I have 7 plants (white widow from a-dam and some random seeds). They are all about 5 weeks old (germinated at different times). They have been in their cups since their start, under a 20watt fluorescent light 24/0. I am feeding them miracle grow, as well. They are about to 6 inches or so (i'll take pictures soon I guess). Do I need to top them? What is the exact point of topping,,? I have a big grow room. is there a need to? Also, I hear about at 1 foot (2 more weeks or so) i'm going to 12/12 and start blooming them. I know how to determine the sex, but do I figure it out during the start of 12/12? Thanks!
For starters, a 20w fluorescent is no where near enough light. get 10 or more of those and you'll be on the right track. this is why they are so small. after 5 weeks a healthy cannabis plant should 3-4 ft tall, not 6 inches. Second, when you do get the lights you'll need to transplant them to bigger pots otherwise they won't grow much. don't top them when they are this small. get them to grow more, maybe a foot tall (4-5 sets of leaves) before topping. then give them some more time before flowering. good luck.
Actually, they are 3-4 weeks old, my bad. and i'm not sure my lighting specifications are correct, honestly have no idea, it's from a friend who's done it before. The light is about 4 or 5 feet, pretty bright UV. They are real bushy.
Like I said, i'm not sure exactly what wattage is... it's a big ass light, i need to find out the correct specif. tommorow and i'll get some pictures up.
your plant size of six inches at 5 weeks is fine (I'm not sure where chiefton8 is getting the 3-4 ft number for plants grown from seed -- perhaps s/he's thinking of five weeks for clones). but you definitely will need more light, as a rule of thumb 100 watts for your first plant and additional 50 watts per plant for the remainder. topping is used to maximize the yield, in essence you are splitting the the top of the plant and instead of one cola you will have two colas. your plants should start showing pre-flowering signs in the next week (two tops) which will allow you to figure out their sex before begining to flower. the reason for topping is traditionally one of yield not necessarily space. some growers like to push up the calendar by a few weeks and will send thier crop into flowering mode as a way to force the plant to show their sex. as long as you have at least 3-4 set of leaves then you should be able to force flowering if you so want.
Cool, thanks. 2 more questions... there is small brown on one of the plants leaves, but not a lot... should I be worried? Second thing is I had to move 2 of my big plants to a different place for a day, and i dont have any light besides a lightbulb to put them under.
the small brown portion of your leaf is probably a nute response. miracle grow is a strong nute, you probably should deconcentrate it quite a bit with such a young plant. even with using a solid line of nutes such as fox farm, i usually half what the grow schedule recommends (ie - so if the grow schedule recommends 2 Tblspn per gallon of water then i use 1 tblspn). you should feed your plant distilled (filtered water) the next couple of feedings, then begin the deconcentrated nute feeding again. this will keep your plant from having a bad nute response and seeing more brown leaves. the brown leaf can remain on the plant as ultimately the lower leaves typically wither and drop under the lack of light coming through the canopy of top fan leaves.
Okay. I repotted 3 plants into 3 gallon buckets and put them outside to get air. I tried topping one of the plants, not sure if I did it right, I just cut off an inch or two from the top above the 2 nodes (V shape).
the repotting will help, and i'm sure the extra light from outside is going to help them along. hopefully the nute burn won't be an issue anymore, but if it appears to be a problem you'll likely have to give you plants a good flush with distilled water. as snax was saying, make sure you've got at least 100w of light per plant or so otherwise once you bring them in to flower they'll be rather sad. i'm by no means a true expert in growing, but 3-4 ft tall after 5 wks of veg from seed is what i typically get. i'm not trying to show you up, or tell you you know nothing about growing, but 3-4 ft after 5 wks of veg really isn't unreasonable. this picture here is one of my plants under 250w MH after 5 weeks of veg from sprout:
Wow wow i have the same issue 7 weeks 10 inches maybe he can help us understand what we doing wrong im outdor man lol using 1part ewc 1 part manure/mulch 1 part perlity n some amedmants Sent from my PC36100 using Grasscity Forum mobile app