Very short and bushy plant, Should I LST? How?

leave it along for now, you can raise your light a little to get a bit more stretch.
That looks like mine every time I start over. Short and fat, they will stretch when 12/12 starts then plenty of time to lst

 

Train a plant according to it's grow characteristics to fill your area/light footprint in veg. If the plant is bushy on it's own it may require less training then others or more lollipopping/defoliation to open it up for air and light.

Plants can vary a lot in how they grow. I've had a few that made a bush with almost no training.

 

Rookies always want to rush training. I don't even touch my plants until they are well over 12" tall. If it's all short and packed in like that it's too early to train. Let it stretch out. Your light looks like it leaves a little to be desired.

 

I would get it out of that can if possible

 

Mars has some attractive low budget grow lights right now. One of these would sure kick the crap out of that desk lamp.
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Yep, that plastic pot isn't helping it grow faster.

Oxygen to the roots is so important for rapid growth. It's something you'll learn along the way if you pay attention. Most experienced cannabis growers use about 25% perlite in any medium they use to promote aeration of the roots and drainage. Course perlite is best. Fabric pots are the next step from there. Airpots as well though they're more expensive.

Keep them elevated out of the drain tray so they can't soak back up the runoff. This can open up an additional 25% or more of the root surface to air as well. One of the main advantages of most hydroponic growing systems over soil is superior aeration of the roots often done by mechanical pumps.

*talking to OP not you killset, I know you know this.. heh*

 

Still probably losing out on some potential growth rate with that light even in early veg. It says 4500lumens but that's the absolute output of the bulb it's not the lumens measured at distance which would be way lower. Pretty difficult to even veg well with screw in bulbs. If you ever need some advise on the best indoor lights for your dollar hit me up.

 

Wanted to mention I've tried LST and most training methods. I settled on supercropping. It's my favorite. Check it out. Much easier then other methods and great results. I feel like the growth rate is faster without topping for sure.

Super Cropping Marijuana: Simple Secret to Bigger Yields | Grow Weed Easy

My current veg crop just after it's first supercropping training session. That's how big I let them get before the first training.

 

It's much more even today. In fact I have to transplant all the plants that are in 2 gallon pots. They're drying out too fast now. Canopy is pretty well full. I had intended on giving away a few of those. I raised too many. I usually flower 4 or less.

 

@Tbone Shuffle
You need more light to flower don't ya? Are those QB 120?
I got 4 120's and 6 of the 288's running in my 5x5.

 

Yeah. That's my veg side. It's actually two 120's and two 150 v2's from invisible sun so a little more punch then 4 120's but that's plenty to veg a 4x4. The rated veg coverage of the qb120 is 2x2 and it can be stretched a little from that. 4 of them is quite powerful all maxed out.

I've found that veg requires about half and less then half the power for the same space in flower with leds. I've vegged with as low as 11 or 8 watts per square foot and done well. Flower is more like 30-40.

On the flower 4x4 side currently running 2 288v2's in series on a meanwell 320h-c2800a, 2 qb96 v2 elites on a 320h-54a in parallel, 2 qb304's on an HLG-240h-c1050a, and a qb18 on a meanwell 40h-24a. Maxed it's a little over 1,000 watts in there but I run them all dimmed except the red strip. All 3500k on the white lights. I'm running around the 600 watt level but I haven't done accurate watt readings yet. Just using a light meter to set the top canopy about 66,000k lux.

I'm going to do some accurate watt readings at different dimming levels as soon as it's cleaned out. Still trimming.

 

I could probably flower in a 5x5 with that setup turned up a little more to the 800-900 range. The leds run up to 20% more efficiently when dimmed significantly like that. You can run a closer light distance without sacrificing coverage if you run too many leds for the space. It helps maximize penetration to get the lights as close as possible. It pushes the optimal grow range of the light deeper into the plant.

 

Dang, that's a shrub.

 

Revegged blueberry. It's damn stoney too. Been smoking it for about a week and a half now. I don't need to tell you but that's a good 16 hours or more to trim for a skilled trimmer to have it all the way in jars and all. I've been told the industry standard for hand trimming is about a pound a day. Hard to keep a job as a pro if you can't do at least that.

 

Lovely training on some of those girls but I am lazy and I like growing au natural but if I'm gonna do anything it will be a scrog because it looks super easy!

 

I don't do a scrog because I don't like it trapping the plants. You have to veg in your bloom area essentially. I have two rooms so unless I want to swap lights back and forth or make my veg take longer I'm stuck with other training methods.

Once you get practiced at supercropping I'm confident in saying there is not an easier training method or one that has more control over plant outcome.

If you time it just right you walk in there and even out the whole canopy in less then 10 minutes with your careful hands and that's it. Do that about 3-4 times a crop and you get a dead even full canopy every time.

You can go in and correct it at any time as well. If one starts shooting taller then the rest you find a way to lean it back down with bending/creasing. It turns back up to the light the next day. You can do it up to week 4 after flip.

Combine supercropping with skillful lollipopping/thinning of the canopy from the bottom up for optimal light penetration and air circulation and you have a winning training combination for indoors.

Indoor light has a very narrow range of optimal output. You need to shape your plant and focus it's major canopy in this narrow optimal range of light output. It's roughly about 18" max depending on how powerful your light is. Anything below that level is going to have sub optimal development in order to keep the optimal light distance to the main tops. May as well remove anything below that as it is a negative to final yield on the best parts in the good light.

In cutting back a plant you also provide the root and stem structure of a much larger plant to less foliage so it is more up to the task of supporting it and feeding it optimally.


This picture illustrates my point exactly.

 

Among the many things that supercropping does one of them is it strengthens the stem. The knuckles it forms are very resistant to being bent again once they heal.