Do these look OK for 3 weeks flower today?

Smithy1 said:

No problem I will be carefull, You mentioned topping there I have topped every single one off my plants I have under my 600hps I have 4 and each one has been topped plus the ones outside have been topped to, I read that when you top a plant it increases your girls yield is this true? The plant normally grows one main cola but with topping am I correct in saying it grows 2 main colas? Ive topped my other ones outside 2-3 times I think, They where just a experiment to be honest to see what I can do to my indoors ones, They are flourishing in the U.K weather! Even though the sun has been hiding the last week or so, Nah I know you are not trying to put me off boosters I appreciate every little bit off advice you give me along with other people, When I first germinted the seeds I was thinking Mann this is going to be tough but I think I over complicated things and look into things to much rather than just feed them and let them do there thing, Ohh yeah and the "Stretch" My word they must of nearly doubled in size over a weeks period i had to Ajust things in my grown room I wasn't expecting them to grow so much the first week off flipping, Also I've read about when you feed you plants nutes don't give them the full dose always "Half" the dose you give them. So what nutes do you use if you don't mind me asking do you just use veg nutes all the way through without no bloom nutes? No problem I'll send you a PM with the pics when they are done.

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Topping increases the amount of leaves within better range of your light foot print, the more you top the better that becomes. More developed bud sites are then possible as they are attached to those leaves in optimal light. The buds will be smaller but more dense > increased yield. Topping sooner and as often as possible will give you smaller but wider plants (also assuming light intensity) and more tops. As they progress don't top blindly, look for tops that are getting a good few inches ahead of the rest and only top those. That will slow them down but allow trailing tops to catch up. You can top just shy of a week before flip since 2 weeks of stretch is partly veg time. It's probably not wise to top a couple days before flip though.

With manual feeding in coco, as you better increase leaf surface area to light (say scrog style) your water demands will increase. You want to be in around 15L pots running 4 plants in a 4x4 or so, sog aside. This allows flexibility, you can then feed every other day in coco as it dries fast. Life and tediousness may grind you down manually feeding every day. That size pot also allows longer veg durations especially if using air pots. Many say that feeding every day is better but in the correct size pot it's not a notable yield difference when feeding manually. The biggest difference is that you won't be fighting fungus gnats half as much if at all by feeding every other day, assuming you go down the part organic route. Even if it's a 5% yield drop, not fighting gnats or having to manual water every day is a easy trade off, given the time and product savings. Automated feeding is something to look into if you are chasing max possible yield, but it has it's downsides.

Look into ''mono potassium phosphate''. It's dirt cheap and will increase P as good as any booster. With cana a+b I'd personally try about 0.05 gram per/L from around week 3 and increase it to 0.10 gpl from week 5 until the end, see how that works. You can get into spike feeding, it's probably better once you get use to a certain strain.. but giving a lower constant amount of P will be more consistent if you change strains a lot. Don't quote my values, it's something I'd personally use as a happy medium.

You can use cana at full strength pretty quickly but you need to be in coco and watering at-least every other day properly with some run off. Burns are not definitively by ''full strength''. If your leaves are not optimally topped like I described above, your water demands will not increase but also your nutrient strength demands will not increase much either. If you have poor leaf>light structure but build to full strength because some weekly chart says so, that will likely lead to burn/lock out issues, most certainly if you also have a poor run off routine.

This does not mean you can't feed smaller veg plants full strength, ensure run off and avoid complete dry outs of the coco so that salts and access nutrients don't build. Keeping plants on half strength for too long will slow growth, keeping the lights too high for too long, like 3 feet away will create stretchy plants and run the risk of nutrient build up (less used light = less used nutrients). Sometimes you will see this with un-topped plant pics indoor, the lower leaves during vigorous growth start to look N tox as they are no longer getting enough light to use nutrients, so I presume. You need to get the 600 to around 24" as soon as possible and get them on full strength when at that distance. With run off some of the nutrient will be wasted but as they grow, they will have access to the nutrients they need so will not stall at any point and quickly require near the full amount. This will increase veg speed > topping amount > yield.

Don't bother with an ec meter, they can be very misleading.

Cana at 1.2 ec or so is actually not that high in strength. A mature plant being fed every day can only have run off every other day and things will be fine. The ppm will not build high enough to burn a mature plant over one day, it will save water/nutes. Problem is when you start adding lots of other shit, that 1.2 ec sharp becomes 1.7 and then you have to water with ridicules amounts of run off to ensure no build ups. It's a complete waste of money.

Some people feed very low ec like 0.6 (example) and with that they never need run off. But that is not easy to do, it requires a learning curve of burns and mistakes. It's easier to stick with a slightly higher ec + run off.