When to Start Flowering? Need Help from the Pros

Alright so to start i have 1 bag seed baby about 4 weeks old rescued from an abandoned outdoor set up after i brought it inside and put it under a 24w 6500k clf @18/6 its done much better. It still has a really long stem for its size and is growing straight up as the light is about an inch away from it. My questions are how do i tell when to start the flowering? How do i get it to branch out to form more buds? or will it do that by itself?

Thanks in advance

Hiya ozgreen I normally change the light cycle at about 1 month, my first grow was started off with a normal household bulb and it ended up being 6ft and hardly any branches when I took it down no joke it was as tall as me, so after making that mistake I used 2 CFL's on my current grow (850w equivilent) and its branching out lovely you can see from the journal Ive started if you want , but the 1 Im doing at the moment Ive had to change the light cycle after only 2 weeks 4 days due to my neighbour upstairs flooding my kitchen out and had to turn the electrics off so thought may aswell just turn them. You could top the plant where you just cut just above the nodes and then the next 2 branches below it will take over and it will be like having 2 little plants, it does start to form more branches when it goes into flowering but it should really have the branches through the veg stage I would say.

just uploaded some pics then, Thanks for your suggestions dude! when you say cut the just above the nodes do you mean the little new forming leaves or? im pretty new to all this as you can tell but hey gotta start somwhere

Well it depends how tall you want it. I have a limited space to how tall I can grow. So I start 12/12 at 12 inchs. It depends on you. Some people grow 5 ft tall.

Good luck m8!

Dude I just looked at the pictures again to me the one looks like it has hairs already? Take a closer picture of where the leaf is connected to the stem..

Yeh def hairs on it you sure its not already started flowering?? or it wasnt a cutting as the leaves look like its been reverted back to veg when they go that shape?? yeh just above the new forming leaves m8.

Really? you think it might have already started budding? il take another pic now, rekon i should hold off on the budding and grow her a little bit more or switch to 2700k lights now and go 12/12?

Thanks again fellas

that plant is definitely budding or in the process of going back to veg. you should continue vegging since youve already had it in 18/6. switching to flowering again will stress the plant even more. if you want your plant to fill out and become more bushy you need to add more lights and in the near-future transplant it into a bigger pot. if you're going to be using cfls throughout the grow consider hanging cfls above and around the plant.
good luck