Long veg time. Maybe bad genetics or not autos. Should I flip to 12/12?

Man this post has given me hope after I had began to think I had grown duds. I'm growing Northern Lights autos from 00 Seeds and am on day 45 and my girls look almost Identical to OP's when this thread started. Bushy and leafy as hell with only minor signs of flowering ( a few pistols have popped and my main cola site has some hairs starting to emerge) Going to start cutting my light back and hopefully will see similar results. I've ran 24/0 since day 1, do you guys recommend going straight to 12/12 or doing it gradually? (20/4...18/6.. 12/12 with a few days between each)

CODY_BR said:

Man this post has given me hope after I had began to think I had grown duds. I'm growing Northern Lights autos from 00 Seeds and am on day 45 and my girls look almost Identical to OP's when this thread started. Bushy and leafy as hell with only minor signs of flowering ( a few pistols have popped and my main cola site has some hairs starting to emerge) Going to start cutting my light back and hopefully will see similar results. I've ran 24/0 since day 1, do you guys recommend going straight to 12/12 or doing it gradually? (20/4...18/6.. 12/12 with a few days between each)

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If you can, leave them under longer light cycle for a while. I only ever had preflowers, and no pistils at the terminal bud sites - even after over 50 days. If you have pistils there, you may be in early flower.

My big worry now is that I had insufficient patience for the autoflower life cycle of this strain - and that the yield and quality of bud may suffer from reduced light hours. Then I remember that it took 16 days of 12/12 for all four plants to show definite signs of flowering and I think these have to be photos.

I don't know that it makes a difference to ease into a flip or just do it. I went from 20/4 to 12/12 all at once. You'll probably get a whole lot of different opinions on this, though.

A Viking said:

If you can, leave them under longer light cycle for a while. I only ever had preflowers, and no pistils at the terminal bud sites - even after over 50 days. If you have pistils there, you may be in early flower.

My big worry now is that I had insufficient patience for the autoflower life cycle of this strain - and that the yield and quality of bud may suffer from reduced light hours. Then I remember that it took 16 days of 12/12 for all four plants to show definite signs of flowering and I think these have to be photos.

I don't know that it makes a difference to ease into a flip or just do it. I went from 20/4 to 12/12 all at once. You'll probably get a whole lot of different opinions on this, though.

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Appreciate the reply man. I'm going to go ahead and dial it back to 20/4 and take some good pics of mine tonight to share.

Hey RIU, time for another update.
This will be a fairly pic heavy post. From last night, Day 87 from seed, day 36 of 12/12, I have a pic of each plant, then an attempt at a macro of the main bud. I'm no photographer, but you'll see that quickly, ha.

Flowering is kind of boring - not much changes from day to day, unlike veg. I really have to reference pics a week or so apart to see what's changed.

Girl 1:

Girl 2 - the triploid. She has been flowering longest, has least amount of frost.

Girl #3

Some good views of the calyx on this one.

Girl #4 - tallest, in the 2x2 cab

Day 91 (F40).
Just about the end of week 6 of flower. In a couple of more weeks I'll have to start looking at trichomes to see when to harvest. I have a 50x to 500x usb scope, but don't have the steadiness to use it even at the lowest zoom.

I found an old tripod and managed to clamp the microscope mount to the tripod. After turning off all the circulating fans, I got a real good view of trichs at max mag. Here's the pic:

Looks like the trichs are maturing, in good shape, and completely clear. I'll start checking this girl in about two weeks.

Amazing detail from a $20 Amazon cheapie. It's a bit finicky to focus, and I kind of lucked into the pic above. Took another zoomed in view of my kief catcher. Also interesting to see how much veg matter, stalks, damaged heads...makes up kief.

Hey RIU. Another update. Pics from this morning, Day 97 from seed, day 46 of 12/12.

Here's the girls.

