comment about not being able to keep up with removing nanners and flowers. Took me 30+ min to remove them from each plant. I can see how it did go back into veg because of the extension under each budsite. Here is the downside I am noticing there is pretty much a set of nanners in the center of every bud cluster so in theory this would overpolinate the plant even more than a typical male plant being in the area? I am already noticing in just 2-3 days tons of seed pods developing toward the top of the plants. Here is my hope though...with the new correct dark period in place will the plant stop producing the nanners and stop pollinating new buds? They do not seem to last long before rotting and falling off the plant, and maybe they will grow a top layer of buds over the seed pods if it stops pollinating itself? It does not stay in the plants stems or genetics passing it to new buds does it?

 

Good to know, but this is the end of the line for these plants.

 

I got you man, this is also personal research so I will certainly keep everyone updated. That was my exact thought was more budsites for more yield. That rats may have liked the seeds, but I really hope it stops developing nanners and seed pods....the seeds are very clearly forming and I may pluck some to save energy however the seeds have a nice layer of trichomes on the outside so I would be throwing away hash material. One advantage of taking the time to pluck nanners I think is the fact you remove the tip of every bud which is a technique for bud swelling.

Advantages: bud swelling & bud site stretching
Disadvantages: seeds & pollinating my other plants

I just read this and I may try it (24hrs dark):

"Want to speed up your switch from veg to flower? Give plants an uninterrupted 24-36 hours of darkness before going to a 12-12 cycle. It will make more of the Far-Reds change into Reds, giving a more powerful signal to your plant that it is time to bloom. Normally, the transition can take a couple of weeks to be seen on your plants. By giving them a really long night, you can speed this up dramatically."

 

Took me much less time to pick off the nanners and flowers yesterday then the previous 2 days so I think they are reverting back to flowering again. However I did loose the entire top of the plant that had the best form with a single cola, I decided to cut the top off since it was the most dense with nanners and very visible seed pods with minimal new buds. I would rather put the energy into the bottom colas with fresh buds and hairs with no male organs.




All trimmed up we can now inspect this cola, there is not much to it and this is why I did not want to cut all my plants because they would not have been very smokable...they would have had to be hashed due to the stem to bud ratio.



Here are some close ups so we can see how crappy it would have been, you can see the nanners and seed pods all over. This would have been the most tedious place to pick flowers from so if the plants have truly stopped vegging maybe we are done with pollinating flower growth. I started a 36 hour blackout at 8pm last night and the lights will return to a 12/12 cycle at 8am tomorrow until harvest. I have had them in a 12/12 for the last 3 days now. I would have rather did a 24 hour blackout but 36 will keep them on time with the 12/12 I want from 8am-8pm. I am thinking this could go either way, it will force them to "flower" faster but if these are starting to hermie "flower" goes both ways and I may find tomorrow morning that they have tons of new buds AND nanners/male flowers.

 

Here is an update on how things are going, I stopped trying to keep up with nanner removal you are all right it is nearly impossible and they are not showing any signs at letting up anytime soon. The buds are continuing to grow though, and being pollinated like crazy! These plants are nothing but THC covered seeds at this point, I am starting to realize these will not be smokable they will all need to be hashed first. You would grind way too many seeds in a grinder trying to remove them, I will have to figure out how to hash a seed plant without crushing all the seeds in the process. I have another plant starting to flower very nicely in the same space these plants are in so I hope the nanners pollen does not travel as far as an open flower would or I am screwed again.

 

The two Indica plants I had have been cut and dried at this point, the jar has the seed pods and the paper tray has pretty much popcorn buds without seeds (very stemmy)




This is the last shot of the Sativa plant as I harvested it about a week after the Indicas, it started growing nanners and seeds so I cut it to save my new plants I have flowering now.



These are the buds from the Sativa, big difference! They are actually smokable...not great but I can still smoke them. This is the largest and smallest/weakest bud from the plant.




I have no dry weights yet, the stems all snap and do not bend so time to begin curing!