Hi y'all. Apologies for being incommunicado for a month … battling health issues and a snowmageddon you would not believe. Figure I owe an update and I have a couple of questions.
Now 40 days into flower following a 57 day veg. Since the execution of Passion things have been pretty uneventful (no real leaf issues, no bugs, etc.)… at least I think so, but given this is my first grow who knows? I'm thinking uneventful is a good thing.
So flowering stretch was a wee bit disappointing, particularly with respect to the two Jack Herer … was expecting 100-200% but saw no more than say 35-50% at most. Any advice on this much appreciated. Recall that I'm using some inherited knock off lights that people seem to make fun of sometimes. The Afghan was stretchier (a word?) and has shown greater growth all along. And I still have never managed to get my runoff pH into the prescribed range … best I have got to date is 5.4, even after adjustment of the AN nute mix to pH 7.0 (which you're not supposed to have to adjust). So I guess my question is: I this simply a strain thing; does more flowering stretch equate to more/bigger buds, and if so how best to promote that stretch?
I've been pretty brutal in my defoliation efforts all along … two nights ago I stripped pretty much all the remaining fan leaves to get max. light penetration and air circulation. Hope I haven't overdone it, but a lot of what I've read here says that's pretty hard to do. I've also bent over a few colas on the Afghan to keep them away from the lights and see what happens to the exposed buds … duh … they seem to like the light!
Newbie error: accidentally cut off a couple of buds during recent defol. Got a little complacent after 2 hours and maybe a wee bit hazed …

! On a positive note, had a chance to learn to examine trichomes using my little microscope and phone camera … always look for the positive … right?
Remember stumpy (Jack 1)? Turns out the cola adjacent to the stump did in fact compensate a bit (circled in pic below). Immediately grew a lot more in size, and appears to stacking up a few more buds. Hurray!
Had a cola/stump issue on Jack 3 as well that I wanted to ask about. I noticed the growth of one of the stems appeared to be stunted, and changed from a round geometry to a rectangular one at a certain point. Then, instead of the buds stacking up in the usual manner, they formed a dense cluster in a ball atop the stem (circled in pic)… So did I accidentally restrict the stem, pinch it off completely, or otherwise damage it to promote the growth. Got me thinkin' … could a person train a plant to do this … grow a series of spherical clusters on a vertical stem, with each cluster optimized in terms of size and density to promote max. yield (e.g., smallest sphere on top, largest on bottom, of a 3-4 cluster growth, as I've seen on some bonsai tree thingies ..) … or am I maybe a wee bit hazed …

?
So a wee bit disappointed with bud size so far. Any suggestions on how to make 'em bigger at this point? Currently using 1 mL/L of AN GMB, along with B52, Big Bud, and Bud Candy. Flawless Finish on hand for flush before harvest. Like I said, still don't have a handle on pH, and probably won't this grow, but so far this has not seemed to be source of many of the issues I see described on this forum (fingers crossed!). Still … can't help but wonder what can be at this point to maximize yield. As a 1st time grower I, as I suspect many others, am totally bewildered by the broad range of offerings out there with respect to nutes, lights, media, etc. Kinda reminds me of the gold rush … more people making money from supporting the rush than from the gold itself.
Apologies for the babble …thanks in advance for any input.