Experiment in vertical no stress training

[alltatup]

Are they higher than the last round you said you flipped early? Those are some freakin green leaves. And are you going to defoil later in veg? All these damn questions huh?

Hopefully they will be taller.

I'll defol after they've stopped stretching unless I need to control the stretching.

 

[SoOrbudgal]

I think your spot on, it's me not keeping hands off the bushy growth always wanting to clean it up too much too soon.

 

[alltatup]

They need the leaves to power growth in veg. I try not to touch them unless they're sweating.

 

[alltatup]

I did some stem bending this morning, exposing bud sites. Shiva the big girl on the left definitely needed a little bending to approximate where the other two are. Then I put on the screens, as all plants are getting wide and it would risk damage to wait any longer:

Here's a closeup of big Shiva so you can hopefully see the colas:

I will try to wait this week out to lollypop, defol flip the switch and the nutes, unless the situation gets dire.

 

[SoOrbudgal]

How old are those now alltatup?

 

[alltatup]

SoOrbudgal They are 32 days old--almost 5 weeks from germination.

 

[DingusKhan]

That's impressive growth since you started this thread 8 days ago!

 

[alltatup]

DingusKhan One reason I dearly love my hydro setup...

 

[alltatup]

Switched to 12/12 yesterday.

They rebelled against being framed and constrained. They howled and cried all night, so I took off the cages today. They heaved a sigh of gratitude and spread out.

 

[SoOrbudgal]

I like the freedom you have given them too. Very lush and green.

 

[LurkingInTheGrass]

No assembly line bondage for you

Bespoke bondage for all 😁

 

[Farmall]

So what is your plan now? I know you were hoping to change things up in this new grow. Conventional tie-down? They do look lush

 

[alltatup]

No tie-down: this is a VERTICAL grow, I want to see the colas get taller, so I'm minimally training them. I bend the stems back and forth to give them strength and because they like it, I bend them away from each other, and I'm tucking leaves, exposing the shorter colas. It is different this time because I removed the tie-down thingies I had attached to my net pots, so I have nowhere to tie them down. I'm letting them go free-style with just a little guidance from me. No horizontal training at all.

 

[SoOrbudgal]

Alltatup I think you did a good thing this time around. If I may say abit about my 2 photos I got nearly done. I took the ties off them 3wks ago. Had arms and center trunk strapped down with wire. After removing them at approx. 35days into flowering the arms slowly extended upwards the colas seem to be swelling more without restraints. I figured stretch was nearly over and I had plenty of height left. You may of found the key component on your cola lengths. Just a thought, anyhoo sorry if I rambled. Party on!

 

[alltatup]

SoOrbudgal I've condluded that in my setup, on my time schedule, less horizontal training is better. My first consideration has to be the limited amount of space I have, so I have to make that work. We'll see how these babies shoot up over the next 3 weeks, and take it from there!!

Girl, you really need to get a smart phone and post photos.

 

[SoOrbudgal]

No kidding about the phone, i'm going to work out something with a member here to show me how to set this up cause i'm not able to. I'm going to talk with him later. Yes the space I get it. And yes I think what I've noticed with my grow on release is that the harvest time is on track per seed strain info.

 

[alltatup]

Day 18 flower:

Day 20 defol:

I did some minor floral arrangement to spread colas out in a couple of places. Main colas were all basically good to go on their own--showing, once again, that Cannabis plants are smarter than humans.

 

[SoOrbudgal]

Looking very strong alltatup I think you may of done a good thing this round. Beautiful job.

 

[Obi-Wan]

Stacking very nicely, looking like they’re about 2/3 to where you want them....I think they have a little left in them to reach the finish line!!

 

[alltatup]

WEEK 5 FLOWER STARTS TODAY:

This is before and after today's defoliation. I'm delighted with the bud growth, and the colas are looking strong. The buds have been growing very vigorously all along. Somewhat short, yes, but I'm quite happy with them.

Blue OG, which has definitely become one of my favorites. I'm vaping some that's been curing for 13 weeks: kick ass.

Here's the other box, rounding out week 4 of veg. I finally found the solution to my LST problem: I tied down those screens to the pots, and now I can really train them correctly. I've been experimenting for most of the time I've been growing to find the solution to allow me to train like y'all do in large soil pots, and I have finally found it.

Before and after some defoliation and training:

Kosher Kush (rear right): I didn't top her, I'm just letting her grow herself. She is definitely much more Indica than the other two, and she won't get very tall. But she's chugging away.

I've also finally been able to mobilize a mind set I've been stuck in for around 3 years, and I extended the veg. period. I was indeed trying to get to harvest a little quicker than I should have, and now I understand what I've been sacrificing by rushing--HEIGHT and WEIGHT. Nebula says the key to great flowering is great preparation during veg, and I finally understand what that means for my grow room and my grow boxes. That and the screens have transformed my game. I hope I got a lil bit more. It's funny to me how hard it can be to figure out a problem in growing, and then to suddenly really understand what I've been doing wrong. I'll say it again: GW isn't easy. There are like 5 billion details that have to get put together the right way.