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First off, your plants look great and it seems like you have a great setup! I'll tell you what. If it were me, I'd leave them. They look well developed and I don't think they'll interrupt your others. I feel like at times I've taken too many, and in your situation I'd leave those colas.
Your plant is pretty bushy, but the good thing is it means you've been taking really great care of your plant! If it were me, I'd pluck everything that's not getting light. You have two pictures, one of the bottom of the plant, and one of the top. I'd almost remove every single fan leaf in that first picture. You can leave the bud sites (growth tips, like the little colas that come out of the top of the base of fan leaves), but I'd remove all the big fan leaves at least below about 4 inches down into the plant. But if you feel worried about defoliation, always take less than you need, and you can take more later if you want, after you see how the plant responds. Most plants respond really well to defoliation when you have a lot of lower leaves that aren't getting any light any more.
How tall is your plant, and how much room do you have left? In general you want to change the plant to the flowering stage when your plant is about half the final size, because of you do this right all the colas should stretch a lot and your plant will be about double the height from when you switched to 12/12. Your plant looks really wide and flat, which is great. Have you made it wide enough that it fills the whole tent from one side to another?
Just curious, which model of LED are you using and how far are you keeping it from your plants?
Again, just wanted to comment on how nice your plant looks!
Hello Miss NebulaHaze!
Thank you so much for replying and your compliments!! It means a lot!! Sometimes it is really hard to learn anything when you're kinda isolated (I do not know anyone personally that uses MJ and in the beginning, I had no idea what a cannabis plant even was supposed to look like!!), and all you have to go by are forums, google searches etc. and if you have done as much looking around as I have, you would know everything starts to contradict each other from different sources. Then of course you get angry people on forums completely fighting their view to be THE VIEW. But the more I read, I am starting to understand that no one is really wrong.... it just really depends on ALL THE OTHER factors that weren't talked about, like where do they live, what climate, how's their indoor environment etc... For example, i had heat issues with my first grow because it was done in the winter time and I had my heat on in my apartment. Now, I have not hot enough issues because it's in the middle of summer now in DC and I like to keep my apartment cold, so I have to put a heater in the tent. Anyway, with that preface, I have to commend you and your partner with
www.growweedeasy.com as by far to me, it's the most objective, neutral, non-opinionated website I've read. Will always come back to reference.
So, to answer some of your questions and give you a little background.... This is my 2nd grow. My first grow was done DWC and I made too many mistakes (silly mistakes mind you, like accidentally breaking off a branch), but either the Weed Gods were kind to me or just pure luck, I managed to get like 3 oz from 1 plant.
I have now switched to coco because DWC is a lot of work. I am using MJ for a pinched nerve in my left arm and you can imagine trying to change reservoirs weekly. Also, space is my limiting factor. I only have room in my 500 sq ft place for a 2' x 4' gorilla tent.
There was definitely a learning curve with coco. Some folks say water several times a day, some say water like it's soil, some saw big pots, some say small pots, etc.... The plant you see, C99 is exactly 60 days old today from seed. It just started growing REALLY REALLY slow. And in the beginning, I was starting to doubt coco vs DWC. But I think it was just dialing in things correctly, but the point where I saw like super growth was when I switched from GH Grow/Micro/Bloom formula to Advanced Nutrients. I started with GH because of all the shit people give AN (over priced, not that much better, ridiculous fantastical claims without much science on their website etc.....) On my first DWC grow, I followed the feed schedule for AN strictly. Sure I got nute burns etc.... but the growth was super explosive. I was able to flower my 1st grow just after 3 weeks of vegging!! Now, for this grow, it's been 8 weeks and it doesn't even look ready for flowering. Could be strain related.... who knows (DWC was an indica and now, C99 is a sativa).
After my first grow, I decided to invest in a better LED light. The first grow, I was using 2 Roeldro LED lights, 300 watts (advertised) each from Amazon. Then for this grow, I invested in a refurbished Truth LED M6 (from growershouse.com) for the whole 2 x 4 tent. The M6 has like 2 modes. The first mode turns on half the LED's and the 2nd mode turns them all on which I assume I would do when I'm flowering. So, currently, I'm only using half the lighting capacity of the M6.
The M6 is exactly 57" away from the bottom of the tent. Currently, it is 38" from the top of the canopy. I'm using a 8" tall fabric pot, that's sitting on a 3" tall riser (so it doesn't sit in it's run off). The plant height itself is only about 8" tall. And here I thought sativas grow long and lanky. Don't get me wrong, when I first started, my plant didn't look like now when I was using GH. The leaves were super skinny, sparse and yellow, like it had a nitrogen deficiency. But explosive growth happened after switching to AN (coincidence because the root system is now established? I don't know). So, long story short, I have 38" more of vertical space before it starts touching the LED.
In my tent right now, it's just that one C99 mother plant, and 3 more clones of it, in 1 gallon pots. I followed your manifold instructions to a T and that's what I got. So, it's not so wide to fill out all 4 feet of the tent. I've attached more pictures to show you the progression. See the picture from March, how sickly the seedling looks. Then in May I finished your technique and got the 8 colas numbered in red. Then the last pictures where you see the 8 colas labeled in blue and the 2 red circles (I'm assuming that's what you call bud-sites) was my original question whether they should be removed and just maintain the 8 colas.
I think my saving grace, at least for now..... is my background in chemistry (went to school for chemical engineering) which helped me grasp mixing nutrients, ppm, ph, water chemistry etc..... and being able to differentiate between solid advice vs bullshit chemistry. And 2nd, my anal retentive nature. I have a grow log where I take a picture a day and readings every day. I just don't have it online as a grow journal. I mean, it's only my 2nd grow, not about to advertise my mistakes!! But everything else, like botany, how a plant grows etc.... I got from your website.
Anyway, from everything I got online, I distilled my feeding regiment down to this: every morning, just once a day, I would do this: Day 1: Water with pH'ed RO Water + CaliMagic to about 350 ppm. Day 2: Water and feed with nutes at about 800 ppm. Day 3: Water with pH'ed RO water only. Repeat. Not sure if that's the best way, but they seem to be doing ok for now.
I hope this extra long post gives you a better idea of my situation and may help you give me any suggestions to improve on what I have for now, whether it is feeding schedule, watering schedule, training, pruning etc.....
Again, thanks so much for replying and reading and saying nice things. No one ever gets to see my plants except when I post. And sometimes I just don't post because I get shit back by others (not on your forum!! Other places). So I get a little excited when a super grower like yourself replies to my post!!
Many thanks
Ken
PS: Oh, one more thing, my temps are consistently between 75-84 F and humidity between 45-55 % (if that matters).