Have been pulling a few yellow leaves yesterday and today - old, lower leaves. More pics of the fade:



I did take a look at the trichomes on one plant today. A bit milky, but lots of time to go. I have a few bud shots from this morning. A distinct difference from a week ago (two posts above).

These macro shots really misrepresent the size of the buds. Most buds are only 2 to 3 cm in diameter. Hope they start plumping up soon.

Buds get msot weight last 2 weeks but at 97 days and showing milky, you might not get 2 more weeks before she could be full of amber and degraded thc. 12 hours of light hurt this auto but she still looks good.

MATTYMATT726 said:

Buds get msot weight last 2 weeks but at 97 days and showing milky, you might not get 2 more weeks before she could be full of amber and degraded thc. 12 hours of light hurt this auto but she still looks good.

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I'm pretty happy with how things are turning out. Yeah, I wonder if the decision to go 12/12 was wrong, but decision made, gotta live with it. I'll just keep looking at the trichs each morning to figure when to chop. I'm looking for a sleepy couchlock effect, so probably up to 30% amber....

For shits and giggles, I will try to reveg a couple of them. If at least one is successful, then I guess I made the right decision. I'll update the thread on the result of the attempt.

Decided to quit being lazy, and saved some trichome shots from this morning. Looking back through the thread, I see that I first saw evidence of flowering on two plants on day 10 of 12/12, By day 16 all four plants had begun throwing out pistils. Today is day 98 from seed, 48 days of 12/12. Crop King advertised this strain as needing only 7 weeks of flower. Based on the trich pics, that may apply if you count from when plants are visibly flowering.

Enough jibber jabber - on with some pics.
First girl - flowering under 210 watts of screw in lights, no visible evidence of flowering until F16. still has some clear, The odd amber.trich here and there on leaves.

Number 2: Looking fairly cloudy, some clear, no amber. Visible flowering on F10.

Girl 3 - Again mostly cloudy to my eyes, no amber visible. Visible flowering on F10

Girl 4 - Still looking like lots of clear - this was taken at the very top of a secondary bud. Second last plant to show visible evidence of flowering - around day F13.


So we'll just wait for some amber to show up. And hopefully for some additional weight on the buds. I don't mind stretching the harvest out over a week.

Looking good man! Definitely no sense in rushing it now after all this time lol. Since i was already throwing some pistils I decided to hold up on the 12/12 switch like you recommended and just drop from 24/0 to 20/4 and now at day 60 from seed every potential bud site is now loaded with long white pistils so i'm definitely into flower. Mine must have just been an extremely slow bloomer since seedsman advertised "ready to harvest 75 days from germination" when it's looking like it will be more like 100 days.

CODY_BR said:

Looking good man! Definitely no sense in rushing it now after all this time lol. Since i was already throwing some pistils I decided to hold up on the 12/12 switch like you recommended and just drop from 24/0 to 20/4 and now at day 60 from seed every potential bud site is now loaded with long white pistils so i'm definitely into flower. Mine must have just been an extremely slow bloomer since seedsman advertised "ready to harvest 75 days from germination" when it's looking like it will be more like 100 days.

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Thanks!

Good to hear that your plant started flowering on its own. Do you have a thread somewhere about this grow? I'm on day 100 today, exactly 7 weeks of 12/12. If I hadn't been running out of room I would have waited a bit more too. haha.

Three of my plants are still stacking calyxes, and it seems like the buds are plumping up a bit. So there is still hope for a decent* harvest here - the four plants have about 70 secondary tops in addition to the four central colas.

*Decent is totally subjective. I'm almost afraid to say this, but I was hoping to average roughly two oz. (or 60g) per plant, which would be two years worth of my current consumption, and a pretty good result for a first grow.

Hi Riu, another set of pics from this morning - Day 102, day 51 of 12/12.

I think it is getting closer to the harvest window. It appears that the plants have slowed down producing new pistils, lots of pistils turning orange, and a mix of clear, cloudy and amber trichomes. Too much clear at the moment, and amber is mostly confined to the sugar leaves.

