Need experienced advice

I'm currently into my week 3 of veg on my bagseed grow and i'm curious if anyone could tell me how these girls look for being at only 3 weeks, my concerns are they aren't tall enough for 3 weeks, the highest being 7". I run24hr 2x2700k cfl and 2x 6500k cfl about 3-4" away from girls for veg light... I use FFOF with 4:1 perlite mix . My watering is about 3-4 days apart with awatering consisting of saturation in 5 gallon buckets. I'm stating them on nutes this week using the FF big bloom with a 1/4 feeding.

TLDR: 3 weeks old ; do they look healthy?

Thanks

I'm not experienced in soil, but i've had many seeds that were around the same size around 3wks. Indicas??? Color looks fine by me, nice and dark green. I wouldn't expect much bigger plans from cfls at 3wks IMO. Try topping or pinching the plant in your second picture there, it would help those lower branches catch up then you'd have a nice canopy started.
you didn't mention how many watts your cfls are???

Superb plants imo...They're looking like text book indicas.
It's a good job you've done so far, and your nute plans seems fine...

welcome to RIU Notmeomg...nice plants....I wouldn't worry that they are short, as they look healthy

Nice job...
Soil seems to have nice N, those plants are perfect in color...
Do not worry, if lowest bottom leaves end up yellow, or brown on them, they are mighty close to soil, and could have soil transfer, which would then look like you are doing something wrong [not]... plants look good...
Good Luck man, happy growing!

Your plants need three things to survive, water, nutrients (soil, hydro, whatever you use) and light. We can pretty much do as good as nature or even better when it comes to nutrients and water, but light is really hard to replicate for a plants needs. This being said, your plants look perfectly healthy, the only logical reason they are not growing as fast as some other plants can probably be attributed to the amount of light the receive daily, and possibly strain. I read somewhere that cannabis plants, depending on strain, and in optimal conditions, CAN (not WILL) grow 3-6 inches in a 24 hour period. I have yet to achieve this indoors, but I'm also not a master grower. Keep doing what you are doing, in the end, the only thing that matters is that they look nice and healthy, and they do. If you want them to grow faster, add more light to the mix. Otherwise I would say you are doing great.

650baquet said:

I'm not experienced in soil, but i've had many seeds that were around the same size around 3wks. Indicas??? Color looks fine by me, nice and dark green. I wouldn't expect much bigger plans from cfls at 3wks IMO. Try topping or pinching the plant in your second picture there, it would help those lower branches catch up then you'd have a nice canopy started.
you didn't mention how many watts your cfls are???

Click to expand...

I'm assuming Indicas just due to my location in Colorado. I made a average stoner mistake and said I was using cfls when really I'm using T5 bulbs! I'm not sure how much watts they put out even after doing some google. I do however know what bulbs I have; Maxlume bloom 2800k (x2) and Plantmax fl54t5 865 according to the bulbs. I read, its safe to assume that 1 watt of a T5 puts out around 50 - 100 lumens and a general T5 produces 60 watts which translates to 24,000 lumens which im not sure is enough for a 6'x3'x8' closet... Not to mention the bulbs I've ran for 3 months straight plus they were display bulbs before I bought them. =/

I've vaguely heard of topping or pinching so I don't understand it fully, I will need to hit the search tool and google to find out more, but thanks for the advice keep it coming!

Notmeomg said:

I'm assuming Indicas just due to my location in Colorado. I made a average stoner mistake and said I was using cfls when really I'm using T5 bulbs! I'm not sure how much watts they put out even after doing some google. I do however know what bulbs I have; Maxlume bloom 2800k (x2) and Plantmax fl54t5 865 according to the bulbs. I read, its safe to assume that 1 watt of a T5 puts out around 50 - 100 lumens and a general T5 produces 60 watts which translates to 24,000 lumens which im not sure is enough for a 6'x3'x8' closet... Not to mention the bulbs I've ran for 3 months straight plus they were display bulbs before I bought them. =/

I've vaguely heard of topping or pinching so I don't understand it fully, I will need to hit the search tool and google to find out more, but thanks for the advice keep it coming!

Click to expand...

I only ran fluorescent lighting for my very first grow in a closet, box, and trash can. And they were CFL so i can't tell you if that watt translation estimation is accurate lol. I do know since i've been using mh i've been able to grow faster and more sturdy/stocky/bushy plants.

You can simply pluck off or cut off the top .5-1inch of those small plants. It would redirect growth/energy towards lower branches while the top heals and no longer needs that energy to grow. Some ppl prefer LST(low stress training) which is where you can bend the top over and tie it down which does no "damage" to the plant, but by forcing the top of the plant lower than the top of other branches or just lower in general will allow for lower branches to even out with the main top. LST can be so much fun; Ex: a buddy once just kept tying the top of a plant down once directing and it grew horizontally along the wall(about 6ft) and all of the lower branches grew straight up, hope you can picture that. If you check out my current chocolope grow journal you can see i bent the top it down when it was pretty young and now it has a sweet looking snake in it
Those are two easy ways to control your plant and help increase you yield as well!!