Question about PreFlowering or When to Flower

jstone

Active Member
Hello all

I am after a bit of advice regarding when to start flowering / preflowers. This is my first grow.

I have 3 plants, all grown from bag seeds (good stuff ;-) despite a few seeds).
From what i read they all seam to be classic sativa plants (big leaves with over 10 fingers on many leaves, good dark green).

The plants are now around 8 weeks old (inc 2 weeks seedlings) and look very health (posibly stunted growth due to initial bad conditions (cold and low light)), with very dense groth.
They are around 2 feet tall with around 10 nodes each & continuing to grow up and out like mad.

They have been grown in a bubbler with a 200 watt blue enviro light (24/24) using "sensi grow" nutrients, PH kept at 5.5 - 6.2.

I thought i would get some signs of preflowering by now, and i have been keeping a daily watch of them for any signs (as described in books).
I keep seeing small "ball" growths at the nodes but after a few days these just grow into more leaves.

My questions are: Is preflowering the best way to tell when to start the flowering prosess (i.e change lighting to 12/12 and to Bloom food).
Or is it best to "force" them to flower (at this stage) by changing the lighting and the food?

Or is all this a simple case of i need to wait!!?
(FYI i am fastly running out of space!)

Any advice please :-)
 

potroast

Uses the Rollitup profile
With 10 finger leaves, they are mature plants. The actual way to tell is when the nodes change from opposite to alternate, and I'm sure they have. But you may never see any discernable preflowers. So you need to switch to 12/12 now. Your plants will double in height in the next 3 weeks.

HTH :mrgreen:
 

jstone

Active Member
Thanks for the answer dude!!

you were right, new leaves/nodes had been alternating for several weeks too.

I have given them 12/12 now for 8 days and have now noticed small "flowers" at mainly the tips of most nodes.
I have 3 plants in total and on all of them there is very clear "pistles" (whatever they are called) on all 3 plants. Dose this mean that they are all female or could they still be males?
or could they all me hremaphradites? as they are all grown from bag seeds taken from what i would say was "kind of Sensi"..... :? hmmm..

Thanks all :hump:
:peace:
 
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