Slow growth, thick stems, many leaves

[Weedarast]

Hi,

Strain: Barneys Blue Cheese Autoflower
Mediun: soil, coco, perlite, peat, pebble
Vessel: Smart pot
Fert: Greenhouse powderfeeding grow + phed tap water (stood 2 weeks before usage)
Light: 3w white leds, total 144 watts (car led bar lights experiment)
Light distance: 50 cm

As plant showed itself and 3rd level leaves grew, I started LST in week 2. I noticed, that distance between leaf levels was very short. I thought it was N overdose and flushed for 1 week. It grew slow but with many leaves. Then I put light closer - no progress. Still slow growth and many leaves. Here are the photos. Any ideas?

Thanks and Happy New Year to all growers!

[UrbZ]

It looks like everything is fighting for light.

[dontknownuttin]

It looks like everything is fighting for light.

What he said

[Canuck147]

Time to defoliate.

[Weedarast]

It's only some 10 cm tall but has 8+ colas

[Canyon Grower]

You cant change genetics. Looks to me like this plant is just going to be stout. You can start to defoliate a little and stretch those shoots out to the sides (lst) and by doing so make it a better producer. Regardless, it looks very healthy to me.

[Weedarast]

Thanks! I'll try to defoilate!

[oldjarhead100]

hey Weed my Autos all slowed to a crawl due to lower than normal temps in my grow area ,I have two sour hound plants 4 inches tall with big fat short kolas on them lol the temps in my Auto room are 58 to 66 thats to cold for vigorous growth I feel

[Kobayashi]

How many weeks from seed? Any pistils showing? It looks like a short strong plant to me, just genetics. My autos were fairly slow growing until they started showing pistils, soon after that growth exploded and they grew two and a half times their height over the following 3 weeks.

[D.A.A.S.69]

Your plant ain't thru growing, when you see stigmas -pistils is when they are growing, I'd remove a few of those big fan leaves if she were mine.

[Flockshot]

I would say that the LED's you are using have plenty of blue light in them, so the plant has short nodes due to no stretching for blue light.

I think the plant is small, because you only have 144w of light on it.

I don't think there is a thing wrong with it. You are growing a nice little plant.

Perhaps when you get into flower, all the blue light could be a negative cuz if it is all blue it lacks red.

[Weedarast]

Hi,

Thanks for suggestions. What I did so far:
Defoilated
Friend advised to increase distance between light source and plant so that lux value should not be above 50,000 - Done
Got red LED source as well from GalaxyHydro (300W) - Any idea how this LED works? Has positive reviews.
Plant started to show pistils.

Here is how it looks like!

One more question:

I use Green House Powder Feeding Grow. This is my 2nd plant. I mixed it with water 2 days ago. But only today I discovered that it has some newly produced particles inside the water. When I mixed it I observed carefully and the powder was 100% dissolved. Afterwards I added some PH down and air stones. Is it normal? can I use this liquid for plant?

[Weedarast]

Hi,

Update and question:
I installed Galaxy Hydro 300 in addition to 2x72W Vehicle led bars. Every day it's growing 1 cm. I measured lux of GalaxyHydro and made it closer to get lux value above 30,000 3 days. Leaves started to curl up and some spots appeared.

Here are pics:

[DingusKhan]

There she is! I've liked my Galaxy hydros, I have 2 that have held up for about a year.

[Weedarast]

Do you suggest to remove Galaxy Hydro?

[DingusKhan]

No way. In my very limited experience, I've flowered 2 plants under the GH with the blurple light that is hard on the eyes, and 1 under a roleadro 400w cob light with cxa3070 LEDs. Not that I've done much real reading. Price is still a limiting factor for me.

But I am of the opinion that the GH grown buds were fatter, stickier, and much stinkier. It may have been genetics, still testing.

But I say the GH is an awesome buy for a 2x2 grow, and you can use several in a bigger tent.

[Weedarast]

What about leaves? Do you think that the damage could be caused by lights having too close?

[DingusKhan]

Yup. Any light that is strong enough to grow you nice buds will burn if too close.

A quick and dirty measuring tool-wnen I spread my hands out, it's just about 9 inches from tip of thumb to pinky. If I spread my hands in front of me like I'm about to climb a rope, I hold the tip of left thumb just under the light, and right pinky at the top of her canopy, it's about 18 inches exactly. Well, close enough for growing pot.

And then I sneak it down a little bit until it scares me that I'm going to burn them. Sometimes they get a little crisp, which may cause stress if left unchecked. But I back them off, and she gets over it.

I like these lights, but I agree there are much better ones out there.

[DingusKhan]

Taking a closer look at your pictures from the beginning of the thread, the damage to the leaf does look like the light is too close, but the bud right next to is does not. I am getting some of that on my leaves on my Jack Herer and Timberline Auto that aren't under a strong light, but I've been having trouble getting the pH under control.

I'm still with DAAS, I think the main problem is light too close, but make sure to check other things that cause the same symptoms. In medicine, they try to pin many of the symptoms on one cause, and then find many causes for one symptom.

[Weedarast]

Thank you all!