The following pics are from a new attempt at taking macros with my phone. The USB microscope takes good pics, but is tough to get enough field of view. This "macro lens" is a 25mm Plössl eyepiece for my telescope. Pictures were taken backwards through the eyepiece. I built a wooden holder for the eyepiece and my phone that keeps things lined up and allows me to clamp everything to a tripod for stabilization.




Patience is at a premium these days. I'm thinking to chop this weekend, but will take a good look first.

Last pic: Oh, It looks like plants have some husky fur on them, dammit. My pup rarely comes into the shop, so I guess these probably came off of me

Looking awesome man! Can't wait to see the harvest results. Do you recall about when they quit stretching? I'm beginning to worry about running out of room with mine!

CODY_BR said:

Looking awesome man! Can't wait to see the harvest results. Do you recall about when they quit stretching? I'm beginning to worry about running out of room with mine!

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Thanks, dude!

I didn't keep explicit records about the stretch, however It seems to me that the stretch lasted about three weeks. These particular plants added about 50% to height (some of my earlier posts detailed the heights). My tent eventually got so crowded that I had to build a separate 2x2 cab for the largest plant, but the stretch had finished by then. The cab will become the drying cab once the harvest starts.

Here's some pics from this morning. I took a bunch of trich shots too, this time trying to look at older parts of buds. Still lots of clear, although the leaves are starting to get lots of amber. Enough clear that the pics convinced me not to chop this weekend.

Definitely added some bulk in the last week.

main cola on another plant

Looking fire ! ... resin rails are good.

Side question .... how about a pic of your tripod / microscope build .... great pics.

I did a DIY thread on a cheap microscope mod awhile back ... your pics reminds me of it !

https://www.rollitup.org/t/diy-microscope-modification-for-phone-ipad-easy-cheap.864913/

Budzbuddha said:

Looking fire ! ... resin rails are good.

Side question .... how about a pic of your tripod / microscope build .... great pics.

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I took some pics of it the other day, so here you go.

Clamped to tripod

A shot of the eyepiece I'm using as a macro. It is press fit into the slab of scrap maple. It is secure, took a fair bit of pressure to press it in.

detail showing the alignment rails and elastics to keep the phone in place.

Budzbuddha said:

I did a DIY thread on a cheap microscope mod awhile back ... your pics reminds me of it !

https://www.rollitup.org/t/diy-microscope-modification-for-phone-ipad-easy-cheap.864913/

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Yeah, pretty much the same concept. Are you still using that setup?

A Viking said:

Thanks, dude!

I didn't keep explicit records about the stretch, however It seems to me that the stretch lasted about three weeks. These particular plants added about 50% to height (some of my earlier posts detailed the heights). My tent eventually got so crowded that I had to build a separate 2x2 cab for the largest plant, but the stretch had finished by then. The cab will become the drying cab once the harvest starts.

Here's some pics from this morning. I took a bunch of trich shots too, this time trying to look at older parts of buds. Still lots of clear, although the leaves are starting to get lots of amber. Enough clear that the pics convinced me not to chop this weekend.

Definitely added some bulk in the last week.
View attachment 4274166
main cola on another plant
View attachment 4274167

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Welllll that's not good. I'm on day 63 and my girls look about identical to how yours did on day 71 so i've probably got at least another week of stretching and i'm already about 10" away from my LED's lol.

But DAMN did that main cola ever pack on some weight! Super impressive man.

Happy Groundhog Day RIU

Today is day 105 from seed, day 54 of 12/12. I have some noticeable foxtails forming on three plants. Here's some pics of the three main colas that some foxtails. But Mmmmmmm, getting frosty.




I have some trich shots from this morning too. God I feel like a giddy teenager. The urge to chop is almost overpowering. Think I'm going to have to cut off a bit that isn't foxtailing to get a good look at the trichs. Anyway, here is a shot from one plant. IBtwomoreweeks.