New to site, new to growing.. questions about my plant!

hey so ive been on here for a few months reading threads, gathering information, just establishing a decent knowledge of the weed plant before i attempted my first grow. The basics are as follows.
Growing a strain called CITRAL, in a 5 gallon sterilized paint bucket, under a 200 watt cfl day spectrium w/ reflector. soil is an organic potting mix (not MG, but i tossed the bags out so i forget)plus perlite a lil pete moss and a drainage system so the roots dont rot, and for nutes im using "Espoma big bloom", says its a veggie fert. at the moment im using it sparingly only once every other week untill the root system gets a lil more robust and i know im not burning anything.
As for the plant. its about 3 weeks old getting a 20/4 light cycle, growing maybe 2-4 inches from the CFL, growing very dark green and very bushy
anyway pictures speak better than words but its a pain to send them from my phone to email so ill be uploading them kinda slow.
Im not new to gardening but very new to growing marijuana, so while i have a general knowledge of what a plant needs i want to learn more marijuana specific growing skills, mainly regarding pruning, and optimizing soil (pH, nutes whatever)

and finally the pic. this was taken this morning.

That is a very healthy looking plant, as far as I'm concerned almost perfect looking!!

Thanks for the reply and kind words! One new development is the reddening of the bottom stem and branches on the first node. Pics. Will be up soon.

420God said:

That is a very healthy looking plant, as far as I'm concerned almost perfect looking!!

Click to expand...

I agree with this guy

Iscariott said:

I agree with this guy

Click to expand...

me too!!!!!!!!!

twenty2 said:

Thanks for the reply and kind words! One new development is the reddening of the bottom stem and branches on the first node. Pics. Will be up soon.

Click to expand...

Thats pretty common. Nothing to worry about. Looks pretty good. Here are 2 guides on topping, i dont do it more than a few times a plant a grow, i prefer low stress training alot more. topping/fimming-
https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/151706-uncle-bens-topping-technique-get.html
https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/200413-fimming-m-blaze-complete-how.html
Low stress training
https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/369528-low-stress-training-lst-guide.html

Welcome to RIU!
Your plant look really healthy,
if you need any advice just check through the threads.

Just remember it's not an orchid it's a WEED,yrs looks very good I wouldn't stress I would advise topping for the four main colas

hey sorry i havent updated in a few days, but i have some new pics and a video of the setup. The redness of the stems went away after a few days and didnt seem to be a big deal. The plant has been growing fast and dense lol the stem is thick and theres lots of growth under the main leaves... maybe its a result of the strong (200w) cfl being inches away... do you guys think its too close?
I know its good to keep cfls close because their light dosnt penetrate like an HID, but when the plant gets taller its only gonna have 2 more 100w bulbs on the sides... will this grown die and should i just try to stretch her more? anyway onto the pics let me know what you think... BTW after reading around a little i realized the soil i mixed was rich enough to not use nutes.. and as such ive only been giving it water... about a litre a week letting the soil dry out considerbly before i rewater it... but not enough so the leaves wilt. anyway onto some pics







and a video of the setup... added a fan, yeast/sugar c02 mix, and hung the reflector with the supplied hardware... not the coat hanger work of art in the pic above.
edit... dunno how to post a vid lol any tips on that?
next update ill have topped the plant and want to start thinking about sexing it i dont wanna waste time with a male... how long do you think till i know?

it usually takes 3-5 weeks of vegging before alternating nodes and preflowers appear. your doing really good. lots of nice bushy growth. Stretching the plant now would be a bad idea imo, its gonna do alot of that during the stretch phase of flowering. instead of getting 2 100w lights i'd get more smaller bulbs, that way you can bathe the plant in light from all over.

hey guys its been a little while since i updated... just wanted to give the plant enough time to look different. thanks for the replies about pruning, i topped the plant after the 4th node and it exploded... grew probably 5-6 inches in a week and a half after.
i also took some clones, but the soil was much too damp and clones too small... so after not showing any roots after 8 days they were trashed. i figured this time i would put the cuttings in a mix of 50%pete 50 soil/perlite so the medium would be more...fluffy... i guess. and the cuttings i used this time are about 6-7 inches tall while the last ones were 2-3 inches.
the pics in this post are of the older small clones... ill have pics of the new setup... pretty much the same except the new clones have gallon bags over them instead of sandwich baggies.
kind of surprised that a plant this size 11-14 inches has roots comming out the bottom of a 5gallon bucket... but i figured give the roots tons of room and the plant should end up yielding better.
the plan was to keep this plant as a mother and take lots of clones but after a discussing it with my grow partner we decided we both wanted to grow more sativa dominant strains and as such will be flowering / harvesting this plant as well as the two clones. so we put in an order at the attitude for some more exotic strains and got the shipment today... so in addition to the citral ill have a new york 47 (AK x NYCD) and a white widdow x afghan kush (not sativa i know... but a potent plant none the less) and after xmas probably a large autoflower grow.
couple questions about fertilizer... im using a solid (powder) fertilizer... not liquid like a lot of you guys on here and my plant seems to be doing just fine... so far. why do so many soil growers use the liquid fert? better / quicker absorption?
onto lights... will be upgrading the light setup... currently have one 200 watt cfl. on order is one 400w mh, and possibly some mylar. space is only about 3'x6'x6'. this will be plenty of light for the three ill have at the moment just wondering if its enough to do about 20 auto-flowers once this finishes up.
anyway onto pics... this is how she looks now.


