HELP! Should I go for 8 colas or stay at 4?

[BigBadLion]

Hi guys!

It's been a while since the last time I posted here (my last grow went well! No huge issues in the end!) and well... I'm here again to ask for some advice haha.

Right now I'm in my 2nd grow (starting week 7) and I've been doing some LST/main-lining to my babies and so far they've been growing perfectly well! My main problem now is that I don't know if I should continue main-lining and go for 8 colas or stay with 4! I fear my plants might grow way too much for the space available in my tent and that I will waste light because not all the plants will receive the proper amount of light they'll need.

The size of my tent is 80cm x 80cm (about 2.65 x 2.65) and I'm using 5 50w COBs (Citizen CLU048 1212).

3 of my babies were main-lined and one was slightly defoliated (she was born without one cotyledons and was quite small until recently)

I'm adding photos of all my babies and how my tent used to look in my previous grow (only 4 plants in that photo) so you all can see how crowded they used to be.


Thanks everyone!

[Cali]

Well being that you have more than one plant and going by the amount of light you have I would say keep it at four. Otherwise you will end up with a bunch of Larfy bud to trim which is not fun and thesmoke will suck. But if you keep four most likely they’ll be dense and won’t have a lot of no good greens to trim. I know it’s hard to cut or keep colas from growing but you’ll be thankful in the end. Or you can go for more colas and learn the hard way like I did haha.

[BigBadLion]

Oooooh!

I was thinking to trim them today and continue doing some more LST so the colas would be far from each other (if I were to stay with the 4 colas)... and I def. want dense buds instead of small ones!


Thanks for your advice!

[Gingerbeard]

Four. You can fit more plants with fewer colas. More plants means you can do multiple strains and have more chances of success. I do two plants with four colas in a 2'x2' tent. If one goes hermie or male, I have a backup. Do yours right and you can train three, two or three gallon pots in your space. 10" wide for the pot, 30+" in your tent. Straight or staggered. Train four colas to 10, 8, 2, and 4 o'clock. That'll give you about 6" space between colas. Take a look at training spirals.
At the moment, for the second time in my short career, I have a plant with three main colas. Freak of nature, you say? Nope. Clumsy gingerbeard. Las time, the cola that was left on it's own was noticeably larger than its counterparts.
Also, since recovery from topping takes three or four weeks, you'll save that much time vegging.

[BigBadLion]

A lot of information!

Right now I'm only growing 1 strain (Kali Dog from RQS, all feminized) and all of them look very healthy so I don't think any of them will go hermie.

I also don't plan to add more plants, even when I have a total of 5 of those air pots (about 2,65 galon each) and I'm using 3 of them (maybe a 4th one if the small one without any kind of training continues to grow so well). The reason is because last time I used all the pots the plants were extremely crowded and I don't want the buds fighting for light x__x

I'll probably ask again for help when I start defoliating them! As I'm sure the lower branches might thank me!


Thanks! <3