How tall to grow my plants?

kfos said:

these girls were 5" tall. 30 days into flower now. i veged for 17 days. i could have done less veg time.

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hard to tell by the picture,how tall are they now starting at 5" and flowering?

Lucky Luke said:

It is a worry for new growers though.
Im new to indoor (after 2 decades away from) and its something that is confusing and a worry in a small space. Lots of different contradictory info on how much room to leave due to diff strains etc.
If he is like me and is running an unknown strain then he is just voicing his concern and question..better hear than to his friends....

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There are lots of watlya to grow in a small space and still have a decent yeild. I'm undergoing a change because I switched growing areas and my vert. Went from 6ft. To 32" and I'm having issues now so I read you can tie the stems and branches down and the plantí will follow the lean. And topping and fimming (not sure what that even is) but do googling you have options. You just need to learn what works best for you. I'll show some of the pics of my problem and solution. Ok I topped the tallest wayyyyy to late (in my opinion) and she was looking fugly and I tied her down to better fit her for when i flower and the middle plant is tied as a preventative measure for later and the smallest. I grew her directly under the light. She is short and stubby but I topped her at the 4 node. So far so good. But I'm still a bit confused on what is better for what aplication.

To keep it as simple as possible, considering you are new, I'd just switch to flower when the plants are half as tall as the room you have to grow, that's a good rule of thumb, but can be adjusted according to the strain info. Considering you're using bagseed, this may not be accurate info, because unless you actually buy your seeds from a reputable breeder, the phenotypes of your mystery bagseed (you don't really know what the daddy was, lol) are only a guess.

Then in the 2nd to 4th week of flower, if it looks like it's in danger of maxing out your height, just top the tallest branches, and keep doing this if necessary until you see a definite slowing of your vertical growth. Topping is very easy, so stick with that for now, fiming and training can take some time to learn, and if this is your first grow, you just want to get through this with some success, and there'll be a lot of other factors and problems to occupy your mind in the meantime, more than likely ;?D Good luck though.

I will add that if you want to slow the growth on your tallest branches, instead of topping them you can try a bit of high stress training called super cropping. You can find a lot of info on it, but basically in your case, if a branch is growing too fast/tall, you can slow it down by breaking it somewhere in the top quarter.

You don't want to snap it completely off, start with a section, say the 2nd or 3rd node from the top, and with your thumb and index finger, squeeze and roll it back and forth, softening it up a bit. Then try and bend it at this point, don't bend it all at once, just a back and forth motion until it bends over double, the stem should crack but not snap off, and when finished you want it to hang down past 90 degrees to the vertical.

If you do it right, it should stay bent and hanging down, if not enough you'll find that within 24 hrs it'll be back up and looking pretty much like nothing happened. When done right, the injured spot will take time to heal, usually forming a knot at the damaged spot, but in the meantime this stops vertical growth, and as super croppers claim, they say it can also increase potency due to the plant kicking into survival mode and upping its production of cannabinoids (I'm still not 100% sold on that idea, but the technique comes in handy for other purposes, like stimulating lateral branching below the break point).

It's a fairly easy tech to learn and the worst that can happen is that the broken part dies which still gets the results you want of slowing vertical growth. Btw, I've snapped many a branch while doing this, and so I keep a roll of electrical tape handy - just hold the branch upright and wrap enough tape around the spot (plus about 1.5 inches above an below the break) to support it upright again (you can also use some string to hold it upright if need be). Then after a week or so you can remove the tape and it'll be all healed up. Fun stuff to play with if you feel up to it ;?D

I wouldnt be putting any stress on a flowering plant at all if you can help it.

If you HAVE to do anything just do very low stress stuff like tieing a branch down.

Any stress in flowering can cause a hemi.