and a pic of the NY47...
also to be grown once more lights arrive and more space opens up are...
Kiwi Seeds Mako Haze
X Line White Widow x Big Bud
G13 Blueberry Gum
Reserva Privada Kandy Kush (OG x trainwreck)
Dutch Passion Blueberry
Dutch Passion Orange Bud
Dutch Passion Mekong High
Dutch Passion White Widow
all are feminized seeds.
anyway thanks for looking riu!

forgot to add... the plant already smells... not like bud but it has a very sweet distinct smell... when you walk in the room it really hits you... and it hasnt even started flowering. also... at the size it is now how much do you think it would yield? i kinda want to just flower it now to make room for other strains / a grow room redesign.

It's looking excellent! You did an awesome job at the topping.

For a guess on a yield if you were to do things correctly, probably be between 1 1/2 - 2 ozs.

thanks man the first cut was a little nerve wracking... pruned many a plant... none i cared as much about as this one tho lol.

shits hawt gj

Looking good.

yo what up riu, thanks for all the love towards my grow!
The plant is growing much larger than expected, not a the worst of things but its gonna be too big for its 2.5x5x8 closet. i dont wanna prune the plant too much and lose weeks worth of vegging, but with 7-8 weeks left in flower, i dont think im gonna be able to let it grow as tall as it wants. funny because its an indica dominant strain but its been stretching like crazy lately... maybe its a sativa pheno within the pack.
anyway to combat the plants height my buddy and i decided to take some clones and then just flower the clones as soon as they root. Now ive tried to clone before and failed terribly, 4/4 clones died. However, i had a terrible setup and method and after doing a little more research i think i have a solution. browsing amazon let me to realize i didnt wanna spend $2-300 on a cloner and i dont wanna venture into hydroponics yet anyway so i just went down to the local hydro store and got a humidity dome and tray along with a pack of these "Rapid Rooter" seed / cutting starters... they honestly look like little square sponges with holes in them and a tray with holders.
Also new to the mix are an AKxNYCD about 2 weeks old and a WiddowxAfghan Kush same age, but i accidentally gave it some ink poisoning with a card i used to mark the cup... two bottom leaves browned out... but she recovered wonderfully.
Right now i have the big girl flowering along with the Kush and NY47. this is because i haven't divided the closet into a veg and flower section which i think im gonna do because now that i have the clone setup i'm gonna try for a perpetual harvest. one question im trying to figure out is if it makes sense to keep the CFLs for the veg room but buy a HPS setup for the flower room which would be about 2.5x3x8. im wondering if i should use a 150w or a 400w... heat is my only concern.. hell if a 1000w didnt get too hot id just have some stocky clones lol. i figure i can fit about 10-12 small plants in this flower room... if i take 2 clones a week off the mothers then i should be able to harvest 1-2 plants a week depending on strain. so i wonder if im only vegging clones a week or so after rooting before they get flowered and considering my limited space do you guys think 400watts is too hot for 2.5x3x8? and is 150w too low?
Also i picked up foxfarms big bloom, and separate 25watt light / mini cloning cabinet to house the dome and clones. I used the foxfarm but at like 1/4 strength for the first feeding to see how it reacted... last week the tips of the leaves were starting to yellow... maybe the soil mix is a little rich. anyway here are some pics from about a week ago... gonna post some from tonight in an hour or so.

Citral with the Kush n NY47 on the right... new pics will show bare bones (LOL) additions to the setup.

Yellowing tips.

Side view of the Citral

Top view

Ok so i just took some quick pics... its during its dark time so the lighting isnt too good but u can get an idea for how big the plant is and how small the other two are.
The clones are hurting again... same problem as last time just slightly different. its too damn hot for em... almost 77 degrees... and this time i had a t5 laying right on the dome, making it hot and evaporating the water instead of maintaining humidity.

so now the light is on the ceiling about 4 inches overhead. and there is a cup of water inside the dome to hopefully keep it humid. the dome isnt in the pic... but this setup will work much better.

also i germinated two seeds. they got slightly bent because there was a credit card over them keeping em dark and they grew into it lol, but they look good now and should be on their way. the seeds are an Aphrodite and a Skunk#11

the Citral shes looking good... almost 3ft tall now.

Dome with slowly declining clones... 3/5 are on their way to the grave but the other 2 look good.

getting their lean on

hopefully this fixes the problem

seedlings in rapid rooters

Does this plant have herpes?