Have they grown short?

Hello, everyone!

Please forgive my lack of experience, I'm growing for the first time. I'm afraid I've made a mistake but I don't know what was it. My plants look good, no signs of sickness, but it seems they have grown really short.

I have three Silver Haze #9 (by Sensi Seeds), fem, 60, 58 and 55 days old, their heights are 43, 47 and 55 cm (17, 18.5 and 21.5 inches) respectively. Also I have one plant of unknown sex and strain, probably Moby Dick, it's 54 days old and 75 cm (29.5 inches) high. There's 1 x 1 x 2 meters grow box with 400W MH lamp and separate ventilation systems for the lamp and plants; day temperature was up to 27-29 C (79-85 F) and humidity was 40-45% until I bought evaporative cooler two weeks ago, now day temperature is 23-25 C (73-77 F) and humidity is 55-60%. Regime is 18/6 from the beginning, pots are 11 liters (~3 gallons) from the beginning too. Yeah, that was a mistake, could this be the reason?
I water my plants every two days with bottled water I'm buying in the supermarket, ~0.5-0.6 liters for each plant at a time. Maybe it's too frequent, but 48 hrs after watering they look like they need it -- soil is dry and leaves are a bit saggy. After watering they look just fine. I also use fertilizer with NPK 4-3-6 every second watering, it's recommended 2-4 ml per liter, I do 1-2 ml per liter.
Soil is mixed substrate. My pH-meter for soil says pH is 7 in the pots and slightly less in the pack (should be 6.5), but it's inaccurate and can lie. I've never checked pH of the water.

Why are the plants so short? Did I under-water them? Is pH too high? Or there's no need to worry? When should I change the regime to 12/12 and lamp to HPS? The plants seem to stop growing higher but I may be mistaken.

Thanks for reading this wall of text. Any advice would be appreciated!

P.S. If the pictures are bad, just tell me what you need to see, and I'll make another.

youre good to flip now ...... they are going to double if not triple size during flower ......... my hazes do most of their growing after the flip........ i dont think you did anything wrong IMO ........... they look healthy from what i can tell

how far is your light away from the plants ?

tekdc911 said:

how far is your light away from the plants ?

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~65 cm from the tallest plant, ~1 m from the shortest. It has never been closer than 60-70 cm.
I can lift the light just a few inches higher.

bring it down ............ use the back of your hand at canopy level to judge how hot it is .......... my 400w cool tube i keep around 14-18 inches depending on my temps

try to get as close as possible without bleaching/burning them

what kind of air flow do you have going? Do you have fresh air flowing into your grow tent? Exhaust?

tekdc911 said:

bring it down ............ use the back of your hand at canopy level to judge how hot it is .......... my 400w cool tube i keep around 14-18 inches depending on my temps

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I did as you say. Thank you for the tips! I'll flip them tomorrow.

Farmer's Hat said:

what kind of air flow do you have going? Do you have fresh air flowing into your grow tent? Exhaust?

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Room where the tent is standing is small (~6 x 12 ft), and window is wide open. I have an out-take fan extracting air from the tent to the street through rooms window, you can see it on the picture in my previous reply, look on the ceiling. In-take is passive through little window on the bottom of the tent. My evaporative cooler is blowing air inside the tent through that little window if it's on.

Its possible that the plants you are growing simply require more light. Some strains just don't do well indoors. Silver haze tends to do great outdoors. I am actually growing out a few hundred, and they finished nicely. Not as dense as I would like, but considering all the set backs I had this year, I would say it turned out well. The NW is a new environment for me. All my previous crops were grown in Cali.

If your plants aren't growing as fast as you would like, perhaps it would serve you better to grow out a larger amount of plants. Clone your ladies early on.

Incidentally, when was the last time you flushed your plants?

All in all we grew about 1500 plants this season. We got a late start, due to all the formal legalities involved. We ended up pulling about 2-3 ounces per plant... which is depressing by my standards. Im used to 3-5 pounds per plant. Cant wait till next season come around. Its going to be epic.

Anyways, didn't mean to highjack your thread. Good luck with your grow.

Farmer's Hat said:

Its possible that the plants you are growing simply require more light. Some strains just don't do well indoors. Silver haze tends to do great outdoors.

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I lifted the light source down as tekdc911 advised me to, I think it's better now. I was afraid of burning my plants, it's hard to avoid first-time grow mistakes like this one.

Farmer's Hat said:

Incidentally, when was the last time you flushed your plants?

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I've never done it. The CGB, that I use as primary source of information about growing, says:

A soil flush is a last resort ‘time to save our dying plant’ manoeuvre. You only resort to a soil flush when all else has failed.

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After your reply I've googled more info about soil flush and found that some people recommend to do it before harvesting, before flowering and in some other cases.
So do you recommend to flush the plants with water to remove veg fertilizer before they enter flower phase? If I have 3 gallons pots, what amount of water should I use? ~2 gallons for every pot? I want to switch to 12/12 today. So I flush now and going to add bloom fert and bloom stimulant with next watering in 2-3 days, right?
Thanks for the answer. You have an awesome plantation and I wish you luck with your epic quest! =] It's really a pleasure to see that somewhere people are able to grow this amount of MJ completely legal. Unrealizable dream in my home country, but I hope it will become true soon in the country I currently live.

your plants look healthy. Give it some time, and see how they respond to the light change. It should help for sure.

You have the right idea about flushing. It wouldn't hurt to give it a good flush before you switch to bloom nutes.

Sometimes a plants growth can be slightly stunted because the soil is starting to build up toxic levels of nitrogen. I thought this might be happening with your plant, but it looks unlikely. You should be fine.

good luck

Well, here's the result. I didn't get as much as I wanted, but quality is wonderful.
Thank you, guys!