Single Cola Clones?

Hey all!

New grower here. I'm actually on my first grow now. Currently growing out some Serious Seeds White Russian.

I have 2 separate closets. 1 for veg, and 1 for flower.


On the right side, plants are flowering under my 400 watt HPS.

On the left side, I veg 6 clones under the T5. They stay in veg for as long as the flowering cycle takes on the right side (approximately 60 days)


I was noticing how a lot of the branches on the plants have very small, weak buds.

Rather than vegging 6 large plants for 2 months, then flowering for 2 months, I want to try growing more like...20 smaller plants, with no side-branching. Trim them up to focus on a single cola...which would also allow me to pack them in closer.

So on the veg side I'd be looking at keeping 2 mothers, cutting about 20 clones, wait until they get a decent sized rootmass (2-3 weeks or so), then move them into flower.

The benefits I see here are:

1. Harvest more often. Instead of waiting approx 4 months total (2 month clone/veg, 2 month flower), it'll be more like 2 1/2 to 3 months total (2-4 week veg to get roots, trim to single cola, then flower for 2 months). This should also be enough time for the mothers to regenerate enough growth for the next set of 20 clones.

2. Higher quality bud. Getting rid of the side branches will eliminate the light airy small popcorn buds. The entire harvest will be high quality dense main-cola bud.

3. Simplicity. I won't have to worry about all of those fragile side branches. I can't tell you how much of a pain in the ass all those branches are. They get in the way when I try to water. A lot of 'em are actually starting to bend over because of the weight they're putting on....they take up so much room, and they don't even develop as well as the main cola!

4. More consistent yield. It's ideal to harvest at your preferred harvest time, that is, when a certain amount of trichomes are cloudy / amber. With normal growth, from what I read a lot of people seem to have different parts of the plant mature at different times, which leads to the problem of either harvesting everything at once, when the top part of the plant closest to the light is mature, and the rest is immature. The smaller single cola plants should have more consistent potency/maturity throughout all of the smokeable bud.



Anyways...If there's anyone that grows their plants as single colas, if you could post any tips or offer your experience here it would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

 

Well I guess now that I think about it I won't harvest more often since I only have 1 space for flowering...but hopefully 20+ single-cola plants will still be much better than 6 unpruned plants?

 

I thought about LST and SCRoG but I think this method will be less of a hassle and possibly more efficient.

 

Ok...well I decided to go ahead with the SOG route...In about 2 or 3 more weeks I'm going to take a boatload of clones from the 6 plants in veg and wait for roots to shoot out of the rapid rooter plugs (100% success rate last time I took clones). I'll save 2 of 'em to make bonsai-moms.

Then I'll transplant them into soil and possibly go directly into 12/12 lighting after rooting / transplant....or should I veg them for a week?

I'm thinking about going with half-gallon grow bags. This is approximately 2 liters of soil...and I've heard people have great results using 2-liter pop bottles in single-cola sog-style grows.

I'm having trouble here...debating between half-gallon grow bags and 1 gallon grow bags. The half gallons are much cheaper and they'd definitely save on soil.

The plan is to keep the plants numerous, and small. Ideally I wanna pack as many single-cola plants under the light as possible. The white russian has about a 2 month flower time...what do you think? Will I be good to go with the half-gallon grow bags? If the 1 gallon grow bags will only offer a marginal improvement, i'd rather like to avoid them unless they're a huge improvement over half-gallon size.