MH in first 2 weeks of flower to reduce strecthing?

Hey people, thought I'd share something that I'm doing to get some feedback/insults.

I'm in the first week of flower and I've kept my MH bulb in instead of switching over to my HPS to hopefully reduce the amount of stretching the plants do in the first couple weeks. I flipped when they were 18 inches and I can't afford them getting any taller than 3 feet with the space I have. I do have a single 400W HPS supplementing my 600W MH and figured I'd switch the MH to my HPS in a week or two.

Anyone else done anything similar before... anyone think this is a good/bad idea?

Thanks

Just my 2 cents, but i dont think it'll make much difference. It's the darkness and genetics that are making the plant stretch, not so much light spectrum. The plants stretching to give itself room for flowers to grow, and regardless of what you do that's not going to change much. What you can do is, dont veg. your plants so long. They will double or triple in height regardless of what you want her to do, they're stubborn. Did you do some kind of controled grow with an HPS to compare and see if your theory does work? just curious, my scientific side is always after stuff like that. Goodluck with the grow!

andyk187 said:

Just my 2 cents, but i dont think it'll make much difference. It's the darkness and genetics that are making the plant stretch, not so much light spectrum. The plants stretching to give itself room for flowers to grow, and regardless of what you do that's not going to change much. What you can do is, dont veg. your plants so long. They will double or triple in height regardless of what you want her to do, they're stubborn. Did you do some kind of controled grow with an HPS to compare and see if your theory does work? just curious, my scientific side is always after stuff like that. Goodluck with the grow!

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Indeed your quite right, also leaving the MH on for the start of flower would keep feeding it blue photons, well more blue photons then a HPS would which is ideal for Veg giving the plants what they need to grow or "stretch" more. Using a MH at the start of flower imo could possibly hinder the starting growth of your buds giving you less in the end then what you could get if using a HPS from the start of trigger. Like andy mentioned vegging for less time would be good and possibly using smaller pots (not sure how big the ones your using now are) but the bigger the pot the more space the roots have to grow making your plant bigger. Theres nothing wrong with starting your plants 12/12 though that might be ideal for you if you have a small area to grow

It may make a tiny difference but honestly if you don't want any stretching you can just go buy a small bottle of bushmaster and feed that according to directions. My last run I had let get as tall as the ceiling before flowering at all and I didn't want them to stretch an inch. I fed that stuff and they didn't grow any taller in flower than they already were in veg, it's nice to see a product actually work as advertised.

I would use both your lights in flower but not to stop stretching.