How do I slow down/reduce/prevent the flower stretch?

marleyg2 said:

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Budzbuddha said:

Hey bro …. GRINDR on other side of internet

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Richard Drysift said:

Ok I’ll answer your Q... I’ve said this before yet I’ve not seen one grower try this besides me. It is probably too late to do much for these plants other than top and reveg or pinch/LST them but there is a way to prevent or eliminate stretching altogether and it begins in early veg phase. Tight nodal spacing makes big buds later on; plants vegged under intense lighting stack up nodes tightly so more bud sites can develop in the same amount of space.
It is the drastic transition from veg to flowering that triggers a plant’s stretch response. Most indoor pot growers will flip from something like 18/6 to 12/12 which triggers flowering but the sun doesn’t do this in nature. The sun gradually changes to 12/12 over the summer into fall. You almost never see a lanky stretching plant outside under the sun because the transition to bloom phase happens gradually and also because the sun is as intense as it gets with perfect spectrum. If you gradually reduce the amount of light hours indoors to mimic the suns natural cycle you can diminish or even eliminate stretching altogether.
So start off by vegging under proper lighting intensity and spectrum to induce tight nodal spacing. That in and of itself will help increase yield but if avoiding stretch and developing plants with the most yield potential is the goal then reduce the hours of light gradually over a few weeks instead of just flipping to bloom in the conventional way. If let’s say you are vegging at 18/6 the next week go to 17/7 or 16/8. Reduce the hours of daylight by one or two hours per week. When they reach 14/10 they should begin to pre-flower; at 13/11 they could start to throw pistils. You can get them to be in veg and bloom phase at the same time which usually makes for bushy plants with lots of bud sites. You can continue to go into full bloom 12/12 at this point or pull them back to veg them even longer but you can almost eliminate stretching if you do this gradually. It’s a great way to sex out reg seeds and/or to “monster” your plants for maximum yield.

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Flowki said:

Can you give more details on how much yield increase you expect from a typical 12/12 plant, to the technique you described?. I currently don't mind a little bit of stretch from the net, with 6-8 inch buds rising above the main leaf canopy at net. It makes better use of air circulation, without the need to engineer a 24/7 200w wind tunnel to ward off mold. It starts adding up, heating, venting, air circulation, humidity control, co2, water heaters/coolers etc, along with increased ware and tare renewals. For me, it's all good talking about max yield, but what are the running costs to get to a product that if anything, is going down in price.

If the yield increase justifies the extra W, I would consider trying it. I also hope to get a co2 burner soon, as I am already semi sealed to save on heating, so adding co2 in the process makes sense. My worry on that was people say the oxygen levels can drop, releasing toxic gas from improper burning. The suggestion was to keep in-out take on a low setting to keep oxygen up for the burner.. but then that's back to needlessly blowing hot air and created co2 out of the space 24/7.

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Richard Drysift said:

Ok I’ll answer your Q... I’ve said this before yet I’ve not seen one grower try this besides me. It is probably too late to do much for these plants other than top and reveg or pinch/LST them but there is a way to prevent or eliminate stretching altogether and it begins in early veg phase. Tight nodal spacing makes big buds later on; plants vegged under intense lighting stack up nodes tightly so more bud sites can develop in the same amount of space.
It is the drastic transition from veg to flowering that triggers a plant’s stretch response. Most indoor pot growers will flip from something like 18/6 to 12/12 which triggers flowering but the sun doesn’t do this in nature. The sun gradually changes to 12/12 over the summer into fall. You almost never see a lanky stretching plant outside under the sun because the transition to bloom phase happens gradually and also because the sun is as intense as it gets with perfect spectrum. If you gradually reduce the amount of light hours indoors to mimic the suns natural cycle you can diminish or even eliminate stretching altogether.
So start off by vegging under proper lighting intensity and spectrum to induce tight nodal spacing. That in and of itself will help increase yield but if avoiding stretch and developing plants with the most yield potential is the goal then reduce the hours of light gradually over a few weeks instead of just flipping to bloom in the conventional way. If let’s say you are vegging at 18/6 the next week go to 17/7 or 16/8. Reduce the hours of daylight by one or two hours per week. When they reach 14/10 they should begin to pre-flower; at 13/11 they could start to throw pistils. You can get them to be in veg and bloom phase at the same time which usually makes for bushy plants with lots of bud sites. You can continue to go into full bloom 12/12 at this point or pull them back to veg them even longer but you can almost eliminate stretching if you do this gradually. It’s a great way to sex out reg seeds and/or to “monster” your plants for maximum yield.

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Richard Drysift said:

I don’t have hard numbers but monster-ing the plants by gradually reducing hours of daylight is an old indoor practice. Can easily double the yields over just flipping them as normal if you have the patience and grow space to do it. For clones this technique is a kind of unpredictable due to their irregular growth but from seed around week 7 of veg is a good place to start. I go straight to 15/9 to induce preflower and then go to 14/10 the following week and so on. Once they show sex I put them back to 18/6 for a week or two and then begin reducing daylight again. You can almost completely avoid stretching this way but it also adds several weeks to veg time. Forms untrained plants from seed into perfect Christmas tree shapes. Makes for nice big buds but that also comes at a price; bud rot if humidity is too high for too long. Heavy buds also may need a lot of support later in bloom. Curious to see what happens doing this on a scrog net but I’m still not sure the extra veg time is worth it if ROI is the goal.

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Richard Drysift said:

Ok I’ll answer your Q... I’ve said this before yet I’ve not seen one grower try this besides me. It is probably too late to do much for these plants other than top and reveg or pinch/LST them but there is a way to prevent or eliminate stretching altogether and it begins in early veg phase. Tight nodal spacing makes big buds later on; plants vegged under intense lighting stack up nodes tightly so more bud sites can develop in the same amount of space.
It is the drastic transition from veg to flowering that triggers a plant’s stretch response. Most indoor pot growers will flip from something like 18/6 to 12/12 which triggers flowering but the sun doesn’t do this in nature. The sun gradually changes to 12/12 over the summer into fall. You almost never see a lanky stretching plant outside under the sun because the transition to bloom phase happens gradually and also because the sun is as intense as it gets with perfect spectrum. If you gradually reduce the amount of light hours indoors to mimic the suns natural cycle you can diminish or even eliminate stretching altogether.
So start off by vegging under proper lighting intensity and spectrum to induce tight nodal spacing. That in and of itself will help increase yield but if avoiding stretch and developing plants with the most yield potential is the goal then reduce the hours of light gradually over a few weeks instead of just flipping to bloom in the conventional way. If let’s say you are vegging at 18/6 the next week go to 17/7 or 16/8. Reduce the hours of daylight by one or two hours per week. When they reach 14/10 they should begin to pre-flower; at 13/11 they could start to throw pistils. You can get them to be in veg and bloom phase at the same time which usually makes for bushy plants with lots of bud sites. You can continue to go into full bloom 12/12 at this point or pull them back to veg them even longer but you can almost eliminate stretching if you do this gradually. It’s a great way to sex out reg seeds and/or to “monster” your plants for maximum yield.

Click to expand...